Difficult Journey to La Paz.

The trip to La Paz was difficult.

The problems began after the boarding had started for the flight from Seattle to San Diego.  Processing stopped abruptly after a few of the economy class passengers had boarded, and after about 15 minutes we were told that the computers were down and they would be back up in a few minutes.  Thirty minutes later we were told to sit down.  Forty five minutes after that the boarding resumed without the computer system.  The manual processing was slow and the flight departed 2.5 hours behind schedule.

A little time was gained during the brief stopover in San Diego but we were still well over 2 hours late in reaching San Jose (which has the airport servicing Cabo San Lucas.)  By the time I made it to the Eco Baja Tours office for the shuttle to La Paz it was closed for the day, and there went my plan for getting to La Paz. With the help from locals I found my way to a local bus stop where I caught a bus to nearby Santa Anita where I managed to get what I think was the last bus of the day for La Paz.  We arrived in La Paz at 10 PM and soon I took a cab to the apartment building at the corner of Juarez and Madero.

Unfortunately I could not find the night watchman who had been expecting me at 8 AM to hand over the keys and he did not seem to be at home because the lights were out in his ground floor apartment and there was no response when I banged on the door.  I could see Ken´s light on in his third floor apartment but there was no way to contact him.  I had his telephone number but the public telephone on the street took only cards.  After 30 minutes of effort it was past 11 PM and I decided to walk along the malecon back into town to get a hotel room because I deemed it too dangerous to be out in the streets alone with all of my baggage at that time of the night.  Soon I was at the Perla hotel and got a room for $88 USD.  I was very tired.  I had been up since 2 AM and after the stress of the flight with its delay I had been forced to walk close to a mile in the heat wearing Seattle clothing to reach Terminal 1 for the shuttle to La Paz.  (No conveyor walkways, trains, or even hand carts at this airport.)  That had been followed by another half mile walk to the local bus station and after that the lugging of my baggage (3 bags but mercifully light) through the streets of La Paz.

The Perla was probably a 5 star hotel in its time but is showing its age.  Nevertheless it is still a pretty nice hotel overlooking the malecon and La Paz bay, is well set out with a swimming spool and spas which were still in use well into the night, and offers large rooms.  The wireless internet service in the room is useless and the plumbing has problems, but I am accustomed  to that by now.  As soon as I was settled in the room I headed back out into the street with only my room key and a bit of cash and had a meal accompanied by two cans of cold Modelo beer.  I was hungry.  All I had eaten all day was two cups of coffee in Seattle, three glasses of orange juice and one tiny bag of pretzles on the airplane, and three tiny sickly sweet empenadas that I bought on the way to La Paz.

This morning there as an email waiting for me from Alaska Airlines apologizing for the flight delay with the explanation that a fiber optic cable had been cut, which would have stopped the Sprint service in its tracks.  AA made an offer to help out with travel consequences of the delay and I might put in a claim for the hotel room.  In any event, I accept the that the problem was beyond AA´s control but I can fault them for taking 90 minutes to make the decision to resume boarding manually.  I was in the IT business in a previous life and figure that AA and Sprint should have identified the problem within 30 minutes.

At 9 AM I met Bob Carroll for breakfast, though I had only coffee because I wasn´t hungry after the late dinner.  It was great to see Bob again and I appreciated the High Five he gave me for rounding the Horn.  We have much more to say and we will meet tonight for dinner.

After breakfast we visited the apartment building and found Theresa.  It was great to see her again and I gave her a warm hug.  She led us to my apartment on the top floor and sure enough there were 6 cold cans of Pacifico Clara beer in the refrigerator.

I am hastily writing this blog using the computer in the lobby which is set to Spanish which flags every other word as misspelled.  The keyboard is so warn that a third of the keys do not show what letter they represent, so it is just as well that I am a touch typist.  So please view any spelling and grammatical errors with understanding.

Once I check out of the hotel my access to the internet for blogging and dealing with my email will be uncertain.