June, 2014 | Jason Around the World

Travel Stats to Date

Jun 192014

Since I’m in an unusual (for me) travel lull right now, I decided to use the opportunity to do some cleaning up and enhancing of the spreadsheet I use to manage and remember all of my travel. I didn’t start getting serious about it until 15 years ago, so data before then is largely from memory and old family photos. I’m pretty sure I have most of the big trips in there, although it’s very possible the dates are a bit off. Anyways, a few interesting statistics:

Countries Visited to Date: 157 (39 to go)

Airports Visited to Date: 265

Lifetime Flight Miles: Over 1.89 million

Unique Airlines: 130

Countries with more than 10 nights spent:

United States – Over 14,000
Canada – 241
United Kingdom – 77
Netherlands – 60
Senegal – 29
France – 24
Thailand – 21
Singapore – 17
South Africa – 16
Soviet Union – 14
Argentina – 13
Germany – 12
Sri Lanka – 11
Australia – 10
Malaysia – 10

Borders crossed more than 5 times:

United States – Over 170
Canada – 67
United Kingdom – 49
Netherlands – 23
Germany – 18
Singapore – 15
Thailand – 12
France – 10
Belgium – 9
South Africa – 8
Malaysia – 7
Sri Lanka – 7
China – 5
Italy – 5

Domestic Flights by Country:

United States – More than 600
Canada – 15
Norway – 5
United Kingdom – 5
Malaysia – 4
Brazil – 3
Greece – 3
Guyana – 3
Soviet Union – 3
Thailand – 3
Australia – 2
Bolivia – 2
France – 2
Germany – 2
Peru – 2
South Africa – 2
Angola – 1
Argentina – 1
Ethiopia – 1
India – 1
Marshall Islands – 1
Micronesia – 1
Netherlands Antilles – 1

Quito to Washington DC on COPA and US Airways (via Panama, Cancun, and Philadelphia)

Airports, Bolivia and Ecuador plus Medellin, Ecuador, Flights, Mexico, Panama No Responses »

Jun 102014

I’d ordered a car from the hotel the night before, and it was maybe $10 more than the going taxi rate if I remember right, but could be charged to the room and would be ready…so was more than worth it. Checkout was nice and easy, and soon we were on the way to the airport. Contrary to the trip to the hotel, the roads were absolutely empty, and my driver decided he was auditioning for a formula one race. Ran one right light and FLASH…he started cursing up a storm. Who knew that Quito had red light cameras?! Did this stop him though…no, about 15 minutes later, he decided to run another red light…and FLASH…another red light camera ticket. Some people just don’t learn their lesson.

Got to the airport in plenty of time, but unfortunately the agent was only able to print out my boarding passes as far as Cancun. Since US Airways had left Star Alliance, they said they were unable to check me in for their flights, and with only 1:42 to connect, change terminals, clear immigration and security, and check-in in Cancun, I knew my chances weren’t very good of making the connection.

Immigration and security in Quito were a breeze, and I had about 30 minutes to kill in the business lounge. Nothing special, but had a decent coffee machine and lots of bottled beverages as well as adequate outlets, so it more than met my needs. Soon, it was time to head to the gate to board.

This is where I saw my very first…what I can only assume was local, complete with headdress and military surplus jacket complaining about his seat assignment. Note in the background of the (sorry blurry) pic a few African guys also waiting for the flight. They were from DR Congo, didn’t speak a word of Spanish or English, and were a group of 9 who were “in Ecuador looking for houses to buy” based on the translation I tried to help the gate agent with. She was holding their passports as well so I’m not sure of the full story, but by the looks of them when they boarded they’d never been on a plane before. They couldn’t understand, for example, that 22F meant 22 rows back…no matter how many times it was explained to them. The concept of numbered places was completely foreign. How they got to Ecuador in the first place was beyond me….

Boarding was pretty quick, and we pulled back from the gate right on time.

COPA Airlines flight 210
Quito, Ecuador (UIO) to Panama City, Panama (PTY)
Depart 6:08, Arrive 8:04, Flight Time 1:56
Boeing 737-800, Registration HP-1539CMP, Manufactured 2010, Seat 2B

Although the flight was only booked to 8 of 16 in business class when I checked in, we ended up leaving completely full. The breakfast choices were “eggs” or french toast, so decided to go with the eggs, which came scrambled in some sort of a pastry shell that was completely unnecessary. Definitely one of the less amusing and tasty meals I’d had on COPA.

Not too much else to say about this short flight, as I slept most of the rest of it. We arrived in Panama right on time, and I had a little time to spend in the absolutely packed COPA club. I tried again to check in for my US Airways flights here, but there was once again nothing the agent could do. I also Skyped US Airways Chairmans Preferred line, but try as they might, the best they could do was note my record that I was on a tight connection. Something to do with the COPA flight not leaving yet was preventing them from checking me in either. I would just be trying my luck once I got to Cancun.

