Travel days are exhausting… this travel journey was one for the books. We started are day off at 8:30 am on wednesday morning. We had to check out of our airbnb by 11 am so we got up had some breakfast and got packed. *note we put our running shoes on at this time and they don’t come off again until this story is over! We “left” our airbnb at that time and sat in the garden in front of our place to waste time. I made some phone calls and we relaxed on a bench until around 1pm. We then decided to grab some lunch and hang out at a cafe. We got to the cafe and had a delicious lunch. As we sat and relaxed we realised that the wifi at the cafe had a time limit and we had to leave. Our next stop was the airport in San Jose.

We got to the airport and headed to the only cafe that was outside of security. We arrived at 3pm and had a long wait ahead of us. Our flight was leaving at 1:35am and we weren’t able to check our bags until 10:30pm. So we sat in this small cafe waiting. Luckily the wifi was good and we were able to watch some netflix to pass some time. By 10:30 we were starting to feel tired from our full day already but excited to finally be able to go through security. We checked in and got through security by 11:30pm. We found a little place for a sandwich and burger. By 1am when we started to board we felt delusional.

We got on our first plane and left Costa Rica. The ride was bumpy and I don’t know why but my body decided to say no sleeping today. So I sat awake the whole 2 hour journey. We arrived in Bogota, Columbia at around 3am. The one lucky thing is our bags were going to meet us in Chile and we did not have to wait for them.

We got to our gate and had a one and a half hour wait until our next flight. I was able to lay down on the chairs in the airport (as one does in airports) and have a 30 minute power nap. We got onto the next flight feeling like we were floating. You don’t realize what flying over night does to the body and I learned hard. On this second flight I was able to sleep 3 hours out of the six which was a great feeling. I woke up and read and felt pretty good. We then arrived at the Santiago airport!

Once we landed we got off the plane and had to go through customs, another 2 hour wait. At this point we were on hour 24 of travel. We got through customs and collected our bags, we were home free. One short ride and we were at our airbnb. We arrived there around 4:30pm. We got in had a quick shower and fell asleep. We woke up around 8pm starving. As we were getting ready to go for dinner we had the worst realization. My travel partner had left his bank card (the only card he had on him) in the ATM at the airport 4 hours ago. As panic set in we decided our best bet was to go back to the airport and hope that there were good people in the world. We got back to the airport and checked the machine, nothing. We then decided to ask the help desk which was a solid walk away from the machine. Once we arrived they told us no cards had been returned. All of the sudden one of the workers remembered that a card had in fact got dropped off. It was his card! We had found it. With adrenaline pumping we realized we still hadn’t eaten anything solid since the cafe 18 hours prior.

We found a nice Chilean resturant, had a delicious meal with some live music. We headed back to our place and finally were able to rest.

My one tip, if you are flying a late night flight book a room for that night so you can stay relaxing all day instead of checking out in the morning and having the longest wait.

Totals:

Kilometers traveled: 9,484 Km

Hours spent flying: 8 hours

Hours traveling: 27 hours *plus 4 hours of card chasing and worrying

Overall we made it and I am happy to say I am in my 6th continent! Cannot wait to explore Chile and South America.