A Post by Mack:
Hi, all!
I got home yesterday, but I'm very sick. I don't know how quickly I will be able to produce these trip reports, but I'll give it my best shot.
As many of you know, the visit I just made to my sponsored children was a "replacement trip" for the one I missed back in January due to illness and other complications. Good things come to those that wait, I guess, because my second visit attempt this year was planned to be more adventurous, rather than just a quick in-and-out affair. Instead of travelling mostly alone (but meeting up with Victor in Honduras), I arranged to go with a friend, and also to spend some time in Nicaragua (a new country for me) after the child visits.
My first step was to connect with my friend, Sam, in NYC, so we could fly together to Central America. Unfortunately, I was restricted to using Frequent Flyer miles, which offered no availability to JFK at such short notice. I began searching for an open FF flight to ANYWHERE on the Eastern seaboard, and Boston turned out to be the big winner. I took an overnight flight to Beantown, then relied on JetBlue Airlines for cheap one-way transport to JFK. I allowed myself four hours between the two flights (in case of complications), so I had plenty of time for a leisurely stroll – pushing a cart piled high with luggage – from Terminal A to Terminal C.
Here are a few airport security tips:
1. If you are transporting big bags of batteries to power children's toys, remove them from your carry-on before you run it through the x-ray machine. The guards don't like bags full of batteries.
2. Don't let Barbara (WorldTraveller) talk you into taking a pretty crystal knick-knack to her girl in Guatemala. The guards think that pretty knick-knacks are far too bomb-like to pass by without through inspection.
3. If you DO transport a gift for Barbara, don't carry it in a pretty box tied with a big bow. Otherwise, you will have to re-tie the big bow after each suspicious bomb-scare (3 times, in my case.).
When I got to New York (two hours late because of a delayed cheap JetBlue flight), Sam was waiting for me at our hotel. We headed first to Central Park, where I had some business to attend to, and then we hit the closest Target store to shop for our kids.
We took TACA Airlines from NYC to Guatemala. This is a reliable and affordable (keep an eye out for specials) airline to use if you are travelling to Central or South America, but they fly out of only a handful of select U.S. cities. Check their website to see if you live close enough. I don't.
One great thing about TACA is that they allow a whopping TWO free bags! Hence our visit to Target to take full advantage of this generosity. However, our Target shopping experience was less than successful. This particular store was a mess! Pretty much all of the merchandise was in one huge pile in the middle of the floor, and you had to dig through and wrestle with other shoppers to grab the items you needed. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the place was extremely disorganized. I hate shopping in the best of circumstances, and this Target was so frustratingly crowded and confusing that I just gave up. The one cool thing about the store was that it was the first place either Sam or I had seen an escalator with a mechanism for moving shopping carts to the second floor. That was fun to play with.
Our shopping took longer than anticipated, so we headed straight to Manhattan to catch a Broadway show without going back to the hotel to drop our bags. After some research, we decided that we couldn't afford Broadway, so we settled for "Off" instead.
The next morning, we enjoyed a pleasant flight to Guatemala City, with a brief layover in San Salvador. Our goal was to spend as little time in violence-ridden GC as possible, which was easy since my sponsored child is lucky enough to live outside of beautiful Antigua, about 45 away. We arranged for someone from our hostel to pick us up at the airport and drive us straight to Antigua. He graciously slowed down for me to take photos of Pizza Huts, which was all that the big city had to offer me.
I'm sure that you've all been following the storm situation in Guatemala. At the time of our visit, many major roads were closed due to mud slides. We were fortunate that the route between GC and Antigua was not affected.
We stayed at Casa Bellona, a quiet hostel on the edge of the city. The owner, Danielle, was very helpful and friendly. A basic private room with shared bathroom cost us $22 per night (Dorms = $8 a bed). A good breakfast of cereal, fruit, and toast is included
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