Let´s see, where shall I begin? Well I got to the airport yesterday morning at 11am, which was WAY earlier than I needed, but my mom wanted to make sure I wasn´t late. My plane wasn´t sposed to leave until 1:50pm, so yes, I ended up sitting around for a while. Then it was late. Not significantly, but like half an hour or so, which probably would have bothered me if I didn´t have a 5 hour layover to look forward to in Miami.
So that flight was uneventful, and I arrived in Miami. Let me tell you, that airport is smelly. Anyways, having a five hour layover, I tried to have a nap at first, but that wasn´t working so well, as there were announcements all the time. So I decided to go on the internet, but NO ONE, especially that silly boy of mine, was online. So basically I sat around being bored for five hours.
Somehow, five hours turned into six and a half, cuz our plane was late. This one I did mind about, because I had an hour and a half layover in La Paz that I really wasn´t too keen on missing. But, there was nothing I could do but get on the plane and cross my fingers. Now this flight was scheduled to be from 11:20pm-5:30am, and let me tell you, I can´t sleep on planes, so I knew this was going to suck. But you try sleeping on a plane when you´re freaking out about whether or not you´re going to make your connection and the only thing you can do is will the pilot to fly faster. But not crash. Definitely not crash. As a sidenote, I learned that American Airlines personnel really suck at their jobs.
So we ended up landing in La Paz at about 6:30 am, and got to the gate at maybe 6:45. The flight attendent was all saying that I could make it, not to worry, it was a really small airport. Well guess what? It may have been easier to do so if I freaking spoke Spanish! I still had to go through customs, collect my bags, and figure out where the hell to go. There were a whole bunch of airport people ushering us along, as if they had it all sorted out and they were holding up the plane (there were about 12 of us who had the same connection). But somehow, none of us made it. Figures.
So, here I am, in La Paz, totally freaked out because I missed my connection and I was in a weird country I´ve never been to, completely alone, not even speaking the language very well, and wondering what the hell to do (on top of it all, La Paz is at 12,000 vertical feet, so the air is really thin and I felt like I was going to pass out or vomit, not sure which), when I ran into this really nice couple.
They turned out to be Anglican missionaries, originally from Alabama, who had lived in Cochabamba for the past 6 years and were returning home. They basically took me in under their wing and talked to the airport people for me. Honestly, it´s times like that when I feel like there may be a god after all, despite all the rest he craps on my travel plans. They said that the reason they didn´t catch their flight was because god wanted them to help me. So sweet.
Anyways, with their extraordinary help, American Airlines decided to give all of us a ticket to Santa Cruz, because there were no more flights from La Paz to Cochabamba that day that still had space on them. So, somewhat ironically and even more alarmingly, I ended up boarding the same plane I just got off of, and headed off the path of my itinerary. Which really freaked me out; I was wondering if the plane was going to crash and no one would know where I was.
So we ended up in Santa Cruz at about 10am, which was the first time I stepped outside on this whole excursion, and it was gorgeous. A sunny day, the perfect spring temperature, with a nice breeze. However, I didn´t have a whole lot of time to appreciate that, because I was stuck in Santa Cruz. American Airlines doesn´t fly to Cochabamba, so I needed to switch airlines. But the airlines that flies there, Aerosur, charges a pretty big fee for changing flights around. I´m not exactly sure how it worked, cuz I don´t really speak Spanish, but AA was obligated to get us to Cochabamba, cuz they made us miss our flight. So that means that they had to pay for the charge of shuffling the Aerosur flights around. But all the AA guys were avoiding us, and for the longest time I thought I was stuck and it was very scary. But it all worked itself out, again, thanks to the help of my new friends, and I was scheduled to be on a flight from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba at 1:20 pm.
To throw a monkey wrench into my already difficult day, I was getting picked up at the Cochabamba airport at 8am, along with a bunch of other people in the same program as me. But I had no opportunity to call them and tell them I missed the connection, because I was being herded onto the next flights and all, so it wasn´t until 11am-ish that I managed to call and tell them I was going to be late. They told me not to worry, usually it happens to at least five people in their group, but this year I was unlucky and I was the only one. Figures. So I tell them that my flight gets in at 2, and they say they´re going to send someone to pick me up. Cool, right?
Not so. The 1:20 flight turned into a 2:00 flight... and the string of bad luck continued. I wondered what I had done recently to piss the gods off, or if I had killed a spider or broken a mirror. Well, it didn´t really matter, because we were only about 45 minutes late, and I ended up getting picked up just fine, getting the phone number of my new missionary friends, and meeting up with the rest of my group just fine. Well exhausted and frustrated, but physically fine.
Now let´s recap:
Flight 1: Toronto-Miami - LATE
Flight 2: Miami-La Paz - VERY LATE
Flight 3: La Paz-Cochabamba - the only one that was ON TIME, and the only one that I wasn´t on!
Flight 4: La Paz-Santa Cruz - LATE, because we made it so
Flight 5: Santa Cruz-Cochabamba - LATE
So this concludes my 28, yes count 'em, twenty-eight hours of travelling. Now who can honestly say that no one is spiting me?
1 comment:
Having travelled extensivly to Latin America in general, and Bolivia in particular, I can state with certainy that your experiences were normal. Okay, I found American Airlines to be better, but that may be because I was in Business Class. But I was yanked off the plane in Santa Cruz once for secondary security, stripsearched leaving the country, sick for 3 days in La Paz until I acclimatized, had flights cancelled & rescheduled -- in all, very normal.
But having spent 3 months in Santa Cruz, I can say I certainly liked the city.
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