Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder from an incredibly noisy

airport at Guatemala City and I just want to talk a little bit about how to handle Latin American airports.

I've been to quite a lot of them, and they're not exactly as you would imagine.

So, first thing is, Guatemala City Airport is very central,

but when you're in the cab coming here, and of course there's no obvious bus way of getting here,

that's going to be kind of safe and secure,

the first thing you need to know is that you will be feeling as though you're being abducted.

There is no sense of a kind of grand entrance.

You end up in this slightly of slightly odd industrial-looking

landscape. And eventually, yes, there is an airport. It's zero organisation for dropping people

off. So what tends to happen is that all the taxes, almost everyone who arrives by car, of course, are backed up.

And therefore, people just get out. I did it myself in the middle of the road and sort of take their belongings out, which makes things even worse.

And the whole thing just is a massive tailback. Then you're not going to get into the airport without

having had your papers checked. That means that you are going to be given. You have to have

your booking reference and your passport checked.

Then, who knows where the check-in desk is?

There's certainly no signs.

I'm flying on American Airlines,

but you wouldn't necessarily have known that.

And it was merely a question of wandering around until I saw a logo.

I was in this airport in, I think. Oursay. To all plastic airspace, confirmed a set-tled flight 1188,

destined to down as far. Please, Morphor v. Number 11.

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