Flights and layovers

Yesterday was quite an intense day. The day before yesterday, Juan left San Juan for Mendoza by bus and, when he arrived, Nicolás was waiting for him. Between the two of us, we reorganized the luggage, said goodbye to Nicolás's family, and from the terminal, we set off by bus towards Chile. Crossing the mountain range was long and demanding. At Chilean customs, there was a long delay due to the number of tourists, so the trip stretched through the entire night and we only arrived at noon yesterday. Our friend Daniel Gianotti welcomed us and hosted us at his house. We took advantage of that time to buy a professional camera backpack and reorganize all the luggage again: we were carrying a lot of wine and several gifts for Herzog and for the workshop colleagues, and that had made the bags difficult to handle. Once better organized, we rested, had dinner, and early the next day we went to the Santiago airport. We left from Santiago, Chile, bound for São Paulo. At the São Paulo airport, at the time of boarding for Milan, a new obstacle appeared: they didn't want to let us take the wine on the plane. After a long time of talking, explanations, and negotiation, we finally managed to convince the customs agent, who authorized us to pass with the wine. It was very good news and a relief in the middle of the trip. From there, everything continued without problems. We arrived in Milan without any issues and then arrived perfectly in Lisbon. From Lisbon, we made the transfer to the Azores around ten at night. Almost magically, we ended up on a practically empty plane. We were able to change seats, each lie down across three seats, and sleep throughout the flight, recovering a bit from the fatigue accumulated after so many days of travel. We arrived at the Ponta Delgada airport and João, part of the Extática production team, was waiting for us and took us to the hotel. We are already settled into a double room, tired but anxious for dawn to break so we can go out and see the islands. Tonight we have the welcome reception and, finally, we are going to fulfill the dream of meeting Herzog in person. We want to close this chapter by deeply thanking all the people, companies, and institutions that supported us and trusted us to make this trip possible. Without that support, this dream would not have made it this far. Starting tomorrow, from the islands, we are going to start sharing the chapters of this experience day by day, telling what we experience in each day of the workshop.