A serendipitious experience in Colombia.

Serendipity the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

This word accurately sums up the strange unfolding of events that luckily happened to me in Colombia. One minute I'm waiting in the airport in Bogota, and the next I'm having a flight attendant apologize to me while I stare dumbfounded by what is happening. I couldn't tell if my bag got lost or if I was about to get deported. All I could catch in the riff-raff of airport lunacy was,
Lo siento, lo siento. Venga, por favor.

Damn, I thought, whatever she was saying was probably really terrible so I decided my best defense was to play the "no entiendo" card and keep a firm stance. I had a list of excuses and practiced phrases for when the time was going to come when they asked about my onward going ticket. I had already sneaked through two gates and was not about to get sent home on the third. I was going to tell them that I left the flight copy in my check-in bag, or I have buss ticket, or I'm a student, or pleaseee just don't send me back!! Then this girl from Miami who I had been talking to started to congratulate me,
"Wow! That is great. I can't believe you just got a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world!"

Huh? I said.

"Yeah" the girl from Miami continued "Since they overbooked your flight they are compensating you with a round-trip ticket, putting you up in a hotel for the night with a free dinner and breakfast, and you are getting on the first-class flight to Quito in the morning."

At this point my confusion had escalated into baffled enthusiasm! I had purchased a ticket to Quito, Ecuador with a layover in Bogota because it was cheaper to fly there instead of Colombia, but I had no intention to hop on the connecting flight. If only the dear flight attendant lady knew that this wasn't a problem at all, but a dream come true! I only paid $175 bucks for the flight from Costa Rica to Bogota and now they are giving me an open ended voucher good for one year to anywhere Avianca fly's to. Wahooooooo!

Anyway the lady takes my hand and leads me and a handful of pissed off others to this underground VIP room in the Bogota airport. Alright, now I'm going to get to see how the drugs are smuggled through:) We wait and wait and wait and finally we get our new tickets for the morning, the round-trip voucher, and airport pick-up to the hotel which ended up not being a hotel but a resort! It took me nearly 30 minutes to clean the drool from my face because of how far my jaw dropped when I opened the door to my room. There was a huge walk-in glass shower with more showerheads then I have fingers or toes. I had never been so excited about showering in my life until I saw that bathroom! There was a surround sound IPOD system, 30inch flat screen, bottled room service, 2 themperpedic mattress beds, and an entrance to a garden..

I still can't believe it. I have a ticket back to the States or Europe or Asia or who cares! I'm just glad serendipity finally found me.

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Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity.Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of...."

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what I've learned from this fabulous tale is that quests are meant for conquering and conquering means possession and anything possessed can be lost. The only thing that matters is what one may discover along the way. So keep your eyes open and your mind wider to all things thought impossible because nothing ever was to begin with. Impossible is just the stuff that hasn't been discovered yet.