After the excitement of the Galapagos we returned to the Sheraton in Guayaquil (Yay Starwood points!), only to find the latest packet waiting for Jennifer. In case I haven't mentioned it before, or in case you've forgotten, Jen ended up matching for a fellowship position at UC Irvine. So once we get home we'll be loading up the truck and moving to Tustin, Ranch that is.
In the interim, however, the program needs roughly 10 reams worth of paperwork completed. This would be challenging in the best of scenarios, but given that we spend roughly 4 days in a country it's turned into a logistical nightmare. Jen's mom has been a saint for sending us stuff and so far we've managed to find a UPS/DHL/FedEx to get it back to California. In this case, though, we needed to fax it, which the hotel was gracious enough to do for us.
5-6 pages at a time.
Each fax at an exorbitant rate.
But hey, it got there.
We also took this opportunity to ship all of our diving stuff back to the states. After Machu Picchu we shipped the camping stuff back, and after this we'll be down to what we started with - roughly 100 pounds of checked luggage and 30 of carry-on. It's a relief to be able to carry everything for a change.
We ended up on Iberia from Guayaquil to Madrid (and from Madrid to Cairo). For the most part I've dogged on American Airlines during the trip - literally every airline along the way has had better customer service and amenities. Iberia, however, makes American look outstanding. If at all possible I will avoid them in the future.
We got into Cairo around 10:30 pm where we were met by our friend Jason (who featured in the previous entry, and was there when Jen and I met). Jason's been teaching in Cairo for the last two years and we'll be crashing with his family before we join up with GAP for our tour of Egypt and Jordan.
Tomorrow: When blogs collide/Can we crash at your place even though we haven't seen you in over a decade?
1 comment:
Bet it was good to get rid of some of the load. I'm sure it was good to see Jason. Wondering how he likes living there and how long is he planning on staying. Glad you were able to get Jen's paperwork done, even if it was quite an exercise. Glad to see more on the blog....
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