military plane because of cloud when 1/3 of country is rainforest?? This was hard to believe, but we had no choice but to believe it as there was no planes coming from La Paz until the cloud had cleared!!! We didn’t even think it was that cloudy but who are we to argue with the slick operation that is TAM?

Not only did our lady have us to deal with, she also had the problem that the people who were booked onto the pampas tour couldn’t go today due to one of the villages along the way being on strike! This poor woman had the patience of a saint and had no end of problems to deal with in her daily job. If it wasn’t bad enough that the planes didn’t fly due to cloud, then she had striking villagers to put a spanner in the works!!! And I thought working with computers was stressful!!!

We were asked to go round to TAM’s office to see what was going on. We arrived to see a host of other disappointed travellers wondering what the hell was going on. Our lady left us there and we actually checked our luggage in which was a hopeful sign. The airport office was a basic affair and was having a paint job, but it did have a few seats outside so we grabbed a seat and crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. There were a number of rumours going around as to what was going on, but we were still just sat there with no signs of movement so we chose to ignore any hopes of getting of our of here. Finally just as Rob had got off to buy some mints, word was out that we were going. A van turned up and they started to load on the luggage. I ran around the corner and thankfully saw Rob so I motioned for him to be quick then headed back to the van to see if I could find out what was happening.