So after three flights I’m back in Switzerland. Thursday night I flew from Cochabamba to La Paz and from there on Friday morning via Santa Cruz and Miami back to Zürich.
To say goodbye to beloved ones is always difficult, thus we tried to keep it (more or less) short. I was soon distracted after passing security when the security people seemed to be starting talking about some stuff in my backpack when I collected it from the X-Ray machine.
I was a bit confused since I thought to understand that they were talking about the big padlock I had in my backpack (?!).
I was sitting and waiting for boarding when one of the security lady came up to me and asked if I could come back to recheck my backpack. I went with her and there the other one asked me if I would sell my padlock to her! That was quite amusing but I explained that I’d need it that night to secure my luggage and that I was sorry not to be able to help out.
Whatever…
The flight from Cochabamba to La Paz was quite spectacular. I had my window seat on the right (right) side and could see the ‘Cristo de la Concordia’ from the runway, he seemed to watch over the airport as he does over the city.
Taking off allowed a nice the view over the city and the flight into the night was kind of scary, one could guess where the mountains around Cocha stop and where the sky starts. The city is situated at approx. 2600 m above sea level and the mountains surrounding it reach easily 4000 m, thus they seem quite close when overflying them, maybe even more so by night and some moonlight.
Thanks to that light I also came to peace with my favourite mountain:
The Illimani.
I hadn’t seen it one single time from La Paz due to the clouds. But from the plane I could see the snow covered peaks of the mountain in the moonlight, a real beauty.
Shortly after arriving in La Paz one could see how huge ‘El Alto’ has become. Endlessly streching over the plane above La Paz it seems almost larger than the city sitting in the bowl.
The only large black spot in the sea of light was the airport.
Next morning I had to
get up very early to catch my plane and the rest of the trip was less than spectacular, apart from another amazing view of the moutains (including Illimani) shortly after take off, and the US once again made a fool out of themselves with their silly procedures:
My checked luggage was technically checked through to Zürich (it had the barcode thing to ZRH), but I had to collect it in Miami, go through customs with it and hand it over to a guy after the customs for them to X-ray it again and leave it there.
Now why do I have to wait half an hour for the bloody bag at the conveyor belt to carry it those few meters? I don’t get it! Besides it takes them forever to get the luggage to the belt. I’ve spoken to some people and so many of them miss planes because of this stupid procedure! And don’t tell me it’s for security. If anything, this whole action reduces security from my point of view.
Yes, this blog entry is getting ridiculously long and with it’s lousy content is really useless, as I was when I arrived in Zürich. Just not back yet. I even took the wrong bus when getting out of the train 🙂
At home at least there was something to cheer about when I went though the mail: my diploma certificate finally arrived (for the degree I got in September) and looks like this – yes, let me brag a little:
Now I have no more interesting trip to write about, let’s see what happens to the blog, maybe I manage not to let it slip into hibernation again 😉
See you