The lounge was packed, so I used the rest of my short connection to walk around the airport a bit and just people watch, until it was time to board. At least we boarded on time, and pushed back from the gate 10 minutes early.

COPA Airlines flight 324
Panama City, Panama (PTY) to Cancun, Mexico (CUN)
Depart 9:45, Arrive 12:28, Flight Time 2:43
Boeing 737-800, Registration HP-1536CMP, Manufactured 2009, Seat 4A

Luckily, there were only 8 of 16 seats taken on this flight, so I was able to move back to row 4 and have the entire row to myself. Made for a nice, quiet flight up to Cancun. So, why Cancun, Panama, etc? When I booked with miles, this was the only routing available. After booking it, I actually sort of was amused at the strange, but not all-that-out-of-the-way routing that would take me back. Then, US Airways upgraded Cancun-Philly to an A330 and I was actually excited for it. That is, until I saw that changing planes in Cancun is not straightforward. Oh well, at least it would be an adventure.

View on takeoff from Panama:

Syria

Lebanon, overland travel, Syria 8 Responses »

Jun 092014

Not that I’m seriously considering it any time soon (or am I) but one of the biggest gaps and challenges to my plan to finish all countries in a little over two years is Lebanon (easy) and Syria (very not easy.)

Ideally, of course, I’d prefer to do them together since Beirut and Damascus are relatively close, but this opens up lots of questions:

1) What’s the visa situation? Are Syrian embassies still open, and if they are, are they even issuing visas?

2) According to this map, the road from Beirut to Damascus appears to be solidly in government hands (assuming your driver knows which roads to take) and would be feasible. But, are taxis still running this route? Could I even find one willing in Beirut?

3) Once in Damascus, are their still safe areas? Possible to spend a night, or would this be a daytrip type of thing from Beirut?

4) What direction are the winds blowing? From media reports, Assad appears to be gaining the upper hand again, so it would appear things might get safer, at least in Damascus, over coming months?

5) Is there a “safe and easy” option? A relatively safe area that would be easy to daytrip over from Lebanon or Turkey? A border I could cross with a town on the other side, spend a couple of hours, and go back? The Jordanian border seems to border rebel-held areas, so that looks out of the question. Maybe west from Mosul (which I think is safe from Erbil these days?) into what appear to be “safe” Kurdish held areas like Al-Yarubiyah? Who controls the border here? Visa situation?

6) Latakia sounds to be completely (a relative term) safe these days, but is there any way to get there? From Turkey? The border at Kesab (based on the map above) appears in rebel hands?

Any thoughts?

Quito, Ecuador

Attractions, Bolivia and Ecuador plus Medellin, Ecuador, hotels, Restaurants No Responses »

Jun 062014

It was nearly 7:30pm already by the time I reached my hotel, the Sheraton Quito. Nice touch number one: was met carside by the valet/doorman with an umbrella, so I didn’t get too terribly wet in the downpour. Now that’s service…and from a Sheraton! Check-in was pretty slow, taking nearly 20 minutes, but after asking if there might be any suites available for upgrade, they did find a nice junior suite for me.

It was happy hour, and I had lounge access, so decided to go check it out since it was still pouring rain. I was the only person in the lounge, and had a few small munchies and a couple of glasses of wine while I waited for the rain to let up. The hour I was there, I was the only person in the lounge…which kind of made me wonder why they had it open. After an hour of browsing the local area for places to eat, and the rain letting up to a steady drizzle, I decided to first go for a walk around the block. Couldn’t find either of the places I was looking for, but did manage to find a local ripoff of the Pinkberry frozen yogurt chain in DC. Or maybe this came first…not sure.

Didn’t find anything in my wander, so headed to the huge shopping mall near my hotel. Nothing that looked special there, and so far a TGI Fridays was looking like the best bet. It was almost 9pm at this point and I was getting seriously hungry. One more loop around the block, and I found a Chilis, lol. I was hungry, and it sounded good…plus the rain was getting heavier again, so I went in. Are you serious….a 2 hour wait for a table…maybe 90 minutes at the bar? I’ll pass.

Kept walking back towards the hotel and came across a little steak place right across from the Sheraton whose name I can’t remember. But hey, they had sangria, so all was not lost:

Unfortunately, my steak was terrible. It was way overcooked, and way too gristly. I guess my expectations were just too high after having great steaks all over south america. Oh well! At least it was filling. Decided to skip on desert, call it a night, and get up early to explore.

