I’ve made it to Colombia, but was very much one of those days where everything conspires against me to make life a pain.
I’d already booked a taxi to Paddington relatively early considering the flight was at 10.30, but it arrived at the station in less than half an hour, suggesting I’d get to the airport over four hours before the flight was ready to leave. Instead of calmly stopping for a coffee to wake up I blearily jumped on the first Heathrow Express available, which turned out to be direct to Terminal 5, meaning I had to get a train back to Terminal 2 and take the slow little Heathrow Connect train back out to Terminal 4.
Once I’d reached the airport I checked in and made my way to Security. At each checkpoint I was stopped and everything searched whilst they questioned why someone without a job had purchased a one way ticket to Bogotá. Mindful of the rubber gloves I decided not to make up any fanciful stories and stuck to the boring truth. The magic word seemed to be redundant, as each time they said ‘Oh, sorry mate’ and sent me on my way, so a good tip there for any drugs mules.
The airside of Terminal 2 is sadly lacking in attractive food or drink outlets so skipped breakfast and spent too much on things I don’t really need in the Dixons Travel shop. Unlike the entire developing world, Heathrow doesn’t have a free Wi-Fi signal so instead of reading the papers online wandered up and down the terminal whilst people repeatedly bumped luggage trolleys into my ankles.
On board the plane, I was sat next to a Panamanian chap who couldn’t be bothered to work his seat-back TV so sat watching across at mine, which shouldn’t really matter but it did lead to feeling like I was being stared at in my peripheral vision, for 8 long hours. Also he actually tutted when I selected the new Harry Potter film, after quite enjoying Transformers 2.
Newark was where the stress set in. I’d allowed 3 hours to cross to the different gate. The first two hours were spent queuing at Immigration whilst stroppy border guards shouted at various people for no apparent reason. As always I got the queue with the people who all needed to be checked by a supervisor, so I watched other lines build up and all get processed, but wasn’t allowed to cross to a different station despite the others all being empty.
It took so long to get through Immigration that by the time I got to the luggage hall the monitors were no longer displaying my flight so had to traipse round all the conveyor belts looking for my stuff, then get questioned why I was so late, then get questioned why I was flying one-way to Bogotá.
Handing my luggage back to the handlers they sent me off to the gate at the far end of the terminal where I queued for a while only to be told I needed the gate at the other end of the terminal, where I’d dropped off my baggage. It was now only 30 minutes before boarding and the huge security queue stretched before me. Twenty slow minutes later I reached the front and got place in line behind a woman too fat to bend over enough to take her shoes off, so a pair of rubber gloves had to be sent for whilst we had to wait behind as to go past would upset her civil liberties. When she’d finally squeezed her fat backside through the metal detector arch I was next in line and got stopped by the care in the community guy whose job it was to replenish the stack of plastic trays used for objects passing through the X-ray machine. Again I had to stand and wait for him to do all thirty of them one at a time. By now the plane was boarding so I rushed off to Gate 87 as per my boarding pass only to find it had been changed to Gate 127. A bit more rushing later whilst I kept an ear out for the tannoy telling me to get a move on I arrived there to find it was scheduled for 25 minutes earlier than it said on my boarding pass so I’d missed it by 35 minutes. She then stood there at stared at me for a few seconds whilst I silently seethed before saying ‘Oh, it’s been delayed by 50 minutes, so you can wait over there for us to call you’. Gah!
The second leg was much quieter, but the only film they had was Harry Potter again, so the 6 hours flight time dragged somewhat and the rest is a bit of a blur, but the hotel is very nice.
As may be apparent, I’m writing this whilst tired and grumpy and unable to sleep, but at least I’m in Colombia now so can’t go too wrong, drugs lords, kidnapping and gun battles notwithstanding.
PS: Next day, after some coffee…
Typical Colombian breakfast turned out to be rice with no beans, so that makes a pleasant change.
Looking back the next morning, I do remember arriving and ably explaining the man at immigration that I was here on holiday, only staying in Bogotá for one night then flying to Cartagena tomorrow all in Spanish, then managing to check into the hotel in Spanish. All that time in Costa Rica seems to have paid off, although I’m useless at planning conversations and can still only speak it competently off the cuff.
Also, after flying 18,818 miles to London and back, I’m only 777 miles from where I started in Costa Rica…
