¨The clouds look ominous...¨. That observation from Nicole summed up our flight experience from Juliaca back to Lima. We had booked a minibus to take us to the Juliaca airport from Puno. As we were approaching the airport, we saw thunderstorms and lightning in the distance. It is amazing as to how far ahead you can see in the highlands of Peru. Once we came to the airport, we checked in without any hassel and patiently waited for our flight in the lounge. Ten minutes before boarding, there was a huge commotion and the staff anounced that the flight was delayed due to weather. Half an hour later, the flight was cancelled!! In these Andean highlands, the winds can get really rough and the incoming flight from Lima had to turn back.....We felt really sorry for the passengers on board...they must have had such a rough ride through the storms......
Ok, once we knew that we could not do anything, we had to deal with the situation at hand. We spoke with the staff at LAN airlines. Even though they had told most of the other crowd that they would be put back on a plane at 12pm. Nicole´s excellent Castellano came in handy here. She spoke with the LAN rep and asked if we could be put back on an earlier flight. We also had to call in our hostel in Lima to cancel the first night. We lost some money here, since that is what happens to last minute cancellations. The lady who helped us out was kind enough to recommend a couple of hotels where we could stay the night.
It was late at night (around 10:30pm) and we had to find our way back to Juliaca. Let me just say that it is not a city you want to stay in, or make your way back to late at night. The security at the airport hailed the last cab for us. We were asked to pay 2.5 times the regular cab fare and I haggled with the driver and we paid twice the regular fare.
The first hotel we went to was completely booked up. We went to the second hotel and they had one room (the expensive one ofcourse...). We dropped off our baggage and ventured out to find a bank and some food (Oh, did I forget to mention, that we were out of cash at this point...). We took an auto-rickshaw to the center of the town and managed to get some cash out. Here we had a really weired experience. We kept trying to stop people to ask them for a place to eat, but everybody kept ignoring us and just walked right past us....!!! It was strange, almost like we did not exist at all.
We finally managed to trap a few people at the ATM when they were taking out money. Even here, the girl who spoke to us, did not make eye-contact. We were told about a mall close by, where we could find food.
I have never ever in my life been as happy about finding a food court in a Mall, as I was then. This was a known terrain and I could navigate. Most of the stores were closed, but we managed to find a pizza to take back to the hotel. When we got back, our hotel was completely boarded up in metal shutters. Infact almost all of the buildings in the city were like this. There was no doubt that Juliaca was not a very safe place.
We went to the airport early the next day; just to make sure that the early flight that was promised was a real deal and not something they said to placate our nerves. Thankfully it was real. During our checkin process, we bumped into another man who had stayed in the airport all night (after having argued with the security...since they don´t let people stay in the airport at night). We just exchanged pleasentries but did not talk for long. I was not sure if he had secured a place on the earlier flight, and did not want to rub in that fact. Funnily enough, he had managed to get on the same flight as us and sat right next to us. Javier turned out to be quite a fun person and we had a very memorable conversation on our flight back to Lima!!! He told us that in his 20 years of flying around, this was the first time something like this had happened. He was very interested in our travel stories and now we have a pen-pal from Lima. Hasta Luego Javier (hope you are reading these blogs).
Overall it was a nice ending to an awful experience that we don´t ever want to repeat again!
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