Not trying to be contrary to the popular wisdom but I like the approach of the first better, though there are good elements in both.
Random suggestions you can ignore: The first sentence is really too long. I would consider breaking up the road description into a separate sentence. Also, as in the second example, I'd go with "*the* long war", or drop the whole "by long years of war", as that's going to become obvious shortly. I'd like to see a little bit more information about this group of five. As it stands, we get the impression that Pablo's son is a kid but the others are all much older. I think you could give us a lot of the impressions currently in the first paragraph through the eyes of the characters, and tell us a bit more about where they specifically are: the airport is new, yes, but what does it look like? How does it differ from the airport they remember here? Or was there none here? I think we may need to have a little bit more of a specific sense of place/people (not necessarily a lot, but you've given us the big picture very nicely but not yet the small one) fairly soon.
nitpick --> "For example" sort of jars in both cases.
I like it, though; I would keep reading beyond either of the above.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Random suggestions you can ignore:
The first sentence is really too long. I would consider breaking up the road description into a separate sentence. Also, as in the second example, I'd go with "*the* long war", or drop the whole "by long years of war", as that's going to become obvious shortly. I'd like to see a little bit more information about this group of five. As it stands, we get the impression that Pablo's son is a kid but the others are all much older. I think you could give us a lot of the impressions currently in the first paragraph through the eyes of the characters, and tell us a bit more about where they specifically are: the airport is new, yes, but what does it look like? How does it differ from the airport they remember here? Or was there none here? I think we may need to have a little bit more of a specific sense of place/people (not necessarily a lot, but you've given us the big picture very nicely but not yet the small one) fairly soon.
nitpick --> "For example" sort of jars in both cases.
I like it, though; I would keep reading beyond either of the above.