Bogota, Colombia

The morning that we left Brazil and headed to the airport for Colombia we were in top of the world, we had had the best time in Brazil and were excited to get to Colombia. Sadly our good moods were not going to last long.

We arrived at the airport, collected our boarding passes and headed to the check in the desk to drop off our bags. The look on the face of the check in man was not good. Every possible thought went through my head, had we booked the wrong day or turned up at the wrong airport…. No, I had made the biggest school boy error ever, and had booked the ticket for Tim under the name Tim not Timothy as per his passport.

You would think that this would be an easy fix and someone would just see that it was obviously the same person and just an honest mistake, amend the ticket and we would be on our way, but sadly the check-in guy decided to ask his manager if it was ok for him to change it. Grumpy manager said no and sent us over to the Avianca Information desk. At the Avianca desk the girl was super sympathetic and again wanted to make the change but guess who was her manager, yup the same grump from the check in who proceeded to come over and confirm that no she couldn’t change the name and if we wanted to fly we needed to buy a new ticket.

My heart sank and my tear ducts exploded, this was going to be one of the most expensive errors I had ever made, we had booked these tickets months ago and a 5 hour flight from Brazil to Colombia is not cheap, however miraculously the price she quoted us was actually less than we had paid all those months ago, but was still £180. Ouch.

I was crying, Tim was devastated and the poor check in guy looked mortified when we turned up back at his counter with a new ticket and the weight of the world on our shoulders.

Eventually he took our bags and sent us on our way.

The irony of the whole thing is that the woman on the counter to let us through to immigration who had to check our passports, tickets and onward tickets from Colombia had a print out of the flight manifest prior to us having to buy a new ticket and happily ticked off Tim Currie as present and correct, oh the irony.

Hey ho, we live and learn, I will now be triple and quadruple checking our names before I press buy in future.

Just a quick overnight in an airport hotel in the wet and at altitude Bogota for us before we head to Cartagena for some sun on Colombia’s northern coast.

Cartagena here we come.