The Following Was Posted Saturday, October 02, 2004
A Stop in Cochabamba
I woke at 4:00AM with about an hour left of my long flight from Mexico City to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. That’s when the pilot made an unexpected announcement.
Bolivia’s air traffic controllers had gone on strike – while I was in mid-flight – and we would be diverted to Cochabamba.
No one knew if the strike would last an hour, a day, or a month. While waiting for my luggage to come out on the carousel at the Cochabamba airport – which it never did – I considered taking a bus to Santa Cruz, but that would have been eleven hours of uncomfortable traveling.
The airline put us up in a four star downtown hotel where I had a nice breakfast, a nap, and a hot shower. But no fresh clothes and no shave. All that stuff was in my checked luggage, and who knew where that could be? My jacket was also in that bag, and Cochabamba was cool and cloudy – in the low 50’s.
There were about sixty of us from two different Lloyd Aereo Boliviano flights staying at the hotel. One of my fellow passengers was a missionary originally from Florida. She and her husband had been living in Uruguay with their four kids and were in the process of moving to Bolivia. But the somewhat arbitrary entry taxes were forcing them to store their furniture at the border until they could negotiate lower property taxes. She described it all as a system of semi-legalized bribes. Her trip that week had been to Florida to look into a possible move back to the states.
Throughout the morning there was no news about the strike. But at one o’clock, just as we were finishing the buffet lunch, fifteen taxis pulled up to the front of the hotel and hurried us back to the airport.
After about two hours of waiting, we boarded our plane and waited another hour. We taxied out. Then we taxied back to the terminal. The pilot announced we needed a different plane. Then, he decided this one was fine. We taxied back out again and finally took off.
But the question remained. Where the hell was my luggage?
¶
I woke at 4:00AM with about an hour left of my long flight from Mexico City to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. That’s when the pilot made an unexpected announcement.
Bolivia’s air traffic controllers had gone on strike – while I was in mid-flight – and we would be diverted to Cochabamba.
No one knew if the strike would last an hour, a day, or a month. While waiting for my luggage to come out on the carousel at the Cochabamba airport – which it never did – I considered taking a bus to Santa Cruz, but that would have been eleven hours of uncomfortable traveling.
The airline put us up in a four star downtown hotel where I had a nice breakfast, a nap, and a hot shower. But no fresh clothes and no shave. All that stuff was in my checked luggage, and who knew where that could be? My jacket was also in that bag, and Cochabamba was cool and cloudy – in the low 50’s.
There were about sixty of us from two different Lloyd Aereo Boliviano flights staying at the hotel. One of my fellow passengers was a missionary originally from Florida. She and her husband had been living in Uruguay with their four kids and were in the process of moving to Bolivia. But the somewhat arbitrary entry taxes were forcing them to store their furniture at the border until they could negotiate lower property taxes. She described it all as a system of semi-legalized bribes. Her trip that week had been to Florida to look into a possible move back to the states.
Throughout the morning there was no news about the strike. But at one o’clock, just as we were finishing the buffet lunch, fifteen taxis pulled up to the front of the hotel and hurried us back to the airport.
After about two hours of waiting, we boarded our plane and waited another hour. We taxied out. Then we taxied back to the terminal. The pilot announced we needed a different plane. Then, he decided this one was fine. We taxied back out again and finally took off.
But the question remained. Where the hell was my luggage?
¶
