The Uruguay Trip Part 1 aka the Bad Part

Checking in at the airport, what a process! Five checked bags, two car seats and 3 children, 5 carry-ons and a stroller. Yikes!!! (Just FYI, I took tons of stuff my parents needed, hence the 5 checked bags. Carry-ons are a different story. Electronic bag (I don't even want to admit to you what was in there....okay, Matt's work laptop, a mini DVD player, my mini laptop (for when the DVD player ran out of batteries) a camera, a video camera multiple chargers, both of our phones and that might be all, might not. I can't remember anymore. Let's just say pulling all of that out at security was delightful. Thank goodness the U.S. is the only country we visited that makes you do that. There was also the diaper bag, the overnight bag (I was very paranoid about us not having a change of clothes. On my last flight to Uruguay (the overnight part) a young girl threw up on the plane and had no clothes to change into. It stunk all night long, and the stewardess was very rude to the poor girl.) The entertainment/snack bag which really was two bags. I just couldn't contain it into one and organized it so that as it emptied we could consolidate them.

We said goodbye and met up with Tara and her family. We hopped on a plane to Dallas and the kids were all very excited, but very well-behaved. In Dallas we only had a short amount of time, but managed to get dinner, get everyone to the bathroom and ready for the overnight flight. We hopped on plane number two and ended up sitting in a plane with a two seats, three seats then two seats. Matt and Derek sat in a two-seater and the other boys and I took the three seater spot. This flight was a little rougher on everyone. We were served dinner on the plane, around 11 pm and it was surprisingly delicious. The kids began to drift off and Derek actually slept most of the night. Austin slept about 5 hours and then watched movies the rest of the flight. Poor Zack struggled with his ears and getting comfortable and slept about two hours. Matt and I think we each slept about two hours also. We were pretty beat when our plane landed in Chile.

We had a five-hour layover in Santiago and during the first few hours we tried to take turns napping and entertaining the kids. I admit that we made a mess wherever we were sitting. Crumpled up stickers, broken crayons and cracker crumbs were everywhere. About two hours before our flight we decided to make our way to our gate. (We had camped out in a more kid-friendly location until it was closer to departure time.) Just as we arrived at our gate we saw a big flashing sign announce that our flight was canceled. Now I do not know why, but there were only two flights from Santiago to Uruguay that day and the other left an hour before ours did. Tara and I ran to a reservation desk and tried to get on the earlier flight. The only problem was that we were flying a government-owned airline for this last leg of the journey. Let's just call them P.U. This airline had no offices in the Santiago airport. We were trying in our poor Spanish to convince the American Airlines people to help us. They finally called a representative from P.U. to come help us. After about thirty minutes he showed up. His name was Miguel.

To make a very long story as short as possible, it took so long to switch our flights (apparently this airline does not play nice with other airlines and no one was willing to help.) that we missed the other flight to Uruguay. Our only option was to spend the night in Chile. However, for some reason I do not understand, Chile will not let you exit the airport unless you pay an "airport tax." P.U. was responsible for paying for it and refused. We said we would happily stay the night in the airport as long as we had the first flight to Uruguay in the morning. But this was not allowed. Apparently, there is a limit to how much time you can spend in the airport and we had reached our 12 hour limit. I am not kidding, from the time we first spoke with Miguel until we came to final resolution, we had been at the airport for 12 hours. We were able to email my parents and let them know we were stuck in Chile. We received vouchers to eat at lunch shop there who were very grouchy about accepting our vouchers and instead of the 10 promised meals made the ten of us share 6 ham sandwiches. We ate all of our snacks and bought lots of water. The weird thing about it all was that Miguel would come talk to us and then disappear for several hours. This happened over and over again we were quite frustrated. The final solution was that we were put on a flight to ARGENTINA in the middle of the night, sent to a hotel to sleep for 4 hours and then fly to Uruguay. I will spare you the details of Argentina, although I did receive a very interesting lecture from my taxi driver on the political climate of that country.
It was raining in Chile.

The kids were so good during our 12 hour airport stay.
The view of Buenos Aires from our hotel around 6am.

Finally on our way to Uruguay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!