Argentina: My wildest flight check-in yet

The first leg of my three-flight journey to Minnesota was scheduled to depart at 5 p.m. Getting to the airport approximately three hours beforehand, I thought, would be ample time to have my temperature checked, verify my negative covid test and paperwork, drop off my luggage, and pass through security. As it would turn out, I only needed about one hour instead of three.

So there I was, sitting at our kitchen table, watching Brazil play against Argentina in a men's volleyball match of the Tokyo Olympics. My luggage was packed and ready to go, and Emi was on his way to pick me up and take me to the airport. At 1:45 p.m., I received an email from the airline of my first flight notifying that it had been delayed for a 10:30 p.m. departure. Given that my second flight departed at 11:05 p.m. (and on a different airline), leaving from Cordoba at 10:30 p.m. was simply not going to work. I needed to find a way to get from Cordoba to Buenos Aires for my second flight's 11:05 p.m. departure, and I was convinced that it wouldn't be possible to do so until at least the next day if not later.

Pandemic restrictions have drastically reduced the amount of flights into, out of, and within Argentina. The only connection available that would get me from Cordoba to Buenos Aires on my scheduled departure date left at 2:55 p.m. If you've been paying attention, that's just an hour and ten minutes after I received word that my original flight was delayed and two hours and five minutes before my original departure time. When Emi arrived to pick me up not long after I received that email, he loaded my luggage into the vehicle, and we sped off to the airport in hopes of finding a solution.

Pandemic restrictions have also prohibited non-traveling passengers from entering the airport in Cordoba. We arrived around 2:15 p.m., parked, and ran to the entrance without luggage. The guard at the door asked to see boarding passes before he would let us inside, so I told him I didn't have one, that my flight had been delayed, that I needed to find a solution because I had a connecting international flight to make. If my story did not communicate the right amount of desperation, Emi's yelling out, "She's a foreigner!" sure did. The guard instructed both of us to go to the airline's ticketing office to figure something out. 

Into the airport we run. We knocked on the door of the ticketing office and waited either a few seconds or an eternity, depending on your perspective, for someone to wave us inside. We explained the situation to the worker who immediately grabbed the phone and instructed me, the traveler, to run upstairs to counter 28. As I bolted past the temperature and paperwork checkpoints, up the escalator, and down to counter 28, Emi ran outside to get my luggage (all 3 suitcases, for a combined 128 pounds) from the car. The lady at the counter took my passport to "see if she could find a seat for me on the plane." 

In what seemed like nanoseconds later, Emi came running across the concourse, wheeling my three suitcases in front of him with a finesse that made it look like he had somehow done that before. "Oh, you have luggage?" asked the worker at the counter. Um, duhhh, I thought to myself. Yes I do, I responded. "Do your suitcases weigh more or less fifty pounds each?" Yes, I responded as she set them on the conveyor belt without weighing them. "You have a negative covid test, right?" Yes, I responded again without pulling out my paperwork to prove it. "Will these suitcases make it on the plane?" It was my turn to ask questions. I was assured they would.

After an extremely quick goodbye and a rush through security, I was let on the plane and found my seat in row 5. It was 2:50 p.m. The rest of the trip went surprisingly smoothly. Thankfully, a whole lot of people didn't follow all of the rules they were supposed to have followed that day, and I was able to make my connection. I made it back to Minnesota for the first time in 2 years and 9 months, and I was able to attend my brother's wedding. Let's hope my return flight (which has already been rescheduled twice and is still pending authorization, by the way) is not as eventful.

Dawn's approach, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico