Background
This is my 1,000th post, but my first ever trip report, so bear with me. I’ve been following this forum for a while now and felt the need to contribute a personal tome to repay the hours of entertainment I’ve read here. We’ll see if I have the hang of it … I’ve already made sure to post it completely here (and not on a blog where I’ll hawk credit card deals at you like a guy with free t-shirts at Spring Break), made sure to have (the majority) of the trip in a premium cabin, and brought along one of those fancy photomajiggers (although some of the pictures will be via my iPhone). As of writing this part, I am still in Chile, but I wanted to get a head-start and post a few parts before getting home.

I recently graduated college (or “university,” since I’ve figured this is one of the few truly “international” sub-boards on FT). In my family, once you finish school, you’re expected to go back to school and continue until you can school no more. Perhaps that’s why most of my immediate ancestors were teachers, we just have no imagination … I digress. I had a little time to travel and decided to head south of the equator, since I’d never been there. The idea rattled around in my head last year, until I found out a good friend of mine was moving to Chile in late January and would be free for some of February. Done. The trip was booked -- slowly, but surely.

Booking
The outbound was booked before BA said “Adios!” to unlimited stopovers. I was able to find space available on LAN in J for JFK-LIM, LIM-IPC, and IPC-SCL for 40K. B-E-A-Utiful. Given that JFK-SCL has an MPM of 6147 miles on LAN, and that this routing was a smidge over 8300, I booked it right away, not knowing if I'd get another agent to ticket this. Since the friend I'd be visiting had been to Peru but never to Easter Island, I booked a domestic SCL-IPC return in international J using miles + cash (not my cash … I’m not that great a friend).

Some shiny objects must have distracted me because I left the itinerary at that for a long time. Meanwhile, the sky fell on Americans with hoards of BA miles from Chase and AmEx and dreams of touring all of South America and Asia with LAN and CX. I found the devaluation highly offensive, as the program no longer revolves around us Americans like all things should.

However, the changes turned out to be quite beneficial, as I later booked a LIM-CUZ Y r/t for 9K (20K pre-Avios, $450 paid ticket) and SCL-LIM Y o/w for 5K + cash (7.5K + cash beforehand, lowest price $425). I ended up upgrading the SCL-LIM segment to J earlier today, for reasons and by methods I'll explain when I get to that part. To top it all off, I used 30K AA miles to return me from LIM right-side up to the northern hemisphere in J, with a few days stopover in New York, courtesy of AA’s unique North American gateway stopover rule.

If you’ve ever booked a ticket on LAN, you’re probably aware of the schedule change. It’s where an hombre in a tall building in Santiago decides that you probably won’t mind if your 10am flight gets moved to 5am, before your 6am arrival to the continent. And then sees your funny last name and puts you on a flight 3 days later, just for giggles. Señor Chuckles required me to make about 4 more calls to the BA center in the U.S., to talk to telephone operators who sounded closer to Little Rock than London. But, it all worked out in the end. On with the show!


The Routing (zoomed out to show where exactly is Easter Island)

Links to each part:
1) DL 30, LAX-JFK, Y+
2) JFK T8/AA Admirals Club
3) LA 531, JFK-LIM, J
4) LP 2047, LIM-CUZ, Y
5) Machu Picchu
6) LP 2019, CUZ-LIM, Y
7) Radisson Decapolis Miraflores, Lima
8) LIM Airport/SUMAQ Lounge
9) LA 848, LIM-IPC, J
10) Easter Island, Part 1
11) Easter Island, Part 2
12) IPC/Mataveri International Airport
13) LA 842, IPC-SCL, J
14) Santiago
15) SCL Airport/LAN Neruda Lounge
16) LA 530, SCL-LIM, J
17) LA 530, LIM-JFK, J
18) Yotel NYC
19) AA 181, JFK-LAX, J