We had our first big rain system come through last night after a week of pseudo summer. This “atmospheric river,” as they have come to be known, is supposed to keep cycling through Southern California bringing rain for the next week. It seemed like the perfect time to leave for (hopefully) better weather. While there was much discussion about where to go, we elected to complete some unfinished business in Patagonia. We had initially planned some aspect of this trip over a year ago when we were on the continent, but something as simple as flight schedules threw it all off.
If all goes according to plan (and few things do), we will also include Tikal at the tail end as it has been on my radar for some time. Flights from LA to South America come in two flavors — red eyes or on inconsistent dates. From the days we had to use, we couldn’t take a direct to Chile or Peru, and elected to at least get as far as Panamá. We were able to leave at a leisurely hour to catch our 1115am flight. Security at the Tom Bradley International terminal took 30 seconds. As we were flying perhaps one of the smaller aircraft that fly internationally from LAX (a 737 Max since you ask), our gate was relegated to some weird side part of the terminal that I hadn’t seen since 2015. We were surprised it even existed.
The boarding was a bit chaotic given the smaller, more closed-in gate area, but the gate agents were helpful enough and we were able to get our bags on without checking them which was a plus. Unfortunately we were separated by a row and an aisle. I sat next to the two most obnoxious, loud, miserable human beings on the planet (or at least this 737). In the short span of taxiing to the runway, I along with the front third of the plane were subjected to conversations on speaker phones, as well as a colorful torrent of adjectives loudly used to describe their unfortunate situation of having booked a row with an open seat and yet somehow *gasp* it became occupied. My bad. Later on in the flight, stripped of their ability to talk on speaker phone, they filled the void with a fusillade of farts that were some of the most potent I’d ever been hit with. I can’t 100% say it was them, but surely they were capable of much worse. They say the 737 Max is having issues due to using plugs instead of emergency exit doors, but I think some passengers on this flight could have benefited from a few more plugs if you know what I mean.
We were given a meal, which didn’t upset or distend my stomach, but wasn’t anything that I would call edible either. In this part of the world, Copa and Avianca are in a race to the bottom for worst airline food. Nearly six hours after departing LAX, we arrived in Panamá City’s massive new Terminal 2 complex. Of course, today being the day of relegation, we were sent to the older more 1980s mall-vibe Terminal 1. We noshed on some peanut butter sandwiches that Nicole had packed earlier. She was anticipating a poor performance from Copa’s culinary team. It wasn’t long before we boarded our next flight to Bogotá. To get to Buenos Aires from Panamá, one has to go through Bogotá one way or the other, so we decided to get that out of the way now and just have one flight tomorrow.
This time we were issued seats together in an exit row with a gentleman who was perhaps full blown Q-Anon. He wasted no time in announcing that he was from Florida, where it’s “free,” an apparent dig at us after we told him we were from California. I don’t know what it is about Florida, but there are a lot of people bred or perhaps brainwashed to be bad at reading a room or at least to be conversationally inept. I mean, Nicole and I have chosen to live in California, a place that I’m pretty sure is also “free,” but a few people (and seemingly always from Florida) seem to think that insulting where someone lives while at the same time outing their own political bias is just normal small talk. This is not to say that everyone in Florida is like this. For me to insinuate such would make me no better than my Q-Anon seatmate. After all, Salt, everyone’s favorite senior celebrity travel couple are yearning to get back to Florida after what can only be described as a literal two weeks of darkness in the Arctic circle.
My seatmate must have consumed so much freedom before he left Florida, that he slept most of the flight rather than antagonize us further. In fact, when he woke up, he was friendly to us as if nothing had happened. We landed in Bogotá on schedule and made our way through customs fairly quickly. The hotel supposedly has a shuttle, but all their phone numbers seemed to be dead links so we got an Uber instead. We then waited in line behind one person to checkin for about twenty minutes. This seems to be a common occurrence at this particular Hilton Garden Inn. This is our third time here and it’s always a little slow. Rooms, however, are clean and we attempted to unwind a bit after a long day of travel. Tomorrow we don’t have to get to the airport until the afternoon, so we will try and relax for a spell. Hasta mañana.
passports & pepto bismol 