Our last day in Chile was a short one. We finished packing and had to retrieve our car from the parkade near by. We arrived at the airport and returned our rental car. Unbelievably, the return process took almost as long as the rental process 4 days ago - about an HOUR! There were 5-6 people inside the booth and it took all of them over an hour to figure out how much we owed! The initial sum was also much higher at $160USD. After we complained, it dropped suddenly to $96USD. Not as low as $83USD we were told when we rented the car but we were not in the mood to argue any longer. The woman kept apologizing about her mistaken quote.
The Air Canada counter only opened at 3:15p so we had to kill 2h by standing as there were no seats provided for passengers to sit down in the main hall! After checked in finally at 3:30p, we still had two hours to explore another Star Alliance lounge run by Avianca. As I was allowed to bring one more guest (Yi's business class pass already included lounge admission), either Larry or Agnes would have to stay outside. Luckily, the lounge was literally empty at that time and that super friendly guy told us that he'd make an exception this time.
Not surprisingly, this Avianca lounge is much better than those found in North America. The total area was not big (didn't look like very busy flights and elite passenger demands). But their food offerings were much superior - all kinds of sandwiches and hors d'oeuvre like smoked salmon and prosciutto. We stuffed ourselves silly since we didn't even have lunch yet. Our flights home via YYZ were all in business class. Yi was very happy with both flights as we could catch a short nap. Meals were kind of disappointing though. No doubt this would be among one of her highlights of this trip.
However, Toronto (YYZ) really really sucks as a hub. It took the airport over 1h 10m for our luggage to show up after we cleared customs. And we had to re-enter the long security check line again even though we just got off another flight. We would still have made it since we have Nexus but Larry & Agnes didn't. By the time we got the luggage, we missed our original flight and had to rebook on another flight. Luckily, it was only for 45m later and was a 777 plane. We still got to enjoy the lie-flat business class seat unlike the smaller Boeing 737 or Airbus A321 plane.
Finally home... 9h after landing in YVR! 3h wait for BC Ferry and 1.5h drive... Such is life for our Islanders.
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