Desperate for home

My alarm buzzed at 5am, around the same time I had woken up from insufficient warmth in my bed, to tell me to call the airline and check again what options I had of getting home. Fun times. Even funner when I got through and was told the alternative flight they were trying to organise had also been cancelled. Again, I lost it. Freezing and desperate, I wept into my hands alone in the kitchen.

Defeated, I went back to bed (with more clothing on) and slept until a buzzing, ringing sound from the kitchen woke me up. In my dazed post-sleep mode, it took me a while but I finally realised it was a phone and that phone was probably for me, considering O had no other way of contacting me. I had left a note telling of my predicament and was hoping she had gotten in touch with her friend from the airline.

It was her on the phone and she had gotten in touch with her friend, but as yet had no news because I needed to pass on details for my booking to try and get re-booked on a flight OUTTA there. Fast forward several hours and still no luck. Last I heard the alt flight was "collapsed' which I didn't entirely understand in O's second-language English but I imagined was not a positive outcome.

At this point, O suggested I go into the LAN office in town and basically stay until they found me another way to go home. I left with my UK flight agent also on the case and luckily so... when I finally got to the office, they told me I had been booked onto the alt flight. This confused me, but I took it and ran, it was my only hope. When my tear-soaked face returned to the house, I saw my UK agent was the one that booked the flight on my behalf, and I was eternally grateful for that.

Elated but still wary, I started packing for the flight - which was that evening - and told dad the good news. He'd been pretty much sleeping with the phone glued to his ear for the past 3 days - in fact, he was the one who had told of the volcano in the first place when I had no idea in La Paz.

In the end, I got a lift all the way to the airport by my CS host and delivered smack bang to the front door. Woot woot. I was mega early, keen to be checked in and sorted before some other mooch took my seat. I knew this flight would be full.

On board, I was sat conveniently between not 1, not 3 but about FIVE babies... this should be a fun flight. Felt like a creche up in there. And then the inevitable happened. I popped a sleeping pill and midway through my slumber, I was woken by almost all the babies simultaneously screaming their heads off. Fuck's sake!!! I was all disorientated n angry at being woken up, I think I actually yelled, "Fucking hell, are you serious????!!" with one of the parents right next to me. Ahh, fuck it, they should have kept the thing at home.

For the second leg of the 22-hour ridunkulous flight via Tahiti, I requested to have my seat changed as I was already on the edge of a nervous breakdown and didn't quite want to be dragged off the plane in handcuffs charged with throwing a newborn out a plane window... luckily, there was 1 other seat free (just 1) which I was moved into and I had peace n quiet. Except for the Aussie lady next to me quizzing me on my hair and general appearance "Did you find people would react harshly to you?" (like I'm some kind of freak haha)...

And then it happened. We touched Australian soil. After 3 long, adventurous years I was finally back on home turf for an undetermined amount of time. And it was a relief. After all that trouble I went to to get out of South America, it was a relief. And to see my dad pretty much already crying when I came out of Arrivals... well, that just topped it off.

I am home. Happy birthday to me.