Its been 'one of those journeys' to Roldanillo! The theme has been 'no hay sistema' (the system is down) so far.
It started with all the check-in systems at Barcelona airport crashing and Avianca having to do check-in and baggage by hand using random lists.
The 2 1/2 hour flight delay due to this meant that i, along with 95% of the people on board missed their onward connection on Monday evening. These same 300 people all then queued (not accustomed behaviour for the largely South American group, so lots of waving of hands and pointy elbow tactics were visible) for another hour+ to change tickets for the following day which caused the system to crash in Avianca reservations in Bogotá airport. Eventually after midnight I had a new flight to Cali and a hotel for the night in Bogotá.
The rush of 300 people arriving at the hotel caused a queue which tailed out of the door as we waited for room allocation. Finally at nearly 2am I had a room key and was looking forward to a shower and a nice sleep before the morning flight when the hotel staff announced that the bus to take us back to the airport would leave at 4am!!
So much for any sleep! Fearing that I would miss the flight and unable to get a wake-up call booked as reception was permanently engaged I dozed fitfully watching the clock reach 3:30 am and time to get up.
Trying to check-out i ended up in another queue of 50+ people as guess what - the hotel systems went down so they couldn't check room bills or issue check-out vouchers for the return bus.
But all queues eventually come to an end and I am now in Roldanillo, just had a much longed-for breakfast of 'huevos pericos con arepa' and am now destined for a few hours desperately needed sleeeeeppppppp...hasta zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz