guate to the states via el salvador

june brought us to new york state for four days for a family reunion so that we could renew our visas and anna could meet her great gandparents. however, what was supposed to be an easy there-and-back trip became a little more complicated...

friday before the monday we were to leave, ash from an erupting volcano outside of guatemala city covered everything in the city... trees, cars, houses, sidewalks... and the airport runway. saturday morning the effects of tropical storm agatha had already been pouring rain down and causing landslides throughout the country for three days, and weather reports promised that it would hit central america hard early sunday morning, closing down all central american airports as well. after looking into every option, we finally called my parents to say that it looked like we would not be able to make it… as it was such a short trip, it did not make much sense to leave too much later in the week.

sunday morning, we woke up to find out that the promised storm dissipated, and while guatemala’s airport was still closed for the ash, we found out sunday afternoon that el salvador’s airport had opened. so, with a hurried phone call to continental, we got the last two tickets on a flight out of el salvador ealry tuesday morning… now all we had to do was get to guatemala city by 7:00 am on monday morning in order to get a bus to el salvador where we could spend the night in san salvador and catch our flight out the next morning… which we soon found out was the same plan that everyone else trying to get out of guatemala had.

so, we got in our truck at 4:30 on sunday afternoon and headed into the city... we already knew that due to landslides there was only one route open, which is why we were surprised halfway through when we were not seeing many other vehicles coming from the opposite direction… until we hit stopped traffic at 7:30. as anna and i waited in the truck, aaron walked ahead to find out that about a quarter of a mile from where we were, there was a landslide covering the entire four lane highway. so we called to cancel our hotel reservations for that night, and settled in for a long wait… at 5:00 the next morning we finally started moving again… 2 hours later, we were through the landslide, which now had a space wide enough for one vehicle and about 8 feet high. glad to be through, but still at least an hour from the city, we had now missed our bus to el salvador. so, as we entered the city, i called into a couple other bus stations that we knew had safe buslines and one told us that they had the last two tickets available for a bus at 3:00 that afternoon. so we went straight there, and i stood at the ticket counter as aaron called to see if any other buslines had openings or earlier leave times. as i listened to the guy next to me spout off all the other buslines and how there were no other openings, another couple walked up to the ticket counter next to us… as i heard them ask about openings to el salvador, i quickly turned back to the ticketmaster in front of us and told him we’d take the last to tickets to el salvador for that afternoon! 6 hours later, we boarded the bus which took us straight to san salvador and our hotel, arriving by 11:00 that night. there, we got about 4 hours of sleep before hailing the taxi to take us to the airport and our flight out at 6:00. after a quick layover in houston, we got on our plane to nyc, where it was smooth sailing… until at about 20 minutes out from landing, the pilot came on with the announcement, “you may be wondering why the plane is turning around….” I could not believe it, but he quickly explained that we were simply going to be circling while we waited for clear weather to land. about an hour later we landed, and i finally felt i could breathe a sigh of relief… we had made it! now, all we had was our 5 hour drive to where my gramma lives :) arriving at about 1 in the morning, we ate up each moment with family over the next four days before safely leaving and arriving in guatemala city the following saturday.

and as we landed on the airstrip here in guatemala city, so ended one of those “glad we went, glad to be home” trips.

here's some highlights...

driving through the landslide

more landslide destruction

swept up piles of volcanic ash stacked up on the side of the road in the city

entering new york city
becca and anna in the town we were born in

learning how to make homemade macaroni with gramma
(my brother jon in the background)

four generations of catherines

my parents with the three of us