Haiti - Guatemala

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We said goodbye to Major Lucien Lamartiniere and boarded our flight to Guatemala, via Miami. Our transit time in Miami was short and we were a little worried when we realised that our bags weren’t checked all the way through - in the United States now you have to collect your bags and then re-check them in, even if you are a transit passenger… So we impatiently started the process of getting through all the appropriate lines: the line for customs, the wait for our luggage, the line for quarantine, and the extra-long line at the security check-point! Luckily for us our plane was delayed by an hour, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it.

So our poor hosts in Guatemala were waiting at the airport for us for two hours by the time we finally arrived. Major Manuel Munoz, the Divisional Commander for Guatemala is a great guy. He doesn’t speak much English and our Spanish is very very poor but through a series of ridiculous hand gestures and constant referrals to our Spanish/English dictionary we managed to exchange pleasantries and organise the next few days of filming.

It was a huge relief for the guys to walk outside the airport in Guatemala City and not be hit by a heat-wave! The temperatures here are much the same as Sydney on an Autumn day - much more pleasant for filming.

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