I spent the morning packing my backs and taking the excess stuff I didn't wish to take with me to my storage locker. With most things packed yesterday, this morning was meant to be a stress-free day, but now I had to rush to the offices of my International Credit Card company as they needed to issue me with a replacement, as they were changing their systems while I will be away and cancelling my current card. So I left my Airbnb at 12:30, picked up my new card from Old Street and rushed to Heathrow for my flight at 5:05 pm, bound for Cartagena, Columbia with a long layer in Philadelphia and a short layover in Miami.

Everyone had boarded the plane very quickly, and we were ready to leave ahead of schedule until they discovered a "defect" on the outside of the aircraft, which needed to be checked by an engineer. This took nearly 45 minutes to say it was just a scratch. Now given the all clear to leave, the pilot tells us there are 26 planes ahead of us before when can go, eventually, we took off at 6:16 pm, 1 hour 11 mins late. ??Other than the delay, my first leg London to Philadelphia was nice, I had a Thai Red Chicken Curry for dinner, which is probably the nicest meal I ever had on a plane, watched a movie, and then tried to sleep, although I really only shut my eyes.

Due to the delay, we arrived in Philadelphia 41 minutes late at 20:40 (local time) and what was going to be a really long and boring wait in the airport until my flight at 5:00 am has become a good layover. Kirby, a friend from my recent Intrepid tour Kruger, Coast, and Cape, had offered to get a train up from Washington D.C. to Philly to show me the city.

It quite common for American airlines to not allow bags to be checked through to the final destination, so before I could leave I had to collect my bags and take them to a conveyor belt to re-check my bags through to Cartagena. Little did I know that it'll be a long time before I see them again. I managed to clear immigration and customs etc. by 10:00 PM. and I caught an Uber to Bar Hygge, where we spent the night drinking beers and cocktails until 3:00 am when I left to go back to the airport. While in the Uber, I suddenly realized how exhausted I was and struggled to stay awake. This was even worse when waiting at the gate for my next flight; I had to stand up to keep myself awake, fearing I would fall asleep and miss my flight. Twice, I actually fell asleep while standing up and woke up while falling over, both times managing to catch myself before actually falling over. When finally boarded, I fell asleep as soon as I was seated and slept through the safety demonstration and even takeoff, waking up about 1 hour into the 3-hour flight. The remainder of the next two flights and layer were quite uneventful.

Upon arriving at Cartagena, due to where I was seated on the plane, I was one of the last people off the plane and therefore arrive at a full queue at immigration. The line was processed quite quickly; however, this meant I was one of the last people to the bag collection, where, a BA staff member had pulled the remaining c10 bags on the conveyor belt and placed them on the ground nearby. Realising that my bags were not there I asked if more were coming, but this was everything. After doing some investigation, we discovered my bags had never left Philadelphia.

Eventually, I caught an Uber to the hotel. I am sharing a room with an older Australian man from Melbourne. We had our orientation meeting tonight at 6:00 pm there are 13 of us on this tour, plus Jass our tour guide and Herald, our driver, an Aussie from Caboolture who used to work in the mines driving trucks. We have a good mix of ages and genders, so fingers crossed we have a good group. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant the guide had booked, I had a very nice Chicken Teriyaki (pollo teriyaki), however, I was a bit of a walking zombie at dinner, so I didn't participate much, but everyone seems nice.

Off to bed, as we need to be ready for an 8:00 am walking tour of Cartagena tomorrow.