Thursday, February 22, 2024

Last night I went to bed at 9:15, took a while to fall asleep, got up once at 2:15, took quite a while to fall back asleep and was awakened by my alarm at 5:15.

It’s now a little after 5pm while I sit here at my laptop in the Bogota airport.

It’s been an interesting day thus far but let’s start at the beginning.

Bryan picked us up at 6:30 and while I didn’t look at the time, I think it was about 7:15 when we arrived.

We checked our single bag at the LATAM and stopped at Juan Valdez where we ordered lattes to have with the chicken tortillas Teresa made.

We went through the TSA checkpoint and I confirmed our flight was still at 9am and our gate was #6. We got ourselves close to the gate and found seats. Someone made an announcement that our flight had been cancelled but they gave everyone a free chicken sandwich with a soda at Burger King.

I saw a line at our gate but was told they’re going to Cali. A while later we inquired again and were told they were going to Pereira. We finally saw our flight was rescheduled for noon and we found seats by gate 7. I guess we missed an important PA announcement because the next thing we knew it was noon and we had missed our flight. ☹

We exited the secure area and at the LATAM office we learned we could either pay 100,000 pesos more and go tomorrow or take multiple flights today. We opted for the latter and he booked this itinerary:

LA 4025 MDE – BOG 15:21-1618 (57 min.)

LA 4077 BOG – CLO 20:44-2149 (1:05)

LA 4254 CLO – CTG 22:21-23:47 (1:28)

We took the 3:21 flight to Bogota and arrived by 4:15. We’re now at an altitude a little over 8,000 feet

and it’s noticeably cooler. We found our next gate and soon we’re going to try to find something decent to eat.

About 6pm we walked from one end of the airport to the other but the best we could find was premade sandwiches in a cooler and Teresa was afraid they would be old. We ended up leaving the secure area where our options increased greatly. I even saw a Carbon y Lenos restaurant but we ended up at a small Subway where we bought 6” sandwiches and ate them while sitting on a nearby bench.

I saw this beautiful sunset, hope it shows up in the photo:

We had to go through TSA again (that makes 3 times in one day) and took seats near our gate with still 2 hours before scheduled takeoff.

I can’t believe electrical outlets are so hard to come by. I got lucky as a woman saw my expression when the only one I found had 2 cellphones using the outlet. I guess she had pity on me as her husband soon gave me one of the outlets. Teresa’s phone will soon be dead so she’ll probably be switching mine out for hers which is exactly what happened.

At the last minute they changed gates on us, Gate 1 to Gate 5. We’re lucky we caught it or we’d still be in Bogota. Our flight left 30 minutes late which means when we arrive in Cali we’ll have something like 2 minutes to get to our next gate. ☹

We arrived by 10:30 and luckily our next gate was next to us and our next flight was late.  We boarded and I gave Teresa seat 7D so she could sit on the aisle and I took 10B, a middle seat. In the end it didn’t matter because no one took 10C so after takeoff I moved to the aisle seat.

This is the "meal" they gave us on each flight:

The flight lasted about 90 minutes and when we arrived in Cartagena we quickly claimed our bag. Good job with our suitcase (thanks LATAM) keeping up with us.

We made it! We’re in Cartagena with our suitcase!

Outside, our taxi brought us to our AirBnB in about 15 minutes (it was about 1am, so no traffic).

We checked in at the security desk, took the elevator up to the 3^rd floor, I entered the code for the lock box and took 1 of the 2 keys. We entered the apt and chose the bedroom we wanted, and figured out the lights and the all-important A/C. I set the A/C to 23 degrees Celsius (73F) and we were probably in bed by 1:30.

 

CREEPY THINGS