It's Like America, But South! Day 17

This was how I intended to start this post: 

Surprise! We're home from South America!

Why? Because we were supposed to be home around dinner time today and I was going to write about our travel day.

We are nowhere close to home yet.

Last Monday morning, when we saw this picture of Avalanche, afraid of a thunderstorm, we were devastated. We immediately starting talking about shortening our trip to get home sooner. C's parents have been incredible, but the guilt we felt about being away for so long was weighing on us. It didn't help that not long after we saw the picture, I read something about only getting 11 or 12 summers with a dog and making the most of them...given that Avalanche was already 11 when we adopted him six months ago, I really wanted to come home.

C launched into travel planner extraordinaire mode, canceled flights to La Paz, Bogota and Santiago, Chile, canceled those hotels, and rebooked our flight home so we would leave from Quito instead of Santiago. That meant we were shortening our trip by a week, leaving on July 3 instead of July 10, and spending less time in Ecuador that we had originally planned.

The reality is that we booked this trip in November, before we had a dog and Bolivia and Chile aren't going anywhere. We've already discussed visiting them when we return to South America to go to Peru, since we had to cancel that portion of the trip anyway!

32 days is a long time for him to be away from home, even though he is in the very best hands, and 32 days is a long time for us to be away from him (we haven't seen him since June 11!). We are so fortunate to be able to travel and the 17 days we were gone were fantastic – but homesickness is a real thing! We adopted Avalanche in January, in the middle of the school year, so my time with him has been limited. I'm looking forward to spending some lazy summer days with him!

C made the best plans for us to get home, but United had other ideas.

We got a late check out from our Quito hotel yesterday, so we had our room until 6 pm, which was great because we did all of our sightseeing in the morning and afternoon, and then were able to go back to the hotel, shower, change, and pack, and then leave for the airport around 7 pm. Our flight home was Quito-Houston-Baltimore on United (not only do we try to avoid connecting flights at all cost, but we rarely fly United because we don't think particularly highly of them and this experience did nothing to change our opinion). C had been tracking flights for the past few days because United had been cancelling so many flights, and yesterday he was vigilant in tracking our plane throughout the day. All seemed promising until just before we had to check out of our hotel room when the inbound flight from Houston was listed as delayed. And then delayed again. And then delayed again. It was supposed to leave Houston at 6:15 pm. but didn't take off until 9:40 pm. So it didn't arrive in Quito until 2:40 am. We were scheduled to leave Quito at 3:00 am.

One big problem with that was it meant there was no way we were going to make our connection from Houston to Baltimore, which was scheduled for 9:30 am. Since the inbound flight was so delayed, the United agent was able to change our connection when we checked in for the Quito-Houston flight. So then instead of leaving Houston at 9:30, we left at noon, which would be an easy connection to make. Sounds great, right?

Well, our car is in Baltimore at B1's house. And he, S1, my niece, and my nephew just left for their own summer vacation yesterday. The plan was for us to take an uber from the airport to their house to pick up our car, but that was no longer possible because instead of flying from Houston to Baltimore, we got moved to a Houston to Washington-Reagan flight. We obviously just wanted to get home, so we figured we'd take an uber from DCA to our house, and take my car to drive to Baltimore to pick up C's car. A little inconvenient, but not a big deal.

It's now 9:00 am and we are currently still in Quito.

We've been at this airport for 13 hours.

Here's the timeline of events:

8:00 pm

arrived at airport

completed self check in

9:30 pm

dropped bags off at counter

gate agent changed the second leg of our flight to IAH to DCA

went through security and immigration

went to the airport lounge

2:30 am

went to our gate

2:40 am

inbound plane arrived

everyone in gate area was eager to board

3:15 am

announcement that there's a problem with the cockpit door and the plane can't fly until it's repaired

4:05 am

announcement that maintenance is working on the door

4:15 am

announcement that door should be fixed in 30-45 minutes

4:35 am

announcement that flight is cancelled; even though the door is fixed, the crew didn't want to fly (YES, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY)

announcement that flights will be rebooked - C knew it would a numbers game because our flight only happened once a day and this could turn into a multi-day affair of waiting and hoping to be put on that flight

4:45 am

C got on his computer, found us flights home at 2:30 pm on Copa Airlines, connecting through Panama and then cancelled our United flights

5:40 am

a United employee walked around with an empty printer paper box and collected everyone's passport in an act of sheer lunacy - immigration had to cancel everyone's exit stamp and apparently they could think of no better system - absolutely ridiculous

6:40 am

United employees randomly started yelling out people's names to come and collect their passports, resulting in pushing and shoving, mass chaos, and very irritated travelers who were all exhausted and frustrated by how poorly things were being handled - no explanations, no directions, no information

7:00 am

we were escorted through immigration and to baggage claim

we collected our bags and returned to the main terminal, which is where I've been sitting and writing this post

As of right now, we should get to Dulles by 1:00 am (C made sure the final destination was Dulles because it's closest to our house). Let's hope things go smoothly today! We are so fortunate to be in a position where we can purchase last minute tickets and I am beyond grateful that C is so amazing!

Stayed tuned for the next post, which I will hopefully be writing from home!

Happy Tails to you!