It was a rather unexpected and fateful day. You see, there seems to be an issue with either Avianca’s ticketing system and/or the website that I use to list for flights because when I want to change to a flight at a different time or go somewhere else, it keeps giving me an error when I try and cancel my previous listing. It came up when we took an earlier flight to Cartagena. I told the ticket agent that there were probably two that were showing up in the system, and to cancel the later one if it was possible. (She wasn’t able to do it either, but that’s beside the point). I had created two listings for today. We had to fly from Cartagena to Bogotà regardless, but the next leg was a bit different. One went from Bogotà to Los Angeles direct on Avianca. The other went to Guatemala City, a holdover from when we thought we would be spending the night in Bogotà and the direct flights for tomorrow didn’t look good. From my research, I discovered that there were seats to Guatemala City and then a direct from there on Delta to LAX. You follow all that?
To get to the point, I had two listings to two very different places. In my research I discovered a small colonial town called Antigua, a UNESCO heritage site, an hour or so drive outside Guatemala city. It looked very nice in the pictures, so I was a bit intrigued. On the flip side, we had been on the road for the last two weeks dealing with holiday stress and a suitcase that had both winter garments and bathings suits. There was a certain appeal to getting home and going back to our lives.
The Avianca counter in Cartagena was out of control. For some reason they have scheduled three flights to Bogotà all within the hour plus a flight to Medellin, so the line extended well beyond the ropes. Luckily our rudimentary knowledge of Spanish let us know that an Avianca employee was motioning people on the 9:11 am flight (us) to go to a separate line. From there, we were quickly called to the counter. It was at this point that I asked Nicole what she wanted to do. She was noncommittal, so it was up to me, except I didn’t say anything and the ticket agent never asked. Eventually we were handed four tickets, with only the Cartagena-Bogotà leg visible in the stack. I had my hands full with other things, so I couldn’t flip through to see where we were going next until we got to security. I looked at Nicole, “You ok with going to Guatemala?” Sure.
After a somewhat confusing situation where we were given seats on an earlier delayed flight, which had already boarded by the time we got into the terminal. We were transferred back to our originally scheduled flight once we realized what had happened. Once in Bogotà we worked at a brisk pace to exit the domestic terminal, enter the international terminal, process through customs, go through security, and walk to our gate just prior to boarding. About three hours later, we were in Guatemala. We got an Uber to take us to Antigua. With traffic, it took about 90 minutes due to some slow trucks climbing through the hills. The town of Antigua looks substantially different than the views from the car leading up to it. We made a turn and all of a sudden went back 500 years. The streets were cobblestone and we saw our first white people, who appeared to be involved in some kind of yoga retreat. Figures. Our hotel was an old mansion built for some conquistador. It would have been quite the house. It has a large courtyard and fountain. I’m not sure if it’s the wood or what they’re cleaning with, but the place has an aroma of something that’s 500 years old.
After settling in, we walked around briefly. The clouds had moved in, obscuring the usually photogenic volcano and dulling some of the colors of the buildings, so I didn’t take any pictures. Uncharacteristically, we were able to get an ornament for our tree at the first shop we entered. It is a grouping of “worry” dolls stitched on a wreath. The worry dolls were/are a tradition for Guatemalan kids, who place them under their pillows and by morning, their worries have gone away. Perhaps they should make worry dolls for adults too. We walked a bit more and got dinner at a place called Angie Angie. They also had a large courtyard, where they had strung lights and started a fire. It was a very nice atmosphere. Worth noting is that we were wearing jackets because despite how one might picture Guatemala, we are currently more than 5000 feet above sea level and the temperature dropped quite rapidly after the sun went down. After dinner, we returned to our hotel to sit in the courtyard and relax after a long day of unexpected travels. Tomorrow we hope the sun shines down once again on Antigua so we may see it in its glory.
The Avianca counter in Cartagena was out of control. For some reason they have scheduled three flights to Bogotà all within the hour plus a flight to Medellin, so the line extended well beyond the ropes. Luckily our rudimentary knowledge of Spanish let us know that an Avianca employee was motioning people on the 9:11 am flight (us) to go to a separate line. From there, we were quickly called to the counter. It was at this point that I asked Nicole what she wanted to do. She was noncommittal, so it was up to me, except I didn’t say anything and the ticket agent never asked. Eventually we were handed four tickets, with only the Cartagena-Bogotà leg visible in the stack. I had my hands full with other things, so I couldn’t flip through to see where we were going next until we got to security. I looked at Nicole, “You ok with going to Guatemala?” Sure.
After settling in, we walked around briefly. The clouds had moved in, obscuring the usually photogenic volcano and dulling some of the colors of the buildings, so I didn’t take any pictures. Uncharacteristically, we were able to get an ornament for our tree at the first shop we entered. It is a grouping of “worry” dolls stitched on a wreath. The worry dolls were/are a tradition for Guatemalan kids, who place them under their pillows and by morning, their worries have gone away. Perhaps they should make worry dolls for adults too. We walked a bit more and got dinner at a place called Angie Angie. They also had a large courtyard, where they had strung lights and started a fire. It was a very nice atmosphere. Worth noting is that we were wearing jackets because despite how one might picture Guatemala, we are currently more than 5000 feet above sea level and the temperature dropped quite rapidly after the sun went down. After dinner, we returned to our hotel to sit in the courtyard and relax after a long day of unexpected travels. Tomorrow we hope the sun shines down once again on Antigua so we may see it in its glory.
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