Back Home in the States

We had an awesome time in Cuenca and we really didn't want to come back home.  But we had the return flight tickets and Pat had to come back home to finish up working until April 1st.  So as of right now, he only has 19 more working days until retirement.  Ya-hoo!!!  Plus we have to finish getting everything ready for our return trip.  Now we have to sort, give, sell, throw away, etc.  I'm sure anyone who has been there knows exactly what I am talking about. 

We loved meeting so many nice people in Cuenca and we can't wait to return.  We fly to Quito on April 23rd and then on the Cuenca on April 24th.  So for those of you who we did not to get to see or meet over the last 2 weeks, maybe we will see you at the end of April.

We had a good flight back to Quito on Friday.  We were supposed to fly out of Quito to Miami at 9:30am on Saturday morning, but we received an email that the flight had been changed from 9:30am until 7:30pm.  So then we had an unexpected day in Quito.  If we had known, then we could have flown out later from Cuenca and stayed at the airport and gone straight to Miami.  As it was, we arrived in Miami at 11:30pm on Saturday and had missed our connecting flight to Louisville.  Customs was unbelievable!!  We got there just in time for a "shift change" and then the US citizen side had one guy working to get us through customs.  It took 45 minutes for 20 people to get through the line.  So then we tried to see if LAN Ecuador airlines would put us up in a hotel for the night since our flight to Louisville was not leaving Miami until 11:35am on Sunday.  We finally got to the hotel at 1:30am.  Even though we got up at 7:30am the next morning, it was still better to sleep in a hotel than to spend the night in the airport.

It was not easy, but we did just make both of our flights -- in Miami and again in Atlanta.  God is good.  It was good to get home, especially after all of the time waiting.  We will say that LAN airlines is a very nice airlines--nice plane, movies, food, etc.  It reminds of TWA on the way to Vegas or Eastern Airlines  a few years ago.  If we had checked on our flight a week before, we wouldn't have had such a problem trying to get back to Louisville.

Next post, I will post more pics from Cuenca.