Day 5

Back to San Cristóbal

I’d done well the whole trip not to get ill or hungover, but this was the day it all caught up with me. My tolerance for vodka was nowhere near what it was in college, and I was left clutching my stomach the whole ride home with cramps every 10-20 minutes. Not that the roads or the quarter-G turns were helping much, either – but three and a half hours later we were back in San Cristóbal and I skipped lunch in favor of a siesta.

Antigua

After a hour or two of sleeping, I felt much better. Since we were rained out in Cobán, we couldn’t stage Jim and Ana’s wedding up there. Our backup plans was to wander around Antigua for a bit and shoot there. Jim and Ana were married about 13 years ago, and had a local photographer who was unfortunately not very skilled and also wanted to extort a large sum from them when they wanted to get the original negatives from him. Jim and I had talked about staging some couple pictures several months back when we were planning this trip, and they were really excited about going through with it. It was a lot of fun walking around town and having everyone look at us – not that I think we were genuinely out of place, but because of the vibe Jim and Ana give off. They look like they were just as excited about each other as the day they were married, and I certainly picked up on it.

About an hour into our shoot, I could feel my energy draining. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and my blood sugar was pretty much obliterated.. so we sat down for some drinks at the hotel we were shooting in and called it a day as the sun finished setting and the cool air started to settle over the city.

Day 6

Market

One of the things I was keeping an eye out for the whole time was a good hammock. Eric has a couple from Ecuador that are wonderful to lounge around in, and I think you can never have too many. So when we went to the market to fill up our suitcase’s remaining weight allowances, I opted for two. I picked up a beautiful red one, and a teal green one. Jim wanted one for his back yard as well, so we got a good price for buying three at once- Q250 each, which is about $30 US. We also bargained with a leatherworker who built some incredible saddle bags. I bought one larger bag to keep a hammock in (so I can go guerrilla napping around town), and a smaller satchel bag with a shoulder strap to keep a book and a couple of necessities in.

Airport

Our trip to the market put us a little later getting to the airport than we meant to, but everything went pretty smoothly. I say that rather ironically, since in the age of security theater, there is always a new level of annoyance when passing through an airport. We were screened with X-ray and metal detector, as usual for a US domestic flight – but one of the attendants really liked my roll of gaffer’s tape and confiscated it. It wasn’t contraband, because I’ve flown with it several times before and he didn’t throw it away in the trash can next to him with the other contraband. Instead, he set it on top of the x-ray machine to probably take home with him later. After passing through the detector, everyone was patted down top to bottom.

Once inside the gate, we were again subjected to another search. This time, they picked through all the carry-on luggage and pulled out any liquids. They were confiscating packets of ketchup and hot sauce from the restaurants inside the gate, as well as any drinks. most of the drinks had just be bought by the passengers to go with their food for the flight (since they don’t provide meals anymore). I opted not to buy a drink with my food, figuring this exact sort of situation would arise.

We landed in Atlanta fifteen minutes early, but the gain was immediately wiped when all the gates were full from a few flights returning due to mechanical problems, and our designated gate hadn’t been cleared since they were looking for a few items of luggage to remove from no-show passengers. We sat in a taxiway for about 20 minutes, and I discovered that my cell phone depleted it’s battery from the full charge I left it with, despite being powered off. Next time, the battery comes out entirely when it’s not in use..

When we did get to a gate and off the plane, it was cattle call through passport control. I lucked out with the slowest line and the slowest clerk; Jim and Ana had made it through their line 15 minutes ahead of me, even though we entered the lines at the same time. It didn’t matter that much, since the baggage claim didn’t start throwing luggage out until I walked down there. We were granted clearance to skip the custom’s luggage check, saving us probably another half-hour of waiting – but we still had to go through another x-ray/metal detector combo before we were allowed back into the terminal to get to the other side of the airport. It was off with shoes, belt, jacket and all that again.

In the end, it took us about two hours to get off the plane and into the car, and then another two hours to drive back to Birmingham.