Cali now: Warm, comfortable and welcome

More on our continuing adventure in Colombia:

2:51 p.m. June 20 – Which brings me back to Villa Javier, where I’m enjoying the warm (not hot) and humid (though hardly unbearable) weather while the others nap.

As you can imagine, our getting here remained a struggle. After getting up before 6 a.m., all to check in at 7:15 for our scheduled 8:15 flight to Cali, we arrive at the airport only to find that while the Delta representative did his job, the info never got passed on to Delta’s partner airline, Avianca.

So we spend the next 45-plus minutes going from one office to the next, showing our boarding passes, our passports and, I swear on one occasion, our permanent records – you know, the ones that our high school teachers swore would one day come back to bite us on the derriere. Sorry, Mrs. Voss.

Whatever we do, it seems to work as we end up being among the final passengers who board the Avianca flight to our final destination: Cali. And although I don’t get the cup of coffee that I requested from the friendly flight attendant, I do receive a complimentary bottle of what looks like rum for a Father’s Day gift.

Being a father is, I gather, a pretty big deal in this country.

And when we finally arrive, not only are all our bags here, but so are the people from Javeriana who have been assigned to pick us up.

There’s nothing quite like walking into the arrival waiting room of a foreign airport, exhausted and wearing the same clothes as the day before, and, amid all the hand waving and catcalls, seeing a sign with your name on it. Some things, it seems, do come as promised.

But … more on that another time.