Baggage fun at the airport

February 2013.

Before planning my trip to Peru I checked on the airline baggage allowance, especially as I was going for 6 months and wanted to take some fishing tackle along. 2 bags of 20 kilos each – so quite generous, but I still knew I would probably be heavy! Sure enough my 2 cases weighed in at 48 kilos – but then I was in for a shock! The check-in clerk told me that as my final destination was at a minor airport in Peru my allowance was the standard one suitcase weighing 23 kilos – meaning I had 25 kilos excess baggage to pay! She said I had to pay the excess on the whole journey, despite my protestations that surely it should just be on the final leg of the flight, as I was allowed 2 x 20 kilos from Brazil, to the capital of Peru, Lima. She went off to consult a supervisor.

I was a bit miffed as I could have opted for a bus from Lima to Trujillo, which would have meant the 40 kilo limit was right, but as that meant making my way from the airport to the bus terminal late at night, and a long wait (longer than the 7 hours I would have at the airport) for the next bus, I decided to take the easy way out!

The clerk returned and confirmed that I had to pay the excess for the whole flight and gave me a hand-written note to take to the airline desk, where there was quite a queue.  Half an hour later, and £250 poorer I was back at check-in (they had kept my baggage there), where I saw a different clerk, who had a supervisor with her. After a little consultation the supervisor got on the phone to someone else, and they decided that because my final destination was still in Peru, then the 40 kilo rule did, in fact, apply – so I only had to pay 8 kilos excess baggage! So it was back to the airline desk, another brief wait – caused mainly by the fact that, although there were 2 cashiers operating, it appeared that they did not have a cash drawer at the desk, but had to go into the back room to make change for every customer! I did get a refund and ended up paying around £80 for the excess baggage, but my cases were, this time, going through to Lima, and I didn't have to collect them, and check them in again, in Sao Paulo. (The last time I went the baggage tab showed Lima so I assumed they were going straight through, but no-one told me I had to collect them in Sao Paulo, so I went to check in without them and was sent off to look for them. As it was now a couple of hours after the plane had landed they had been removed from the carousel, and so I had an adventure finding them!)

Lima airport customs has a unique system for checking arriving baggage – rather than the red and green lanes (goods to declare, and nothing to declare), they have a single lane, and when it is your turn you press a button, and seemingly randomly there is a red or green light. Green means proceed, but red (which I got this time!) means you have to subject all your baggage, including hand baggage which was checked in Sao Paulo (and in my case also in Salvador) to an x-ray check. If the operator doesn't like what he sees then you are subjected to a full baggage search, which fortunately I avoided.

I still arrived in Trujillo pretty shattered, though, as it was 7.00am, after a 7 hour layover in Lima, and with the time-zone difference it meant I had been awake for 28 hours by the time I got to my hotel in Huanchaco!