Mom Pays a Visit

Mom arrived at about 10:30 p.m. in good spirits and happy to see her son. Given her flight's delay and my arrival in town just at nightfall (a precaution), I waited a total of four hours at Arrivals to receive her. For some reason the guy checking passports at the door to Departures decided to ask for a boarding pass (unlike last time) and since I didn't have one, I had to wait downstairs and forgo dinner.

Upon greeting Mom, I called for a cab and got a busy signal. We had no choice but to take our chances with the taxis offered at the airport, but I had seen several people accept rides in these and the one guy running the airport taxi hustle made me relatively confident. I don't know why, but this time I had decided to skip the hostel by the airport and go straight to Antigua.

About ten kilometers from Antigua we were turned around by police. A landslide had blocked the main passage in and out of town. We could go around via Chimaltenango but it was nearly twice the distance and would run us another fifty bucks in the cab. I decided to cut our losses and scoot to my old standby, Hostal Los Volcanes.

Arriving at the hostel we were distressed to discover what money we had was yet not enough to pay for the trip to within 10k of Antigua and back. Not knowing what to do, we opted to stash our bags in our room and have the driver take us to an ATM. Luckily upon hearing our plight, the guy running Hostal Los Volcanes decided to loan us what we needed and save us the trip.

Sleep came easy.