The Way I Roll

I woke up at 4:30 am to catch a too-early shuttle to the airport in Managua. I arrived at the crack of dawn, grabbed coffee and a snack (I still had 3 hours before take-off), and went to check in for my 8:50 flight to Quito. Right away, an airline employee guarding the line told me to come back at a quarter to seven - they weren´t yet serving my flight.

I went back to the food court, had another cup of coffee and a second breakfast, and started planning my time in Ecuador. I wanted to head strait up north, to Ibarra, after landing. I figured I would have plenty of time in the next three months to explore Quito - I should see something different before school started.

At 6:55, I returned to check in for my flight. This time, the man guarding the line glanced at my reservation and sent me strait to Ticketing. Confused, I stood in line for a few minues, and then returned to stammer in broken Spanish that I already had a ticket, I needed to check in. Only then does somebody bother to tell me that my flight has been cancelled. Because that´s the way I roll.

The last three times I´ve flown, I´ve had either a cancelled flight or a missed connection. Returning home from Mexico on New Year´s Eve, my connecting flight from Houston to DC was cancelled, and I´d been rescheduled on an earlier flight - one that would leave Houston two hours before I arrived. I ended up spending New Year´s Eve alone in a hotel room. On my way to Nicaragua, I sat on an airplane in Baltimore for over an hour while it was de-iced, then sprinted across the entirity of the Atlanta airport to arrive at my gate two minutes after boarding was closed. Did they hold the flight two extra minutes? I can dream. They re-routed me through Miami, six hours later, where I almost missed another connection. I arrived in Managua exactly 7 hours late, and completely frazzled.

However, unlike the usual cancelled flight experience - where they reroute you, give you a barely sufficent meal voucher, and release you to airport purgatory - LACSA rerouted me and drove me to the Best Western across the street. There, I had a buffet breakfast with a variety of tropical fruit, a buffet lunch with a large selection of comida tipica, not to mention free internet access and a complimentery 3 minute international phone call. After eating breakfast and checking my email, I swam laps in the pool and laid in the sun until lunchtime, and then returned to the airport for my rescheduled flight. (Continental, Delta, are you listening?)

Of course, when I got to the airport and checked in with the airline I'd been switched to (COPA) they informed me that I would be flying standby, as they had a full flight and their own customers were a priority. Nevertheless, I got on the plane and arrived in Quito at 9:45 that night. Too late to hop a bus for Ibarra, but my hotel had hot water, and what more can you ask for, really?