The next morning I said goodbye to Nancy, along with my usual thank you postcard and went straight to the closest Avis centre. The staff here were really nice. I got a much better car - a Hyundai accent (with cruise control!) and for cheaper than the old car. I drove around Fort Pierce for a bit, which was actually quite a beautiful town. It had both a river and the Atlantic ocean next to it.

Pelicans by the water - they were totally unafraid of the humans

After having had a good look around Fort Pierce, I was just about to head towards towards Miami when I spotted an interesting looking bus parked in a parking lot. I stopped to take a closer look and clicked a few pictures since nobody was around. Just as I was walking towards my car, the owner of the bus, Bob, showed up and we started talking.

Bob told me that he, along with his dog Bogart was driving around the United States in the bus. He was giving talks at various schools around the country with themes promoting kindness, peace and harmony in the world. He also gave me a few stickers to distribute to children in my school in Ecuador.

If you’d like to read more about him, his website is called One Million Acts of Kindness

With Bob, Bogart & The Kindness Bus

Next stop was Miami, which was more or less as I had expected. It had tall buildings, busy traffic, mean looking people and tough looking policemen as every other big city in the US. Personally, I felt that it was a highly overrated place. I would rate Fort Pierce as being more beautiful. But of course if you have the money to live the posh life, then Miami is the place to be at.

Late in the evening, I went to Le Cafe, where the Miami couchsurfers were having their weekly meeting. They met every Wednesday, and I just happened to be at the right place on the right day. Some guy was teaching some basic Salsa steps to anyone who was interested, so I joined in as well for a while. Having danced some Salsa (and put up a dance performance) with some colleagues at work not too long ago, it was quite easy for me to dance along.

From there I drove to the airport, returned the car at the Avis outlet and took a shuttle bus to the main terminal. My flight to Bogota, Colombia was set to leave at seven in the morning, and the check-in process would start only at 4 am, so I had to wait.

Finally at 4 am, when I went to check myself in, I was in for a shock. The lady at the counter said that I could not board the flight as I didn’t have a visa to Colombia. I had assumed that I wouldn’t need a visa to just transit through Colombia, but as the famous saying goes, “Assumptions are the mother of all f***-ups”.

So here I was in the middle of yet another breakdown :)

So I had to cancel my flight from Miami to Bogota and also the onward flight from Bogota to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Then I bought a ticket on a direct flight to Ecuador. This, as you would expect, involved considerable damage to my pocket :(

But… there was no way around what had to be done, so I decided to try and forget about the loss and settled in to wait near the departure gate for the boarding process to begin. Just as they started letting passengers board the aircraft, I heard an announcement that said, “Passenger Gautam Kotian flying on blah blah to Guayaquil, Ecuador, please report to the airline staff”. I was like, “Oh great! Here we go again. Another breakdown!!”

As you can imagine, it was not everyday that an Indian flies from Miami to Ecuador, and this is probably what made them nervous. They asked to see the credit card I had used to purchase my tickets, wanted to know what exactly I was going to do in Ecuador, and some other related stuff. But these staff were really nice and polite, and not the least bit like the horrendous Air Arabia personnel.

Once they were satisfied that I was an ok guy after all, I finally joined my co-passengers on the plane.