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We woke up at 7 a.m. and I took a shower. We re-packed everything for the flight home. Now that we had given out all of our gifts, we wouldn't have to check a bag and reclaim it in Miami, thank goodness. Humberto came by at 7:45 and we said our goodbyes to him because he had to go to work. This is his busy season and he worked every day of our visit, which is of course good for the family.
At around 8 o'clock Paulina came into our room and called us next door to breakfast. We finished up and went to the dining room. She asked if we wanted her to make us eggs or whether the carrot cake that Vilma had brought to yesterdays party was fine. We have tasted Vilma's baking before (she had baked her own wedding cake which we had enjoyed on a previous trip), so we were eager to try the carrot cake. It lived up to her reputation and we supplemented it with a nice cup of coffee. Yoselin was the first of the kids to get up, but was followed quickly by everyone else. Aracely was playing with her new teddy bear. Eddy was sleepy, being carried around by Paulina. As he woke up a bit he sat on my lap at the table. He accidentally spilled his coffee on both me and himself. He wasn't even fooling around; it was just as accident. But of course this couldn't happen on any other day when I could just rinse off my pants and hang them up to dry. Now I had to pack them away wet in my luggage and find something else clean enough to wear home. After changing Eddy's shirt, Paulina ran off down the street and returned with a bottle of Gatorade for each of us. They always take such good care of us! Paola returned from her cousin Elizabeth's at 9 o'clock. At 9:15 Adrin picked us up in the van. All of the kids had decided to go with us and Paulina to the airport, which made us happy. Parting seems less sad when we don't need to make the three hour journey to the city all alone. Craig sat up front and chatted with Adrin. The kids and I napped. It had been a busy few days. Poor Aracely got a bit carsick. This happens to her every time she rides in a car, and we felt that she was such a trooper to voluntarily undertake a 6 hour round trip journey just to say goodbye to us. We arrived at the airport shortly after 12 noon. Everyone got out of the van, and Paulina asked Adrin to get a group photo of the nine of us. We got our last hugs and kisses from everyone and said our goodbyes. When they crossed the street to go back to the van, Eddy kept looking back at us, wondering why we weren't following them. The girls understand we'll be back in July, but Eddy is still too young to remember the goodbye ritual from past trips, and exactly what it meant. We headed into the airport and checked in at American Airlines. Then we headed upstairs to the food court and enjoyed a 2 piece meal with fries and a Mirinda orange soda at Pollo Campero. We noticed that they no longer have the cute little plastic ketchup cups they used to have; they use regular ketchup packets instead. The end of an era. We laughed that we actually have a couple of the old plastic cups at home, with some of our Guatemala mementoes. Travelers no longer need to pay airport tax at a separate booth at thei airort; it is now included in the price of the ticket. So we were able to go straight to security. We wondered how strict they would be this time. On our last trip they had confiscated Craig's (smaller than 3 ounce) bottle of baby powder, something we had never known them to do. But this time we had no such problems. Over the past few years they have really made a lot of improvements to the Guatemala City airport. There are now many restaurant choices as well as a lot of artisan's shops and duty-free boutiques. We walked through the upscale terminal and sat at our gate at around 1 o'clock. Our flight boarded on time and took off as scheduled at 3:15. There was a shrieking baby sitting behind us, and we were never more thankful to have our iPod loaded with some hard rocking Black Sabbath to drown out the extended noise. When we landed in Miami, we hustled over to Immigration. From getting in line to getting through both Immigration, Customs, AND security, it took around 20 minutes. It was too easy. That must be some kind of record for Miami. We were feeling good - we should have known that Miami still had something in store for us. We looked at the departures board and saw that the Boston flight was scheduled for gate D49. That gate was pretty far from security, so we needed to take the Sky Train. When we got to the gate, we got seats and I went to try to find some food. It is always challenging to find any decent food in Miami International Airport. But I found some fresh pizza slices and Gatorades, which would do quite nicely. Unfortunately, as I don't have 4 hands, I had to stack the paper plates of pizza on top of one another and the cheese stuck to the paper plates. Craig and I were peeling cheese away from paper as we heard an announcement that there had been a gate change for the Boston plane. Great, now we had to scarf down the rest of our pizza, pick up our bags, and go back to the Sky Train. The plane would now be departing from gate D33. That was back where we had started, near Security! We finally ended up back where we had just come from half an hour before. Sweaty from running around the airport, we found some seats and awaited boarding. The crew reported that someone had gotten sick on the plane, and it required some cleaning. They let us board anyway, and while we were on the gangway we saw the dirty seat cushion leaning against the wall. As we got to our seats, we noticed that the seat in question was in our same row, across the aisle. I could have bet money on it. The seat cushion had been taken out but they hadn't noticed the neighboring seatbelt was also dirty. So there were two young women across the aisle from us who had no place to sit. A maintenance worker replaced the seat belt and cushions, and we thought that we would finally be on our way after a short delay. But no, the crew announecd that maintenance needed to come and take care of yet another seat issue. This seemed odd and unlikely. And more of a delay. As if we hadn't been sweaty enough running all over the airport, the heat was blasting in the plane. We were very uncomfortable. Then thec crew announced that there were "baggage issues", and that we still needed to refuel. Refuel? How many delays could a single plane have? We were stuck in our seats waiting for all of these supposed issues to clear up. We had been scheduled to depart at 9 o'clock. At 10:35, they announced that all of the bags were now on the plane. Why had it taken an extra hour and a half to get the bags on the plane? But at least now we could be on our way. We pulled away from the gate at 10:40...and wound up taxiing and sitting on the runway. We didn't take off until 11:03. We were officially 2 hours late, on a night when we had to work the next morning. We were not in the best moods by a long shot. We were thirsty and bordering on dehydration. We couldn't wait to get our drinks. But when the drinks came out, there was not even a cart. The flight attendant asked each row what they wanted, walked all the wayto the back of the plane to get the drinks, and then walked all the way back to the passengers to deliver the drinks. It was painstakingly slow and we thought that we really were being ppunished bvy the travel gods for having made it through Miami immigration too efficiently. When will we learn, and stop booking flights through Miami? |
 Yasmin  Yoselin and Terry  Aracely  The van to Guatemala City  Saying goodbye at the airport  Pollo Campero at the airport |
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