The QANTAS kangaroo is up there with the most prestigious airline logos, alongside America’s eagle and Canada’s maple leaf, seeing our country’s red kangaroo 747 parked at a gangway in major cities across the globe always fills me with a sense of national pride… As I walk straight past it and board whichever airline is offering an airfare within my budget…
“I’m not going anywhere special. I just really like airplane food”
As much as I love QANTAS, Skyscanner usually convinces me to chose the 4-stop, 60-hour transit option. But not even Skyscanner had a better option for making it to South America. No matter who you chose to fly with from Australia it isn’t a cheap trip, and for the first time in a long time I was boarding a national icon… Well, after a four-hour delay.
But the four hours was soon forgotten as we sat on the 12-hour flight. Which happened to be one of the best long-haul flights I have ever had… Probably mostly due to being next to my mother instead of an anonymous smelly stranger for an extended amount of time…
The food was wonderful and plentiful. Our VGML, (AKA vegan, for those of you that don’t speak airline food codes), meal happened to be a magnificent curry – paired with your choice of COCKTAILS or wine or beer, as well as a VGML chocolate cake. (Something you can’t even find on the ground in most parts of the world).
The flight was long but the staff on board this flight made it fly by. (Pun kind of intended). We descend over one of the most magnificent sky-high views I had ever witnessed. The great mountain ranges of South America. The Andes. Weaving through the extraordinary peaks we soon we landed in Chile’s elevated capital, touching down smoothly in Santiago.
We were tired and grumpy and I was feeling pretty American… Not due to my exhausted mood – simply due to the lack of visa-fees applicable to USA… Duel citizenship has it’s perks – in this case I saved $117USD that the poor Aussies (my mother included) were subjected to handing over at immigration. (I almost feel like I could create an infomercial about the perks of Americanism – order in the next half hour and you get a bag of Reeses pieces completely free).
American and exhausted I exited immigration and entered Chile.
Chile. Yes, the country that sounds like and is shaped like the spice. But do not be fooled. You will not find a taste of spiciness anywhere in the country. The food is as mild as can be.
But this does not apply to the people. These hot-blooded and hot-looking latin americans have fire in their blood and the passion that we were about to discover in this country would be second to none. I would soon fall in love with the spiciness of Chile.
