Journey to Colombia

This was initially supposed to be a New Year's trip with Alex and my Engineers Without Borders friends from Cal Poly, but costs for airfare got to be $1500-$2500 for a 5 day trip... we delayed this to a mid-January trip to get back into the lower post-holiday prices.

We booked separate tickets from Seattle-Los Angeles and LA to Cartagena, Colombia via Bogota, with only a 2 hour layover at LAX. As luck would have it, our flight out of Seattle was delayed almost 2 hours!

The LAX terminal 6 (domestic) is well-signed, but we and another couple others trying to make the same Bogota flight couldn't find upfront signage for terminals 2 or 3, just Tom Bradley terminal. No signage for buses was clearly visible in our rush either.

We ran the 1.1 miles through tunnels from one side of the LA airport to the other, fortunate that our luggage was only light carry-on backpacks. Eventually we made it to our gate...

... 3 minutes after our Bogota plane pulled away.

 I asked at the Avianca ticket counter employees, who responded without mercy that I should rebook at the airline office. Meanwhile Alex had much better luck speaking with another Avianca representative who encouraged the ticket counter workers to rebook us for free through San Salvador, Bogota, and finally Cartagena for free, leaving almost immediately! That was very nice of Avianca, especially since when we called their offices prior to leaving Seattle, the employees were adamant that any kind of rebooking would incur significant costs.

We were off! Watched parts of Revenant and Victoria & Abdul. Woke up as we touched down in San Salvador as the airport was starting up for the day. We stop over for food before our onward flight to Bogotá and then Cartagena.

 Our breakfast of pupusas in Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International San Salvador airport was a great life choice.