It was a lovely summer evening, still light at 8:00 p.m., when we departed Davis from Civic Center Pool in two rented school buses. Yes, seriously, rented school buses! Granted, it was cheap and for cheap we got a bumpy ride, without air conditioning to the Oakland airport. The line was very long and we had a lengthy wait in line at Grupo TACA airlines, the airline of Latin American. We nicknamed it “Taco airlines.” We were 3 hours early and we still barely made the plane (Coach Rick, pictured, counted heads as we found our seats in the airplane). Airline managed to demonstrate all the maddening disorganization that cliches attribute to Latin America. It took two clerks to process each ticket and the printout for each ticket was approximately 5 feet long (seriously). It was so long because the plane puddled-jumped its way thru central America and our luggage needed tags for the various stops and plane changes (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salavador and finally Ecuador, landing first in Quito and then in our destination city of Guayaquil). Most of us managed to sleep after the plane took off at 1:30 a.m., at least until we reached central America.
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