Into the Southern US with a bit of a hiccup

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Its the end of our time in Central America. We're now heading for Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for Keith's conference, with a night in Houston on the way.

On the tarmac at Guatemala City airport, we're feeling very sad to see the end of our stint in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Of course we're also looking forward to spending some time in the States, but expecting a bit of a culture shock. Suddenly a huge brown butterfly appears inside the closed plane above the hand luggage compartments. As we're quietly admiring it and wondering how to get it out of the plane, other tourists see it and some start screaming, apparently thinking there's a bat on the plane! Next minute theres a tall white guy leaping up to save the day, grabbing at the butterfly's wings with his fingertips! We sit astounded as in his grabbing he pulls chunks from its wings until finally he has it between his fingers and the flight attendant opens the door to let it back out into the Guatemalan air. The three of us glance at each other in disbelief. It all seems like a metaphor - the clumsy white guy probably now feeling like a hero and the beautiful misunderstood Guatemalan butterfly now injured and left to its fate...

On that note, we leave Guatemala. Apart from amazing views of Guatemala City and the countryside around it, the flight is uneventful and we touch down in Houston on time. Its exciting to be in another part of the world, but we're over that excitement after we've spent 2 hours waiting in a queue to get through immigration. We'd already had our photos and fingerprints taken when we had a short stopover in LA on the way to Guatemala, but that doesn't seem to make any difference to the process. Photos and fingerprints again when we finally get to the front of the queue.

We're now in a culture where everything is big. A big country, big voices, big vehicles, and lots of big people. The culture shock has set in already. We catch a shuttle to our hotel and sprawl across the king size bed surrounded by flyers for takeout and delivery food. Venturing out into the heat, we find the only restaurant around is Denny's with chilly airconditioning and the compulsory big feeds. So we hoe in.

After a big sleep we get a shuttle back to the airport for our flight on to Knoxville, Tennessee. We're pretty early and there are no queues, so we have heaps of time before our 10:30am plane leaves. We find the gate, then locate some comfy seats around the corner and settle in to play backgammon as we wait. As it gets closer to the time for our flight we check back in at the gate, only to find that the sign no longer says Knoxville. Getting that sinking feeling, we have a quick word with the attendant who tells us that 10:30 was the time of departure, not boarding! The flight has closed and our bags are on their way to Knoxville without us! The most straightforward flight we've had so far and we missed it.

So follows all sorts of discussions with officials and traipsing from one end of the terminal to the other to work out how we now get to Knoxville. We're hoping that if we do get on another flight that our stupidity won't cost us the price of another ticket. Even worse, in the back of our minds is the warning we'd had when we booked our round the world tickets, that if we don't get on one of our booked flights that every one of the later flights around the world will be cancelled. Add to it that the original plan for the afternoon had involved locating a computer to allow Keith to prepare for his presentation at the conference. Things are slightly tense.

After many discussions and a little bit of eyelash batting (that's Tessa) we manage to get on an early afternoon flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. We should be in Gatlinburg by about 10pm. All is on track until the pilot announces that we're circling over Charlotte because the airport has closed due to a thunderstorm. Luckily before we run out of fuel it opens again and we're on the ground in Charlotte. All good except for the backlog of passengers waiting for delayed planes. Time for us to wander the airport, try out the plentiful rocking chairs (just like a Southern porch) and check out some of the displays on aviation history. There's even a replica of the plane flown by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. Finally they announce that our plane and pilot have arrived and our now very delayed flight to Knoxville departs with us on board at about 8:30pm.

When we touch down in Knoxville all thats left is to collect our luggage that came on the morning flight and to get transport to Gatlinburg to our bed for the night. But when we find the left luggage office it's closed and there's not a soul to be seen anywhere from that airline. Peering in the window we can see our bags, but its over an hour til someone turns up and we get our hands on them. By then the only option available is a taxi for the hour trip to Gatlinburg. Keith slips into negotiation mode and gets us a better price and we're on our way.

Its an entertaining last leg of the trip, with our taxi driver enlightening us on American politics, drugs and music, and switching between famous voices on the talking satellite navigation system. Instead of reaching Gatlinburg around midday, its after midnight when we arrive, feeling a little sheepish and vowing to be much more careful when checking the boarding and departure times for our next flights!

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Photos

A beautiful butterfly emigrant
The 'before' photo

The crew arrive in the US
All smiles before it all goes awry

You're not in Guatemala now, Mr Gorf
Waiting for a shuttle at Houston airport

Start as you mean to go on
A standard size US meal

All under control at the airport
But what's that plane I hear leaving?