From the road: Auckland — Santiago — Lima — Bogotá — Barranquilla, 2010. Twenty-seven days, business class booked the whole way. It did not go to plan.
They say no one talks about the bad things that can happen on the road. Righto — here is one from 2010, told with fifteen years of distance and most of the dignity recovered.
I was heading to South America to meet highly skilled Cat mechanics working at Antofagasta and Escondida and the support centres. The plan: depart Brisbane, fly business class, and meet people in Auckland, Santiago, Lima, Bogotá and Barranquilla — then replicate the trip in reverse. Twenty-seven days in total. I was travelling with an Australian Registered Migration Agent, who would assess documents and circumstances against visa criteria. I was going to listen, make friends, and see if we could change some lives for the better. Just another day in the life, right?
Wrong. Every part of the trip blew up in my face.
Down the back
We land in Auckland. I chat with a few people, make arrangements to catch up on the return leg, and the time gets away from me — so I’m rushing through security to the plane. Now, given that I spend my life on planes, you’d think I knew that outside Australia, airlines can bump you off a flight or change your cabin class without notice.
“Business class is full, sir. We sell extra seats, as we expect some people not to show. You can fly tomorrow — or I can put you down the back and give you some extra drinks.” In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a fairly large fella, and it’s a twelve-hour flight. But flying the next day wasn’t an option. I had a schedule to meet, and I don’t let people down.
So down the back I went, wedged between two charming Chileans who didn’t speak a word of English but could talk the hind legs off a donkey in Spanish. By Santiago I’d been awake twenty-two hours, with a bit of an aroma about me — and like a trooper I spent the next seven hours in the airport talking with people about Australian Cat dealers, big lumps of mining gear, and how they’d like a crack at it. Then the next plane, and three and a half hours later: Lima, Peru, 1.20am.
Lima, 1.20am
This was some time ago — think Harrison Ford movies. Dusty ceiling fans moving nothing but dust. Hot as anything, sweat coming through my clothes, watching everyone collect their bags. The carousel slowly empties. People wander out. The agent has his bags. And it dawns on me: where’s my bag?
It’s 2.10am in a practically deserted airport, and one senior baggage handler is assuring me the bag will come on the next plane and be sent to the hotel, no charge. What I have is this: the jeans I’ve been wearing for the last thirty-five-plus hours, an undervest, a short-sleeved shirt, the socks and jocks I’m standing in, my wallet, my phone, and my laptop bag. Just call me Mr Travel Light.
The dressing gown
At the hotel, the check-in clerk is keen to upsell me anything he can, so I ask: do you do two-hour dry cleaning? Yes sir, he says. Righto. I stuff my jeans and shirt into the laundry bag. Two hours, sir.
At 5.45am, after clearly not much sleep, I’m up — in my reggies, socks and undervest washed in the sink and dried with the hair dryer the night before, and a dressing gown about a foot too short to meet in the middle. I look outside the door. No laundry bag. I ring the front desk. “What laundry?” Do not move an inch. I’m coming down.
So there I am in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza just after 6am — flight crews checking in and out, business people everywhere, and me: reggies, undervest, and a dressing gown on the wrong side of decent. Talk about the glamorous life I lead.
I spoke to twenty-five fitters that day, in my room, in my undies, socks, undervest and a dressing gown five sizes too small — and not one of them batted an eyelid. Not one. A tradesperson never blames their tools. Clothes do not maketh the man. We survived.
My jeans turned up at 6.30pm. My shirt at 8pm. They never left my sight again until I got home — washed in the sink each night, dried with hotel hairdryers. You do what you need to do.
People later asked why I didn’t just buy new clothes. I wish it had been that easy. I was a big guy back then — clothes my size had to be made, not bought off a shelf — and I was moving cities every day. Meet, chat, move on.
Bogotá, on high alert
This was 2010. If I’d seen the series Narcos first, I might never have gone — but there I was, and Bogotá was on serious high alert. Not just police and soldiers with guns: long-barrel weapons trained on you from multiple directions, fingers beside triggers. To this day, the scariest situation I’ve been in outside a war zone. And yet the people I sat down with were lovely — warm conversations, recommendations for the best ceviche, fish cured in lime juice. The tension belonged to the time and the place, not the people. But comfortable it was not.
“He had me at Miami”
So when we finished the first leg at Barranquilla, and the agent came to my room saying he’d researched flights — leave now and we could be landing in Miami in under five hours — well. He had me at Miami. He packed; I, of course, had nothing to pack. We arrived at the airport laughing like two kids without a care in the world.
Except that at Barranquilla back then, check-in meant airline staff plus the DEA, Colombian narcotics officers, and some very well-equipped soldiers. You are profiled at the desk and questioned. Mine went like this: “Where are your check-in bags?” I don’t have any, I was… “I ask you again. Where are your check-in bags?” As I was explaining… “I ask one more time only. Where are your bags?” Slowly, calmly, with hand gestures: I have no bags. My bag never arrived. I have been without it for twenty-five days. A pause. “You have no bags?” Yes — now we’re getting there. I have no bags. A finger extended, then curled back. Come with me.
Forty-seven minutes, I was later told, I was in that room. On a conveyor belt going back and forth through an X-ray machine. A retina scan. A full set of fingerprints. Swabs on the laptop and the laptop bag, the phone searched — and finally, a search of a place I never thought I’d be searched. We’ll leave it there.
I was permitted to leave, ran like mad, and made the plane as they were closing the doors. The agent asked what happened back there. I told him the truth: it’s going to be a long time before I can tell this story. Fifteen years, as it turns out.
The knock at the door
We landed in the USA, met people in Miami, Houston and LA, and flew home to Brisbane. Six weeks later I’m at a barbecue with friends when there’s a knock at the door — and my flipping bag turns up. Just like that. Not even a by-your-leave.
Since that trip, I am the guy who fits as much as humanly possible into carry-on.
Twenty-five fitters in Lima didn’t care what I was wearing. They cared that we turned up. We still do.
The places in these stories are real. We meet every candidate face to face, in their home country — here’s how our interviews work, and here’s the map.