February 3rd - Santiago to Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

LAN-basted!

The six o'clock in the morning taxi drove me to the airport, arriving two hours before the flight to Easter Island. After an hour and a half in line, reaching the counter, the attendant stopped cold and waved over a manager. I was about to be bumped off the flight, literally the first person to "not be allowed to board. There was no appeal process, as the only option was to accept a certificate and return later in the evening for the next flight.



Throughout the day I continued to hear one story of woe after another, as to the complete lack of customer service provided by LAN. One person said, "The only reason LAN is in the One World Alliance is due to their near monopoly of western South America." I tried to have patience and enjoy the oddities of the airport, like this stacked luggage art installation.



Ultimately, the evening plane was delayed for three hours and finally lifted off for Easter Island (Isle de Pasqua) fourteen hours after my originally scheduled flight. Just to make things more interesting, the person at the airline desk in the morning had assigned to me a non-existent seat, which was conveniently in the same row location as the bathroom. So after all my patience with LAN, the reward was a middle seat in the next to last row of the plane.



When the doors of the aircraft were cracked at two thirty in the morning, the humidity flooded the tube. Yep, I had definitely made it to a tropical island, complete with flower lei. Despite the awful experience with LAN I was completely excited to be on Easter Island and couldn't wait for the daylight to come so that exploration could begin.