The Planning Exercise : Getting to Chile

Jul 2

4 min read

Chile, Travel, Backpacking, Planning, Packing

Preparation and Planning

Most planning decisions were either about the itinerary or contingent on the itinerary - which was not easy to finalise. Should I travel from north to south or the other way round? What all places should I stop in? How long for? Would I get a bus easily between those two cities? Would I be stretching myself too much if visit cities back to back? Would I get bored and/or exhausted if I travel for this long?

So I started with a basic itinerary - one with a broad outline of places I would like to visit - based on a couple days' worth of browsing. An itinerary so basic, I knew I would come back to for major revisions. Here's what I had finalised by the end of the exercise. (Blog Link)

Visas - for entering Chile and passing through European airport(s) - would also be a variable for the Indian citizen in me. Do I book a cheaper flight with an additional visa required to pass through Europe or do I book an expensive flight to avoid transit visa hassles? An additional visa would mean playing with the chance that it might get rejected, that it might arrive late and a definite additional expense associated with it. I decided to go with the expensive flight, so I didn't have to deal with any additional transit visas. I happened to have a US B1/B2 visa and with Chile accepting US visas for Indian citizens, and Paris Airport allowing the same for transit, my visa problems looked solved.

Other things that I needed to plan included logistics around expenditure and currency conversion, bookings for packages and internal flights and other aspects like learning their language and about the Chilean culture. Here is a exhaustive list (Blog Link) of all things I could come up with to plan.

I also made some ground rules, commandments (Blog Link), if you may, that were to be my guiding principles throughout the trip.

Packing

I was to be there for 5 weeks. Plus the 4 days of flying and through airports. I decided to pack light. Super light. I went with a 30L rugsack - a trouser, a few dri-fit t-shirts, a compact down jacket that could be rolled, a fleece sweater, a thermal, some underpants and other miscellaneous paraphernalia - all that would fit in 30L worth of volume.

I did not carry any food or any grocery item that I could just buy from there. Chile has, as I discovered, strict rules around allowing organic matter into the country, including even fruits, so my decision to pack light had another backer now.

Getting There

A 48 hour travel - split between flights and airports beckoned. But I was too excited to be bothered by this trivial nuggets of logistical details. We would fly over magnificent mountain ranges in Central Asia, brightly-lit European cities at night, islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Andes Mountains, the Amazonas and whatnot!

The spirits were brought to the ground at the first frontier - the Air France check-in counter at the Delhi Airport. After being given a go-ahead for my visas, I was questioned about my motive of going to Chile, made to strip open my financial details and employment history and thorough itinerary by at least 3 separate Air France employees at the counter. After a hour long interrogation, where I produced all the papers that I had prepared for the immigration counter, the employees found nothing to back their suspicion , felt defeated and coyly printed my boarding pass. With mixed feelings about the whole incident, I marched on.

Next stop was the Indian immigration. The encounter with the Indian immigration officer turned out to be as wholesome as the previous episode with Air France was depressing. He asked me the purpose of my travel and upon hearing that I was going to be running the Santiago Marathon, became pally and starting talking about my hobby of running and how I like it and wished me luck for my participation in the marathon in Chile.

It was only up and ahead for me from then on, for the first of the two flights - Delhi to Paris - went comfortable, and then the 17 hour layover in Paris went well too. I strolled around the airport terminal, eating cheap sandwiches from different outlets, browsing books through airport bookstores and watching the TV screens display all the places one could go to.

At 11 in the night, it was time for my 14 hour long flight from Paris to Santiago . I slept well and went smooth too..except for the Santiago airport denying the airplane landing at the last moment due to a bird issue at the airport. So, the plane circled around the Santiago airspace several times, waiting for the go-ahead and when none came, the captains decided to go to the airport in the city of Concepcion to fuel up, only to take another u-turn halfway through the distance to Concepcion, as the Santiago airport gave clearance. Free joyride. Great Success!