Still managed to sleep in until nearly 9am, just in time to go up and grab breakfast in the lounge. A decent selection of hot and cold items, and plenty to fuel me for the day. Once again, I was the only person in the lounge. I was beginning to wonder what was going on. There were wedding decorations all over the hotel, so clearly it was pretty full, but for whatever reason nobody was using the lounge. Oh well!

Went downstairs and asked the bellman to get me a taxi to go explore, and he highly recommended using a hotel car and negotiating a rate for all the stops I wanted to make. I had three stops planned, and the driver was more than happy to negotiate a flat rate for 6 hours. Sold…I wouldn’t have to worry about finding cars, leaving things in the car, etc. Maybe cost $20 or so more in the end, but well worth it to not have to think about safety/etc.

First stop was the TelefériQo (get it? Teleférico and Quito combined? Clever) which is a cable car that starts at about 10,000 feet and rises to nearly 13,000 feet and was supposed to have great views over the city. Paid my $8.50, and got a Sacagawea in change…I never even see those in the US, but apparently they’re alive and well in Ecuador. This was one of many times I got one.

There was absolutely no line, got my own gondola, and up I go. But first…let me take a #selfie

Great views of the city from the Gondola…I was getting a bit of fear of heights at this point….

At the top, I paused briefly to catch my breath…and start a hike further up the mountain. First stop was a small church:

Medellin, Colombia to Quito, Ecuador on Aero Republica and COPA (via Panama)

Airports, Bolivia and Ecuador plus Medellin, Colombia, Ecuador, Flights, Panama 3 Responses »

Jun 032014

After Judd and his wife dropped me at the airport, they were also kind enough to wait while I checked in to made sure there was no drama…which of course there was. A “VIP” decided they wanted my pre-selected seat, so it had been given away. I was having absolutely none of this, and made it known…and did get my seats back. Said our goodbyes, I changed a little bit of leftover security, and headed for the gate area.

I had been warned there was no lounge in the international terminal, so made a point not to arrive too early to the airport. By the time I’d cleared immigration and the painfully slow security checkpoint it was only about 30 minutes until boarding. There was a fairly nice waiting area filled with outlets for charging phones/etc so that was nice. There was also a small, but decent variety of places to eat and shop. Overall not bad for a smaller airport. We boarded about 20 minutes late, and only about 15 minutes before scheduled departure which was worrisome, since I had barely 40 minutes to connect in Panama.

COPA Airlines flight 646 operated by COPA Airlines Colombia aka Aero Republica
Medellin, Colombia (MDE) to Panama City, Panama (PTY)
Depart 13:22, Arrive 14:38, Flight Time 1:16
Embraer ERJ-190, Registration HP-1562CMP, Manufactured 2007, Seat 2A

Even more shocking for a short flight once we were airborn, there was not just a meal on this flight with a flight time of 52 minutes, there was a choice of meals! I went with the chicken. It was decently tasty. One thing I remembered on this flight, COPA always makes a point to turn the glasses to face you when they serve, so you can read the writing. Small touch, but adds a tiny bit of class!

I asked for a second glass of wine after the meal, but it was too close to landing…but that wasn’t a problem. They just served it United-style!

Landed in Panama right on time, and of course with a short-ish connection the flight was clear across the airport, about a 15 minute walk away. Wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, except even with the air conditioning it was hot. And with the humidex it felt downright nasty:

We boarded right at scheduled departure time, so there was really no reason I had to rush. I was only slightly concerned, because in my experience COPA is incredibly punctual, and even though it’s a small airport I figured they would almost certainly be on time.

COPA Airlines flight 159
Panama City, Panama (PTY) to Quito, Ecuador (UIO)
Depart 15:24, Arrive 17:20, Flight Time 1:56
Boeing 737-800, Registration HP-1531CMP, Manufactured 2006, Seat 2B

Boarding took…forever. Business was supposed to be full, but it appeared there were only 4 seats taken in total. How odd. Boarding was delayed because there was a group of 50+ American teenagers and their chaperones going to do some sort of missionary work in Ecuador. Packing away their giant backpacks, guitars, combined with the typical inefficiency of boarding planes for Americans, meant we finally left the gate about 30 minutes late. Would have only been 20, except we waited another 10 for the remaining six business class passengers who were all connecting from the same delayed flight. Turned out I really didn’t need to worry!

First things, up in the air, immigration forms were handed out. Straightforward, but I wasn’t sure what the “date of bird” was? Is this like a Chinese Zodiac thing? 😉

Once again, there were two choices. I don’t remember the other one, but it sounded unappetizing, so I went with the generic “salmon” which turned out to be a salmon bagel. It was quite mediocre:

Once again, however, the glasses were turned properly!

