I’m wasting time here in Bogota’s international airport waiting for my flight to Toronto. I am exhausted from the last 9 days, but it’s a good exhaustion. This trip has been SO much fun and non-stop action. From having dinner with Sylvia’s close friends, to exploring a church built in a salt mine to drinking way to much Aguardiente (a drink made from sugarcane which is served cold in a shot glass). The time spent here was WONDERFUL. A big thanks to Sylvia and Hernan for inviting me to their wedding and thanks to Rachel and Andries for inviting me along to Cartegena.
One thing I want to talk about before my battery dies. We (Andries, Rachel and I) flew from Cartegena to Bogota this afternoon. About 20 minutes from landing the captain got on the radio and talked for along time in Spanish then the flight attendents started grabbing everyone’s under the seats and shoved them up top. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I figured we were going to get into some bad turbulence or something coming into Bogota. I took off my headphones and started putting stuff away preparing to land. The girl next to me says, “I sure hope we’re going to be ok” and I tell her everything is going to be fine, there’s nothing to worry about. She keeps going on about how she’s really worried and stuff and I keep telling her not to. Then she says, “The pilot said there is going to be fire trucks waiting for us on the runway in case there is any problems”. That’s when I say, “Why? is there something wrong with the plane?”
The girl tells me that a warning light has come on in the cockpit saying that the planes brakes were not operating properly. That’s when it hits me, the flight attendants were preparing for an emergency landing! After the girl saw my reaction, she asked if I spoke Spanish and I replied, “no”. She then made a comment about how she was amazed that I wasn’t worried about what was going on and was so relaxed. Just after my English speaking friend tells me about the problems the plane is having, the captain gets back on the radio saying that the warning light was now off but the fire trucks were going to still be on the runway in case we had a problem. Everyone on the plane was quiet as we came in to land, except for the girl next to me. She was scared as hell and talked about how she has bad luck on flights and the stories of what happened until we made it to the terminal.
The funny thing is that Andries didn’t tell Rachel, who doesn’t speak much Spanish, until after we had landed safely. Rachel said it was a good thing because she would have been freaking out if she knew what was happening. I have to admit it scared me a little, but when the captain said that the warning light was off, I felt a bit better. Ah the joys of traveling!
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