We awake today to a beautiful clear day, typical, just the
day we are leaving! We pack up our bags
and get ready for our 4.30pm flight. We
have to check out of the hostel at midday so we make use of every minute in our
room before we check out. At about 12.30
we get a taxi to the airport. The
airport is only about a 15 minute drive from where we are staying. Quito are currently constructing a new
airport which is about 30 minutes out of the city, so it would have been about
an hour drive if that airport had been in operation. This new airport is due to be open in October
this year, although in saying that when construction first began in 2006, the
new airport was supposed to be in full operation by 2010.
We decide to take an early taxi to the airport because we
don’t know too much about what the airport systems are, I’m sure they are
strait forward though. We have also
heard stories about travellers turning up to the airport and being told that
they couldn’t get on the flight because the flight had been oversold, so we
wanted to get in early to make sure we had our seats all sorted!
We get to the international terminal and have plenty of
time, so we sit down and soak it all in.
We then decide to go to our gate and line up to check in. The line is big, as per usual with
international flights, however this line wasn’t moving! And yes, there were
attendants at the counter and they were processing passengers. After about half an hour the line starts
moving at a normal pace, and eventually we are at the front of the line and are
booked into our flight with no dramas.
The flight to Bogota is a standard flight, an hour and a
half with a platter of food and a drink.
Good entertainment system too which could be viewed in Spanish OR
English, bonus! We arrive in Bogota and
get through customs with no hassle what so ever. Ann had told me that they will search through
everyone’s bags so I was preparing to get all the cloths out, however it was as
normal as ever with all bags just going through the x-ray machine. We get a taxi to our hostel, but before we did
this we changed our remaining US dollars to Colombian Peso’s. The Colombian currency is very annoying. The exchange rate is about NZ$1 for every
COP$1390 (Colombian Peso’s). This makes
it very difficult to work out how much we are spending in NZ dollars. That’s alright though, need to keep the mind
active! We arrive at our hostel and just settle into the place. It is about 8pm by the time we have our bags
in our room so we watch a movie.
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