MileSmiles: What hotels did you stay at during your trip? How far from airport? Use
a shuttle / taxi / ?? Cost? Thanks.


[QUOTE]Originally posted by MileSmiles:
[B]Hi there, came back today from my 500k run.

Well, I'm heading off on a 500K run on 3/28... Doing MIA-SAL-GUA-SJO-BOG-CCS-MIA..

Mahalo to MauiGirl and everybody else who helped produce my itinerary. I'll remember to check in w/the various airlines 3 days prior to departure to be sure that I'm not stuck in Bogota.

Cheers,
ns

An echo to the reconfirmation refrain---remember that in many of these countries aviation is a critical lifeline to remote areas that have limited roads---the airlines operate intensively with limited resources for a local clientele. Reconfirm, reconfirm, reconfirm!

My friends and I are now in LIM to complete our trips for the 1M miles. If all goes well, we be done tomorrow...

Having a great time in Lima. This city seems to stay active all night long, which is good for us since all the flights seem to arrive around midnight and leave around 6 am. Great ice cream and coffee, reasonable prices, friendly people. We got quite a history lesson from our bus driver (in spanish--covered about 3000 years..

Just got back to LAX from my 500k run. Almost all of my flights were very timely, and most connections can be made rather rapidly. Here are my flights and my impressions of the airports.

LAX->GUA Lacsa in Business Flight left about 20 minutes late and arrived 15 minutes early. Sat in row 3 would recommend rows 1 or 2 as 3 does not recline all the way. The crew was great and food was good. Guatamala airport is small and allows for quick connections. You could connect in 15 minutes easy, you do not need to go through customs if you are connecting.

GUA->SAL Aviateca. Business. Very short flight. Flight time is about 30 minutes. Arrived 15 minutes early. Americans who are going to leave the airport need a tourist card. You just buy it at immigration it cost $10. Most other nationalities do not need it (ie Europe).

SAL->MGA TACA Plane was small and hot! MGA is Another place to make quick connections. Make sure to tell someone if you do the same connection that we did which is to a COPA flight because it is a strange combination. This is because the copa flight that we got on originated in SAL, ie we could have stayed on the same plane (in their eyes). I'd say 15-20 minutes to connect. Flight was on time.

MGA->PTY Copa. Business. Good flight. Landed on time. PTY needs a little more time for connections while OAG says 1:30 that is way to long. If you are chaning from copa to avianca (or another Copa) 30 minutes is good I'd say 45 minutes for most other airlines.

PTY->BOG SAM(avianca) The only flight that we had that was late. The 6:50 flight from PTY apparantly never leaves on time. We left at 8:00pm. We stayed in Bogota. Not a bad place to stay at all. I would recommend staying at the Travelodge, close to the airport. The locals know it as "el capital" we paid $84 and they have a free shuttle. The bogota Airport is the most modern of the Airports that we went to. They go through your luggage throughly, If you stay in Bogota you should get there 2 hours early for the flight.

Bog->Miami Aces. Aces is ecomony only. The meals were very good for economy. We had a choice between Veal and Trout, both good.

Anyway i'm back home in less then 48 hours.



[This message has been edited by fabsco (edited 03-13-2000).]

Joseph Stagner, Marc Renson, and I finished up our quest for the 1M mile bonus this morning. All was smooth. The turnaround LIM-CUZ-LIM was made in plenty of time, though the agent at the CUZ check-in counter seemed worried about getting us on the plane.

We were really blown away by Quito. This was, by far, the best LatinPass city we visited. Had a great time walking through the old city. Most things were incredibly inexpensive. A cross-town taxi ride from the airport was $4. We had tasty t-bone steak dinners for $1.76, and ice cream sundaes for $.75. FlyerTalkers, plan to spend some time in Quito!

Pudding Guy,

Congratulations on bagging the million.

What was your itinerary for your recent run? Did you fly from SFO? What hotels did you use?

We're making the 500k run in early April and our thoughts are to use some of the 500k bonus to return to LatinPass country to complete the 1M in June.

ejulber

Hmmm Pudding Guy... congrats.. and thanks for the info.... We are proud that you are flying to earn even more miles..... You bonus guy you....

I am thinking of a good trip (not really Latin Pass related for 500,000 miles) but to see some of hte area.. any good ideas?? Cities not to miss?

Have to agree with PG about Quito - it's an amazing - it's one of my favorite cities in the world. Will post more tonight.

We returned from our 500K mile run yesterday and had a great time. Our goal had been to complete the 6 segments in 28 hours from departing MIA to returning to MIA. Met student and his sister in GUA for a great meal. Also met UpgradeMe on 2 of our flights. Our only problem that others may want to be aware of occurred in MGA.

