We got up early yet again on the morning of the 18th and boarded the bus to the airport at about 7:30 am. We arrived at the airport at 8:30 and checked in, then said our goodbyes to Edwin after a wonderful tour.
The plane for Miami left on time at 10:40 am and was a very uneventful flight until we arrived in Miami. Upon our arrival in Miami, we ended up sitting on the tarmac for over an hour before we could get off due to thunderstorms in the area. The delay and the thunderstorms spoiled our plans to take a trip over to South Beach and have dinner over there. When we finally got off, we breezed through customs and then Go Ahead let us all down for the only time on the trip.
Because of the flight schedules, about 35 of the 40 people on the tour were staying overnight at the hotel in Miami. Unfortunately, Go Ahead hadn’t made any arrangements to get 35 people from the airport to the hotel, and we completely overwhelmed the hotel’s shuttle. The Clarion Las Palmas took over an hour to get enough buses to the airport to get all of us. On top of that, Go Ahead’s 24-hour “emergency” number appears to really just be an answering service and was incapable of even answering basic questions like the phone number for the hotel (the number they gave us was in New Jersey). All that they could do was leave a message for the normal 8-5 staff. Thank goodness we didn’t have a problem in Peru! That being said, that’s one of only two bad things I have to say about Go Ahead, the other being the flight scheduling. On the whole, the tour was very well ran and went very smoothly.
We finally got to the hotel at about 8:45 pm and then hiked over to Johnny Carino’s for dinner with Greg, Rich, Greg M, and Amanda before heading back to the hotel and heading to bed.
On the morning of the 19th, we got up early for our 7 am flight to Atlanta. Check in was a little more involved than normal because of the fact we had extra bags and were continuing an international itinerary, so they had to waive the fees. Once we got checked in though, everything went smoothly. We spent our layover in Atlanta with Greg and Rich, and arrived back in Denver shortly after noon, exhausted at the end of a wonderful trip.
