Caracas Airport on Sunday, February 14th, Valentine’s Day. We left my grandmother’s apartment at 5:30am and made it to the airport at 6am o’clock. Not too shabby. Didn’t run into any traffic, but had to be super careful on the highway: due to the rationing of electricity, the lights on the highway get shut off at night (when are they on, then?). Like my mother says: if you can drive in Caracas, you can drive anywhere!
My flight was scheduled to depart at 11:10am, while Brian’s was at 8:52am. I promised I’d be with him all the way until he boarded.
First we dropped Brian off at the Delta counter. They were using the Air France counters, as well as their own, to check in passengers. It reminded me of that Boy Meets World episode where Shawn Hunter wanted to run away to Europe, so he naturally headed for the bus station (lol), and bought a ticket to Paris, TX. “Oh, I thought TX meant Tax!” 😀 Good memories.
The Delta line moved quickly. Then I went to the American Airlines counter. The line was about twice as long, and it took me all of 50 minutes to get through the line. Can you believe this? They only had 2 out of 5 booths open checking passports and ID. After 40 minutes, Brian had to go to make his flight. I was able to catch up with him at his gate, though. I guess that’s it for our Valentine’s Day together 🙁
I don’t really have a lot of beef with the airport itself. It has tons of shopping in the (only) terminal, and a great food court, plus Duty Free shops. It even has a “Venezuelan Chocolates” store where you can buy last-minute delights. Each gate has a flat screen TV where they advertise Venezuela tourism, play funny videos and play music videos… no sound, though. I would rather they played CNN myself, but I guess if “playing the news” translates into showing the government channel’s propaganda, then I’ll stick with the soundless music videos, thank you very much.
The beef I do have here is the completely unnecessary, redundant and pain in the ass that is going through all the checkpoints from the moment you get to the airport until you get on the plane. Allow me to describe:
6:10am: Got in line at American Airlines counter
6:55am: AA worker checked my passport and ID before leaving me at the computerless booth to go to the actual counter to confirm my reservation (since I had an eTicket). She came back and gave me a printed itinerary.
7:05am: I approached the counter. No bags to check (Brian will arrive in Boston earlier, so he checked it instead). SO glad I wasn’t the one to do it: behind the AA worker was a pile of bags for the next flight out. 50 bags, all checked, but apparently not going anywhere any time soon. Lastly, I paid the difference in exit taxes (taxes went up since I bought the ticket a month ago), and got my boarding passes. Stapled to one of them was a bar code that proved I had paid the taxes.
7:10am: Stood aside with my mother to fill out the customs form. Glad a man passed by offering us a pen. Called my aunt to say goodbye. Said my goodbyes to my mother and grandmother.
7:20am: First checkpoint: a turnstile activated by scanning the bar code from the tax receipt.
7:24am: Second checkpoint: National-Guard operated X-ray for luggage. They had me open my bag to explain the heavy metal base of my blowdryer stand. Yes, I travel with it: it packs nicely and I can’t seem to be able to live without it. Don’t judge! They let it through.
7:30am: Third checkpoint: airport operated X-ray for luggage. This post is located no more than 15 ft from the secoind checkpoint. One would think they’d spot the redundancy, right? They have me open my bag again to explain the base of the blowdryer stand. This guy was more rigid. “Why didn’t you check it?” “Because I have lost things I’ve checked before, and the stand doesn’t work without the base.” He said never to carry it on again, since it’s a potentially harmful object, and let me through.
7:35am: Fourth checkpoint: Customs. Hand over the exit form and show passport to get it stamped out. Sit and wait at the gate (and walk from one end of the terminal to the other to see how long it takes).
10:35am: Fifth checkpoint: at the gate, run my carry-on luggage through a THIRD X-ray check. They did not ask me to open it this time. Go through a personal metal detector AND get a full pat-down.
10:45am: Sitting on the plane!
I swear, it’s almost as if they didn’t want you to leave the country, isn’t it?
The flight crew had to go through the metal detector and X-rays at the gate as well, and you could tell they were completely annoyed. I overheard one tell another, about the checkpoint, “I thought you were kidding!” — I hear you, blondie, we all wished they were.
ina
PS: In case you were wondering, it took 10 minutes to run the lenght of the entire international terminal. Not much of a workout, but it’s good to know 🙂