Friday, March 14, 2008

Lines, Lines, Everywhere a Line

I am back from Lima, Peru. Back in Toronto. I'm in my house. It only took me a day to shovel threw the driveway to get in the garage. All is fine and dandy. I'm thankful I made it home, though. I'm surprised I'm still not waiting in line.

Now I can't say I'm the biggest traveler in the world, but I have been to a few airports in my time. I have never been through so many lines before! You'd think this airport has a "line manager" who sits in an office just coming up with new ways to wait in line. Here was my evening at the airport after taking a taxi to get there.

Line 1: The cab driver has to show ID at the airport gate. Waited in line with other cabs for about 10 minutes to show the ID.

Line 2: After being dropped off, I waited in line just to get into the building. That took about 5 minutes or so.

Line 3: Before even approaching the counter, I had to wait in line to approach a "pre-check-in" person who confirmed my flight and that my bags were ok.

Line 4: Only now did I get to stand in line just to check in, get my boarding pass, drop off my luggage, etc.

Line 5: Finally, I can head to security. But wait! There's a line up first as you have to pay a "departure tax". It's not built in to the cost of the ticket, so everyone who's departing had to wait in a line to pay the tax.

Line 6: Now there's the line up for your passport to be stamped before you leave -- customs in a sense. But that line is too long, so there's another line I had to stand in to go into the security line. Seriously.

Line 7: Passport has been stamped. Now there's a line-up for security, where you get x-rayed and such. I assume this is why they tell you to get to the airport 3 hours before departure. You have to spend 2 hours of that time in a line of some sort.

Line 8: Yay! I'm finally at the gate! Of course, there's that infamous line to get on the plane. You know, the one where they first "pre-board" people who are old or with kids, yet everyone rushes the gate en masse anyways? It's funny to watch as mysteriously everyone has a limp or clutching their backs or sides in mock pain; adults explaining how they're kids-at-heart so they should board first.

So all-in-all a total of 8 lines -- not counting all those lines when I got home. I bet if I wanted to complain about the lineups, there'd be a lineup to get into the complaints area, a line to fill out a form, and a line to give it to someone.

Side note: I have finally posted my first batch of Peruvian pics on my Flickr website! Yay! Go to www.flickr.com/photos/jeffuwo and click on the Peru 2008 link towards the upper-right of the screen to view them.

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