I don't know why it is, that despite carefully planning everything down to the last second - my travels never go entirely smoothly.
My first problem was luggage. Our long haul Qantas flight from London to Auckland, NZ gave us a generous 30 kg luggage allowance each - which is about right for 4 weeks travelling through a country that can experience all 4 seasons in one day. However I had to get to London from Spain and the best option I could find was Iberia who gave me 23kg. So rather than travel light - (a concept I have never really managed to embrace) I put all the really heavy stuff in my hand luggage. By the time I'd finished packing - my trusty rolling backpack, that has served me well across Central and South America, was full to the brim with everything electrical - hair straighteners, 3 cameras, all their chargers, a huge back of Go Pro accessories, loads of plug converters and a million leads for the phones, kindles, laptop & cameras. It weighed 12 kg and was literally bulging at the seams. Even so, I still had to jettison loads of stuff that I had considered essential, to get my big case down to the 23kg. I arrived at Valencia airport for the first leg of my journey feeling quite calm and relaxed after being chauffeured there by my wonderful kind neighbours and remained that way until I got to security. Picture a sea of people all milling about, carrying trays of belts, coats, bags laptops etc with no clear indication of where one line started and the next one finished. I read the signs carefully, removed my belt (always a worry - cos no one wants to be showing a builders bum when you bend down to remove your boots) watch, jewellery, coat and laptop and started queueing. The main trouble is that you have to put everything in trays, but once you join one of the mile long queues there is no where to put them, so you have to carry them - fine if you are travelling light (which we've already established isn't one of my strong points) not so great if you have a 12kg backpack to carry. So when I eventually staggered to the front of the queue, I was very happy to see my stuff head into the xray machine. 10 seconds later - not so happy to see it reverse back out again. The official ( and she really was official in every sense of the word) yelled at me in very fast Spanish that there was far too much in the bag and she couldn't see anything - so I needed to take out all the electrical stuff (virtually everything that was in there) and put it in trays. I must have given her an :"are you mad" look because as I started to unzip my backpack, whilst wildly looking around for spare trays, she flapped her arms at me and told me to go to the back and do it at the tables. Knowing my luck, I had mentally prepared for them doing a bag search after the Xray but certainly not before. My range of emotions ran through anger, frustration, tearfulness and finally resignation. Anyway, once I had pulled everything out, I now had big 4 trays (or it could have been 5 - who knows - it was a lot) that I somehow had to get back to the conveyor belt. By this time the queues were even longer, so I tried to explain to the people that were already near the front what had happened and could I push in, but I was obviously saying it all wrong or they chose not to understand, because they all huddled closer together in the queue and waved at me to get to the back. Another "official" appeared and shouted at me for trying to push in, I told her I had already queued and had been told to unpack everything and that I couldn't queue because I had this huge stack of trays and they were too heavy to manage. She gave me an icy stare and said everyone had heavy trays. Well she may have been right, but no-one else had 4 or 5, that when piled on top of each other meant you couldn't see where you were going, so kept bumping into people. By the time I made it back to the front, my arms were dropping off, I looked like a drowned rat that had been pulled through a hedge backwards and I felt like the most hated person in Spain.
When I finally made it through, it took me a full 20 minutes to repack the bag, mostly because if I just stuffed it all back in, I knew it wouldn't fit in the little cratey thing, that they use to measure hand luggage.
This all left me with no time for coffeee or shopping (probably a good thing as there was no-where to put anything anyway) so I headed to the gate, which, as always was the furthest one away.
At the gate, there were only a few passengers waiting, so I thought great - the flight's going to be empty, I can stretch out and I won't risk losing my backpack to the dreaded hold (unless I hadn't packed it well enough). I sat down, made myself comfortable and took in the view through the huge windows they have in that part of the airport. "Oh look", I said to myself "there's a sweet little turbo prop plane right by our gate - I wonder where that's going". I glanced around to see where my plane might be and noticed the doors to the little plane opening, a tiny set of steps descending and then people heading into the terminal right through our gate. I was sat there wondering how they managed to cram that many people into something slightly bigger than a model aircraft- when the reality hit me.Â
No no no - please don't tell me I'm going to Madrid in that. Now I'm not a huge fan of flying, but I accept that it's a necessary evil if you want to travel. However I do draw the line at being taken that far from the ground in something that looks like it's made of balsa wood with only 2 propellers. So faced with the stark choice of cancelling 12 months of planning, disappointing Lottie, Hellene and losing all that dosh or taking a deep breathe and getting on the plane, I ran for the hills. No I didn't really - otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here with a lovely cup of coffee looking at the most breathtaking view.
So having made the decision to put my life in their hands I queued up to board. The Iberia check in lady began walking up the queue to look at everyone's boarding pass and - horror of horrors carried with her the little hand baggage crate checker. Oh shit shit shit! It was touch and go whether it would have fitted before the major repack at security scenario, now there was virtually no chance. Sure enough, she got to me and with an evil grin had the little IN HOLD label attached to my bag before I could say a word. Normally, following in the footsteps of my lovely sister, I would have ripped it off when no-one was looking - but standing exposed in this little queue with a thousand Iberia staff looking on - there was no chance. There wasn't even the opportunity to take out the valuable stuff, because nearly everything in there fell into that category, so still suffering from PTSD after security, I started to get a bit tearful. She told me not to worry, the staff would be careful with it (seriously????) and I would be able to collect it as soon as we got to Madrid.
As I boarded the plane, I tried to go slow, so I could watch it go into the hold, but as I said, the steps were minuscule, so I had no option but to keep moving.
The plane itself was small, with only 2 cabin crew and only 4 people per row. I had been given a window seat, so I offered to swap with the bloke next to me, but he wasn't having any of it, so I crammed myself into the little space, only to find myself with a perfect view............ of the propeller!
Not good - so during take off and for the first few minutes until I fell into an exhausted sleep I watched it repeating "keep turning, keep turning" to myself.
Well it did, and we arrived safely in Madrid 45 minutes later.
Back on the tarmac, I waited patiently with loads of other passengers who had been given the evil little tags. Sure enough, all the bags arrived one by one - sighs of relief all round, until there were just 2 of us left. Worryingly, the crew seemed to be hunting for the 2 final bags - they kept disappearing into the hold and then coming out again, empty handed. Then they went round to the back of the plane, then into the front again - still no backpack. Other crew members started unloading the checked bags and by now, my heart was hammering in my chest and there was a teensy weency bit of hyperventilation going on. I was only waiting for 10 minutes - but it seemed like 10 hours, so when they finally walked round the plane with it, I nearly collapsed with relief. I opened it to check my macbook was still there and working on the assumption that no-one would have been able to get everything out to get to the cameras at the bottom and get it all back in again, I headed off to find my connecting flight to Heathrow.
I don't know if you've ever been to Madrid airport but it's massive and getting from one gate to another involved miles of walking, trains then more walking. So again - no time to shop - but feeling grateful that my ridiculously heavy back pack has wheels, I got to my gate 30 mins later.
The flight to London, passed without further incident and my lovely cousin was there waiting for me in his beautiful Black Cab. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to see anyone and after 5 fags on the trot we headed into London.
I had a wonderful evening staying with another cousin and got to have a nice hot curry and see my 93 year old uncle before heading back to Heathrow the next day for the next part of the journey.