National Lampoon's Trip to Ecuador

Embarrassing outfits, another Griswold family staple.

Have you seen any of the Griswold Family vacation movies?  Any one of them will do...regardless of your selection, you should (I hope) have some particularly ridiculous scene that comes to mind (driving up to a closed Walley World, Christmas decorations causing electrocutions, getting lost on a tour of the Hoover Dam, etc).  Each movie seems to run  through a common timeline: grand plans lead to a series of disasters which are remarkably resolved and result in a general vacation success.  Unfortunately the Cabezas experienced their own version of a Griswold Family vacation during our quest to move to Ecuador (primarily the series of disasters part...)

The trip started with my grand packing plan (see previous post) and a small miracle when the man checking bags at the Delta counter felt a moment of overwhelming generosity and charged us for only ONE overweight bag!! (Even though our bags came in at: 49, 50, 55 and 73 pounds each). What a great start to our trip! (a stroke of luck...also often the start to a Griswold vacation...)  Things got more dicey when we were 'next' for take off for our 1pm flight, but were halted due to bad weather in Atlanta (our first destination).  No problem, we'll just sit on the run way until we're cleared....2 hours later we headed back to the gate (primarily because there is some law now that forbids us from staying on a plane much longer).  At first they told only those that had already missed a connection or no longer wanted to fly to Atlanta to deboard.  Then...they started letting us get off to grab food and come right back...I appropriately selected the below to be our LAST meal in the US (boy what a jinx....)

these were all of our boarding passes
(many reprints, redirects etc.)

After 4 hours on the plane they made us all deboard.  The pilot explained that even though we had been cleared for a take off, the crew had now been working too long and wasn't permitted to fly us to Atlanta....they would be looking for a different crew..... I'll save you the suspense...we did fly to Atlanta at 10pm (9 hours after our original flight time) only after watching every other Atlanta flight depart before us (the 3pm, the 5pm, the 6pm....the worst).  AND only after I waited in a 2 hour line at Delta's 'Need Help' desk to ensure we had reserved seats on the following day's Quito flight (we were all but certain we would miss our flight to Quito in Atlanta even though it too had been delayed).

We arrived in Atlanta = YAY! But had to sit on that plane for another hour and 45 minutes until a gate was available for deboarding (we're deboarding at 1am).  During that time we were calling every hotel in Atlanta to see if they might have a room....no, they didn't.  None of them.  (Although hotel.com was acting up just enough to let us think we had a room for the briefest of minutes, in which time we left the secure area).  Every Delta line in the airport was 2+ hours long (people trying to rebook, etc) so we decided to head to the international gate (after going back through security) and hunker down for the night.  By now its 2am.

So we got some sleep, but its hard to rest easy when you're clutching your belongings as you sleep.  And awoke with a splendid day in the airport ahead! (there is only one Delta flight to Quito a day and it leaves at 6pm,  Yes, we could have left the airport, but after seeing the mob crowd of people trying to get out of Atlanta the night prior, we didn't want to chance leaving and having to come back through security...) It was actually a fine day: Phase 10 tournament (I crushed, NBD), blog reading and writing catch up (Atlanta airport has free wifi = AWESOME) and a delicious lunch at One Flew South = consistently ranked the best airport restaurant in the country.

So after 36 hours of being in an airport or on a plane and only a day later than we had planned....we arrived easily in Quito :) (we realized our trip to Sydney was shorter...Griswolds you've met your match...)