The long road home, on TACA

I'm in the airport now, waiting for my first flight home--I'm flying into JFK with a connection in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Overall, I have to say I'm very happy with how this trip has gone. (Again, I promise on various things that are holy to give you a blow-by-blow, with pictures, a video or two, etc., of my trip, but this is a job for a better internet connection.) Some highlights:

1) Drank water everywhere except one community where it would have meant certain death.

2) Have yet to suffer from any food- or water-borne illnesses.

(A hardy llama
Stomach of steel and coca
the runs won't stop me)

3) Have eaten about 4 servings of aji de gallina, and drank about 5 pisco sours.

4) Have not been hit by any vehicles.

5) Have watched Babel. The verdict: way too depressing, and not good enough to merit the depressingness.

I'll leave it at that for now, everything will be more exciting when I put up video of dudes dancing to tubas.

So I'm flying home on TACA, the airline of choice for flying in certain remote regions of Panama and French Guyana. It is the kind of airline whose passengers clap every time the pilots make a successful landing. (I have heard this done in small, single-engine planes in the Amazon, but a 747, in 2007? Uh-uh.) It is also the kind of airline that gives you soda and peanuts while you are in the air, and also offers you an awesome warm cheese sandwich "lunch" option at the passenger-friendly price of $5.

I don't want to rag too much on this culinary option, 'cause if I operated a catering business with five retarded monkeys and a broken microwave, I too would be somewhat sensitive to criticism--but let's just say that this is not the best $5 warm cheese sandwich on soggy bread I have ever had.

Whatever, if they deposit me in JFK, with my luggage, on time, I really won't care... but if this sucker goes down in the high seas (unsuccessful landing, hence no clapping), I want my next of kin to get my $5 back.

Update from San Salvador: I take back what I said about TACA's catering monkeys. They still serve lots of warm cheese, but there is at least one ape in there that knows how to make a mean steak sandwich.

Brain damaged primate
Forager, hunter, maker
of sweet beef sandwich