I’m back from Venezuela after spending 3 days in 3 different airports. Back two days late but finally back home.

I was supposed to fly from Barinas (in the middle of Venezuela) to Caracas at noon on Tuesday but Avior cancelled the flight on Tuesday without notifying anybody. The next flight from Barinas was at 6pm, which ironically was the time the flight from Caracas to Madrid left. I spent Tuesday in Barinas airport without bothering to go to Barinas city as everything was closed because of the carnival holidays.

On Wednesday I spent the whole day (from 8am to 6pm) in Caracas airport trying to get a flight to Europe. The next flight to Madrid was full so I had to go on waitlist to wait for passengers not to show up. Spent from 2pm till 5pm staring at the queue waiting and hoping (the second most anticipated wait of the holiday – the other one was from 1pm till 6pm for an entirely different reason). I made it on that flight and arrived in Madrid on Thursday morning.

By the time I collected the luggage and made the flight arrangements to change the flight back to Dublin (because the check-in clerk didn’t want to issue the boarding pass in Caracas) the flight was closed for check-in. The next flight to Dublin with Iberia was on the following day and it was also full, which meant that I had to waitlist for the flight again. After three days trying to get home I decided to burn 314 Euros (282euros for the ticket and 32euros for 4kg excess baggage) on a ticket with Aer Lingus to take me to Dublin. Of course the flight to Dublin departed at 8pm which meant I spent Thursday in Madrid airport. (I actually went to Madrid city centre for 4 hours).

I cannot remember the last time I was so glad to make it to the office. At least my work mates were supportive and congratulated me on making it back safely. I cannot imagine this would have ever happened when I was working in ‘the dot’.

All this is the sad part of an otherwise wonderful holiday. But we’ll leave the details of the trip to another post.