we woke up just before six (am) to grab some breakfast and catch a ride to the aeropuerto with ronaldo. we had decided it was perhaps the coca tea that was making us feel slightly sick, so we opted for cafe con leche instead.
we were anxious to leave cusco and arrive in lima, as we were hoping to speak with the avianca counter and switch our flight to dc. we were currently scheduled to leave early sunday morning, but wanted to catch a flight saturday (today) instead, as dani had just found out she was to leave for ghana on tuesday for work.
as we had printed our boarding passes from the taca office in cusco the day before, ronaldo told us we could go straight upstairs to our gate, even though our flight was not yet being shown on any of the television monitors. just to be safe, we double checked with a security person, who told us the same thing. once upstairs and through security, we asked around to see which gate was the taca gate, but no one had any idea.
we settled down in front of the most beautiful alpaca ever:
after about an hour of waiting, with ten minutes before we were set to be boarding, we realized something had to be wrong - there was no one around, and no gate had yet been announced. we asked someone from the security checkpoint, who then got in touch with someone else, and we were instructed that the taca gate was downstairs. we looked at each other in disbelief: no one could have told us that an hour before?but oh, it gets worse.
we then went downstairs and spoke with a woman who was posted at the door for the downstairs gates. she told us we were in the wrong place, and to go back upstairs. when we protested and told her we'd been upstairs for the last hour, and they'd sent us down here, she handed us off to a security guard, who consulted his walkie-talkie, and then told us to go to information. information hadn't the slightest idea what to do, and told us to get in the taca line. at this point, we were supposed to be boarding, and we hadn't the slightest idea what was going on. we asked someone who worked for taca, who informed us our flight was delayed until 1230, and put us in the 'ejecutivos' line, where we waited approximately forever only to be waited on by a horrid man who was completely unhelpful. by this point, we'd missed all other, earlier, flights we could have taken because no one had been able to tell us our flight had been delayed.
we then had to go back upstairs and back through security (where we'd already passed through with flying colors), only to have a man with a giant stick up his bum tell us that we could not take caribeeners through because we might take them off, put them on a fist, and punch someone in the face. we could only stare at him incredulously. we were also not allowed to take a gift for our brother through (to be fair, it was a flail - but we were pretty angry because we'd been allowed through with it the first time, so why not the second? way to be consistent, security).
we collapsed into seats near our supposed gate. katie had a cerveza (at 8am) out of sheer frustration. we passed the next five hours grumbling about peru and the creepy old men that went out of their way to sit next to us and try to impress us.
we were completely disgusted with the whole experience.
(this is for you, taca airlines)
we finally made it back to lima, where a woman from hotel espana had been waiting patiently for us for hours because ronaldo had neglected to call and tell them we were going to try and change our flight. we went on an adventure to find chinatown - and we did find it, after a long trek, only to discover there were absolutely no chinese people there. we were so pleased to be sitting down, however, and have some real food, we didn't even care it was the weirdest chinatown we've ever been in.
we shoveled down some vegetable fried rice
and hoofed it back to the hotel, where we packed up our things, stocked up on candy bars, and went to bed early.
sus amigas,
daniela y katerina
No comments:
Post a Comment