Looking back on Friday March the 3rd at around 10 pm: the plane begins to fuel-up as the pungent smell of gasoline makes its way into the cabin. We listen to the pre-flight demonstration before departing for Montevideo, Uruguay. The flight attendants begin to secure the cabin and the whine of the engines grows louder by the second as the pilot navigates to the tarmac in preparation for take-off. Before I know it, the plane is pushing further up into the atmosphere and my ears are popping as we climb to 40,000 feet. Since it was only my second time flying, the first being on the connecting flight from Atlanta, the redeye trip to Uruguay fascinated me. The most memorable part of the passage to Montevideo was waking up to the monitor displaying our current location in the world along with the different metrics of the flight such as groundspeed, true air speed, altitude, and current external temperature. The first thing I remember about the Saturday morning of our arrival is waking up to watch as we cruised over South America at 550 mph; the continent was surprisingly flat, but the view was indescribably beautiful despite the countries within it being plagued with a severe drought. Upon landing, I recall thinking “Are we landing in a field?” because as we descended, we were surrounded by farmlands and countryside for what looked like miles. Once we reached the airport, which was aesthetically pleasing itself, I turned on my phone, saw SOS on my service indicator, and realized that I was finally in Uruguay, the trip I had been wanting to attend since I first learned of it in my sophomore year.
