The road to hell (19 - 20 July 2008)
Before you start reading, be warned: this is a post of complaints about our transit from Argentina to Egypt - 50 hours of pure hell. Travel is not all fun and games…
Argentina to Cairo: A two hour flight from Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo, with a four hour stop-over. Then a 10 hour flight from Sao Paulo to Madrid with an eight hour stop-over. And then finally, a five hour flight to Cairo. We knew it would be gruelling, but we were prepared. Physical preparation: 11 months of uncomfortable travel and limited sleep on overnight journeys. Mental preparation: imagining the final destination…seeing the Pyramids of Giza, floating down the Nile on a felucca, diving in the Red Sea…
We had to get up at 5 am, walk about 1,5 km to the bus stop and, after waiting half an hour (which had me very worried - I thought we would be late), took the one and a half hour bus to the airport. With very limited time before check-in closed, we ran from where the bus dropped us to the Iberia check-in counters (about 1 km).
And here the whole day started to turn sour…The guy at the check-in counter was totally incompetent: he took our passports, flipped through them a million times (bending them to Eon’s extreme annoyance) in search of our visas for Egypt. After about half an hour of consulting with the other check-in crew, Eon interrupted the search and asked what the problem was. We were told that we needed a visa for Egypt and they couldn’t find it in our passports, so they couldn’t issue our boarding passes. Eon flipped to the page and pointed to the visa. Okay, back on track…he checked us in and handed us the boarding passes for all three flights (Buenos Aires - Sao Paulo - Madrid - Cairo). We checked them and saw that, even though we asked for seats next to each other, he had totally ignored the request and just randomly handed out seats. We did not have time to change this - they took so long with the check-in that we had to board the plane by this time.
Finally on the plane to Sao Paulo with a family willing to let us swap seats. Great, we were back on track with our travel plans. Air Iberia… I’ll let myself go on this topic at a later stage. After two hours and a very quick meal, we land in Sao Paulo. We immediately walked to the Iberia counter and asked if we could change our seats to be seated together….and here we go again!! The women was franticly paging through our passports. Eon stepped in and pointed to the Egypt visa. Another session on the phone to who knows who…some more paging…more phoning and some computer work. How difficult can it be to change one seat?! When she finally reported back to us, we were told that we might need an in-transit visa for Spain. What?! No one ever said anything like this to us…tick-tock… tick-tock. Okay, problem solved - we did not need any more visas and she managed to change our seats. And then the waiting began. Three more hours before boarding… Finally - we were on the plane to Madrid!
Anyone who has ever flown with Iberia would agree that they are horrible. As with the first flight, the service was horrendous, there was no TV (on a 10 hour flight), the seats could hardly recline and the leg space was as small as the plane was old - VERY. “That’s right folks; here on Iberia Airlines our passengers entertain themselves. And what’s more, do not expect the flight attendants to be helpful or friendly because they are busy entertaining themselves in the rear of the cabin.”
But we survived, we think mainly due to the mental preparation 
And then we arrived in Madrid - only one more wait and one more flight to go. I was very upset when the security guard confiscated the coca cola I saved from the plane-dinner the night before. What could possibly be hidden in it? I got it from the plane, never left the airport (seeing that we were in transit) and now I could not take it with me. He did not even ask me if I wanted to drink it, he just took it. And Eon got away with a pomelo and carrots in his bag - talk about sexual injustice!
Million Dollar Question: How does one kill time on an airport? Walk through all the duty free shops and do window shopping (my mother’s term for looking but not buying), sneakily spritz ourselves with the luxurious perfumes on display (as apposed to spraying it on the little piece of paper) and compare prices for ALL the eateries in the airport. Then you choose a restaurant (for us it was the cheapest one) and eat as S-L-O-W-L-Y as possible. We were shocked to see how expensive things were here - yes, airports tend to be pricier than elsewhere, but this was ridiculous. The ‘cheap’ meal referred to above, included two hamburgers, two small chips and one Coke for 16 Euro, that’s nearly R200!!
Eight hours later we were on the plane to Cairo and at that stage the five hour flight seemed like it would be a drop in the ocean. That was until we met our neighbours: to our left was a dad with the two naughtiest kids I have ever come across and behind them was a French mother with her little boy and girl, just waiting to be corrupted by the two kids in front of them. At least we did not sit in front of the devils - we felt so sorry for the women who did. The kids were screaming, jumping on the seats, refused to wear their seatbelts, throwing things around and were just totally out of control. At first the women asked the flight attendant if there were any other open seats available, but there was none. The kids were pulling at the women’s hair and kicking into their seats - and what did the dad do when one of the women asked him to make them behave? He just laughed and did absolutely nothing! I grabbed for my earplugs and tried to read or sleep, but I would catch myself flicking hateful stares at the father and his hooligans.
When we disembarked in Cairo, I thought that we had arrived in hell. Not only due to the worst flight I have ever had, but also due to the extreme heat. It must have been about 35 degrees at 11 pm at night. When queuing at passport control, the official looked at my passport, then back at me, back at my passport, back at me again and said: “Is this you?” I laughed and confirmed. He did not see the humour in that and looked back down at the passport again. Now I was slightly worried…I had a haircut and colour in Buenos Aires, and even though I now have a schoolgirl fringe, I did not think I looked that different. What a relieve when he finally stamped the passport and let us through.
We fought our way through the crowd of touts, found a taxi and made our way to the Hotel named Pension Roma. It was an exhausting two days, so we collapsed on the bed and slept under the fan that cooled the room down to a moderate 32 degrees What were we thinking coming to Egypt in the middle of summer?!