Post date: Nov 2, 2013 8:03:33 PM
At least that is what I wanted - a boring trip: no accidents, no blizzards, no noisy kids pushing on the backs of our seats. And, until I dozed off across the Caribbean about an hour after leaving Houston, that is what we had.
But just as we approached San Pedro Sula, in the north of Honduras, I was awakened by about a minute of very violent turbulence. After we recovered from that shock I noticed flashes outside the airplane window. We had a very exciting lightning display for about 15 minutes, with some bolts going both all the way to the ground from our altitude (39,000 feet) and some going upwards. There seemed to be at least one large dark cloud column, and some of the lightning was on our side, and some on the opposite side of the column. We were treated to this light show from several different patches of clouds for the entire length of Honduras. I tried to make a video through the airplane window, but was only marginally successful.
After a smooth (boring) touchdown in Managua, our entry through immigration and customs was uneventful, even though our four large duffle bags included a couple of computers, my old toolbox, and fifty pounds of stuff for Becca in Ciudad Sandino. (Since we were probably the last plane-load in that evening, and we were nearly the first people from our plane to go through customs, and there was clearly a big line behind us, and the customs inspector had probably been working all day, I suspect that she didn’t want to extend her work day checking a couple of aging tourists. I didn’t either, so both of us were happy.
According to plan, our hotel is right across the highway from the airport, so we had only to wait a few minutes for the hotel shuttle to bring us. We left four duffles in the lobby storage, and had a conveniently located recently-remodeled room. At least at this season we don’t have mango fruit dropping on our roof during the night.
We shared the restaurant for breakfast with about twenty uniformed men. They had patches on their uniforms written in cyrillic script. They were quite quiet, so I couldn’t determine what language they spoke, and my ability to read Russian is non-existent. A minor mystery. They all got up and left at the same time, as if under orders.
While our sleep was quiet, after breakfast the planes seemed to take off right over the hotel - something we had not experienced before. Somewhat odd, because the runway is parallel to the highway and the planes could not possibly pass overhead.