Landed in Quito just over 30 minutes late, and had a relatively short walk to immigration. The line was nearly an hour long, and I ended up chatting up a mid-50s Canadian couple from Regina (who made sure to inform me how to pronounce the city…yes, yes, I’m not an ignorant American) who were on their second trip to Ecuador. They’d gotten bad altitude sickness the first time, and had to abandon the trip and head home rather than go to the Galapagos. Up until this point, I hadn’t realized that Quito is still at approximately 10,000 feet above sea level. Coming from Bolivia it felt absolutely wonderful to be able to breathe easily again!

Rather chatting immigration agent, but soon I was through and in a taxi to the hotel in a torrential downpour….which took nearly two hours since it was rush hour. Oh well, that’s one way to get a brief preview of the city I suppose!

Short Stay in Medellin, Colombia

Bolivia and Ecuador plus Medellin, Colombia, hotels, Restaurants 2 Responses »

Jun 022014

Unfortunately, I didn’t get many pictures for this part of the trip. I’ll chalk it up to good conversation and not really “playing tourist.” Despite that, I got a fantastic intro to Medellin!

It was nearly 3pm by the time my taxi safely delivered me to my hotel, the Four Points Medellin. The taxi fare was fixed from the airport, so there was no need to negotiate or anything. So far, I was enjoying Medellin – all the people I encountered were quite pleasant, and the city seemed quite green, clean, and fairly orderly.

Got to the check-in counter, where I had to wait more than ten minutes to check in due to just two other customers in front of me. Then, ran into part one of the problem – neither of the front desk workers were willing to (or were unable to) speak any English at all. I finally got my point across to them: I wanted to check in, I was an SPG platinum member, and would prefer an upgraded room or suite with one bed. Unfortunately, the hotel was completely sold out, and the only room they could give me on my cash and points rate was a basic room with two beds. Ugh. After discussing for a bit they told me to go up and use that room, and they would see in an hour what they could do.

Got to the room, and it was clean and comfortable enough, with plenty of outlets/etc, and the air conditioning worked quite well and the room was a comfortable temperature. More importantly, the speed of the WiFi was quite good, and I had no trouble doing a high-bandwidth teleconference for work. After about an hour they called back, and they had indeed found me another room. Would I like a room with a patio and a king bed? Absolutely…and they sent staff up to get my bags and do the move for me. Quite a nice touch, although still not a single word of English was spoken by anyone.

The view of the patio in the upgraded room:

Unfortunately, I got stuck on several work calls in a row, and it was after 5pm when I was finally able to venture out and explore. First stop was a quick trip to the mall/grocery store around the corner to stock up on water and a few basics. It was a very modern well-stocked store that would have been at home anywhere in North America – I was incredibly impressed.

After I got back to the room, I managed to get in touch with Judd, a member of FlyerTalk who I’d been getting some advice from on things to do. Unfortunately it was really to late to go explore the city, but he was walking over to my hotel, and there was a good place to get a beer within walking distance. Count me in! He’s an Australian who’s been working in Medellin for a couple of years, and had some fantastic insights into the city. I love meetings like this, because you get a much deeper appreciation in a much shorter time when someone who knows the city well offers to show you around.

Found a nice quite place for a beer maybe a 10-15 minute walk from the hotel, or two…or three. I forgot that Australians consider drinking a competitive sport! By this point we were quite hungry, and it had started to rain, so we hopped in a cab to find somewhere to eat. I’ve forgotten the names of all the places we went, but hopefully Judd will chime in and I can update this post. We ended up for dinner at a brewpub type place, that had hundreds of bottled beers on the menu, along with their own homebrews which were really quite good. Add in a quite good burger and it was the perfect end to to a long day. No, I didn’t get to go out and play tourist, but with work running way longer than planned, I still feel I got a nice intro to the city…and can’t wait to go back!

After a good night’s sleep I was up early for a short run around the neighbourhood, and it was nice seeing the city come to life. Check-out of the hotel was slow and inefficient, just as check-in had been, but the staff were incredibly friendly and tried hard. They just seemed very new and unsure of how to handle some rather basic procedures.

Mid-morning Judd and his wife picked me up at the hotel, and offered me a ride to the airport…with a stop at a local restaurant for breakfast on the way. It was absolutely delicious, good local food (including chicharrón – YUM) and supposedly the President (I believe it is?) stops by here when he’s in Medellin as well. Good, local, non-pretentious cooking…and it was the absolute perfect ending to a short into to the city.

I’m incredibly grateful to Judd and his wife not only for showing me around, but also for the lift to the airport. Their generosity made this short stop so, so much more than it would have been otherwise, where I would have been at the whims of TripAdvisor etc! Soon after a late breakfast they dropped me at the airport, and it was off for the next stage of the adventure!