Arrival

Over twenty years ago I wrote a number of  accounts of our experiences in Montana as well as our flights to and from that location. In those days, although email was quite common in universities in the US and the UK, not many people had email in Argentina, there was no such thing as blogs and web sites were something that required some fairly sophisticated programming knowledge. So, I used the old traditional way: I printed and posted the texts and sent them by mail to friends in different countries. It was a way of recording our experience and also of sharing these experiences.
Since that early experience, technology has come to our aid and I can now take advantage of blogs to share our experiences during this new sojourn. I've been sharing some photos on FB and whatsapp, but neither medium is totally satisfying because I can't really include my impressions in detail there. This blog will allow me to include photos, text, video and may be the length of posts will mean people don't have the time to look at such a detailed account, but it does help me as a record, so here it goes.
Let's start at the beginning. After a rather hectic end of year (and couple of years!), we packed our bags and set off for Ezeiza on December 31st.

The plan was to spend the New Year in flight, which we did from Santiago to Miami, our first port of call. Ray, Anabel and Oliver expected that something to celebrate the event would take place on the plane, may be some celebratory music or some bubbles to toast, I had lower expectations, having spent a New Year in-flight before. What we had was a spontaneous celebratory round of applause from the passengers, and that was it. In any case, we were expectant thinking about our destination and the coming weeks, so it didn't seem to matter much.
After an uneventful overnight flight, we arrived in Miami. We were not sure if we would have to collect our cases and lug them around for the duration of our brief stay in Miami or if we could send them on and be free of them. We had been told in Buenos Aires they would be checked through and we would only have to pick them up for a security check, but we had also been told the boarding passes we had would be valid and they had had to be re-done in Santiago, so ... As it turned out, we were able to disembarrass ourselves of the four cases, not without providing a generous tip to the gentleman who kindly helped us with them.

And so we were free to pick up the car we had booked (using the new Gold membership Ray figured out, which substantially reduced the paperwork and waiting time and simply involved picking the car we liked from a parking lot).

Which car would you like, Sir?

Off we went! Armed we a satnav of sorts (we weren't sure the map would work but, as it turns out, it did) we headed for Miami Beach. It was very early and January 1st,

so we didn't expect to see many people, but there were several restaurants open and, as the early hours passed, more people started appearing. In any case, we were able to walk along an empty beach and see the seagulls before people arrived.

After that, we went for breakfast (our first American breakfast, with hints of tropical fruit) and a photo next to the local clock to record the time when we were there.
Well, it is time to go to work now, so I'll continue with this later.