Eventful Travels

Lightening flashed in the night sky, rain fell against the window as our plane sat on the tarmac of San Salvador, El Salvador. Mom was asleep in the aisle seat, I was in the middle, and Karen next to the window. As we took off, Karen and I watched as we came into multiple lightening flashes, the rain streaming off the wings, and sparks of fire (!!!) igniting the wing. Karen and I were wide eyed, looking at each other speechless, we didn't want to speak of the fire on the wing, didn't want to awaken and alarm Mom. The plane was hushed. My heart stopped as the pilot spoke, first in Spanish, I was waiting to hear the English of an emergency. The English announcement was mundane pilot talk! There was not concern about the "fire" on the wing! Karen and I watched, as we got further from the lightening storm, the fire on the wing lessened. Phew!!!

Turns out this was St. Elmo's Fire, an electrical weather phenomena. A "sparking discharge of static electricity caused by the lightening as the plane transitioned from ground to air."

Face masks were the attire of all airport employees and many passengers on our journey home from Roatan. A gate at San Salvador airport was lined with a gowned, masked, capped and gloved medical team holding test kits, awaiting an incoming flight from Mexico. Going through customs at LAX, the question of the night, over and over was "Did you arrive from Mexico?" I wonder what kind of quarantine we would have endured if we had.

We layover at LAX from midnight until 8am. We find benches to try to get some sleep. Right! Jackhammers, buzz saws and activity of airport renovation and constant announcements bombard our ears. Maxed out air conditioning chills us to the bones. We have survived travel through Central America without contracting Swine Flu, but we may catch cold sitting all night in a freezing airport of our civilized, home country. What a long night! We manage a few winks.

We had all our luggage since we had gone through customs. After sleeping on a bench, Karen got out her cosmetic bag, which ended up in her carry on, with scissors, knife, corkscrew, plus bottles of duty free rum. Karen was so busted going through LAX security. Lucky, she ran it back down to the check-in counter, with just enough time to make her Santa Barbara flight. We part our ways with more laughs of our final hurrahs together. I still have one more long flight to Maui, home sweet home!