Great flight from Heathrow to SaoPaulo in Brazil, then just under 2 hours on the ground before our flight to Santiago. Arrived and much to my relief all bags were on the carrousel and we were good to go. Our one last obstacle was customs.
When approaching customs we knew we had a lot of kit and the entry restrictions on value and food are very strict. However we were confident that we had good reasons for bringing all of this kit and I’m sure this was the case for many others on their way to Antarctica before us.
All bags go through an X-ray machine and sure enough I was pulled to one side and my ski bag which was also stuffed full of clothes and food (nuts, jelly babies, raisins and Mars bars) caused a stir with the customs officials.
I went to unlock the bag only to find the lock had gone, somebody had been in there already so this was not the first time my ski bag had been inspected since check in at Heathrow.
I opened the bag getting ready to explain what I was doing with so many bags of Jelly Babies but their interest was immediately on the packs of hand warmers I had thrown in the bag as a last minute thought. Once they saw what they were and I had explained where I was going they became very friendly, wished me luck and we were soon on our way.
Sue and I debated for some time why the hand warmers had caused them to be concerned, was it their chemical content making them seem like explosives but this didn’t stack up as they are sealed in plastic bags and only work when exposed to the air so they are air tight. We finally decided it must be that they looked like a stash of drugs. Each pack contains 2 small hand size cloth chemical bags which when seen through an X-ray machine must look like street size packs of drugs. No wonder we were stopped…
We thought about this earlier and then remembered back at Heathrow our flight was delayed due to cargo issues. Was it my ski bag and it’s suspect packages? We will never know but if you were on our flight from Heathrow to SaoPaulo on Monday evening Nov 7th I guess we owe you an apology for the delay.
Lots of Drama already and we haven’t even got anywhere near a man eating penguin yet.