Three Flights Home...

Only a couple days earlier, this sign in the Buenos Aires barrio of Barracas had pointed me in the opposite direction.

It’s been a week now since I left Buenos Aires, and a busy one as things piled up in my absence, but my 24-hour odyssey from the Argentine capital to my home in California was a memorable one—good in some ways, and not so good in others. Going from mid-summer to mid-winter wasn’t that great a shock—I can’t say I miss the River Plate’s hot, wet and sticky January and the Bay Area’s cool damp climate is nothing like the brutal “bomb cyclone” that hit the eastern US not so long ago. Still, there were ups and downs (figuratively as well as literally) en route.

Aeroparque Jorge Newbery is Buenos Aires's domestic airport, but also has flights to neighboring countries.

For the first time, my return trip started from Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, Buenos Aires’s city airport that’s just a ten-minute taxi ride from our Palermo apartment—as opposed to the more distant Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini, in the provincial suburb of Ezeiza. One attraction was the fare: only A$100 (about US$5) door-to-door, while a comparable service to Ezeiza costs A$950 (about US$50). A taxi-bus combination to Ezeiza would have cost about A$350 (US$18), but it would have taken considerably longer.

Argentines and others trying to leave the country at Aeroparque immigration.

That convenience came at a price that I hadn’t quite anticipated, though. I had flown out of Aeroparque before, but never on an international flight. The security line moved pretty well but, once I reached the immigration line, there was a lengthy backup. While the only international flights are to neighboring countries—my first leg was to Santiago de Chile—there simply weren’t enough posts, and enough personnel, to handle everybody expeditiously, at least on a Friday afternoon in high season.

On top of that, there weren’t enough gates for all the flights, so passengers were milling about waiting for the announcements and, then, most of us had to board buses to the planes parked on the tarmac. Eventually, we departed about half an hour late, which caused me some concern as I had a relatively short window for my connecting flight to Lima. I wondered, and still wonder, whether Ezeiza—accustomed to dealing with large crowds and many more planes—would have been a better option.

The secondary security checkpoint at Santiago's international terminal

That said, the LATAM flight over the Andes was comfortable enough, with limited food service that I declined—I’d already eaten a good lunch, so I didn’t feel like a savory medialuna (croissant) with ham and cheese. On landing in Santiago, I was surprised to find a secondary security line in the international terminal that slowed matters down some more, and equally surprised to find that I had to place my daypack and computer bag in trays rather than sending them through as is.

It was indeed the last pisco sour (at least until I return to Chile in March).

That said, I did manage to grab a pisco sour before boarding my flight north. I was disappointed, though, not to see the airport’s new free book exchange, but there simply wasn’t time to walk past every gate. I did notice, however, that Australians are now the only foreign visitors who remain subject to Chile’s “reciprocity fee.”

Only Australians now pay Chile's "reciprocity fee" to visit the country.

From there to Lima, the flight was uneventful, though I was pleased to find that LATAM is now offering Chile’s own emblematic Carménère varietal to accompany meal service, rather than some generic Cabernet. To my mind this was long overdue, even if this particular vintage was not an elite version. Switching planes again at Lima, we went through yet another secondary security line—which I had experienced before here—before continuing to Los Angeles.

Chile's signature varietal is now available on LATAM flights out of Santiago.

The connection was tight, so there was no time for a Peruvian pisco sour, but on board we had a surprisingly good choice of meals, and the first time I ever recall receiving a printed menu in clase económica (coach class). It was also rewarding to see Peruvian touches on the grilled chicken, though the huancaína sauce was far less “spicy” than the English translation might suggest. The only downside to the flight was tropical turbulence that interrupted my hard-earned sleep.

The flight from Lima to LAX offered diverse dinner and breakfast options, even in coach.

The immigration lines at LAX were long, but they moved much faster than those at Aeroparque.

