Okay where was I? Ah yes, traveling home to Loja for censo. So the plan was, get up, fly to Guayaquil, change flights fly to Cuenca and then grab the 5 hour bus home. Easy as pie, right? No. We arrived in Guayaquil at 7am and as our next flight didn’t leave until 10:10 we sat in front of the TV’s in case there were any changes. There were lots of flights coming and going during that time and the TV’s seem to update everything. Mom bought me the strongest coffee I may have ever had in my life so I was on a caffeine high for about an hour but I faithfully watched the TV's and updated everyone on the progress of flights. Ecuador uses funny English sometimes which always makes me laugh. Our flight to Cuenca had been delayed to 10:15am but by 10:00am there was no update to the television, it simply kept saying “Delayed”. We were watching the gate but there was no extensive activity but finally at 10:00am I walked over to ask the attendants what the status of the flight was. I was told that our flight had boarded and was gone. I told them the TV had never said “boarding”, they had never announced our flight and that our names were certainly never called. They admitted no and said they would try and get our flight back, I calmly told them, yes, that might be a good idea. I rushed back and collected the others and our things. When we were all there we were told they were still trying and then finally we were told it was still there and to run. Most of you can probably picture us running along with our bags, but oh no, we had to run down the terminal, down stairs, outside onto the runway and then over to the plane. We looked like a bunch of crazy people but we didn't mind because, well, we had made our flight. When we got up to the door of the plane, we were told whatever carry-on’s we had would not fit and that they had to be put under the plane. We weren’t given a chance to respond and all 3 carry-on’s were taken away. I asked for a tag for them and was told to get on the plane and they would bring it to me. Just before the plane was about to take off, a stewardess came up and handed me one ticket that didn’t have a baggage number on it, it just said our destination and flight number. I told the stewardess we had 3 bags and was told I just needed the one tag for all 3 bags. When we arrived in Cuenca, as we were disembarking the plane, I asked 2 stewardess’ where we should collect our carry-on’s. Both people told me inside the gate. We went in and waited. In total, out of 3 checked bags and 3 carry-on’s, one bag arrived. As most travelers, our carry-on’s had valuable things in them, medication, etc. I inquired as to where our missing bags were and more importantly our carry-on’s and we were told that our carry-on’s were taken off the aircraft and were left in Guayaquil. I asked whether it is Lan’s policy to take carry-on baggage off without the permission of the passenger and was told “no”. We gave the representative we were dealing with the tags from the two missing checked pieces and the one tag I received for the 3 carry-on’s. I kept saying we were missing 5 bags but they were confused since we only had 3 luggage tags. I explained that the one tag represented 3 bags. I was asked why I was not given 3 tags but I said I had no idea, but that I had asked for 3. They said Lan would try hard to recover our bags - ya, thanks! We were then told to go to our hotel and when our bags arrived on the next flight we could collect them. I let them know (without getting too ethnic on them) that we are neither tourists nor do we live in Cuenca and that we needed to travel for another 5 hours to get home. They said there was nothing they could do but that our luggage would be on the next flight from Guayaquil, which was to arrive at 5:30pm. We believed them so we took our one bag and headed to the bus station to arrange a bus that would leave later that night to Loja and then went into City Centre to get some food. Since we had been up at 4am and were completely exhausted at this point and it had started to thunder storm, at 5:00pm headed back to the airport when we received a call from Lan. Our bags had not made it on the next flight and since we had mentioned that there was medication in our bags, they wanted to get us what we needed. We told them we were on our way and would discuss it when we got there. At the airport we went up into the office and we were told that they were still trying to locate the 2 carry-on bags that had not been tagged and that our other entire luggage was still in Guayaquil. There were no other flights arriving from Guayaquil that evening and as the nationwide Censo was happening the next day, there was no business happening at all between 9am to 5pm. The next flight arriving from Guayaquil was not until Sunday evening at 7:30pm. Lan said that we could leave and they could send our luggage by bus but since there was no way that was happening we had no choice but to stay in Cuenca. I was able to book a place to stay pretty quickly and we then had to split up and rush to purchase food for the next day as there were no restaurants open and purchase some provisions like Shampoo, deodorant, toothbrushes/paste, etc that we didn’t have and then headed to the hotel. The censo on Sunday was all day and so no one, not even tourists could leave their hotel from 9am to 5pm. We were staying in a pretty fancy hotel and we had a balcony so we could look out and see military trucks driving around and men on foot. We enjoyed the day for what it was though and laid around and read our books. Once the curfew was over, we got a bite to eat and then returned to the airport at 7:00pm, ready to deal with Lan in case our bags still hadn't arrived or worse yet, weren't recovered. Fortunately for them, all 5 of our bags were recovered. We are dealing with Lan though about what happened . . . Monday morning we got up and headed by bus to Loja. We arrived in the evening and I have never been so happy to be back at home!!
