Yesterday at 1:18pm I landed in Guatemala City, Guatemala. My day had been rather long, I had gotten up at 3am to grab an early flight to Houston from Boston at 5:15am. My original flight was at 7:30, but I was concerned about hurricane Irene delaying my flight and my layover in Houston was only an hour. I changed to the earlier flight out and got to the airport at 3:45am. The line to check bags was very long, but I printed my ticket from the kiosk and was able to go straight to the front to check my bags. I checked two bags, which cost money for the second, and because my suitcase was over 50lbs (it was 62lbs) I was going to be charged $230. I was able to move some of my stuff from my suitcase to my second bag, and ended up only paying the $30 for the second bag.
By the time I got to security it was 4:40am, and I was a little panicky. For the future: I suggest that eTickets be printed at home rather than the airport so that waiting in line becomes less of a problem.
Security wasn't too bad. The line was not too long and when I got up to the machines I was able to just go right through. My gate was right next to security too, so though I got through security later than I wanted to, I got to my gate a minute later at 4:50am.
However, my flight got delayed. Not because of weather, but because the computer systems went on the fritz. Everything that the pilots had to do had to be done manually. In the end we took off at 7:30am, the same time I would have left anyways.
I landed in Houston at 10:20 and I had to rush to my gate which was about 20mins from the gate I landed at. My flight to Guatemala City took off at 11:35 so I had to really book it to be able to get to the gate in time to get a snack as well (on the first flight I slept through snacks and drinks).
Two of the other students from the program were also on my plane and because of our coordination in t-shirts (they wore UT Austin shirts and I wore a MassArt shirt) we were able to meet up before we boarded the plane. We chatted a bit and talked about our morning flights. When we boarded we got on together, and got to our seats. There were not that many people on the flight, and at first I though about moving so we could all sit together and talk on the way there. I decided not to because we all had window seats and one of the best parts of flying into Guatemala is looking out the window as you land.
At 1:18 we landed in Guatemala City and taxied to the terminal. The flight was wonderful and calm. We filled out our paperwork for getting into the country and for our baggage and together the three of us went through the process of getting through customs. I had done it before in Guatemala City so I had an idea f what was going to happen and also where we needed to go.
None of us had any trouble getting through customs and we walked out of the airport together. Milady was waiting for us to the left of the exit and as the last group to arrive we got into a bus with Milady to head back to Antigua!
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