We prepared ourselves during a long time for things such as the weather, language, finding a job, but we never quite thought before what we were suppoused to do the day our mothers will be left behind, crying our departure. It’s tough!!! We barely caught the flight, the whole family was there and let me tell you: we are many people and quite loud.
Bucaramanga viewed from the airport.
After leaving our family... arriving to “el dorado” airport. To wait 5 hours to take our flight to Toronto. The trip was horrible! You just can’t sleep. The crew it’s actually over the top nice, food it’s balanced, you can watch movies or tv shows, listen to music, all planed to make your torture in those chairs human.
El Dorado airport, Bogotá - Colombia
In Toronto... everything it’s so easy! We had 2 hours to do our paperwork before catching our flight to Québec and that was fine. We did it all in less than an hour. Everyone it’s nice, I guess speaking english was the key, we were asked fewer questions and truly those questions were simple... just routine questions.
People traveling with Air Canada: I highly recommend watching this video, you’ll know the whole way you have to make in the Pearson airport.
From Toronto to Québec, still in Pearson’s terminal 1, we took a Jazz plane. In this flight we got to see much better Canada. It was Wednesday the 29th april and nature was still recovering from the hard winter. I mean that seen from above that day, everything was brown. My eyes were familiar with green and mountains just the day before, this almost gave me a heart attack on air.
But it’s not ugly at all, there’s a lake or a river almost everywhere. Lots of lakes and rivers in that tiny plane window.
Landing at Jean-Lesage airport. Small, well organized, people it’s kind, in both airports bathrooms are easy to find, clean and free. (Why can’t they be that way in my dear Colombia?)
We didn’t stay long at Jean-Lesage. We traded some US dollars for canadian dollars, our first contact with the currency. The bills are larger than the pesos bills, they are pretty. Coins are collectible, mostly the 25 cents one. There’s a 25 cents coin for everything: Vancouver 2010, support for AIDS victims, hunters, bears, ducks... nevermind. Those are the ones we use the most calling from Bell phones everywhere. (But not yet Colombia I hope our mothers will forgive us one fine day)
Jean-Lesage airport, Québec city
Where were I? Oh yes, the currency exchange. Then we were ready for taking our cab to Orlean’s Express bus terminal. Something cool about Québec (the region) is that taxi charges are the same for all cities, you just have to look in google maps how many kilometers there are in one path so you can have the (almost) exact amount the cost you'll pay.
Round one with doors in this country. In the airports you walk and most of the doors open automaticly forwards. Sometimes they open to the sides like Colombian doors. Manually most of them most be pulled outside. So once in the bus terminal we stood like two idiots waiting the terminal to open.
What truly happened is that we couldn’t figure out how to open the door! Silly me! Once the “huge” problem of entering the terminal was over, we bought our tickets to Trois-Rivières. It was 11:30 in the morning in Canada, 10:30 in Colombia, we were exhausted, waiting the 14 h bus and thinking of our mothers, who probably were praying for us to call. The travelers, a couple of ungrateful children who wouldn’t call them nor that day, nor the next... I better stop, if not I’m going to get a good spanking.
Gare du Palais (Québec) Orléans Express.
Well that’s it for today, I’ll finish to tell how ended our journey in the second part of the story.
Hugs to everyone, I’m glad to be living in Trois-Rivières.
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What a journey!
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling, I always try to call home as soon as I arrive, no matter from where. My trick now is to buy an international phone card at the airport. Try the Euroshade, for $5 you can talk for hours! You don't even need 50 cents, just use the 1-800 number.
Anyway, I'm sure you had a lot of other things to consider, plus you must have been quite tired.
Thanks Zhu, I guess we just where overwelmed by the fact of being outside Colombia... too much info to process in one day... We bought a card and now we're calling from Skype. That's an advice we'll keep in mind whenever we travel again: Buy an international phone card.
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