A Leap of Faith

This trip is different. In the past four years, we’ve traveled to nine countries, always on our own. This time, we're traveling with a group of 24 (23 I've never met, and the one I know,  I met once). Traveling with tour groups is not our style.  First, it’s expensive. Second, it’s limiting. You stay at pre-selected locations a specified amount of time, and it’s not you that’s selecting or specifying. So, to save money (which makes the whole trip possible), and to tailor our travel to meet our needs/desires, we don’t do the group thing.

This time though, the group is a good thing. In fact, it’s what made the trip possible.

On June 30th, I was working a flight from Washington D.C (IAD) to LAX and met a passenger who was on his way to Guatemala. He’d come back to use the lav and something he said made me think he was a person worth chatting with. Our galley time is precious, since we are in the aisle a lot on this long day (lax-iad-lax – 15 hrs on duty).  So, though I can’t quite remember exactly what he said, I thought he was interesting. I asked him if he was going home.

He said he was on his way to Guatemala for a funeral. I asked him if he realized there was a faster way to go to Guatemala from Washington D.C than through Los Angeles, (a lot of backtracking), but he told me it was the option that would put his family in GUA the soonest. You see, he explained, his aunt had just passed away suddenly in Guatemala and they do not embalm the bodies there. So, the family was awaiting their arrival from Washington before they buried her. This flight, through LAX, offered them the earliest arrival in GUA.

He was traveling with his mom and cousin and we spent quite a while chatting with them in the galley. Then, when they mentioned this woman who had passed away and her husband support an orphanage in Guatemala, I asked if the orphanage ever needs volunteers. Turns out, the cousin was taking a group down in a few weeks. We talked about the details and exchanged contact info. Over the next few weeks, he sent me more info, including the itinerary. We would stay on his father's coffee plantation: Los Humitos, and drive to the orphanage during the day. We would be taking the kids to an amusement park in GUA one day, having them over at Los Humitos to swim on another. Our main purpose however, would be to plant Earthboxes for Fundaniños. You can check them out here: http://earthbox.com/  These above-ground contained gardens would provide the orphanage with healthy, wholesome food, without the need for much water or good soil. There would be an agronomist traveling with us from the Earthbox company. We would be planting 75 of them.

Would I really consider this? Traveling to a foreign country with a stranger? Hard to explain in words, but I trusted him. This opportunity just felt right. I sent him a check to cover the cost of Trevor's and my food, lodging, transportation, amusement park in GUA, airfare and tour to Tikal ruins, etc.

So here we are. Part of the group.

We are meeting them in Houston where they change planes after coming in from IAD on the way to GUA. We arrived here in IAH yesterday and will meet their inbound flight in a couple hours. We'll divide up the 22 pairs of new Reebok shoes we're bringing to the kids, so GUA Customs doesn't think we're trying to sell them there. If we each only have a few, it will raise less concern. I hope.

Normally we travel as light as possible, so this is another departure from our norm...all the duffels in the foreground are filled with clothes, shoes, games, toys, and book for the kids.  It was pretty comical seeing just how many of those bags we could each pile on top of our two wheeled bags.