6. Bumpy start — Machu Picchu to the left series

I arrived in Lima on early Saturday morning. Only until I waited for 40 minutes by the baggage belt, the airline confirmed that they somehow left my suitcase in Miami. Well, sometimes you were not just unlucky to be the last one to collect your bag from your flight. You simply didn’t get it for good.

I walked to the airline counter, “What should I do? I have a transfer flight to Cuzco in two hours.”

I will never forget that cocky and careless look on that airline representative and dreamed to rip it into pieces one day after, “We have a flight this afternoon from Miami to Lima. And we can then send the bag to your address in Cuzco. You will have your luggage by tomorrow morning.”

It sounded very smooth. I had a deep breath and tried to assure myself it’s not a big deal. Airlines fuck up all the time. They know what they are doing. Before I got aboard on my connecting flight, I checked the weather in Cuzco. The highest was 14 degree and the lowest was 6 degree in a day. I was in a short and a t-shirt.

The attitude of Cuzco is 3,400 meters. A lot of people have suffered altitude sickness when they arrive. I worried a lot as I remember I didn’t feel well every time I was above 3,000 meters. I heard some pretty scary stories from my friends who travelled to Cuzco. They had horrible headache, felt dizzy and can’t eat. Not only those feelings were extremely unpleasant, it also meant I won’t be able to do anything. And I hate wasting time. But one good thing happened on my first day in Peru was that I didn’t feel anything when I landed in Cuzco. Except for feeling cold.

The street view from the airport to the town center was very rural. But the sunny weather and the local people carrying them in a very relaxing way made me feel cheerfully comfortable. I saw locals wearing layers and layers of winter clothes while me with my bare legs instead. Suddenly I realized I was exactly like those chicks who were in mini-skirts in winter and I gave them side eyes when they walked passing me.

The first day was short and easy. I didn’t do much and went to sleep early. The upsetting moment came the next morning when I didn’t get my luggage. Instead I got a call from Latam Airline and was informed they can’t further proceed sending my luggage from Lima to Cuzco as my signature provided to them can’t match mine on my passport. They asked me to sign a document and send back to them. It took two hours for me to receive that document through email and another 6 hours for them to confirm they received my signed paper. Along the process, I learned the same cocky prick who I met on the counter yesterday input the wrong email address to the system besides confirmed my signature was alright and promised that I could get my bag back by today noon. The airline kept this careless manner to an extreme that both the call and the correspondence were in Spanish only. I didn’t think the biggest airline in South America didn’t deal with English-speaking customers on a daily basis.

I felt so frustrated that I was constrained at the hotel to deal with this bureaucratic nonsense. Even after I canceled my plans for my first two days in Cuzco to focus on this, I saw things were going nowhere. The people from the airline hotline were based in Colombia and they surprisingly had no direct phone contact with their colleagues in Lima airport and can only wait for them to follow up through email. And the people at Lima airport were a group of most unresponsive people that you can ever count on. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more messes they have created and they were so occupied that they waited for 6 hours to confirm they received a form by email. I would rather act stupidly and set on a self-destructive path than to wait passively and get fucked up by others. The fact that I was shivering in a boring hotel room and all my hiking gear was in that delayed suitcase only pushed me more to try to fix the problem.

I decided to apply what I learned in a negotiation book. I enjoyed the read but always felt embarrassed to bring up the name as I saw that book placed at quite a few airport bookstores in China. Yes, in those notorious shops which sell cheesy books teaching you either how to be successful or how to not be depressed if you don’t succeed. Just to be clear, I got that book back in university way before it became an airport bookstore collection.

First I showed sympathy and understanding to the guy at the hotline who may constantly take phone calls from angry customers. In return he did an amazing job following up for me but clearly he was not in a position to be able to help me. The bureaucracy and no clear line of responsibility were the real obstacles. The airline got all the resources to ship my luggage from point A to point B. But once there was a glitch in the system, no people would take the initiative to push things forward. I needed someone who had direct contact and ideally could yield some influence on people at Lima airport. I thought of LinkedIn and found a guy who was in charge of customer service for Latam in Peru. I sent an email to him ticking a lot of points from that negotiation book: use his organization’s standards to prove they failed to deliver what they promised; recognize his authority and show my weakness; be respectable and make my emotions in check. Also I brought up a taboo in the modern business world. I remembered the airline left three pieces of luggage in Miami, respectively from an American white guy, an American black lady and the Asian me. The guy happened to stay in Lima while me and that black lady continued our trips to Cuzco. I bet that American white guy should get his luggage back much faster and drama-free. What helped me even more was the guy from the airline specifically asked me where I came from. So in the email, I asked if the white man from a developed country has received his luggage and asked if a colored customer from a developing country deserved the same service from Latam. Surprisingly, I got a reply within a minute and he said he will forward my email to people in charge. By that point, I had zero expectation and I was ready to fly to Lima tomorrow to pick up the luggage by myself. My Inca Trail will start next Tuesday. I couldn’t afford to wait for one more day.

I went to bed early on Sunday evening. While I was sleeping, I heard someone knocking on my door. A guy shouted from the outside, “I had your luggage.” I immediately jumped out the bed, “Just a second!” I checked the time. It was 9:45pm. I finally got my luggage back after 38 hours. And right away I called an agency for Rain Mountain hike and finger crossed that people would answer the phone at that hour. It got through and they will pick me up tomorrow at 3:30am. Now I can get 5-hour good sleep before my holiday officially starts.