Setting Off
We woke up at 4.45am this morning (ouch), and despite the grogginess a little excitement was peeking through. We were finally setting off on a journey we’d been anticipating for so long. I fully expected plenty of travel stress and chaos on this trip, but I wasn’t expecting it to kick in long before we’d even reached South America.
It all started so well. Getting to Heathrow was a breeze on a few tubes including the shiny new Elizabeth Line - I can highly recommended it for airport trips. On getting to Heathrow though, we saw some of the chaos we’ve been reading about recently. Thankfully there was no sea of luggage, but the terminal was so full we could barely squeeze past the crowds to find our very long bag drop queue, only to then have to walk back on ourselves to queue for the start of the security queue. Little did we realise, the best of the queuing was yet to come.
Once we were on the plane however, everything was nice and easy. Three bad action/adventure films (Jeremy) and a couple of documentaries and a surprising amount of sleep - thanks Glastonbury (Melissa) later we arrived in Houston for our change. And that’s where the fun began.
We had 1h 45m to get off one flight and on to another. Pretty simple I thought, having connected flights in several big European airports before - you just walk to the next gate, right? Nope - Melissa was far more concerned that time would be tight, having changed in Houston before. We left the plane and walked straight in to an immigration queue, where we stayed for the next 1h 10m. “But why were you in the immigration queue?” I hear you ask. “You weren’t going to the US, you were just connecting and flying out again!” A very sensible point you make, dear reader. Sadly it would appear US border control do not think the same way, and we were doomed to also go out through US customs and back through security again.
By the end we were quite literally sprinting through Houston airport (and dodging the security guards asking us not to run), but we made it just in time. A nice camaraderie had developed between us and other now equally sweaty travellers in similar situations, all running for the same flight. We cheered each other on to the Lima bound plane, and felt especially lucky when we met some unfortunate people who had been in an identical situation the day before but hadn’t quite made it. They had waited 24 hours to be on our plane. The moral of the story - don’t change at Houston!
Soon though we’ll be arriving in Lima and we can’t wait to get started… but first, sleep. We woke up at 4:45am and we won’t get to our hostel until after midnight local time - past 5am according to our body clocks. Fingers tightly crossed for deep sleep and no jet lag!
Jeremy and Melissa x
