Learning to Let it Go in Quito

There are some things to worry about, and some things to let go. Learning the difference has everything to do with stress.

We were staying with a family in Quito, Ecuador as part of a language school homestay program. We had finished school with mixed results. On the plus side, we acquired sufficient skill and confidence in the language to purchase a return flight to the Galapagos Islands all in Spanish. On the other hand, I experienced a set back at the hair salon where I left behind on the floor much more hair than I had planned for lack of Spanish words like “trim”, “conservative style”, “work with the cow-lick, not against it”. Tired of my rants, Dan suggested, “let it go.’

The night before our departure, I noticed that the airline agent had booked us on different flights departing a few hours apart.

Drying my eyes on the bedspread, I went through the usual sequence of emotions; Culpability. How could I be so stupid not to double check the tickets? Self-pity; Why me? Blame; Dan distracted me. Excuses; I don't understand Spanish well enough for such transactions. Look at my hair!

In the end, the only thing to do was to wake our hosts at 6 a.m. and call for an immediate taxi, abandoning one prescheduled to come later. We would try to change Dan's ticket at the airport to match my earlier one. Failure meant that Dan would have to hang out in the Quito airport an extra four hours until his plane left, and at the other end, I would have to do the same until his arrived. We didn’t have a hotel booked so there would be no place we could meet outside of the airport.

In the end, it all worked out because we learned that agents, as a rule, overbooked flights. In fact, the practice was so common that they recommended you arrive well in advance of your flight, not for lengthy security procedures, rather, to ensure you get a seat. At the check-in counter in Quito, the attendant simply took Dan’s ticket for the later flight, cancelled it, and assigned him a boarding pass for my flight. No fuss. Someone else that morning would arrive at the desk and find out he would have to wait for the later flight.

It was a happy ending for our Galapagos flight but we didn’t internalize the learning as we might have. A month later, we found ourselves on the other end of the stick. Arriving only two hours before our flight to Santiago Chile from Lima Peru, we found ourselves without seats and having to reschedule for a night flight, ten hours later. By then I knew not to sweat it. What goes around, had just come around. (by Carolann Moisse at http://www.maturetraveler.blogspot.com/)

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