Since we were running out of days and we missed Jordan's birthday, we had went out for a big supper with everyone who could make it and then went back to Ken's house for birthday cake.
Bolivia has a bit of a tradition around birthdays which we (including Jordan) were aware of. It is tradition that as everybody sings happy birthday, that someone slams the birthday person's face into the cake. When in Bolivia do as Bolivians is what they say.
So our trip had come to an end and it was time for a long uneventful return home. Unfortunately, that was not what ended up happening. We departed Santa Cruz as planned, but about 3 hours into the 6 hour flight to Miami, there was the smell of jet fuel in the cabin of the plane, so the pilot came on the speaker system and announced we were deviating to Bogota, Colombia to do an emergency landing. Everyone was pretty calm about it until the little Bolivian lady got up and started praying loudly for the next 10 minutes or so which instead of having a calming effect on people seemed to have the opposite effect.
20 minutes later, we landed in Bogota and the plane was surrounded by flashing lights, fire trucks, hazmat trucks and police cars. The doors opened, and two guys in silver bomb suits boarded the plane with machines looking for the source of the smell. We were all escorted off the plane, loaded onto buses and brought to a secure area of the terminal where we laid around for the next few hours. Eventually, they figured out that everyone was hungry so they started handing out food vouchers for the food court that had 4 restaurants. Since it was 9:00 at night and they had next to no staff working, it was not a smooth situation when the 300 of us showed up. We pulled the "for the sake of the children, let them go first" card and were some of the first people to eat.
After a few more hours of waiting, they announced that they were going to put everyone up in a hotel for the night and then fly us out the next day. Sounded good to us until we got to customs where they pulled all the Canadians to the side and informed them that as of December there was an 85USD fee to enter Colombia for Canadians. I expected American Airlines to pony up since we were here because of their airplane, but oh no. So if you can read this American Airlines, we were not amused!!! I didn't have a spare $600 in my wallet so I put on my angry voice and politely accosted the American Airlines staff by informing them that I didn't care what they had to do, they were getting us home and flying us out tonight.
After a few minutes, they came back saying that they had managed to get us tickets to Dallas leaving at 1:00 am and then to Toronto and then Regina. Since I know my geography pretty well, I informed them that no, they were going to get us to Dallas and then to Calgary and then Regina. They came back a few minutes later with tickets in hand and big smiles. Those smiles soon disappeared when I informed them that we needed all 5 of us to get home, not the 4 of us that they arranged tickets for. Apparently Jordan didn't need to go home according to American Airlines. They apologized again, and explained the flight to Dallas didn't have any more tickets. I politely explained they would make a seat appear for her. 20 minutes later they miraculously came back with 5 tickets.
We got to Dallas and then waited it out there for our Calgary flight. You would think that the airline would take good care of people that were in our situation, but once again American Airlines apparently doesn't work that way. We were all to happy when we arrived at Calgary where the Westjet people were absolutely awesome and they provided us with blankets, free food and drinks and were ever so polite taking care of us before we boarded and on the plane back to Regina. So just to summarize American Airlines bad...Westjet good.
Anyways, we got home and slept and then slept some more....
