Day 0.

At Terminal 1 at Dubai International Airport at 2am, ready to start my journey to Colombia.


My 4:40am flight to Addis Ababa had been changed to 5:30am. This reduced my 95 minute transit down to just 45, and although a little tight, I had made many transits in Addis before and even with as little as 30 minutes and had never yet missed a connection so decided not to worry too much.

I perhaps should have been a little more vigilant however as the Boeing 777 from Addis was significantly delayed and as it had just started the 4 hour flight to Dubai it would not arrive until at least 7am.

In hindsight this was a little perplexing, given that at check-in in Dubai they had given me my onward boarding pass for the 9:30am flight from Addis Ababa to São Paulo when it was physically impossible at that stage for me to make the flight.

Grabbing a bite to eat at the Marhaba lounge.


I headed to the gate for the flight to Ethiopia. After a quick look at the departures board I saw that the flight wasn't due to depart now until 7:30am. I realised I would definitely miss the flight to São Paulo and likely have to catch the following days flight!

I booked my fare booked through an OTA to Bogotá on Ethiopian Airlines and Avianca Brazil for only $1,253.

Given my cheap ticket I wasn't sure there was really a better option other than the probable 24 hour stopover in Addis so just resigned myself to having to arrive a day later than planned in Bogotá.

For the trip I had also booked three domestic flights in Colombia on Avianca for an additional $251.

Hence my eventual flight schedule for the trip was:
Day 0: Flying Ethiopian Airlines (ET) from Dubai to São Paulo via Addis Ababa (DXB-ADD-GRU).
Day 1: Flying Avianca Brazil (O6) from São Paulo to Bogotá (GRU-BOG).
Day 2: Flying Avianca (AV) from Bogotá to Medellín (BOG-MDE).
Day 6: Flying Avianca (AV) from Medellín to Cartagena (MDE-CTG).
Day 9: Flying Avianca (AV) from Cartagena to Bogotá (CTG-BOG).
Flying Avianca Brazil (O6) from Bogotá to São Paulo (BOG-GRU).
Flying Ethiopian Airlines (ET) from São Paulo to Dubai via Addis Ababa (GRU-ADD-DXB).