-24 days: intercontinental one-way ticket booked for 153eur

Now there’s a departure date & time, and finally a destination!

Departure: Tuesday 31st May 2011, 13:25, Amsterdam

Arrival: Tuesday 21st May 2011, 17:24, Panama City (Panama’)

The one-way ticket is booked, for the amazing price of ~150 euro spending a fair amount of KLM airmiles (30.000).

How to spend so little for an intercontinental flight on a major airline company??

My suggestions are simple:

- register to frequent flyer programs and start collecting airmiles. If you’re not going it already, START IMMEDIATELY and make sure they give you a “welcome” amount of airmiles when you join;

- get a credit card that awards you with airmiles for each euro/dollar spent, AND USE IT TO PAY EVERY EXPENSE YOU CAN. Really, it’s so easy to use the credit card instead of the debit card and get airmiles, I don’t know why many people don’t realize that.

Back to the Salsa WalkAbout… it took some time to decide between Panama’ and Bogota’.
I wanted a city where I could ease in and settle down and both are good options.

But arriving in Panama’ and then entering Colombia via boat through the Darien Gap is too tempting of an adventure to avoid… not to mention the Salsa tradition that is best represented by Ruben Blades, and the Panama Canal, one of the biggest engineering marvels not far from the city.

So Panama’ will be.

Below the steps on the KLM website to get a one-way ticket Amsterdam-Panama for ~150 EUR (if you have 30.000 miles available), to remember this historic moment :)

Selecting airports and dates:

Choosing the date – as 1-2-3 June are either not available or too expensive in terms of miles, I opted to anticipate the departure to 31st May:

Direct flight, YUPPIE!

154eur only… I LIKE IT:

Choosing seat is very important – I like aisle in the central row, to have space and don’t have to stand up too often.
And as far as the tale of the plane as possible – but this time the front rows have been already taken.

Your booking was successful, time to open a bottle and celebrate:

I should have enough miles left for the trip back…