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Published: August 7th 2010
Guatemala Here I Come
From Woodhouse to Antigua.
It’s a long haul from
Mansfield Woodhouse to
Antigua in
Guatemala.
I travel down to London the day before my flight and then it’s up at stupid o’clock to get the tube up to
Heathrow for my early morning flight. I’m normally not very alert in the mornings so my first visit to the new
Terminal 5 at Heathrow is wasted on me. I’m not awake enough to really appreciate it or form any opinions. Everything seems to run fairly smoothly though. In fact today is a good day - the volcano is behaving itself and the cabin crew aren’t on strike.
I strike lucky because the guy I’m sitting next to on the flight has recently been travelling in
Guatemala. He’s formed a very positive impression on his travels and all the places he recommends I go to are on my itinerary!
Miami
I have 5 hours to kill at
Miami Airport before my connecting flight onto
Guatemala City. The officials at the airport help me fill some of the time though. I can remember in the “good old days” when being in transit just meant getting off one aircraft and onto another. But here I’m made to feel really important - I’m photographed and fingerprinted and I have to reassure the customs officials that my small piece of hand luggage is actually full of cameras and not soil or farm animals.
I also finally manage to get hold of some Guatemalan
Quetzales at Miami airport. I’m sure that the rate was quite extortionate but at least I’ve now got enough currency to get me from
Guatemala City to
Antigua and to my hotel when I arrive.
Ooops! Wrong Country!
The final leg of the flight should be a fairly short flight from
Miami to
Guatemala City. But as we are landing at Guatemala the pilot seems to change his mind at the last minute and aborts the landing. I get the feeling that that we then do at least one circle before heading off in a straight line. This is the bit where I expect the stewardess to tell us not to panic and casually ask if anyone knows how to fly a plane. The poor lady sat next to me is getting plenty of exercise crossing herself every time we go through some turbulence.
Eventually the pilot tells us that we are making a short detour to
Managua “to refuel” and could we please keep our seatbelts on. The flight to Managua takes more than an hour. Is there no fuel in Guatemala? When we land at
Managua we are eventually told that we are being taken to hotels in the city. Managua airport is shut. They obviously weren’t expecting us and everyone has gone home. There are two staff from American Airlines there who deal with us quite efficiently - it could have taken much much longer to deal with an aircraft full of people and get them on shuttles off to various hotels!
And I get to spend a night in
Nicaragua which means that I can add it to my visited countries list! That counts, doesn’t it?? One night in a hotel near the airport?
I later found out from one of the young Guatemalans on the flight that there had been a very severe storm over Guatemala City that night. The weather had been so bad that his mother couldn't get to the airport to meet him. Perhaps a good thing that we landed somewhere else.
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Helen
non-member comment
natural distasters
I see that you havnt lost the knack for being in the middle of a natural disaster. If I didnt know that you were UK based at the time I might think that you went volcano visiting earlier in the year.