Back in the USA

Tuesday, 17 July

We’re home.  The bags are unpacked and I’ve sorted the laundry into piles; the washing machine is humming along with the first of many loads to come.  It’s a good thing the trekking clothes that made up the bulk of our wardrobe don’t require ironing; that’s one task that I don’t much care for ;-)

Now … let’s go back to Quito to wrap up the trip with one last post.

A 20-pax shuttle bus picked us up from the JW Marriott at 8:30p.  With little traffic en route, the ride to the airport was just about 15 minutes.  During the short ride, the Celebrity rep who accompanied us provided a few tips for negotiating the airport.

Almost everyone on the bus was flying out on the Delta red-eye, so we descended on the counter en masse.  But the airline was ready for us; almost every station was manned.  Mui and I had checked in online and had boarding passes in hand, but we had bags to check.  First in that line, we were taken aback by a question about whether we had any wood carvings in our carry-ons.  No, we didn’t; but we knew that at least one couple from our group had quite a few of them.  Once we were done, we alerted those behind us as to the restriction and they all ended up having to repack the carvings in their checked bags.

None of my pre-trip research mentioned the ban on wood carvings in carry-ons.  I don’t
know if it was a one-time thing, but it caused consternation for some of our cruisemates.

The first security checkpoint was a piece of cake.  Even bottled water was allowed to go through.  As seems to be the norm (since 9/11) for US-bound flights, we were scheduled to leave from the very last gate where a second security checkpoint was set up.  We were all set to go through it when we realized there were no facilities of any sort once we were in the restricted area.  With 90-minutes to go before departure, we decided to go back to the food court and sit there for a while.

The downside to our decision was that, in our absence, the line to go through the checkpoint grew quite long.  To make matters worse, only one person was hand-checking bags.  And I mean CHECKING.  He was emptying carry-ons entirely, making people throw away EMPTY water containers, whether they were disposable or not.  Of course he was blaming it all on the security requirements established by the US.  We’ve traveled extensively and have never heard of a ban on EMPTY water containers; in fact, we always have a disposable bottle or two at the ready to fill up once past the final security check.  Personal opinion — the guy was inexperienced and thus overly cautious.

Standing patiently in line, waiting our turn, we heard Mui’s name called by the gate agent at the door to the jetway.  When Mui identified himself, he was told to join a group of passengers being led away by a Delta rep.  That was it; no explanation — nothing.  We figured this group had been selected for one of those random secondary checks.  Well, sort of.  It turns out that some of the checked bags had been pulled aside for a random inspection — on the tarmac no less!  Anyway, long story short … I made it through the second checkpoint without mishap, and thanks to a female agent who came to the gate to speed up the hand-checks, I didn’t have to unpack all of my camera equipment.  Mui, too, lucked out with the same agent when he finally made it back to the gate.

Boarding for the scheduled 11:30p departure commenced at 10:55p.  Our Economy Comfort seats, which we had upgraded to before leaving the US, came with priority boarding, so it wasn’t long before we were aboard the Boeing 757-200 aircraft and settled into our seats — 20B/C.  Within 30 minutes, the doors were closed and cross-checked, and five minutes later we were pushing back from the gate.  By 11:45p, DL 680 was in the air, winging its way to Atlanta.

The flight itself was uneventful.  After we reached cruising altitude, we pulled out our backpacks from the overhead bin to fashion foot rests for ourselves and take advantage of the extra legroom our seats afforded us.  Wrapped in a blanket — Delta still provides them on international flights — Mui started snoozing almost immediately.  I tried to follow suit — I really did — but it was to no avail.  So, I spent a good chunk of my time drafting the blog posts for our last day in Quito.  By the time the cabin lights came on, signaling breakfast service — nothing special, by the way — all four posts were done.  At least I was productive.

We were wheels down at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 5:30a; 15 minutes early.  Immigration and customs was a piece of cake and we were soon headed to the Delta customer service counter to see if we could switch to an earlier flight.  For $50/person, the airline agreed to put us on the 7:25a Delta Connection flight, saving us from waiting around the airport until 9:40a.

Grabbing some breakfast goodies from Starbucks, we eventually made our way to the gate where Flight 4870 was in the initial stages of boarding.  Our assigned seats were in the last row, but the friendly flight attendant switched us to 8A/B.  The move didn’t give us more legroom on the cramped CRJ700, but at least the seats reclined and we were reasonably comfortably for the 1½-hour flight.  By 9:00a we were on the ground at Dulles International; by 9:35a — before the flight we’d originally been booked on took off from Atlanta — we were in a cab, heading home.  It was worth paying the extra bucks to switch flights … especially since we were on award tickets and our cash outlay for the flights for this trip was minimal to begin with.

And thus another great adventure has concluded.  We loved the Galápagos Islands, and would go back in a heartbeat.  But there are so many other places in the world we’ve not been to yet; it’s hard to envision us going back anytime soon.  If and when we do, would we do it again on the Xpedition?  I don’t know.  We had a grand time and enjoyed every minute of our time on the ship.  Celebrity has these cruisetours down pat and they took good care of us.  I don’t know that being on a smaller boat would have afforded us smaller groups or a slower pace on land.  The National Park Service requirement is for one naturalist guide per 16 passengers.  I can’t imagine that the smaller boats would spring for additional guides just to break up the size of the landing parties; the cost would certainly eat into their profit margin.  The ideal trip for us would be to charter a boat with a small number of like-minded people and design our own itinerary for perhaps 10 days; 7 days was just a little too short.  Perhaps someday that will be in the cards for us.  In the meantime, we have our memories — in digital images and written words — to remind us of a trip to what is a very special part of the world.

Until we go back again … someday.