Arriving early at LAX, I breezed through immigration and headed to my rental car—even though it’s only a one-hour flight home, I prefer driving to the indignities of the Transportation Security Administration, and it also helps me unwind. The only downside here was that, given the recent Montecito mudslide, I could not take US 101 to Santa Barbara and, instead, drove north on Interstate 5 until I intersected California SR 46, leading past Cholame—marking the spot where James Dean met his death in 1955—to intersect 101 at Paso Robles.

The memorial to James Dean at Cholame

In recent years, I’ve grown to enjoy Paso Robles as an ideal lunch break between Southern California and the Bay Area, all the more so because it has an appealing central plaza like so many cities south of the Río Grande. At La Cosecha, I ordered a shrimp and scallop ceviche, plus a lemonade squeezed fresh on the spot—almost exactly 24 hours after I boarded the plane at Aeroparque—before continuing home.

Ceviche and chips at La Cosecha, Paso Robles

Two Days to LA and BA

Last weekend was a travel marathon as, on Saturday morning, I left the Bay Area for Los Angeles in a rental car, en route to Buenos Aires. Obviously, I was not driving to Buenos Aires, but I was flying there Saturday night and the rental car gave me the opportunity to visit my 93-year-old uncle, at the historic Village Green in Baldwin Hills. As Veteran's Day approached, his World War II record sounded like  something out of Hollywood—shot down over France in late 1943, he first avoided German troops and then, with lots of help from the French Resistance, made it over the border into Switzerland.

My uncle's ground-floor apartment in the wooded Village Green complex is part of a national historic landmark.

I’ve seen the fake ID the Resistance fabricated for him but, unfortunately, he was unable to locate it on Saturday. He has a harelip, and that birth defect led the French forger to include “deaf-mute” in his description—something that fooled the Germans as the Resistance led him across France by car, train and on foot. If caught, he would have been executed as a spy.

Sarah Kaminsky wrote this biography of her Argentine-born forger father, Adolfo Kaminsky, but I've not yet read it.

It’s worth mentioning that one of the Resistance’s heroes was Argentine-born Adolfo Kaminsky, who forged thousands of documents—free of charge—to help Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis. After my uncle crossed the border, the neutral Swiss confined him to a ski resort where, one late spring morning, he awoke to unexpected shouts of celebration from his comrades. His first thought was that, “My birthday’s not that big a deal!” but it was June 6, 1944—the date of the Allies’ D-Day invasion. Only after the war ended, though, would the Swiss release him to US authorities.

After the meeting, I dropped my car off at LAX and had a few hours to kill before departing for Lima’s Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Chávez and Buenos Aires’s Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini. Fortunately, check-in and security went quickly, and I was pleased to learn that LATAM (ex-LAN) now had access to a convenient regular gate at LAX rather than a remote gate served by bus shuttle (I’m hoping, given LAX’s major renovation, this is a permanent change).

I'm disappointed that LATAM doesn't offer more typical Southern Cone wines like Argentine Torrontés (I wasn't in business or first class, though).

Though I was in coach, the seats on our Boeing 787-B were comfortable enough, though it also helped that there was an empty seat between me and an Argentine woman from Rosario.  I was also pleased that the USB power outlets were strong enough to charge my tablet—unlike my recent Hawaiian Airlines flight, where the outlets could only charge phones. My only quarrel with the service is that LATAM’s wine options includes only pretty generic Cabernet and Chardonnay, when they could serve more distinctive Southern Cone varietals such as Argentine Malbec and Torrontés, or Chilean Carménère.

Chilean Carménère would also be superior option to more standard wines.

I had a four-hour layover in Lima where, unfortunately, I simply couldn’t justify ordering a pisco sour at 8 a.m. Lima, unfortunately, still has WiFi issues—no more than half an hour of free connection, though our new cell contract gives me good and reasonably priced coverage on the phone (but not the tablet). Our plane to Buenos Aires was an older one, as the photo above shows, but four hours feels like a short hop to me on this route. Still, I didn’t reach our apartment until nearly 8 p.m. Sunday, after which I had a plate of spinach gnocchi at Bella Italia Café before collapsing into bed.

Our plane from Lima to Buenos Aires was old enough that it still had ashtrays.