Imagine you're me for a second.
You've decided to go travelling round South America for an undetermined amount of time, despite the fact their wifi is spotty and your straighteners won't work properly over there.
You've quit your job, put your life in storage, and booked yourself a flight to Rio de Janeiro.
What is there to do next other than sit back, relax and spend some quality time with your loved ones before you jet off?
I'll tell you what there is to do:
Worry.
I'm a natural worrier. My favourite pastime is making myself anxious about things that are either out of my control or could never feasibly happen in a million years.
Don't believe me? Here's a few of the things I worried about in the three weeks leading up to my trip:
- I'm probably going to be violently robbed as soon as I get off the plane.
- What happens if we can't get to Heathrow and we miss our flight?
- I could be sharing a hostel with someone who decides to murder me in my sleep
- What if I inadvertently wander into a favela and have to join a gang or become a drug mule to avoid being shot?
- The pound is probably going to collapse while I'm away and leave me essentially penniless.
- Could there possibly be an arrest warrant for me that I don't know about? I might get to the airport and find out I'm not actually allowed to leave the UK.
And those are just the highlights.
Some anxiety before a big life change like this one is inevitable, but when you find yourself periodically panicking that you'll be detained at the airport and thrown in jail because of an arrest warrant you didn't know about, especially when you've never really done anything illegal in your life, there's probably a bit of an issue there.
By the time the big day actually came around, I was a ball of nerves. I was convinced something would go wrong and we wouldn't actually get there. So when we arrived at Heathrow on time, I was relieved. When I got through check and security without being arrested, I was ecstatic. And when we made it onto the plane (a mere 20 minutes delayed), I was delirious with happiness.
Direct flights to Rio were far too expensive for our backpacker budgets. So the plan was to take a quick plane to Frankfurt, wait round for an hour and half, and then get a 12 hour flight the rest of the way.
I'm not really a fan of changing planes. I regard my baggage getting from point A to point B without me personally watching it some kind of witchcraft on direct flights, so I have absolutely no faith a small barcode on a tag will ensure my luggage arrives at the same final destination as me instead of getting lost somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
But, I thought, we're flying with Lufthansa. German efficiency. There's no way they'll let anything at all go wrong.
And then, while we were waiting to take off, the pilot told us we weren't allowed to leave Heathrow due to thunderstorms (which thunderstorms I have no idea - I certainly couldn't see any) and would be waiting on the runway for around two hours.
Two hours!
Factoring in the delay we'd already had, we'd be leaving Heathrow at the exact same time our flight was meant to go from Frankfurt. We were definitely going to miss our connection.
I hadn't actually worried about this eventuality, so I had no worst case scenario contingency plan prepared for it. I just had to sit.
And worry.
Of course.
- We've wasted money on a night in our first hostel we won't even get to use.
- How will we find a hotel to stay in tonight?
- What if they tell us we have to pay for a new flight to Rio?
- Why did I go for the cheap insurance? It's not going to cover this...
And on and on and on for a full 50 minutes until the thunderstorm apparently stopped and we were allowed to take off.
Eventually we landed in Frankfurt about 8 minutes after our second flight was due to leave. I prayed to every god I could imagine they'd held it for us, but of course they hadn't, and we were told to go to the Lufthansa desk where we'd be given a new flight time for the next morning and a hotel voucher for that night. It was apparently easier for our bags to be kept in the system (witchcraft!), so we were given a little overnight kit by the airline and glumly went to find out what our new flight time was and which awful airport adjacent hovel we'd be staying in that night.
Luckily the Lufthansa staff took pity on us and asked if we'd like to be put on a flight that same night - boarding in about an hour. We jumped at the chance and took the last two seats (unfortunately not together, but someone would surely switch?).
I tried not to think about my poor bag (probably stuck forever in the Floo Network) which would never be returned to me. At least I had all the most important things in my hand luggage: phone, iPad, makeup.
Going through security in Frankfurt, my rucksack was searched and swabbed by a terrifying looking German policeman. I was so done with life by this point that I wouldn't have been surprised if 10 kilos of heroin had somehow made its way into my rucksack and I'd been thrown in prison for the rest of my life.
But it turned out to be a random check - and the policeman was more interested in talking about Brexit than anything else (a recurring theme of this trip so far).
We boarded our plane, took our separate seats, and I asked the nice Norwegian man next to me if he'd possibly consider switching with my friend, since I'm a nervous flier.
He took one look at Alex's seat, which didn't recline because it was at the back of a section of the plane, and refused.
How did I respond to this? The way any reasonable, mature adult would respond of course.
I burst into tears.
I explained to my new Norwegian friend and the flight attendant who was trying to lake the switch that I was anxious, we'd missed our first flight, I was going to be away from home for at least 6 months, and that I just wanted to sit next to my damn friend.
I reckon they thought I was a teenager and that I was having some kind of nervous breakdown because it was all sorted pretty sharpish after that and Alex came to sit next to me for emotional support.
The rest of our flight was uneventful. I didn't sleep much, didn't eat anything. Oh, and the screen on my iPad smashed when the girl in front of me rammed her seat into my knees.
Could anything else go wrong?
It turns out it actually couldn't, because we landed smoothly at about 5am local time (a mere hour and a half later than originally planned), got through security and into the country without a hitch (they didn't even ask to look at the onward flights we'd panic-bought the might before which pissed me off) and after a tense 20 minutes of waiting at the carousel, our luggage even arrived looking pretty unscathed.
We wandered out into the Rio morning with a driver from our hostel, and promptly got stuck in the rush hour traffic. With so many new things to look at I didn't mind too much though.
By the time we arrived at the hostel it was about 7.30. We were greeted by the most stereotypically looking Australian guy I've ever met, and clearly woke up our dorm-mate checking into our room. Never let it he said that I don't know how to win friends and influence people.
The logical end to this blog post would involve me telling you that we got a few hours sleep and then headed out to explore a bit of Rio in the afternoon. But I'm not a particularly logical person, so instead I'll leave you with this sneak peek of our first day, which I'll cover when I next post.
- We ended up in a favela. Essentially by accident. On our very first day in Rio. Having had no sleep.
