Flew out of Guat City at dawn in an old, flaccid 737 that just felt limp and worn out.  I empathized.  It was a Delta flight and it was only about one-third full.  There was us and, maybe 60 or so Guatemalans.

Five hours later we were in LA.  Just in time for our 4 hour layover in a terminal building that literally vibrated like it was a BC ferry.  I have no idea why this huge concrete monolith hummed and jiggled all the time but it did.

And I was not the only one who felt it.  When I inquired with the ticket taker at the gate, the young woman behind me said, “I feel it too.  I thought it was a minor earthquake but it didn’t stop!” 

No answer.

At 2:30 pm we boarded a brand new, packed-to-the-brim 737 that, comparatively speaking, was like sitting in a new Lexus compared to an old Corolla.  It was pretty sleek.

I am sure it is just a coincidence – as in new vs old.  But there was also a micro-culture shift that was hard not to notice.  We went from one plane to the next and the differences were stark.

In the first, it was a chicken-bus version of an airplane.  And, in it, were the Guatemalans.  It wasn’t clean, the announcements were in Spanish and an accented English and the in-flight service was bare-bones minimal.  I half-expected chickens and really loud Latin music to play the whole way.

On the second leg, the plane still had that new-out-of-the-showroom smell, the service was good, the only language spoken was English and about a third of the passengers were Asian.  I don’t think a single Central American went North with us.

It felt like I was in Vancouver already!

“Dave!  It was just a new plane going somewhere else.  No big deal.” 

You are probably right.  It is just that I am kinda seeing things from a Central American perspective and it just feels like they are getting ‘second hand, maybe fourth class’ treatment.

It’s not like their flights are any cheaper.  They paid the going rate.  And it was Delta/Alaska all the way.

And, apropos of nothing, I suppose, there is a huge contingent of Guatemalans in LA. I dunno…………….you’d just think they’d get better attention………ya know?

I dunno…..call me crazy.  The airlines/airport treat you like dumb cattle-on-the-hoof the whole way but I felt like Grade A Prime on the second leg (LAX to YVR)  and stringy, old cow-for-dog-food on the first (GUA to LAX).

Put another way, Central America seems like it is running on ‘old American infrastructure’ from hand-me-down school buses to really old Boeing planes, from bloated and ugly fast food franchises to even the currency itself.  (El Salvador has officially adopted the US currency as its own and all the other Central American countries accept it as a ‘sister currency’).  I have to say their so-called Democratic system is pretty fourth rate, too.

“Central Americans don’t get no respect, man!”

We landed in Vancouver and literally breezed through the formalities while strolling through the cleanest and most beautiful airport building in the known world (defined as known-by-me).  We were picked up efficiently by our hotel shuttle and marveled at clean air, clean streets, signs-that-worked and roads that were smooth.  We were in awe of the modern, efficient, safe, attractive, smooth, civilized non-militarized beauty of it all.  We were star-struck like hill-billy rubes in New York.

When we got to the hotel I reached over to open the large sliding door that allows egress for us passengers and the driver said, “Sorry, sir, please wait for me to open the door….for safety reasons, sir”.  He came around and placed a little plastic step-stool so that I could alight ‘safely’.

Sally and I burst out laughing.  I said, “We just came from El Salvador, for Gawds sake!  There isn’t a sidewalk in the city that isn’t pockmarked with enough unmarked holes sufficiently deep and large to break your leg and even going to a convenience store is literally putting your life in danger.”

It would take you all day to find one spot in Richmond that might constitute a danger to a blind, deaf, completely-mad octogenarian.  And I am saying that an NHL team walking anywhere in Sal Salvador for one afternoon could not escape unscathed.

Our sense of what constitutes ‘risk’ in Canada is way out of proportion to what risk really is.  You are safer running blindfolded down the Trans Canada freeway here than you are drinking the water or buying a quart of milk down there.  We are safe here.

And it is good to be almost home.