Just The Right Ticket

A big part of living abroad is living far far away from everyone you know. So naturally, in my two years of service, there will thousands of miles logged between people who come to visit me, and me going to visit home. This past week was taken over by my quest to get a ticket home. This process ended up being far more complicated than I would have liked. For starters, my departure date out of Peru is nonnegotiable. One of my best friends that I have non since the second grade is getting married August 9th, a Saturday. The whole week prior to the wedding, I have my one year reconnect, med-checks and project presentation that I cannot miss. I already had my boss rearrange the whole week so I would be able to miss Friday. But leaving a day earlier is out of the question.

So some how I had to find a ticket that would go either Thursday night or Friday morning and leave me enough time to get to the wedding and not be completely disoriented and exhausted. This will be the first time I will have been in the US in 14 months, and I have no idea what kind of culture shock and jet lag I am in for. Oh and by the way, I am in the wedding. I can't really just show up, sneak into the back of the church and then be anti-social at the reception. Not only do I have to worry about bridal party responsibilities, but it puts added pressure to get there early so I can attend the rehearsal.

I found myself between a rock and an expensive place. After days of searching online, the cheapest tickets I could find were around the $1200 mark. And those were flights going through Florida, which I didn't have time to do. There are direct flights from Lima to Los Angeles which would get me into California on schedule, but those were gonna cost $1500. Refusing to settle for what seemed like the inevitably expensive fare, I started checking out travel agents. They didn't have any better news for me. But again, I just absolutely refused to believe I couldn't make this work for under $1000. I had easily logged over 24 hours of searching on the internet and in travel agents office. Finally, a man found a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida that left early enough for me to potentially arrive in CA Friday morning. It only cost $550. I was certain I could find a ticket to the west coast for just a few hundred dollars, and thus, achieving my goal of getting home for less than a thousand. After going home and checking out the flights, I was so excited by my finds, I called my parents a relayed some good new, finally.

The next day, the travel agent wasn't in his office. The day after that, the $550 plane was all booked. I almost cried. I then sat with him for another 3 hours while we went over every single flight that left Lima in my allotted time frame. It looked pretty grim. But finally he found a ticket to Panama, and a ticket to Miami for $610 that had me arriving in Florida at midnight on thursday. I booked it immediately not wanting it to slip away. The travel agent figured this was a better flight anyways cause Miami is more or a prominent airport than fort Lauderdale and thus, would be easier and cheaper to find flights to California. The man had clearly never traveled in the US before, where the more obscure airports have the cheaper deals.

Sure enough, the flights out of Miami were more expensive, but I was able to book a direct flight from Miami to San Francisco and arrive in the bay area at 10:25 in the morning. I have to spend the night in the Miami airport, but I figured that was a small price to pay in comparison to the alternative. Getting back to the east coast to catch my flight back to Lima was the tricky part. I once again spent hours in front of the computer screen and on the phone trying to find something that would work. Finally, I called a former Peace Corps volunteer who now lives in Miami and asked her if I could spend a day and a night with her on my lay over. She was ecstatic at the prospect of seeing me again, so I booked the flight. Getting to see this girl is such an added bonus for reasons I cannot say on my blog. Let’s just say, it makes this whole long process worth it. Like it all happened for a reason, just so would get to see her.

So finally, after countless hours, I have a ticket home and back again. It wound up costing me $1002 exactly. In the end, I could have gotten it for cheaper, but did sacrifice some money to do a multi-destination ticket. I will be flying into the San Francisco airport because the wedding is in Berkeley, but then flying out of the Sacramento airport, which is literally a 15 minute drive from my house. I have never had a more complicated travel itinerary. But being able to fly out of Sac will save 2 hours off on already complicated and long few days of travel.

My advice to anybody else who is looking for a cheap deal in an impossibly expensive situation: if you have the time and patience along with the flexibility to fly on a less than perfect travel itinerary, you can find something. Like anything else in life, you just have to work hard to get what you want.