Ecuador 2/22/2022 - 3/8/2022 |
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Monday, March 7, 2022 / Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - DepartureI took the day off from work so that we could prepare for our trip home, as well as spend as much time as possible with the kids before leaving. We always used to get early morning flights out of Ecuador, but now those flights don't exist, and are red-eyes instead. Maybe that has to do with the logistics of COVID testing, etc.This morning, we woke up early. We needed to take our COVID-19 test today in order to be able to fly back home on a red-eye tonight. We had our Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag test kits, and needed to do a video call with EMed to administer the test. If, for some reason, this whole self-testing process didn't work, we would still have time to go to the lab near the airport and get tested there. But we needed to know one way or the other. I went first, initiating a video chat with an EMed representative. They scanned the QR code from my test, and then I took the test on camera. Then I disconnected from the call, waited 15 minutes, and then reconnected for them to verify my results. My result was negative, and then they uploaded that result to their Navica app. Once my test was complete, we repeated the process for Craig. He was also negative. The entire testing process for the two of us took about an hour start to finish. Once they had uploaded both of our results to Navica, I was then able to upload the results to the veriFLY app. Now that we had both tested negative within 24 hours of our flight, I could also fill out our flight attestation forms online. It was a lot of coordination, but by breakfast time, we were good to go. This would mean that we could leave for the airport at 8:30 p.m. as planned, and enjoy the rest of the day with the kids. We went into the kitchen and told Aida the good news that we were COVID-19 negative. She prepared breakfast: scrambled eggs with tomato and onion, bread, bologna, yogurt, and coffee. We cleaned up the casita and packed while the kids were in school. Unfortunately, there was no water today. So much for taking showers before our long, red-eye journey home. It figured. We gave Dashel a stuffed dog that we had brought for her. She doesn't seem to play with toys much, but we had seen her playing with a doll or stuffed animal once in a while. She didn't seem interested in the dog until Antonio pretended to want it. After that, you couldn't get it away from her. For lunch, we had soup, melloco, chicken, and rice. Dashel would say "wowow!" to her stuffed dog, and she made each of us give it a kiss at the lunch table. It was adorable! We went back to the casita to finish packing. The kids knocked on the door and asked if we could come over to the main house. They presented us with beautiful jackets that Aida had made for us. We were really humbled by the gift. We tried them on, and they fit perfectly. Antonio and Aida had the kids put on the winter coats that we had brought for them. We all stood together for a photo. New jackets all around! The water came back on. Unfortunately, it was now late enough that we had already packed away most of our stuff, and it wasn't convenient to take a full-on shower. Craig was, however, at least able to wash his hair, which he had really wanted to do before flying home. Sisa, Yupanqui, and Shina all wrote us goodbye notes, decorated them, and folded paper into an envelope. Shina and Yupanqui gave us bouquets of flowers that they had picked for us. It was really sweet of them all. The family had offered us dinner, but we didn't want a huge meal before the winding drive to the airport. So we had coffee and ham sandwiches, which hit the spot perfectly. In the past, the flights home were always early in the morning, and we would leave the house before dawn. The kids would be asleep, and they may or may not have woken up enough to give us groggy hugs. But this time, we would be leaving in the evening, when kids were fully awake and aware. It made it harder to say goodbye both for them and for us. Add to that the fact that it had been 2.5 years since our last visit, and they didn't want us to leave. We said our emotional goodbyes and thanks to the family, with a promise that we would be back later this year for Sisa's confirmation if at all possible. The car arrived at 8:28 p.m. We arrived at the airport by 10:20. There was a huge check in line at the Amerian counter, but there was a completely empty veriFLY line. I flashed the app at the the guy behind the desk and he proceeded to check us in. No additional paperwork checks, etc. The up-front time uploading all of our documents this morning had paid dividends. We were planning to take our normal duffel bags as carry-on, but we were told that they were too big (although this had not been the case in the past, we noticed once on the plane that the obverhead bins were considerably smaller than normal). So we transferred some items to smaller carry-on bags and checked the duffels. We went through security, and when the attendant saw Craig's cane, they opened a new lane for him. Then we went through immigration, through the handicapped lane. We arrived at the gates with plenty of time to kill before our 1:50 a.m. flight. It was amazing how bustling the airport was this late at night. The restaurants and stores were still open, as there were so many red-eye flights. Craig usually eats at Fly Chicken Fly, and I usually get food from Pizza Famiglia. Neither restaurant was there any more, and the ones that replaced them did not seem to be open at this hour. Johnny Rockets was still there and was open, so we ordered burgers, fries, onion rings, and we shared a vanilla shake. The burger was actually quite disappointing...an overdone, tasteless, small hockey puck of meat topped with a huge piece of iceberg lettuce and a slab of tomato. But the vanilla shake was delicious! After eating, I went to Republica del Cacao and bought some of our favorite chocolate bars. We went to our gate at 11:30 p.m. The flight took off on time and was uneventful. We tried our best to rest. When we arrived in Miami, a wheelchair picked Craig up. We were taken to a wheelchair holding area where we waited for someone to take us through immigration and security. There were many wheelchair-bound passengers waiting, and they were very impatient. The way things work is that they take you in the order of your connecting flight departure times to make sure that everyone makes their flight ontime. You may end up spending the majority of your layover in the wheelchair holding area. This makes people very upset. They want to get to their gates with time to eat, etc. They end up being very nasty to the employees who are really just there to help. Some people refuse to wait and hobble their way to immigration/security/and their gate themselves. We waited patiently and were very polite to the flustered, underappreciated workers. We ended up being the last ones collected from the waiting area, but when somebody did come for us, the process was quite efficient. There was a huge line at immigration, but since we have Global Entry, we were able to go to a kiosk. The kiosks use to take your photo and scan your fingerprints. For some reason, the machine always had a hard time reading my fingerprints. I was pleased to see that fingerprints are no longer a requirement; the photo suffices for identification. They must be using some kind of retinal scan or other scary technology to accomplish that. Once through immigration, we collected our checked duffel bags and re-checked them. Then we went through security and to our gate. I found a Dunkin Donuts and got a coffee for Craig and a chocolate milk for myself. After being on a plane all night, our stomachs were still full from Johnny Rockets and we were not hungry for breakfast. Our flight took off on time at 8:45 a.m. We arrived back in Boston just after noon, and took a taxi home after a long night of travel. |
 Yupanqui and Dashel  Yupanqui and Dashel  New coats!  Sisa practicing her guitar See all photos from March 7 |
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