Our transfer to the airport was at 8.40am but when we were down at breakfast we saw the other couple who were heading to the airport at the same time and they were worried they wouldn't make their flight in time so asked us to be down in the lobby a bit earlier in case the transfer was early.  We said no problem and were actually in the lobby just after 8am.  I had spent the time before breakfast merging two suitcases and one bag into two suitcases.  I knew for sure that we were allowed to check in pieces each from Santiago onwards but I wasn't sure about from Lima to Santiago and I decided it wasn't worth the risk of either paying a fortune or having to do some repacking on the airport floor.

Our transfer was right on time and as well as a driver, Princess had provided a guide, Liliana and given what happened at the airport I was so glad she was with us.

When we first got there she tried to assist us with self check in to get our boarding passes but it referred us to the desk.  So we stood in the baggage check in queue for about 15 mins and at the counter the guy couldn't find our booking.  After much checking and coming and going, one of his colleagues who had better English said that because we'd lost a flight!!!! they couldn't see us in the system and that we needed to go to the Latam desk.  So off we trot - Liliana too.  At this point there was most of the conversation in Spanish and Liliana wa interpreting for me.  The gist of it seemed to be that Latam said we were booked on the flight which had left at 12 midnight - even though our itinerary from Mark and our online itinerary from Qantas showed we were booked on the 12 noon flight and had all the appropriate flight numbers.  The Latam girl said she couldn't change our booking to the noon one and that we'd have to contact Qantas as she claimed they had made the midnight booking.  Time was marching on and we wanted to be on that 12 noon flight so I bought two new tickets - parting with roughly $1300 in the process and then we had to have an escorted crazy dash back through hordes of people to the check in counter as we only had a couple of minutes till checkin closed.  We made it!

Lillian then came upstairs with us and waved us off through security.  Thank goodness Princess provided that level of service or I doubt we'd ever have made that flight.  I'm sure one way or another we'd have got to Santiago - hopefully in time for the next onward flight but the procedure would have been much more tortuous.  

The funny thing is that Mark had booked us exit row seats for this flight and despite us having rebooked we still got exactly the same seats.  A little bit coincidental?  Anyway they were brilliant seats and we had loads of space, a couple of wines and a sandwich, a read and a snooze and three and a half hours later we were in Santiago.

In Santiago we were staying at the Holiday Inn Airport which is only about 50 metres - right across the road from where you come out the arrivals door.  We checked in here - definitely enjoy the perks of being IHG club members - normal check out is 10am - we could wait till 2pm if we wanted though will probably go around 10.30am tomorrow.  We also got a voucher for either a free drink or a snack.  

So we dropped our gear off in our room - not as flash as the ones we've been in these past few days but great nonetheless - massive comfy bed, big room with loads of space for suitcases - what more do you want.  We headed along to the bar area, found ourselves a couple of comfy chairs and and ordered a beer and settled ourselves in for the evening.  

I emailed Mark to let him know what had happened in Lima and we've been emailing back and forth a few times throughout the evening.  He saw early this morning that a cancellation notice came through for our flight and wondered what was going on.  He's now on the case for us but is wondering if they were overbooked and decided to just bump us.  He has all the relevant trail which shows quite clearly that we've been booked on the 12 noon flight since June last year!  The cancellation notice came through at 9.41am which is just before we got to the airport.  He also agrees it's a mighty coincidence that we got exactly the same seats. Anyway he's fired off a couple of emails to Latam requesting an explanation and a full refund of what we paid. We'll see how it goes, otherwise it will be an insurance claim.

We had a snack for tea in the bar then decided we'd acquired the taste for pisco sours (even though they're supposed to be better in Peru than Chile) so had a couple of them before heading to bed and have to say the Chilean ones aren't too bad at all!