Having managed to injure my thumb ice skating on Monday night, my packing suddenly became a lot more rushed and my journey a little more difficult. Mum had the fun of a 2.30am phone call asking for a 9am lift to the hospital in Oxford, and I ended up getting a very attractive blue thumb support. Nothing´s broken, and the original diagnosis of ligament damage that may require surgery was overruled by the hand specialist, so I´m hoping to take it off for good in a few days.
The journey itself wasn´t exactly standard either. I was bumped up to the seats between economy and business class on BA to Miami, but had to endure sitting beside a helpless hypochondriac American, who the air stewardesses loved to piss off. Miami airport had remarkably little to do for 5 hours and a surprising amount of actual walking to get anywhere - I wasn´t surprised there were very few fat people using it! Unfortunately immigration and customs were remarkably quick so there was even more sitting about than I´d expected. I passed the time by getting the security person to tie my laces for me (I thought I´d push my luck with the thumb support), talking to one of the general airport security people for ages and laughing at small children.
The real fun started on the flight to La Paz. There were very few native English speakers, so I had to get the guy beside me to translate everything for me. Turns out the plane had issues with its generators or something, and as a result it would be unable to take off from La Paz if it landed there so we went straight to Santa Cruz instead. That meant I had to wangle a free ticket change from my La Paz - Sucre flight to one going directly from Santa Cruz, otherwise I´d probably have a full day´s delay in La Paz. It worked, and I arrived over 2h earlier than planned! I also used my Scottishness for the first time - I was told AA would pay my airport tax because they´d landed me in the wrong airport. I don´t think they told the guy who was checking for this, but when he asked me where I was from he said we were nice people and just let me through!
My Spanish had its first test in the airport taxi. Turns out my Spanish is fairly limited once you´ve finished talking about nationalities and ages, but the taxi driver guessed correctly that I´d understand if he kept pointing out all the girls he fancied. He really wasn´t picky!
I now need to find the Condor Trekkers office and work out what´s actually going to be happening...
I´ll post again at some point in the next few days once I´ve properly settled in.
Gav
P.S. First song of the holiday is Pet Shop Boys - Go West!
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