
Delta Surprised Us!
I just have to rave about how awesome our trip was Wednesday. With so many things that could have gone wrong our slight anxiety was wiped away time after time. From the Rio Dulce, the Guatemala City airport is a 5 hour drive. We timed our arrival exactly 3 hours early in order to have plenty of time to check our 7 pieces of luggage and two kitties. Although we’ve heard horror stories of accidents and roadblocks we went along without a hitch! We arrived on time We wiped our brows, whew!
As we approached the check in counter I noticed it was completely empty. We were greeted by a pleasant airline employee and were told exactly what our charges would be before we handed over our precious plastic “magic” card! Overall, we each had 2 bags, plus 1 extra. Each second bag was $40 and the extra one was $150, really NOT that bad, considering it’s all we have left you know! The kitties were cleared to ride together in the larger carrier which ended up saving us $224. Bonus!! We leisurely moved to the inspection of our carry-on items and our body scan. Here we were once again treated with respect and patience, the only thing I lost to the travel police was my new knitting needles and a couple pairs of tweezers that I totally forgot were even in that bag!
Our plane arrived on time and we were so happy everything was falling into place we practically skipped onto the Delta 757. This leads me to my next rave session. The last time we flew we took Spirit airlines and made jokes about how terrible the seats and service were. Granted we paid a third of the cost roughly $90 one way from GUA to MIA. I cannot remember the last time I took a flight that wasn’t on with a budget company like Spirit. Our tickets with Delta were one way from GUA to ATL and cost about $400. EEEK! Yet, we had the most fun on this flight than I can EVER remember on a flight since I was Gia’s age! Every seat was leather and came with a blanket. (We didn’t even have to ask!) As we got buckled in we were handed headphones so that we could take full advantage of the TV that was in each headrest! We got to playing around with the touch screen and watched a Stand-Up Comedy show, The Smurfs (old school style) and played games like Zuma, Bookworm and Galactica!
When it came time to pass out our complimentary drinks we were also given not one bag of peanuts, but 3 bags of snacks; one pretzels, one 2-pack of gingerbread cookies and one lightly salted (not stale) peanuts! SCORE! It’s totally the little things! Best of all the time flew by. The flight is 3 hours from Guatemala to Atlanta and why shouldn’t it be fun AND comfortable! We landed smoothly right on time in Atlanta and were a bit nervous once again about the customs situation.
We did the luggage carousel shuffle and managed to get all our bags loaded onto some carts and moved into the agriculture clearance station rather quickly. We showed the officer our paperwork for the cats (rabies certificate) and were sent on our way, once again with a smile! We were corralled into the next section where we would re-check our bags. All we had to do was drive them over to these bag boys and walk away with our carry ons!
Once we made it through the bag & body scan we got into our departure gate. We grabbed some dinner at our FAVORITE quick pizza joint, Pizza Hut! The cats finally got a small drink of water and few morsels of food as well. These girls are such good travellers, they did not make a peep, or a meow. I was really thrilled with the way they were handling all the commotion. Of course, they were loving all the people watching and everyone wanted to say hello.
We made it our destination pretty late but wee so excited we barely made it to bed by 2 am! Soooo not like us! I know that today will be busy looking at a couple boats, making lists, driving around and sea trials! Keep your fingers crossed that everything else just falls into place. It’s so exciting to have no idea what is next for us! We are glad we have you all to share it with!
Love – GR, Jess, Gia, Caico & Provo!