My trip to Guyana!!!

12th August 2010

I finally arrived to Guyana!!! What a trip I had!!! I’m so HAPPY it ended well as at some points I did not believe I would make it…

Let’s have a look at my original itinerary….

1. Valencia-Paris. Departing at 07.00am, I had to be at the airport at 05.30am so could not sleep more than 3 hrs., and arriving at 09.00am.

2. Paris-New York (JFK). Departing at 10.30am and landing in New York at 12.45pm. Finally took the next flight at 13.30h that landed in JFK at 4pm.

3. New York (JFK) to Georgetown, Guyana. I was supposed to be in the flight at 5.40pm from New York which would land at 1am (local time ) but missed that one and took another that took off at 1am from NY and arrived at Guyana at 07.00am (local time)

Summary: I left Valencia on Wednesday 11th at 07.00am towards Paris, from there to New York and landed in Georgetown on Thursday 12th at 07.00 am local time ( 1.00pm at Valencia) so if I´m still able to do some math…that means I was travelling for 30 hours…

Things did not look good since the beginning when I tried to check in my backpack to Georgetown from Valencia and the “very nice and kind” flight attendant at the air france checking desk started to look at me in a strange way because I was going so far away as a volunteer…at some point she started to ask too many questions, like… “why are you doing this? Are you sure of going there? And they are not going to pay you anything?? “ and of course you always want to be cool with her as she’s the one putting the tag to your bag and one “little” mistake and all your belongings would end up at the other part of the world…So after me answering all her questions with my best smile ….finally she became “doubtful” after reading the special conditions for travelling to Guyana and she did not allow me to check in my things to Guyana because I did not have a valid visa to enter the country! (no visa is required for anyone).

So I had to fly to Paris with my bags, missed my next connection to New York, at that point I thought I would stay in Paris for the night (thanks Andrea for being there I promise you are more than welcome in Guyana!!) but after some phone calls ( I had to look for a place to charge my cell as of course it had not battery) with dearest Maria from VSO Office in The Netherlands I was into the next flight to JFK (New York), and guess what? This time the French version of the same flight attendant from Air France that I had not only did not put any problems for me to check in my bags to Guyana, she even put me in the emergency row for the flight so I had double of room to extend my legs…I definitely like French women!! :p

Okay, are you still there? Cool because this is not finished yet… So I thought “okay, my luck is changing!! I am in one of the most comfortable seats that I can reach, my bags are going straight to Guyana and when I arrive to NY still got almost 2 hours to catch my next one!! I was very convinced about positive thinking…

But I noticed something was not going well when after landing in NY the captain said something like “we have to wait 20mins (that became 40 mins) because another plane stole our parking spot” ( Fuck!! Are you telling me there’s no more parking places in the whole airport?? Reallyyyyyyyyy????)

Then I had to go through Security, apart of doing a 30 mins queue no big deals, and when I was asking how to reach terminal 4, I was in terminal 1, for my next flight the guy told me that I really had to pick up my backpack from this flight and bring it to the other check in desk where I would get my boarding pass as well…

Summary:

4pm (landing) + 40 mins (finding a parking) + 30 mins (waiting at security) + 15 mins ( picking up my backpack, taking the shuttle and running from terminal 1 to 4) = Yes, I missed my flight that was at 5.40pm ….

Cool!!! So now, after 17 hours travelling, here I am in New York, with no flight, no battery in my phone and is around midnight in Europe…mmm…interesting….what shall I do?? Right, first I went to the terminal 1 to try to convince Air France that was the “very nice!” flight attendant’s mistake what made that I missed my flight to Guyana but of course it was not my day….so no good results from that…Therefore I came back to terminal 4 and yes, I went to change some euros into dollars and straight to Mc Donalds….I know I know, not the best dinner ever but there were not so many options and I really needed to have some food in my body as things look really bad when I’m hungry!!!

After that, I bought 2 cards for international calls and called the 24hrs number of the travel agency in London, where they told me about the possibilities for the next flights to Guyana, there were two options:

a) She kindly put me in the waiting list for the next flight with Caribbean Airlines at 01.05am. The flight was full but maybe there was going to be a cancellation, no? We will never know as there was nobody at the Caribbean A. Desk!!! So I had to go for option b

b) There was only one seat in a flight from Delta Airlines at 0.50am but I had to pay for my new ticket and hopefully I would get a refund from VSO!! Okay, so I take all my things from the kart and head terminal 3 where I could “easily” buy a ticket in the next flight….

O o o, more problems… first I don´t know how to enter into terminal 3!! When I get off of the suttle the door is closed so following a very kind gentleman’s advise I go outside of the airport, follow a road with cars passing by and then enter terminal 3 through the back door…and then….CAOS………………..a bunch of people charged was filling the terminal with tons of huge suitcases, you could hear them screaming from the outside, queues without an end, arguments everywhere, people trying to get a ticket …..

Summary: 2 hours (queuing for the ticketing desk) + 780 usd (the price for the last seat available in the flight to Georgetown, it had to be in First class) + 1 hour (queuing for the checking desk) + 5 mins ( calling my contact in Guyana from the public telephone for telling them that I was arriving at 06.30 instead of 01.30!!) + 10 mins (chatting with Sonja, another VSO volunteer that I met when I was waiting in the gate)= I almost missed my flight but I finally made it!!!!!!!!!!

And yes, there was a happy end!!!!

I was in a First class seat for my last flight!!!

As Sonja said I really deserved!!!

:)