From Santiago, Chile to Montevideo, Uruguay.

I have always had a weird life and tonight is no different. It is Monday evening and I am about to take the flight combination I dreaded.

I fly tonight to Buenos Aires and then have a scheduled ten hour lay-over until tomorrow morning and my connection to Montevideo.

On arriving at the airport I dined at Gatsby's and then spent over an hour sitting at my departure gate before my flight disappeared from the screen.

I decided to go and ask for help and there is no one from my airline around so I take myself to their VIP club just to enquire.

The lady seems to think I am a member and invites me in to the Pacific Club. She tells me my flight is delayed at least one and a half hours and my connection tomorrow is two hours delayed.

She says she will tell me when it is time for my flight. I am not sure she understands and so I sneak out every so often without her seeing just to check the flight departure board; I don't want to offend her but I cannot afford to miss my flight either.

Anyway I am writing to you from first class drinking my complimentary coke and waiting to be thrown out at anytime as I don't fit the bill. Everyone else is in a suit and I am in hiking boots and a carrying a big backpack.

From a night flight perspective you get a clear view of the huge valley and the massive urban sprawl that is Santiago.

It is pitch black, its approaching midnight and I am sitting here reading a cultural history of South America on a flight from Chile to Argentina enroute to Uruguay; how middle-class can you get?

I realise that I am so lucky to have been given the intellectual joys life has afforded me and yet I am struggling with why my God - a kind, forgiving and loving God has brought me such torment.

I wanted to ask the two Mormens at the airport the question that if God is all knowing and loving, why then does he torment the human soul so?

Yet as I look around at the businessman on his lap-top and the academic with his papers I realise that I inhabit a world of great privilege and that I am getting to journey and to experience in a way most people never get the opportunity to do.

It is equally amazing flying in on a night flight to Buenos Aires you get a sense from a city bathed in light of just how collosal these South American cities can be.

I told you my life was weird and I am in the weird position of landing in Buenos Aires with my luggage past the immigration counters.

I was assured in Santiago that even though they could only check my bags to Buenos Aires that the transit desk would then check my luggage through to Montevideo.

Of course, the transit desk is closed and all the Aerolineas Argentinas staff have gone home for the night. In my best Spanglish I communicate with the immigration staff (none of whom speak any English) to explain that I cannot enter Argentina and collect my baggage as I do not have enough money to pay the taxes to leave again and come back into transit.

Finally I talk with freight who assure me that they will check my bags through to Uruguay and so I settle in for the night in the departure lounge, and you can take it from me it is not the most comfortable bench seating at Buenos Aires airport.

Tuesday 28th, Late Morning...
It really is epic travel when you are on cheap tickets. I have now been here at Buenos Aires airport for twelve hours going no-where.