...homeward bound

As I woke up on the cold, hard floor of the Guatemala airport's check-in lounge, I became aware of movement.
The sight of hundreds of indigenous men filing in silently, each carrying identical white plastic bags and document folders, brought to mind some sci-fi dystopia.
They were being herded around by three comparitively huge Canadians in bomber jackets and my groggy imagination - it was 2.30am - pictured them being taken to a dark room to suffer some unspeakable cruelty.
Among the 300-or-so men, I spotted one woman. Pity her.
I'm sure they were simply flying off to work somewhere but it was certainly creepy.
It did, however, explain why we had arrived in Guatemala City to be swamped by indigenous families. They had evidently come to bid farewell to their husbands, fathers and sons.
Finding ourselves outside check-in, amid a sea of people in rural dress - all staring at the funny-looking pale couple - had proven an unnerving experience after a day aboard aircraft.
You might wonder what we were doing in Guatemala, given our journey was taking us from Cuba to Mexico City.
It was a quirk of flight pricing that meant the cheapest route was to fly to the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose, board another flight to Honduras which proceeded to Guatemala City, spend the night there, and then catch a morning plane to Mexico.
We had not wanted to waste money at an airport hotel and travelling to a hostel in the city for just a few hours seemed daft, so we asked a nice security guard if we could stay in the airport and he agreed.
Unfortunately, there was no transit lounge and so we remained on the floor - close to the front doors - of check-in. We were woken at 5am by a massive security guard who evidently didn't want his clean floor sullied by a couple of scruffy backpackers.

The flight to Guatemala - aboard an old twin-prop - had been quite an experience.
It's been a while since I 've been in one of these small planes but I've never experienced taxiing at about 80mph before.
And we were kept entertained by a group of 40-something businessmen who spent the trip swatting mosquitos and pestering the pilot to sit up at the flight deck.
The crew kept popping back to use the loo, while numerous children were treated to a trip up front to see them at work.
One young lass sat behind the controls during both landing and the subsequent take-off in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
The whole escapade lent the flight something of a party atmosphere, which is not something I'm sure I want at several thousand feet.
Still, you don't get that sort of experience with Ryanair - nor BA, for that matter.

So, Mexico... Desert heat, sombreros, burritos.
Or none of the above.
The soundtrack to our stay in Mexico City was the occasional clap of thunder and the relentless pounding of torrential rain on the town's roofs.
We caught the tail of the season's first hurricane and it's fair to say it rained almost non-stop for the three days we were there, meaning I felt like I was back in Manchester.
We spent much of our stay in the hostel and only really achieved two things in the city.
One was a tour of the palace, where we read about the country's fascinating history - I never knew it had once incorporated large sections of modern-day USA, for example.
The other was discovering that burritos are not a part of Mexican cuisine - in this city at least. The snack of choice is the torta, a kind of spicy toasted sandwich. They were delicious, even if they did come back to haunt you the next morning.
To be honest, our hearts weren't really in it from the moment we arrived in town - and had a row with a taxi driver.
He'd never heard of the hostel we'd booked, barely knew of the district and then, when police blocked off the road he was about to drive down, he waved in a general direction and told us to get out.
Bearing in mind this is one of the most dangerous places on Earth, we sat tight and told him to find an alternative route.
His agitation at being plunged into rush-hour traffic boiled over when he again tried to drop us in the wrong place.
"Can you not read?" he asked showing us the map, with our hostel's road name on.
I pointed out I could read and that the road he was talking about was not the one where he'd parked up.
In the end, we didn't win. He dropped us on the right road but at the wrong end of it - meaning a walk through the protests that had caused the roadblock in the first place.
Only afterwards did we read a guide book that said you're better getting out where the taxi driver wants to leave you. Oops.

BA's boarding staff had arrived and passengers were milling around when the announcement came.
"We are sorry to announce your flight has been delayed by twenty..."
'Ah, 20 minutes. No probs there,' we thought.
"...twenty-four hours," the announcement ended.
The gasp was audible. Then the tears started among some of our fellow passengers as realisation hit that they would miss onward flights.
The shock was most evident among those who had geared themselves up to cope with babies and young families during a long flight, coaxing them into good behaviour for three hours before take-off, only to face the prospect of doing it all again tomorrow.
The pilot, it transpired, had taken ill and there was no back-up.
It didn't really matter to us because we had no desperate need to get home.
And we relished the chance to live it up in a swanky (at least by our standards) hotel, with free all-you-can eat meals, courtesy of BA. Although we noticed with regret that they emptied the minibar ahead of our arrival.
My only real disappointment was that it forced the cancellation of an important date I'd made with friends for a curry in Surbiton (half-price for cash), where my beard was to make one of its few British public appearances.
Still, I suppose it was only fitting that our trip should end with a mishap.