Easter Island it ain’t, but it does have its share of interesting sights. I speak of Miami, Florida, which is apparently where we will end up on early Friday morning.

Apparently the airports throughout South America are all messed up and clogged up because of the closure of the airport in Santiago, Chile. Lindblad Expeditions decided the most prudent course of action was to charter a Miami Air plane to pick us up in Ushuaia tomorrow and then take us all to Miami (with refueling stops in Lima, Peru, and La Paz, Bolivia). And from Miami we’ll figure out how to make our way home on one of the weekly flights available to us.

In a way it’s a bit of serendipity, as we recently realized we had no birthday presents for Bas’ upcoming 13th birthday in a couple of weeks, and we know Miami shopping options far exceed those on Bonaire or in Ushuaia. And, I need to get my big honking Alienware M17x notebook computer repaired before it completely melts down, and that can only happen when the computer is the in U.S. for a few days.

We’re planning on staying in the Miami area for all of next week, and will get home a couple of days later than expected, but hopefully well rested.

Our 18 days in Costa Rica flew by, and we have some great experiences, as well as some observations about life in Costa Rica to share. And our Spanish classes were also very worthwhile, but at the same time they taught us that there was an awful lot to learning Spanish we had not quite anticipated.

We are presently ending a couple of days of rest and relaxation in Miami in order to sync up with the now abbreviated, three day a week flight schedule on American Airlines to Bonaire via San Juan. We should be home tomorrow night assuming the weather system hovering over Puerto Rico doesn’t get in the way of our travels.

The next task I have is to finish tagging and making ready the 550 or so pictures of our trip that are worth sharing (out of the 2000+ pictures we took while in Costa Rica). Once I have them ready I will post them, and then start sharing some stories and commentary. I still have a few stories about our New York City trip to post too, and those will come along in the next week and a half, hopefully before we take off to see the Canadian Maritimes in early October.

Hasta luego!

P.S. Krystyana has promised me that she will soon start contributing to The Traveling Richters blog, so stay tuned for that to happen.

Okay, so I’ve not been exactly my wordy self on any of my blogs. As usual, life, and more specifically work, got in the way. I spent the last two months in San Diego as a testifying technical expert in a patent trial – my first such trial. Fascinating experience, but not one I expect to repeat anytime soon.

But that’s a different subject. The purpose of this post is to express my pleasant surprise at an e-mail I just received from American Airlines a few minutes ago:

April 8, 2008
Dear Mr. Richter:

We know that you expect on-time departures and arrivals and there is no question that light delays are disruptive and frustrating. We are sorry for the interruption of
your travel plans on March 31.

Although we cannot guarantee our schedules because of the many variables associated with airline operations, we would like to offer a goodwill gesture as an apology and to encourage you to fly with us again. I have added 4,000 miles to your AAdvantage® account. You will shortly see the miles posted to your account at
www.AA.com/AAdvantage.

Please also remember that our first responsibility to you is your safety. We will delay, cancel, reroute, or divert a flight in order to keep this commitment, even if it brings inconvenience. We appreciate your understanding of this promise.

Thank you for traveling on American. We look forward to serving you again soon.

Sincerely,

B. J. Russell
Customer Relations
American Airlines

This was completely unexpected, which is what makes it such a pleasant surprise. Usually one only gets a “reward” of points like this after filing a complaint, but this was a spontaneous offer. It’s unusual in my experience for any travel-related business to be proactive in this way. Kudos American Airlines! Especially as I am only a mere Platinum flyer – I lost my Executive Platinum status because I did not fly enough on American last year.

The back story:

On March 31st, I was attempting to fly home from an overnight in Washington, D.C., to find my flight from DC to Miami an hour late (which was still actually okay, but quite tight). But when I arrived in Miami, I found my connection to San Juan to be an additional two and a half hours late, meaning I would miss my connection to Bonaire (it ultimately turned out the flight was over four hours late, but I had made plans to overnight in Miami and fly to Curacao the next morning). The folks at the American Airlines Admiral’s Club gave me a hotel certificate for the MIA Airport Hotel (the one right at Terminal E) and a couple of negligible food vouchers ($10 for dinner, and $5 for breakfast). Much to my surprise, the hotel was a real pit – closet-like rooms, in serious need of repair, but that wasn’t American’s fault – they were trying to do me a favor and have me stay nearby. I ended up paying for a night at the nearby Sofitel Miami (much nicer but at a price) and getting some work done too as well as a very good night’s rest (something which would not have happened at the MIA Airport Hotel).