Huge thank you to Dan for figuring a way out of Monday morning's travel mess. And sincere thanks to Senator Harry Ried's office for essential assistance.
Without Dan (our amazing friend) and Susan in Senator Reid's office this trip would not be possible.
We left for the airport at 4:00am yesterday with 5 valid US passports and ran into some bad luck.
Despite working with an Ecuadorian travel agent, and providing United with complete passport details upon ticket purchase and during check in the night before, we discovered that Ecuador requires passports to be valid for six months after arrival. The girls' passports were good for another five months. Our phone call oddesy began and lasted the entire day. A turning point was the call from Senator Reid's office: Susan obtained a same day apt for us at the SF passport office, but we had to drive to SF right away, and quickly. D drove aggressively and we made it with a minute to spare. About 5pm, we left SF for Reno, stopping for a fantastic dinner in Berkeley (at Zut!). Can't begin to describe the stress of that day! We're at the reno airport again today, hoping to make it to Ecuador after four flights. If all goes well, we land in Ecuador very late tonight and make it to the boat tomorrow
kview from road on way to SF Monday
Can't wait to see the views from "down under" - Wishing you the greatest time ever - "Uncle D"
ReplyDelete