The Disaster Avoided! 01/11/25

For the rest of the story you will want to read this to the end.

Let me pick up where I left off from my last post. There we sat in the VIP lounge of American Airlines. Things started to feel hopeless because we had no direct contact with any official in the airport. We had no idea if anybody was working on getting us a return flight to the US.

I (Scott) got on the phone and called the State Department in the US. After ten minutes of discussion I was informed they could not help us and they hung up. Gotta love the government. Then I called American Airlines. They could not believe what had happened and told me that there were no open seats available for two days. To compound our anxiety the airport authorities informed us that we could only stay in the lounge for 24 hours. That is when your mind begins to rumble out of control.

At this point we had been waiting in the lounge for three hours, we still could not believe how we got here. I checked my backpack once again taking out every last item as though this time my passport would magically appear.

This is when I decided to use the thin blanket that Sarah had packed for the flight because lounge was very cold. I wrapped myself up and hunkered down for what I expected to be days of waiting before we would ever get home. I could not sit for long. Both of us felt like we were loosing our minds.

Sarah was pacing about and stopped to reach for something on the floor. I stood up and saw Sarah reaching down toward the floor at an object that was partially protruding out from under the couch. That object looked like a passport, her passport. As she reached for it I had this fleeting thought "What if it was mine?" I quickly realized that I was only being hopeful and came back to reality.

I was not prepared for what was about to unfold. Both of our minds were thrown into chaos. When Sarah opened it there was a picture of a man. It was the picture of the man who had been lost for the past five hours. It was my passport.

Sarah could not believe it! I could not believe it! We were both speechless. How did it get there? I wish I could tell you with certainty but there it was. I went from being perilously perched atop a thousand foot skyscraper of emotion to the bottom floor in one second. Unbelievable! Really unbelievable! The only plausible theory we can construct is that I somehow slid It into the rolled up blanket when I went to the bathroom.

Thankfully we found it before we were sent home.

I won't go into all the details of how we convinced the immigration personnel of where we found my passport but it simply wound up under a couch on the second floor of the airport, in the executive lounge. You have to wonder what they will be telling their friends about the two old gringos from Estados Unidos. Muy stupido...

Thankfully it all worked out and we made it to our AirBnB without incident. If any of you ever want to go on a trip with us you may want to rethink your plans. But on second thought we could actually use your help making sure we keep a good eye on my documents.

Hasta luego,

Scott and Sarah