Shana Bearden

3-8-10 Arlington, Texas
I am sorry to be late updating this but we are pretty tuckered out with all of the traveling. First, our overall trip was great and we have some super photos. Carnival was unbelievable and the other cities we visited were beautiful and friendly. Brad loves Buanos Aries while I liked Rio best. Saw too much to really go into here but it was quite a trip that allowed us to cross 6 borders in 14 days before the earthquake and to see a whole lot of south america. South America is not like Mexico. It is modern and generally very clean except for a lot of grafitte that relates to political issues. It seemed to be everywhere except in Chili. Most cities were very modern but with a nice mix of colonial architecture and laid back ways. We had a great time until the earthquake.

I left a message from the hotel about the earthquake. To say it was powerful is an misnomer. It was unbeleavable. During the quake the concrete beams were bending like venitian blinds and they somehow held together. Furniture, plaster, glasses and dishes were all flying around the hotel room during the quake. It made me feel pretty puny as a human.

After the quake we spent a nervous day running in and out of the hotel room during the aftershocks. Some were pretty bad. There was some damage to the part of town we were in but overall it looks like it weathered it pretty well. However, a building down the street from our hotel, a highrise, was reported yesterday to be slowly leaning and falling because the top floors have pancaked and the weight is too much for the pillers on one side. I think it was a 22 floor building so that will be really bad if it falls.

We waited around to get information for a couple of days to see if the airport would reopen. However, the second floor of the airport collapsed and the government kept extending when commercial planes could be taking off. As far as I know, no commercial planes have landed or took off even though emergency flights are landing at the attached military base using the military control system. We started looking for a way to get out and finally heard that some of the neighboring countries were flying in planes to Mendoza, Argentina. So we decided to try to make a break for it to Mendoza. Easier said than done. We were originally going to hire a van but they wanted to be paid in cash and we had only $40 cash to our name. All of the ATM’s in the country were down and were useless. Even after many were fixed they could not do international transactions or the subsequent run on the ATM’s took all of the money in the machines. Finally, we discovered that the local bus terminal had some buses going over the Andes mountains to Mendoza but there was a lot of worry about the riots that were starting now and the possiblity of bandits robbing the buses. We were able to charge the bus tickets in Santiago so that allowed us to get bus tickets but then we had to wait in the terminal for 10 hours to catch our bus. Then the bus took another 10 hours to go over the mountains overnight. Until you have ridden in a foriegn bus over dirt roads in the Andes with drops of thousands of feet on one side while the bus roars up and down the mountain roads, you haven’t lived. We were stopped at the Argentine border and the bus was searched for about 2 hours while we stood outside on the top of a mountain waiting. This was really bad on Brad and I as all we had to wear were shorts and T shirts so it was really really cold. However, it was really pretty too because there was a full moon and we were in the snow on top of the world with the whole Andes mountain range laid out before us. Magnificent.
We fell asleep when we got on the bus and slept most of the way to Mendoza. We had to rent a taxi from the bus stop to the airport and that cut into our available cash significantly. One of the real heroes of this adventure was TAM airlines, the brazilian carrier. They were our master ticket company and once they found out we were getting out, they bent over backwards to accommodate us. Many of the South American Carriers actually flew in planes for their countrymen to carry them out without charge. These guys really tried to help each other. Not true for American Airlines who raised airfare from a normal rate of $800 to over $5,000 per person and was callous about helping out anyone. Most americans who were trying to get out really were angry over the way AA behaved. Greed is a bad image.
Anyway, TAM rescheduled us and did not charge us for the rerouting that was required and made sure that we got a complete itenerary of our new passages. They were great. Once at the Mendoza airport we were able to get our tickets confirmed all the way back to the US and we flew to Buenos Aires. They kept telling us that we had to change airports in BA but all the maps we looked at made it look like the two airports were close together. Unfortunately that was not the case. They are about 50 miles apart and the buses there were $100 cash. We only had about $35 to our name and were getting somewhat worried when an american we met in Mendoza suggested we all split a Taxi to the new airport. We did and after we each paid our portion we were able to keep $10 to make it to the US.
TAM then did another great thing. We had not eaten for some time so they moved us up to first class where we got a great old fashioned silver service meal which kind of saved us. When we got to Sao Paulo Brazil, we had a fairly long wait for a plane but then got on board and since it was a 9 hour flight to Miami we got two more meals from them. Finally we got to Miami, about 60 hours after we left the hotel in Santiago and by this time we were kind of proud of the fact that we had made it that far with only spending about $30, so we passed on eating there and caught our plane back to DFW arriving here late on Wednesday. Both Brad and I are still pretty worn out but in good spirits and back at work today.
Thanks for all of your concern and prayer and I am looking suspiciously at our Greek trip in April which happens to be on the island of Santorini which is one of the most active volcanic islands in the world. Brad seems a bit leary about going with me but I bet he does when all is said and done.
Jim

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.