Getting to Paraguay

I know my first post was way to long but its a start, i hope to get better as time goes by.

Getting to Paraguay has always been an adventure. For one, Paraguay is not a destination country. What this means is that Paraguay is not on a lot of peoples maps for tourist travel, business travel and really for those individuals going for the sheer pleasure of travel.

Don't get me wrong, I love Paraguay, the people that I have met and the attitude of the people at the hospital we work with is great. But, it is not for everyone. I'll give some Paraguay history on a later blog, i think it is somewhat fascinating.

One of the primary difficulties in getting to Asuncion is the fact that we have to travel using TAM airlines. If you have never had to use TAM, the Brazilian airline, you don't know what you have been missing. Knowing they are a monopoly makes them very indifferent to customer service or efficiency. They try to be professional, nice little uniforms, nice clean planes (at least the ones from Miami to Sao Paulo) however they are a nightmare when it comes to professionalism. We may complain a lot about US air travel now days, but to better appreciate what we have I dare anyone to use TAM. First of all their US agents have no authority to approve anything. As a group we try to get group mission rates, however you cannot call someone and discuss the price, itinerary or schedule. You send your request via e-mail (it used to be via fax) to the US agent, they forward it to Sao Paulo Brazil and then after a few days, 1 week or more. After you have successfully guessed the right combination you are given a written contract which more than likely is wrong *ours had the wrong dates approved so we are traveling a day earlier than planned.

The last time we traveled on TAM we were not told that our group was booked on two different flights on our second leg. Once we were in Sao Paulo, we found that half the group was booked one flight that was leaving about 1/2 hour before the second group, so some got there earlier than others. Some of us on one flight made a stop, a stop that was not even on the ticket we were issued or the itinerary, just to add to the excitement. We were flying along then the plane landed at Iguazu Falls, on the Brazil / Paraguay border, to pick up about 4 or 5 passengers. These planes are also not in the best shape either, they shake, vibrate, rattle and looked like they may have transported livestock at some point (but the flight attendants have nice uniforms).

We discovered quite by chance that our return flight from Asuncion to Sao Paulo had been discontinued, not cancelled, discontinued. If we had not gone by the local TAM office in Asuncion one day to get copies of our seating assignments we wouldn't have found out until the day of our flight. Keep in mind we had a group of 45 people and had to re-book everyone on a different flight. TAM had no intention of notifying us that the flight had been discontinued and that we would need to rebook on a different flight.

The adventure this time is really no different. We have received our confirmation and it had errors in it and we were told "oh its ok, they can fix that at the airport". Not quite satisfied with that answer we did request a corrected and confirmed itinerary, which they did issue. They are also going to issue everyone tickets, not that this guarantees anything, we could still get to the airport and find there are no seats available. The travel agent we used for this specializes in mission travel and send people all over the world and she has indicated that TAM is by far one of the most difficult airlines the work with.

Oh well, its all about the adventure. I'll let ya know how it goes.

It is what it is.