Argentina Trip - Day 1 22nd Sept 2007 - Washington DC - very early!

International travel is always a challenge especially if you are daft enough to change flights midway

We were delivered safely to Heathrow Terminal 3 by Job & Asma - thanks guys. We soon discovered that our United Airlines flight to Washington DC had been cancelled and we were being re-booked on a later BA flight from terminal 4. After walking, running, pushing and shoving we arrived at the right gate (miles away) with about 10 minutes to spare.

After some frantic BA phone calls they finally let us on. We found ourselves sitting next to a Civil Engineer from Sierra Leone - he lives and works in Freetown and was off to vist kids and grandkids in Maryland. We chatted away in Krio and I showed him some Mission Direct pics on my laptop - he was really interested and may be able to help us with some of our projects in Freetown.

Amazingly we both slept really well on the 10hr flight - Mo says the food was good - cottage pie & strawberry cheesecake (what! no ice cream!)

You're going to identify with this next bit if you've ever been the last person at the baggage claim. With 45 minutes to make the transfer for the Buenos Aires connection we waited and waited AND we both needed the "rest room"! Then there was the queue at passport control and customs. We were just at the final exit gate when someone spotted that one of our documents hadn't been stamped properly. There were two options - lie on the floor and scream or go all the way back and get another form stamped. A nice US policewoman with a gun shouted at us - "You can't go back there" - "Oh yes we can". Suddenly we a walking free in the USA. By the time we got to United's check in desk the flight was closed and a, smiling, patient, "have-a-nice-day" attendant gave us a voucher for an overnight hotel and a phone number to arrange a flight tomorrow.

So here we are with a free stopover in a luxury room in the Washington Hilton with a free trip planned to the National Air & Space Museum later today - so it's not all bad is it?

Our flight leaves at 9:45pm and we arrive in Buenos Aires on Sunday morning. Hopefully we will have a good night's sleep and still be able to get to one of Claudio's services at Rey de Reyes.

Must have a shower and go for our FREE BREAKFAST!

TERRY & MO