Columnist Melanie Umbaugh writes about dealing with travel plans gone wrong.
Though I’ve enjoyed exploring the city of Buenos Aires over the course of the last two months (and I can’t believe it’s been two months!), I still want to travel more within Argentina while I’m here.
Recently, some friends and I planned a trip to go to El Calafate, a southern town in Argentina known for its beautiful glaciers. We had a couple days off of school and wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity. The day before our planned departure, we realized the plane tickets we’d purchased were incorrect and instead of going to El Calafate, they went to a port city roughly 1,300 miles away.
We had just bought the tickets and booked our hostel a couple days prior, so the whole trip had been planned in a rush, and we totally missed the fact that our plane tickets were for a completely different part of the country. We were so excited about being able to find such cheap tickets so last minute, and that all came crashing down as I desperately searched the airline’s website for cancellation information that Tuesday night.
The airline website (and the hostel reservation) made no assurances that we would be able to cancel the tickets or get a refund, and my friend’s call to the airline was just as unfruitful. Luckily, my host sister offered to call the airline on my behalf and she was able to work everything out. It turns out its policy involves keeping the ticket open if the customer misses their flight, so I was able to cancel the flight I’d purchased, which left me with a credit through that airline. I canceled my hostel reservation (for a fee, ugh), and managed to avoid any huge repercussions beyond that.
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Moral of the story? Spontaneous travel is awesome, but don’t neglect due diligence. Some extra research would have saved me some money and a whole lot of stress. Everything worked out fairly well, considering the biggest consequence was the disappointment of not being able to go on the exciting trip I had planned. Instead, my friends and I tried to enjoy our extra days off in Buenos Aires (and enjoy not being charged for plane tickets we couldn’t use), and we visited some new parts of the city we hadn’t seen and tried to make the most of our time.
I’m still embarrassed by how simple a mistake got us into such a mess, but that’s how it goes sometimes, and I certainly won’t make the same mistake again. It doesn’t take much time staring at a useless plane ticket you might still have to pay for to teach you the importance of research and double — make it triple — checking every detail. This has definitely not ruined travel for me, and I’m excited to use my open ticket for a trip to a different part of Argentina in the near future, with much more planning, of course.
Melanie Umbaugh is a sophomore studying theater who is studying in Buenos Aires this semester. Have you had travel plans go totally wrong? Email her at mu495313@ohio.edu.
