Baggage Reclaim.

Propping up a pillar in a fast-emptying baggage reclaim hall. The same dubious pea-green suitcase comes back round for what seems like the umpteenth time. Eventually we are the sole travellers standing expectant, waiting. Then the belt stops. Only that one disconsolate case to be retrieved. Maybe the shade is too reminiscent of a late eighties shellsuit or an early seventies bathroom suite. I too might have been tempted to disown it, only it too represents somebody's hopes, expectations or at least their dirty washing. Given the confusions in Amsterdam, I would have been surprised if we had been able to exit that hall; replete. So it's off to register the Lost Luggage in the earnest hope that it will reappear tomorrow.

We're fairly sanguine, reasonably relaxed. For in this age of barcodes and on-line tracking, we'll easily follow our wayward luggage's progresses. It's happened before. Several times. The most memorable being the four days bereft of our cycles in Christchurch, they having fallen foul of a 5mm Heathrow snowstorm.

Tomorrow doesn't come. Nor the next. However, I am being reassured that 98% of lost items are returned to their owners within three weeks.

Day four and the Navigator decides to kill time by sewing a new hat; last year's creation has faded, or so I'm informed. She then follows that by boiling up a batch of strawberry jam. Looks and feels like we're stuck within a place called Limbo. Drinking too much high octane coffee.

Day five and a few facts are starting to become clear. We'd travelled on one single ticket but with two carriers, ostensibly both part of the same alliance group. For which we might have reasonably assumed that they would be able to communicate between themselves. We get a 'phone call asking if we've received our bags. NO! and the fact you are asking doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. It transpires that the online tracking site that looks so professional and remains resolutely blank for the duration of this tale, only operates when 'the lost' finds its' self in Argentina. Not a great help when you know that the bags are lying in some vast warehouse on the other side of the equator.

Day six. To really encourage our hopes that we might see our bags again, we've been sent the claim form. We'd already played a Kim's game of memory retrieval and created the eclectic list of spare and replacement parts for a bike trip. It would be interesting to be that proverbial 'fly on the wall', to watch a handler examine the contents. Whilst standing at that Lost and Found desk, we'd been asked to note down some of the contents, items that might help with identification. Schwalbe tyre and Rohloff oil, Allen keys and rust eater, two tarpaulins and a set of hair clippers. A swatch of Black Watch tartan and Matilda the Moo. The agent was somewhat bemused. In truth they're all items that could be adequately replaced in country, are all insured, but that doesn't take into account the sentimental attachments and the superstitions. The Canadian leather gloves that were rescued from the Tweed Bridge in Kelso, the Laguile clasp knife that's been a constant companion for the last twenty years.

So to start filling the form out would be an admission of defeat.

Day seven. Time to tempt fate. Time to head up to the Delta, to the streets of boat chandlers and scrap yards, a ready source of cheap fuel cans that can be cut down to make adequate panniers. Time to visit the Cacciola ferry and threaten to buy a passage to Uruguay. Time to consider a short tour in familiar country that might allow the bags a chance to catch up with us.

Day seven, only later... It worked. A 'phone call to say that our stuff has made it as far as Ezeiza airport and could they confirm our address so we they can courier it to us...... tomorrow. Another day. What the hell....? We celebrate and buy a kilo of ice cream.

Day eight and some questions. Why do our bags have a predeliction for waywardness on outbound journeys, but not for the less important returns to home? Why the concept of 'hold luggage'? Statistically the former is out of balance, whilst the latter leaves me bemused, as I remember my flight neighbour who heaves her Inca-Trail, seventy-litre rucksac into the overhead locker. It's both larger and heavier than what we've entrusted to others.

Postscript: like the lost luggage, there will be a delay of at least eight days before the photographic element reaches this posting.....if it doesn't become part of that 2% that is, forever lost.

 

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New Toy.

Tech-advance, tech-change: once I chose to ignore it, in the vain hope that it might go away. It was the monster under my bed, but It would have disappeared with the daylight. Morning came but it was still there.

With each succeeding return to our southern wintering grounds I finding that I've slid back down the learning curve and need to relearn some skills. Log on to the Blogsy site only to find it's been upgraded. Go to the photo album to find the 'trash can' has moved, then spend time tracing the inadvertent deletes. It's like climbing the stone screes in Glen Torridon, it's 'two steps up: one step down'.

Twelve years ago we headed off on our first long trip with the expressed intention to be 'gizmo-free'. No electronics, the limit was a handlebar computer; there wasn't even a camera. The thinking being that a camera lens will only intrude between view and viewer. It was still the Kodachrome Age. There were also the archaic concepts of cyber-cafés and bookshops, pencils and jotters. Even coin-operated call boxes.

Then came the age of the e-book reader and the economy digital SLR, fifteen hundred paperbacks and a real camera with a heavy intrusive lens. Closely followed by 'netbook'. It's a well researched fact, that if you leave any treasured artefact in a darkened corner it will breed. Be it bicycles or skis, power tools or in this instance, Apple-tech.

Like a floundering fish, I was slowly being reeled into the twenty-first century.

I liked the results that monster camera gave, only those results lie in a place where they're never viewed. So I increasingly found myself using the Navigator's point and shoot for its more unobtrusive, simple, lighter mode. I was contented.... that is until the Navigator purchased a new telephone. We had been loaned another brand of 'clever 'phone' on last year's trip, but it suffered under the perception that the USA was the world. It would, on occasions tie itself into a Gordian knot', only to revert back to the comfort blanket of its original provider. A bit of research and the fact that we've already bought into the Apple monster and the inevitable happens. A new white box containing an old series appliance materialises.

Now if the Navigator can have her new toy, although she is trying to convince me that it is a vital piece of travel equipment, then surely I can too. So I get a new camera. The results are pleasing. It's touch screen simple, light and unobtrusive. Even anonymous. Infinitely ubiquitous. Everybody carries one. Whether you're sitting on a bench in an Edinburgh street or an Andean plaza, banging your drum at a political rally or walking into a light standard, there every where. Like the oft quoted rat statistic: you really are never more than ten paces from one.

It would appear that this said camera comes with a few additional features, an infinite stream of applications. A calculator, a compass, a store of maps, the Internet, and it also appears to operate as a telephone.

We're making our way out of the flat to go into town, the Navigator asks if I've got my camera, whilst I ask if she's got her map? We both hold up our 'phones.

 

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