Thursday and Friday, February 6th and 7th, 2025

Having finally got the last vestiges of penguin guano out of my ears, from under my nails and from a few other places that I do not care to either bother, or to traumatise, you with, I slept like a log.

Anyway, on our last day in Argentina, I woke up at cock crow. That is not some prosaic way of indicating early, or at dawn, a cockerel was actually giving its all in the garden next door. Obviously, there were other cockerels nearby, because within a minute there was a discordant cacophony from all around. The term “dawn chorus” obviously means something else in Argentina – it seemed that they have no blackbirds, thrushes or linnets.

Our hostess, Nel, buzzed around like a small bee to make us breakfast. It was all so endearingly latino. Bits and pieces arrived in a kind of haphazard way, seemingly cunningly designed to make it impossible to start eating. The scrambled eggs came first, for instance, but the toast to put it on was, at that point, grains on a stalk in a (presumably distant) field. Having said that, she had hand made us that well known Austrian delicacy, croissants, which were warm and delicious. When the assembly was finally complete, we sat in the sunlit garden to eat it. Needless to say that, by then, numerous small birds, possibly holidaying South Georgia pipits, were tweeting melodiously in the bushes.

 

Our flight to Madrid was at 14:00 and, due to the local traffic jams, we had been advised to leave at 11:00. Nel had offered to drive us. Having observed her brio, when behind the wheel, at close range (the little FIAT had eventually stopped its slide (let no man call it a skid) about fifty centimetres from my foot the previous day), I had certain reservations about this. However, she drove us to the airport at a pace more befitting to her status as a granny than to a Formula One driver and delivered us safely to the departure doors. Our farewells were almost touching – but then she was gone.

As we might have supposed, despite all the warnings about how long it would all take, it did not. There was the usual hoo-hah with the shoes, but it appeared that, if you could carry it unaided, there was no real barrier to what you could take on board as hand luggage. Those Argentinians, do NOT travel light.

We emigrated successfully, it appeared that our endless fun had changed neither our retinas, nor our fingerprints – and we still had to sit around for over two hours before our flight was called.

The Argentinians have a clever way of boarding an aircraft. The passengers are divided into groups according to their seat numbers. Then, those groups are called in such an order as to ensure maximum milling about in the far narrower aisles within the aircraft. Fortunately, judicious use of our elbows ensured that both our rucksacks were safely stored right above our heads.

Those of you who know me will also know that I have frequently compared flying to the transporter on Star Trek. I sit down, I nod off and, when I wake up (sometimes having been poked by a girl with a vacuum cleaner, anxious to do my seat), I am at my destination.

Sadly, for me, none of the previous four flights had afforded me that luxury and that was not about to change.

To my right, Lucie had the aisle (obviously), I drew a rather portly fellow whose bum, to be brutal, was way too big for his seat. Added to this, he was the reigning wriggling champion of Argentina and obviously in full-on training for some upcoming defence of his title.

In sleep terms, we British describe a short nap as “forty winks”. Thanks to my neighbour’s rigorous training program, I managed about ten percent of that count in twelve hours. I have mentioned already, Iberia’s customer service failings, so I will merely add that I could not watch a movie because the headphones did not work and the staff seemed to control passengers by continuously claiming that, because of turbulence, we needed to sit down and belt up …..

The only speck of balm from Gilead was that I, at least, still had my eReader – and a Micheal Connelly book installed upon it.

It was not much better for Lucie. She did have the aisle seat, but her neighbour across it was my guy’s female counterpart. She stood up every two minutes, but seemed incapable of getting out of her seat without hitting Lucie with own “seat”, then, repeating the process, in reverse, every time the “fasten your seatbelt” light came on. Lucie and I have done a lot of flying and we both agreed this was probably the worst flight ever !

=

We were both a bit frazzled when we arrived in Madrid – and it did not really get a lot better. We landed and disembarked easily enough, but at the very far end of a huge terminal. We were probably nearer to Barcelona, than to Madrid itself. It was then a long hike before we even got near the terminal proper.

Barajas airport had the worst signage that we had ever encountered. We landed in terminal 4S and would need to leave from terminal 4. Not, one would have thought, a problem. However, do not forget this was Spain. When we eventually found a sign pointing to terminal 4 (and believe me, that was not easy) it involved a further long trek and then a five minute ride, on quite a speedy little train, to get there. Then, we needed to exit the terminal completely, walk along the front of the building and go in again. On our way through the airport, we encountered a lot of people who had also got totally lost and disoriented whilst trying to change terminal.

Near the exit, which was through baggage claim, we saw a few other passengers from our flight collecting their bags. At that point, judging by the distance we had travelled, we were all, probably, about ten metres from the aircraft. Not many of them had made it there, some may still not have ….

Lucie had a much needed smoke and we reentered the fray. We had been obliged to remove our boots in South America, but nobody seemed to care about anything else. In Europe, it was totally different and we practically had to unpack all of our bags to reorient their contents to the European regime. We ended up with about six trays and assembling it all again, in our stockinged feet, was no joke. At least all that used up some of our six-hour layover. The airport was also like a collection point for spare, austere seating, so the hanging around was more than a little bit tedious.

They finally called our flight and the day took a slight lift when at least the seating groups were called in an order that worked for us. We nipped on board, stowed our bags above our heads with a small one at Lucie’s feet. In all honesty, our rucksacks were not small, but they did comply with Iberia’s rules in both size and weight. People kept getting on with bags that they could scarcely lift, some of which may well have contained a baby elephant or a small, family, saloon car. Within minutes, people were literally hammering their bags into the overhead lockers and the cabin staff were literally putting them anywhere. I think the pilot might have been sitting on some.

So, why does this matter ? Well, in the mayhem of “Check-in II – Now you’re in Spain!”, my iPad and eReader had got positionally switched. The iPad, which was out of battery, was at Lucie’s feet – and my eReader, with the juicy denouement of Mr Connelly’s novel, teed-up and ready to go, was in the overhead locker. It was so tightly wedged in, that some kind of tool would have been needed to access the bag, let alone rummage through its contents. I simply could not be bothered. I decided on a much needed nap instead, only to discover that my neighbour, this time on my left, was not only another a portly chap (and this is me talking, remember !) but was also practicing hard for a wriggling contest ! I love Prague, but I cannot remember the last time that I was quite so glad to get there ……

At least our booked driver turned up promptly and drove us smoothly and safely home.

I thought that was it, but Lucie is prone to have an Ace up her sleeve, although quite where she keeps it when wearing a tee shirt remains a mystery. On the Plancius, which already seemed like a distant memory, there were always biscuits and cookies in the lounge. Some of these were beautiful chocolate and nut concoctions. What did Lucie have in her bag, but two of those !!

We ate them with our coffee – that put a wonderful cap on the whole trip – and it was a cap not made of ice.

Our holiday was over. Now, where was the Lonely Planet guide for Southern Norway ?

“Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.”

The Hobbit – J. R, Tolkien