Phase one complete! My flight out of Florida got cancelled, so I arrived in canada five hours late—after midnight and long after the last hotel shuttle. At least it gave me time to watch some World Cup goals in the Dallas airport within earshot of the gate to São Paulo.
I realized that not only had Isaac and I trooped through that airport two weeks ago (the TRAIN was his favorite part of course), but I also routed through the same international terminal en route to or from Japan a time or two. It was reassuring, because initially being told I couldn’t get to canada the right day after the cancellation made me wonder if I’d end up being helpfulto anyone. I also saw a rainbow from the air on the first flight—that was cool and I took it as a very good sign.
So anyway, I arrived in Canada eventually and took a cab to the hotel. The desk clerk must have felt sorry for me, because I got an upgraded room for all five hours I was there. Then the shuttle driver was late this morning, so they called another cab. “This is going to be expensive,” I thought. Wrong! The taxi slip the hotel gave me at checkout was a voucher for the cab ride. Score!
Well, sort of score. The driver dropped me off at the wrong terminal, insisting it was the only international terminal. Which it wasn’t. My mistake for not doing enough prior planning. So overall I was late meeting up with Santi, his mom, Anita, Abi the translator, and the host family. But we got checked in, got Anita a special birthday breakfast of French toast, and boarded with no problems.
Santi slept through the first two hours of the five-hour flight—what?! And they served lunch, which I thought they only did on flights longer than six hours.
Now we are in Panama City, Panama, looking for hats while we wait for our Santa Cruz connection. Rain is pelting the windows enthusiastically.
This is my second time at the Hub of the Americas (the first was en route to Costa Rica in 2007). Looking at the Copa Airlines flight map and the convergence of flights at this point, I was struck by the similarity to the original point of the Panama Canal—the quickest pass-through point to bring hemispheres together. Then Santi grabbed the flight map and we went back to looking at airline magazine pictures of chickens, cows, sheep and ducks in some featured sunny South American destination. Cluck cluck baaa moo quack! Don’t need a translator for that!
We are scheduled to leave here in a bit to head south across the equator in another five-hour flight. It will be my second time in the Southern Hemisphere, but my first trip to South America! Hasta la vista!
