Señorita Do You Know The Way To Ipiales?

SEÑORITA DO YOU KNOW WHERE IPIALES IS LOCATED?

I just stared at the pilot. Was he kidding? No...it didn't look like he was kidding. Isn't he supposed to know where he was flying to or how to get there? ”No”. I answered. ”Isn't it your job to know that”? ”Well, yes”, he said, ”I had no trouble finding it yesterday and that was the first time I flew there.” ”All these mountain villages look the same”, he added. His radio was on and he was communicating with flight tower in Pasto. ”We're flying over a town with a football stadium in the middle”, he said to the radio, ”that can't be Ipiales”. ”No, that's Tucarres” came the answer, more to your left...and then coordinates and instructions. ”Gods alive” I thought, ”he really doesn't know! I'm the only person in addition to the young pilot here in this 20-seat air taxi who knows that we're lost in a tiny bimotor over the Andes.”

The whole trip had started out rather badly. The night before while I was getting my stuff together my brother just had to come with a nice piece of information of an Avianca Air Taxi that had just come down on the Andes near Manizales, all 18 passangers and the pilot dead. In the morning Fabian drove me in the Guanabana (the family car's nickname) to Calipuerto, the old airport in Candelaria instead of Palmaseca that had just opened. He had to step on it to make it on time to Palmaseca and I almost missed the plane, they were taking the ladder away when I was running on that glass-walled corridor and the police there yelled at the personnel down there to wait for the señorita. When the señorita got on the plane the only seat available was up front right next to the pilot. Of course I sat there, he wasn't intimidating in any way, a young caleño about my age, looked friendly enough. I had a pretty pleasant flight chatting with the flirty captain until he asked me if I knew where Ipiales was located.

Well, he found Ipiales, right next to a frightful chasm and an airstrip that stopped abdruptly at a mouintainside. I said goodbye and thanks no sweat, took a taxi to town and checked in a hostal downtown, my appointment at the consulate was for the next day. I guess it must've been for the scare I had or something but I got my period right there in Ipiales and I was not prepared. So, I went out to buy a tampax. I walked in a drugstore and asked the employee since I saw no tampax or tampons anywhere....he had no idea what I was talking about. No luck in the three or four other drugstores I found, so finally I gave up and bought a package of old-fashioned sanitary pads, thick and unconfortable. Back at the hotel I ran into A Swedish guy and spent the rest of the evening in his room talking about lingonberry jam and meatballs...nice guy.

The next day I took a taxi over the Rumichaca bridge, stopped at the immigration and customs to get a stamp, went into town and into the Colombian consulate, on time. The lady looked at me and shook her head....”Sorry, we have no stamps”. ”Oh no, not again!” ”Did you get the telegram?” ”Yes, we did, but we are out of stamps for resident visas, you'll have to come back another time.” She was flipping pages in my passport and suddenly she looked up at me. ”But you are not a Norteamericana?”No, Ma'am”, I'm from Finland, Europe”. She told me to sit down and wait. I walked out of that Consulate with an Official Visa, no fee. She had a chip on her shoulder against gringos.

I made it back to the airstrip and this time the plane was slightly larger but the pilot was the same. I sat up in the front again (he invited me to the tiny cockpit) and had a lovely albeit bumpy flight back with turbulences, talking with the pilot and with a magnificent view of the Maciso Colombiano, the place where the three Cordilleras meet in the south.