First day of adventure blends into second day of adventure
We stayed at the airport that night - from 2 am until our standby flight left at 10:30 am Friday. Of course, it was sold out and there was no way in hell we were going to get a seat on it so we went to the smoking area so I could smoke and think.
I was texting with my former student and now travel agent Elaine Olstadt in Prairie Sun, and she was carefully watching flights. She put a hold on a flight from Miami to Bogota, Colombia, to Quito. In the meantime, we’re also talking with the travel adviser with our travel insurance about our options.
Our flight from Quito to the Galapagos Islands was Sunday morning, and everything cascaded from that point so if we didn’t get to Quito to catch that flight – well, now we were looking at canceling the trip, regrouping and figuring out something else.
We were not hopeful.
As we were talking, miracles of all miracles – seats on the 10:36 am flight Saturday morning opened up, and Elaine grabbed two seats. No longer on standby, we could count that we would be on a flight to Quito. And it was an American Airlines flight, so no additional money was spent except a hotel room for Friday night.
It’s now noon on Friday – we have seats but we need to determine what’s up with the checked bag and try to get tickets and boarding passes issued.
More lines – a line to speak to an agent who couldn’t help us because my VeriFLY information had expired (vaccination record, health declaration to get into Ecuador) so we decided to complete the information and return early Saturday to get passes.
Another line to determine the status of the checked bag. Apparently, when our boarding passes are scanned on Saturday, it will ding the bag and it will get on the same flight.
We got to our hotel about 3:15 pm, laid down and napped until around 5 pm then headed down to the bar/café at the hotel. We had several drinks and ate supper, returned to our room around 7:30 pm, showered and were asleep by 8:30 pm.
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