13 Hours in Lima
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2008
1
17
40
Trip End
May 13, 2009
Lima,
Peru
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday
So I rack up to the airport in Bogota fully prepared for the first of two night flights to La Paz via Lima. On checking in I discover they have moved my second flight from 2 a.m. to 12 midday meaning an extra 10 hours in Lima airport! Fan-bloody-tastic! No notice, no warning and I wouldn't mind but these particular flights cost a small fortune!
Right, 30 minutes of argument was met with shrugged shoulders and comments like "Its not our fault", "We canīt change the second flight here" and "Try your luck in Lima" and my personal favourite "Oh by the way the staff in Lima donīt care, so you're gonna have to argue hard!" Great! Fly Lan, they have the best customer service.. well at least they are honest! I'm glad now I left some leeway in getting to La Paz for New Years.
4 hours later I'm touching down in Lima with my argument nicely prepped. Avoiding immigrations I make my way to the Lan counter in connections. No surprise thereīs a fairly lenghty queue. I get to the front and nobody can speak english very well so I rsquest an english speaker thinking my argument isnīt going to be convincing in Spanish.
20 minutes later a bleached-blonde-fairly-camp-born-to-be-an-air-steward guy called Jorge approaches me. How do you try to be annoyed when you are fighting cracking a smile? I state my case and he didn't look that sympathetic, saying I need 24 hours disruption to have a case for compensation, and that I should have prepared for it. I glared at him for a few seconds took out my confirmation mail, said I hadn't been told of the change until I checked-in in Bogota and I had done my preparation on the flight. He looked pensively for a few seconds did a check on his PC, smiled and said "My apologies sir, actually all passengers inconvenienced are being accomodated in our hotel." I would have to pass through immigrations, request for my bag at check-in and they would sort it from there.
30 minutes later I'm in Peru after speaking to some confused immigration officers as to why I wanted only to spend about 8 hours in Peru. At the check-in desk they knew nothing about me of course. I had to explain everything to them again and after a few phone calls they were getting my bag and sending me to the hotel about 100 meters from the terminal. Result! A decent nights sleep in a very plush (by my trip's standards) hotel.
About 7 very satisfying hours later (with BBC world service tv in the background - I left it on just because there was a T.V. in my room in English and there was nobody else it could bother) I was up scoffing my free western brekkie and off to check-in. One obligatory re-run of the entire story and I had my departure tax stamp paid for and I was off on my jolly way to La Paz, the Worlds Most Dangerous Road and the last party of 2008!
