I have always wanted to fly somewhere without a return
ticket. To have the thrill of taking
off, not knowing when or if you would return.
For our flight out of KCI we had return tickets, but they were
fake. They said we were returning home
on October 1st, connecting through Toronto. The fake tickets were from a booking agency
called Student Travel Authority. They
sell flights for students and people under the age of 26. We had combed through a bunch of booking
sites trying to find the cheapest tickets.
Ticket prices varied widely, from around $500 to several thousand, all
one way. While combing through these
sites we discovered that whenever you looked at flights from STA they would
send you a quote for the trip. The quote
was formatted like an itinerary with flight numbers and departure times. The status next to flights on the quote said
“confirmed”. Who knows why. We were lucky to stumble on this early in our
trip process. When you enter Chile you
have to prove that you are leaving the country within 90 days unless you have a
work visa (which we don’t). We printed
off the STA quote for this and practiced together, you know if anyone asks,
“October 1st, Toronto”. The
morning of the flight I was so nervous, leaving home for a year and all the
emotion of good byes and the anxiety of the trip. We couldn’t figure out how to use the
self-check in kiosk so this worker came over and was helping us get our
passports scanned on the machine and get checked in. It was taking a while and he was guiding us
through the screens, just like notifications and boiler plate and such, and he
said while looking at the screen, “Santiago huh? How long you going for?” I thought he was just being chatty, (I am a
chatter, I love to chat), I eagerly responded “one year!”. He glanced up from the screen at my face and
said, “so you have your return tickets booked?”. “No,” I said realizing immediately what I
just did. He stepped away from the kiosk
and went back behind his monitoring saying, “let me look at Chile’s visa
requirements”. “We are returning to
America on October 1st, and then we are going back for another 9
months,” I said. “Oh, OK,” he said, business as usual. He moved back to the kiosk and continued
quickly clicking through the screens, explaining what everything meant as he
went along. I held my breath and thought
about the fake tickets in my bag. I
wondered if he would ask to see them. He
paused briefly on a screen explaining visa requirements for Chile. “Oh, OK, here we go” he said. He scrolled down through the text, squinting
to read the tiny print. I tried to
control my breathing. I was once told
that you’re only lying if you don’t believe in what you are saying. He scrolled more. The screen had in bold the words “proof of
onward passage”. The worker said to
himself and “OK you’re good on that” and briskly punched the continue
button. Sweet. I smiled to my self. And laughed in my head thinking “I’m such an
idiot!”. Nearly blew that one
there. But the fake tickets would have
held up right? We said goodbye to my
parents, who I love very much. The good bye
was tear-filled. When I hugged my mom
her shoulder pressed against the lump in my throat. They were so sweet about it. They said have fun, and this would be an
adventure for us. We all started parting
but looked back and waved with tears in our eyes. I wouldn’t see them for a year, at
least. I had spent the majority of
my life, the last 13 years, living in
Northeast Kansas. I had moved from the
small town where I went to went to high school to the town of Lawrence, where I
went to college, just an hour away. And
now it was time for my wife and I to fly to South America to start our new jobs
teaching English to Chileans.
Our
journey started at 4:30 on a mid-July morning in Kansas City. A little
over 25 hours later we would arrive in Santiago. We had an 8AM flight out
of KCI (had to arrive extra early for international check in) and then a 6 hour
layover, and then a 5 hour flight to Bogota Colombia, and then a 6 hour
overnight flight to Santiago. Our flight
to Bogota was by far the most spectacular views I have ever had from an
airplane. We were lucky enough to have
in flight TV on both the flight to Colombia and to Santiago, but I didn’t use
it much on the flight to Colombia because the sunset was absolutely
gorgeous. It was totally surreal, and
totally peaceful, yet still laced with the anxiety of being 50,000 feet in the
air. I don’t love flying, I love going
some place new, but flying has always kind of been scary for me (frankly I’m more
of a road trip kind of guy!). I took my first flight at age 22 to go to DC for
a wedding and it was an exhilarating but still scary experience. (I flew a
couple times under age 3 but don’t remember so it doesn’t count!). I wish I could have taken a picture of the
sunset outside our jet on the way to Bogota, but there isn’t really any good
way to do that is there? I was a really
serene hue of pick brushed on airy clouds.
I have never seen the ocean from that high up and the water looked so
different from up there, so textured and yet so homogenous. I felt like I could see ripples of waves but
I don’t know, maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks. After the dramatic sunset we flew right past
a storm. There was a gigantic anvil
shaped cloud just to the West of our plane.
I was looking over at it amazed at the shear size of the it when I saw
shots of lightning bouncing around inside the cloud, throwing light against the
insides of its translucent walls. I
watched raptly as this continued for several minutes, strikes of lightning
coming in sparse 30 second or 1 minute intervals. I felt so lucky to have been able to catch
that. I love observing nature on the
ground, mountains, streams, fields, but I have never really thought much about
the nature that occurs outside our view, above our sight, above the highest
mountains on Earth, up in the land of giants and the heavens. Then I discovered another interesting part of
flying over the ocean at night, which was that you would pass over an island
and see networks and concentrations of light, even from 50,000 feet up. You could track on the in flight GPS shown on
the headset TVs and see which islands we were flying over. We flew over Jamaica and Cuba and got great
looks at the night lights, I tried to guess if the cities we were flying over
were cities we knew, like maybe Kingston or Montego Bay. I never thought you would be able to see the
lights like that, even from so high up.
It was amazing. With the sunset
and the lights and storm I felt lucky to have had a mid evening flight for our
journey.
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