Where in the world am I today?: Holiday Inn, JFK, New York, New York, USA
It all stared off looking so promising… I checked with the ship’s purser on Thursday and was thrilled to find out that I didn’t need to wake up at the crack of dawn on Friday to get off the ship, which was great. Often you need to get up and out of your cabin between 8:00 am and 10:00 am so that the room steward can clean it and get it ready for the next performer who usually arrives between 10:00 am and noon. My cabin wasn’t needed until the day after my departure so there was no rush to get out–great! Got up, had a nice breakfast, finished packing, got off the ship with the port agent about 1:30 pm and he helped reschedule my flight from Cartagena to Bogota (that’s him next to me in the picture…never did catch his name) just in case I needed a bit more time in Bogota–perfect!
So things started off well. Even after I landed in Bogota I was optimistic even in spite of an inhumane 6 or 7 hour lay over in Bogota. I had a plan goldarn it. I discovered a free Wi-Fi connection and plopped myself and attacked a pile of emails and such. I also realized that I hadn’t picked up anything for my wife and kids in the way of souvenirs, so picked up some real Juan Valdez Coffee for my wife and a few odds and sods for the kids and a bottle of Vodka for the guy who hosts my website in Duty Free then plopped down and watched a movie on my iPod fully expecting for it to finish about the time I needed to be boarding.
Well the film ended (Shrek 3 in case you’re interested) I got into the departure lounge around 10:00 pm for the 11:15 boarding time and underwent my third security screening…
Man if you thought getting through and airport and the TSA in North America was getting ridiculous you should see what it’s like in Columbia. I went through what would be like a regular TSA screening just before I got to Customs and Immigration. Then I passed through the immigration station and was screened again after my passport was stamped, this time by guys with Columbian military uniforms on and dogs sniffing for ‘SPECIAL’ souvenirs from Columbia, then I one more time for good measure, as I entered the actual departure lounge they had the x-ray and screening set up again…
Once inside the lounge I figure the next leg of my journey was about to start, but no… Boarding was delayed due to some sort of mechanical problem. We’re terribly sorry about this delay, but please come up and get a snack (at least I think that’s what they said in Spanish). First time I’d been served mini-sandwiches, munchies and drinks before getting on a plane…
When I saw more munchies arriving I took it as a bad sign…
Somewhere around two hours after we were supposed to have left it was clear that I wasn’t going to make my connection in New York, JFK, so before we actually left Bogota the service agents for Avianca Airlines rescheduled my Air Canada Flight from 7:00 am Saturday to 7:00 am Sunday.
Pretty uneventful flight although the seats ahead of me seemed a bit closer than I’m used to. The lack of legroom really didn’t matter though because by the time we left at around 2:30 am all I really wanted to do was sleep anyway.
Woke up about 45 minutes before we landed and did the US Immigration two-step, got my luggage, wandered to the Avianca counter only to discover that because the flight was booked by an external agent and because Air Canada wasn’t a partner, they didn’t feel any need to cover the Hotel I was going to require as a result of the delay with their Aircraft… Doh!
Made a couple of calls to the emergency numbers that I had been given for just such situations and discovered:
- There were no other options for flights from New York to Vancouver that they could get me on and
- I could head myself over to the Holiday Inn and cruise line would pick up the tab and provide food vouchers…
All went smoothly with this plan and I’m actually in my room at the Holiday Inn as I type this. Hot water doesn’t appear to be working in the room, so no shower for me yet, but engineering is apparently looking into it–Ha!
Now the irony of all of this is that had all gone smoothly from start to finish I would have gotten in to Vancouver at about 10:30 am local time (January 3) and am scheduled to leave again at 9:00 am on Monday (January 5), so a grand total of 46 ½ hours later. Now, assuming all goes according to the rescheduled plan, that number will drop to 22 ½ hours and that’s from arrival in Vancouver to departure from Vancouver. By the time I get through the airport and home and have to leave for the airport again I think I’ll get something like 18 hours at home.
Now here’s the kicker–I’m flying back to the ship I was just on.
I disembarked at about 1:30 pm on January 2nd will join the ship at about that time on the 6th, about 96 hours in total and all but 18 hours will be spent in transit.
Like I said, it’s not the shows it’s the travel that you really get paid for when you work on cruise ships.
