#711 a rough start

I'm not going to write a day-by-day account of what we did on our vacation, While it was good for us, it would be pretty boring to read about how it was raining so we sat in our condo and watched movies and played cards and read and napped. There were days like that. But not the first day.

We left here on Thursday June 7 bright and early in the morning. We got to the airport in plenty of time, but found ourselves waiting in the American Airlines line for quite awhile. I noticed that nobody behind the counter was smiling or looked even remotely happy. They were all on the phone, and the customers looked disgruntled.

When it was our turn, I bounded up to the counter and said brightly, "Hi! I'm going to Belize!"

And the customer service agent said, "Not today, you're not."

I said, "Excuse me? I'm not going to Belize today?"

She said, "There's bad weather in Dallas. Your plane is delayed. It won't arrive in Dallas until around 1:00. You will miss your connecting flight to Belize today and we only have one flight to Belize City a day. You can go to Belize tomorrow."

Well, not that she cared at all but that just didn't work for me! The people at the resort were going to pick us up in Belize City today - not tomorrow! My plan for the evening was to sit in a tropical paradise sipping a delicious cold drink and looking at the jungle.

"I can get you to Atlanta tonight, and you can fly to Belize first thing in the morning. You'll get to Belize City around noon," the airline rep told me.

I said that was ok and she started making calls. We had to switch from American to Delta Airlines.

My first call was to my travel agent, Candice. She wasn't in yet, but I knew she'd call me as soon as she could. We shuffled sadly back out to the parking lot, with our 5:00 PM tickets to Atlanta in our hot little hands.

Sure enough, Candice called me as soon as we got home. I explained the situation and asked about our options. She said she'd work on it and call me back.

A couple of hours later, she called. Here's what she did for us:

She arranged a hotel in Atlanta for that night.

She called the two resorts in Belize, explained the situation, and asked if we could push our departure dates back by one day, so we'd still have our full ten days in Belize. They agreed, no problem, no fees.

She called the airline and, miraculously, convinced them to push our return flight back one day without any change fees. She's a goddess! She's a genius! If that doesn't convince you to work with a travel agent, I don't know what will.

We flew to Atlanta that evening. The people at Delta were wonderful, very kind and helpful. We checked our bags all the way through to Belize. I was nervous about it, but it beat dragging our heavy suitcases to the hotel and back to the airport. The hotel in Atlanta was nice and the manager was terrific. We had a good night's sleep and then we were off to Belize.

It's about a three hour flight to Belize City from Atlanta, GA.

Remember that I was worried about our luggage getting to Belize with us? No worries, it was all there. Unfortunately, our ride to duPlooy's Jungle Lodge was not. A friendly cab driver offered to let us use his phone to call the resort. Someone was on the way, we were told. He'd be there in half an hour. So we waited. About 20 minutes later, a driver showed up and said he was from duPlooy's and he was ready to take us out there.

That was really the only hiccup we had in Belize. From that point on, everything was good.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about our first night in Belize. There may even be a picture or two.