We arrived in MGA at 8:10 on a Copa flight from GUA. Our connection on TACA was due to leave at 9:55. Immigration told us to wait in the "transit" area for a TACA rep. When no TACA rep appeared we asked a person at the security booth what we should do. She went to the TACA counter (outside of security) and was told that we should continue to wait and an agent will be there shortly. At 9:20 a TACA agent appears and informs me that he did not know we had been waiting. He also told me the flight was overbooked by 30 and we would not have seats on this flight. With only 40 people in the boarding area my travel agent (who was with me on the trip) thought he just did not understand us and demanded from another agent who had arrived to see a supervisor.

I also could not figure out how this flight could be full, until a few minutes later a group of at least 80 children all with "Unescorted Minor" badges appeared.

After boarding was completed the supervisor appeared and told us we would be going on an AA flight in 2 hours. You can imagine his confusion when the 3 gringos in front of him in chorus yelled "NO, we MUST fly a Grupo Taca plane". In the end he agreed to put me and 1 of my companions up for the night with meals and Business Class the next day. The other member of our party chose to go on the Lacsa flight later that day. All 3 of us ended up paying $11 in fees since we were in transit.

the moral of the story being, if connecting from Copa to Taca in MGA, you should collect your boarding pass from the TACA agents in GUA. Do not take no for an answer from them or you will be sorry and have to pay fees to reach the check in desks or risk our situation.


Other things to note:

The Lacsa flight from MGA-MIA, although it keeps the same flight number, required a change of planes in SJO. Thus 2 boarding passes were issued.

We were downgraded on our TACA segment from SJO-SAL when they substitied an Avianca plane with no Business Class. The flight number remained TACA.

Our gate to gate connection time in BOG was exactly 45 minutes. However, it helped that we were the first off an 80 percent FULL 767 from MIA to reach the ONE immigration agent.

Hope everything goes well for the rest of you.

rich

Congrats rich!

I kept looking for FlyerTalkers on my flights, but didn't see any obvious candidates (no one else did the turn-around LIM-CUZ-LIM for example). While waiting in the airports, I'd occasionally yell out, "FlyerTalk?" to see if anyone turned my way. What's the sign, anyway?

I thought about leaving something behind in the Lima airport for the LatinPass FlyerTalkers to sign, but didn't follow through with this idea.

Regarding Rich's problems in MGA, this can be an issue at many of the airports. At Lima, for instance, there didn't seem to be any Aces staff on hand to provide boarding passes. As Rich noted, there's apparently some way to notify the airlines and have them provide boarding passes without leaving, but his experience shows what can go wrong. When we were faced with this situation, we chose to just leave the transit area, wait in line for a boarding pass at the ticket counter, and pay the airport tax when required.

We got pretty tired of paying the airport taxes. We paid three times in Lima! We stayed the night and had to pay $25 for our next day trip on Aces, then $4 for Taca-Peru trip (domestic fee), then another $25 to head back home. No real way to avoid this given our travel plans.

The airport tax rules varied from place to place. In Quito, for instance, we left the airport and spent 12 hours in the city, but weren't required to pay a tax. On the GUA-SAL flight, my friends were asked to check their bags because each weighed more than 10 kg. They then had to leave transit to get their bags and pay the $25 airport tax. One was also charged for a $10 tourist visa! Pretty expensive 30 second walk to get a 11 kg bag.

One more note: If you're planning on spending midnight to 6 am in the Lima airport, don't count on getting much rest. The international terminal was very busy and noisy all night long. The in-transit lounge wasn't so nice, and was hot the night we spent. The back gates were more calm, but LanChile kept rousing us away. Check to see if buying a business class ticket will get you access to the VIP lounge.

To Those that Completed Trip:

1) What were "Transit Lounges" like for Food, Seating, any entrance into Club (ie. Admirals) from Transit area, etc.

2) Please name airport hotels if you stayed at any, cost, shuttle service, etc.

3) Is there a good way to "notify" gate agents that you are in the Transit Lounge so they will come and get you checked in? Sounds like this was the major problem. (Seems if you are "in-transit" there should be a way to get checked in.)

4) If you had "changable tickets", was it easy to reschedule flights.

5) If you used taxis, any problem communicating or with payment?

6) Do you need local currency in all countries (espec. if just in transit)and, if so, how did you get it. Or did most take Dollar bills?

7) Any problems or hints on how to get the LP acct number in the airline record for automatic posting. (Also anyone had probablms with number in Radisson, Hol. Inn, Avis, TWA, etc.?)

Good job on getting back. Hope they post your miles soon. Keep us posted.

Guess thats all. Appreciate the info already given and any more will be of help to all of us who are going over the next 3 months.

Thanks...

[This message has been edited by SAPMAN (edited 03-14-2000).]

Pudding Guy -

I seem to remember you noting that the night-life in LIM does not stop. Could I get into LIM at 12:15, go catch some night-life and then head back to the airport to catch my early morning flight to CUZ?? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Congratulations to all completing such a fantastic mileage run and of course to pudding guy for his second million miles- the "hard" way!