More Flight Problems
June 8, 2009
Following the advice of several people we’ve met during our trip, we decided to make the most of our time in Colombia by leaving expensive Cartagena behind and spending a few days amidst Colombia’s most famous landscape—the Zona Cafetera, or coffee region. Eager to maximize our time there, we decided to splurge and take an early morning flight from Cartagena to Bogota, which would connect a few hours later to a flight to Armenia, the capital city of Quindio province. From there, we planned to take the 45-minute bus ride to our final destination, Salento. If all had gone according to plan, we would have traveled for half a day seeing a bit of Colombia from the air, while avoiding the 20-hour bus trip from Cartagena to Salento. As it turned out, we might have been better off taking the bus!
Although getting up at 6 am to catch our flight out of Cartagena was difficult, we justified it by thinking about all of the time we were going to save by flying to Bogota/Salento. Though slightly delayed, our flight got us into Bogota with three hours to spare before our afternoon flight. But 30 minutes after our flight was supposed to depart, the gate agent informed us that our flight was cancelled.
What followed was an unfortunately typical Latin American experience. Upon learning that we could take the evening flight (only 5 hours later!), we expressed our desire to fly the next morning since we had heard that Armenia wasn’t safe at night and we didn’t want to burn an afternoon waiting around in the airport. The ticket agent however told us that we would have to pay an additional $30 to change our reservation, to which we replied, “no way, we want to fly tomorrow without paying extra!” He then talked to his manager, who waived the ticketing fees after all—so much for consistency!
But by that point an hour had passed and Selina and I were so exhausted and frustrated that couldn’t decide what to do. So Selina flipped a coin. After landing on heads three times, flying that night it was.
Finally having finally made a decision we then learned that the airline would cover our lunch. Things were finally looking up! As we optimistically followed him to the restaurant, we dreamed of the fresh sandwich or salad that might await. But we were sorely disappointed when we arrived at Presto, a cheap Carl’s Junior rip-off, and were told that we could ONLY have a hamburger (without cheese) or a hot dog. After some debate, I resigned myself to the hamburger and Selina managed to persuade them to give her a chicken burger. But when my food arrived and I got a lavish BBQ burger with cheese. As I unquestioningly dove into my food and the waitress brought out Selina’s small hockey puck of a chicken sandwich, we realized the mistake. Sure enough, a heated argument erupted in the kitchen and we received icy glares from the waitress for the rest of our meal.
The next five hours were among the most painful of our trip. Too tired to think clearly, we made the poor decision of staying in the Bogota airport until our flight at 7 pm. If you ever saw the movie The Terminal with Tom Hanks, it was kind of like that. The one bright spot of our day was discovering that good beer DOES exist in South America—if you are ever in Colombia, be sure to check out the Bogota Beer Company (they had a branch in the airport and I had my first IPA in almost three months!).
After an hour and a half delay, we finally took off in a turbo-prop plane and 30 minutes later landed at Armenia’s tiny airport. Because it was so late, and we were so exhausted, we took an hour cab ride to our hostel in Salento (not cheap). Fortunately, the taxi driver was super nice, and I talked coffee cultivation and Colombian pop music with him until we reached our destination.
