Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Síða 32

30 AT L A N T I CA
on the fly
CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED VACATIONER
About a year ago, my girlfriend Anna
and I decided we wanted to go to
Bolivia. Four months before we were
supposed to go, I did an extensive
fare search. I did Orbitz, Expedia,
Travelocity... all the tickets were USD
1,200 to USD 1,400.
I’m like, ‘That’s too much money.’
So I called all the airline brokers in the
newspapers. Then I decided to call the
big airlines. I knew Veritas* doesn’t fly
to Bolivia, but they’re one of the largest
airlines in the world and they have
partnerships. So I called, and the agent
said, “We can get you to Bolivia through
Mexico City.”
The ticket was USD 980. It was
cheaper, but it wasn’t ridiculously
cheaper. I thought I had gotten a deal.
The agent obviously didn’t know there
were two La Pazes.
So the tickets came. They said San
Francisco to Mexico City, and Mexico
City to La Paz. It didn’t trigger anything.
Now, obviously, you look back and say
you should have calculated the hours.
But how many of us do that? We were
leaving early in the morning and we
were going to get to La Paz late at
night.
We went and checked in. Nobody
says anything. But then we got to
Mexico City and we had to go through
customs. We told people we were just
transferring at the airport, and they said
we had to go through customs anyway.
We’re like, ‘Okay, we’re in a foreign
country.’ And didn’t think anything
more of it.
We have a video of me sitting outside
the gate in Mexico City, reading a Bolivia
guidebook. The gate says La Paz. Anna
filmed it, and zoomed in on me and
asked me where we were going. And I
say, “La Paz, Bolivia.”
So we got on the flight. Looking
back, we realized it was really short. It
was a couple of hours. And onboard,
there were people with boogie boards
and shorts. We had hats and scarves.
It’s like 20 degrees Fahrenheit in Bolivia
that time of year. Still, it never crossed
our minds that we weren’t going to
Bolivia.
Then we got off the plane, and it
was really warm out. We thought, ‘This
is weird.’ Then there’s no international
terminal. It’s really casual. No customs.
No immigration.
We got our bags. We were supposed
to meet our friend at the airport who
was coming from Peru, but there was
nobody around. We hunted down
somebody who worked there and they
told us we were the last flight. So we
asked someone if they could take us to
the hotel that we had booked in Bolivia.
They said, “There’s no hotel here by that
name.”
Finally someone says, “We’re in La
Paz, Mexico.” And literally, until they
said that, it really didn’t dawn on us. We
looked at each other – I really remember
this moment – and we froze. We were
like, “Of course. We’re in Mexico.”
At this point, we didn’t know where in
Mexico we were. It was about midnight.
We got a cab. There were no hotels
open, or they were all full because
there was some fishing event in town.
We were on unpaved backroads in
the middle of the night. We eventually
found something, and it turned out to
be a really nice place.
This is when the story goes from bad
to much worse. The next morning we’re
on the phone. We’re calling the airline
from this hotel room in Mexico on hotel
room rates. The airline puts you on hold
until you just hang up. And they play
that song. It plays on. And on. And on.
We couldn’t really leave the hotel
room because we were waiting for the
airline to call us back. We were in this
really nice hotel, but it cost money. We
went out for a little swim in the pool.
Anna broke down crying in the lobby
and some old guy bought us tequila
shots.
The airline admitted they made the
mistake, but there were no flights to
Bolivia. They were full for five days.
The airline finally said, “We can fly you
to Miami, Florida, and you’re on your
own, or we can fly you back to San
Francisco.”
At that point, we were still trying to
get to Bolivia. If we had to take a llama
over the hills, we were going to get to
Bolivia. As long as we were going to get
there, it was not a failed vacation.
But it basically came down to the fact
that to get a flight that soon, you can’t
get anything that’s affordable. We had
left on Wednesday, and we got back to
California on Friday. Everytime we got
close to getting cheap tickets online,
something wouldn’t go through.
We had been getting along really,
really well. As it began to sink in around
11 pm that night, we started to go
at each other’s throats. We realized
that our vacation was over. We weren’t
going anywhere.
When you’re in a situation like that,
where you’re at the will of a big company,
you realize how important it is to have
people who are manning the phones.
The automatic voice activators... people
not communicating.... They can put you
on hold until you give up. I Googled
“ruined vacation,” and the airline’s name
came up.
They refunded our tickets, but at the
same time, we now have a USD 400
phone bill to the airline and a hotel bill
that they haven’t paid us back for yet.
Who knows if we’ll ever get it back. It’s a
total headache. You work all year to get
those paid five days of vacation, and
you can’t get those back.
I was definitely telling everyone at
first, but it’s sort of painful. Still to this
day, it’s a story that you don’t know
whether to laugh or cry. Why didn’t I
put it all together? At the same time, we
shouldn’t have had to.
You’re angry, but you feel like an
idiot. There’s probably some truth to
both those emotions.
So we went out and bought all this
camping equipment and went on a road
trip instead. We went to the redwood
forest. We rented dune buggies in
Oregon and ended up going to Seattle.
It was nice. A little different. a IL
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Jonathan Jones’s vacation started and ended the same day as he boarded a plane in San Francisco
to La Paz, Bolivia, but wound up in La Paz, Mexico. As told to Krista Mahr.

* Name of airline has been changed.
009 airmail Atlantica 606.indd 30 18.10.2006 21:34:07