We flew down together on Copa on a Tuesday (leaving at 2 AM), connecting in Panama City, for an uneventful flight arriving in Medellin in the early afternoon. My buddy Sandman picked us up at the airport, and we filled each other in on recent events on the drive into town. This time, there was maybe only one soldier with an automatic weapon and no checkpoint on the way; in September, there were half a dozen soldiers at various points along the highway and a couple of checkpoints.
For my flight back, I cancelled Copa on the second Thursday following, and used Ameri-can Airlines frequent flyer miles to fly back business/first class on the second Monday, giving me 13 days total. I didn’t realize at first that I was getting biz class—the saver fares were blocked out, the next available fare (which I had used before) was 35K points, so I was happy to see a 30K fare, thus saving 5K miles—which turned out to be the saver fare for biz/first. I think I’ll look for that right away next time.
I had used Camilo Uribe, who works for First American Realty in Medellin (1-305-393-8872, Medellin cell 311-341-3715, US calls 057-311-341-3715, curibe99@yahoo.com) as a driver to pick up my Caleńa gf (more on that later) on Sandman’s recommendation, so I called him again for a ride to the airport.
He’s a young hustler (in the good sense) fluent in English, and was good company. He was probably out late partying, so he sent Santiago to pick me up at 6 AM. Santiago is available anytime (he lives by the airport), and he charged (I think) 55,000 or 60,000 pesos. Camillo had quoted me 80K, and charged me 120K pesos for the round trips to the airport to pick up and drop off Angel.
I got to the airport way early (3 hr.), and as a priority passenger was at the gate 2 hours and 45 minutes early. MDE doesn’t have particularly full service by way of restaurants, so I contented myself with a hot dog and coffee for breakfast. And people-watching for a long time.
We arrived at MIA on time. However, MIA was having intermittent thunderstorms, re-sulting in a 1 hour, 45 minute wait for our luggage in limbo between immigration and customs. No cellphone service there, either. Fortunately, I had a long layover before my flight to LAX. But once we got on the plane, the airport was shut down again, and we sat at the gate for an hour and a half before taking off. At least I was in first class, and pam-pered by the overweight legacy flight attendants.