Catch Me If You Can: How to Catch a Flight in Bolivia

1. You purchase your air ticket from a travel agency in La Paz to Rurrenbaque. Printed on your ticket is a departure time set for 1645. 

 

2. You ask your hotel to ring the airline in the morning to confirm the flight time, and are advised that the departure time has been shifted to 1700. Nevertheless, the hotel advises to head to the airport early in case of roadblocks and traffic. The roads end up being relatively clear and you arrive at the airport around 1430. 

3. You check the departures screen and see that your 1645 flight (still noted for 1645 and not 1700) has not opened for check-in.  

You kill some time by using the free wifi internet (why is it that the Bolivian airport has free internet and yet none of the airports in Australia seem to have this..?) and eat Subway for lunch.

4. You check your luggage at the counter right one time at 1545 and are told that the flight has already closed. 

“What? But how is this possible...?” You say. You gesture vaguely in the direction of departures screen. “But the ticket, the boarding screen says...” 

The guy at the counter shakes his head and says that the flight had been rescheduled to 16:05.

“What?!” You say. “How is this possible? I rang to check and there’s nothing on the board to say that the flight had changed...?”

The lady immediately behind you in the queue overhears your conversation.

“Oh,” she says. “I rang before coming to the airport and they said the flight had been pushed back to 5:30pm. I thought I was here early.”

5. The guy at the counter looks at you and shakes his head.

“You can take a flight tomorrow morning,” he says.

Lerdo turista is really what his expression is saying.

6. You look at him in dismay.

The guy sighs. “Momento,” he says, and then starts rapidly firing away in Spanish, speaking into his walkie talkie.

7. After a brief conversation, he looks up and says, “Okay. You must hurry. Quickly go pay your airport tax and head to the departure gate.

He pauses before emphasising, “You must run.”

8. You run. You run to the counter to pay your airport departure tax, run through security and then run to the departure gate. You arrive at the gate all sweaty and breathless only to see a whole bunch of people sitting down, looking bored with their arms folded.

9. “The plane,” you say panting. “Where is the plane?”

You peer out the window and see an empty runway.

“Oh,” says a German girl. “The plane’s late and they said that it’s going to arrive in maybe 20 minutes.”

So, all that running for nothing. It turns out that all those people sitting and waiting with their arms folded have been waiting for the 2:15pm flight that has yet to arrive. So logic has it that they decided to push up your flight, without notifying anybody of the changes, to compensate for the extremely delayed earlier flight.

Go figure.

10. To be continued...