Sunday, March 25, 2012

Getting there

So I decided to make a play by play of our trip down here.Using my FB updates.

You mean no one is on at 8am, a Saturday, the first day of Spring Break?

Landed in Dallas Ft. Worth. next flight boards in a few minutes.

Just landed in Miami, and we leave at around 8 am. Gonna use our free hotel vouchers for some sleep tonight! :)

So far everything has been okay, we found a quiet cool place in MIA to chill for the wee hours of the morning. Our flight so far is on time, and boarding at 6:30. Let's hope all goes well to get to Haiti on our final leg!

We are in Haiti! We made it safely, however, our luggage is delayed until tomorr

We left for PDX around 6am on Saturday morning. We arrive at the airport, check-in, and when we go to scan our boarding passes, the woman offered us 2 $500 American Airlines ticket vouchers, a hotel room for the night in Miami, and Lunch meal vouchers. (On account of the flight being overbooked and there was a group of 45French sturdents travelling to Paris) She told us that we would make all the same connections, and arrive in Haiti at the same time. We gladly accepted the generous offer and got to chill around the PDX terminal until 12:15 when our flight boarded.

We arrived in Dallas on time, and were supposed to have only 10 minutes to make our connection in the next terminal over. We rushed as fast as we could, and made it to the gate- to find that the flight time had changed to a half hour later. This was good for us, we just got a bite to eat and then got ready to board. Unfortunately there was a mechanical wire failure in the right engine that needed to be fixed. We finally boarded the scorching hot plane about 1 hour past our original flight time. After we boarded they STILL had not fixed the problem and the Captain informed us we would depart in around 30 minutes. We finally left the tarmac, engine trouble fixed, and arrived in Miami International Airport. Since we had hotel vouchers from PDX we wanted to use them. After being told to wait a few minutes while they contacted the hotel, a man became irate at the fact that he missed his connection. Finally security came and delt with him.

The rebooking agent told us that there were no more rooms anywhere, even with vouchers. We were given about $60 in food vouchers and told that there was some free snacks and a place to sleep in the "auditorium".
This so-called auditorium was a dark room with people sleeping everywhere, and a table with some sodas and granola bars. We decided that for our safety, we would find somewhere else. We found a cool quiet niche in a corner with an electrical outlet. My mom tried to sleep, and I watched How I Met Your Mother.

After several long hours of nothing, and many Subway pizzas later, it was time to go through security and head to our gate a bit early. Security took a while, only because of the sheer volume of people, but we still had plenty of time to spare.

The last leg of our journey was Miami to Port-Au-Prince which, traditionally in our experiences, are loud and very tight flights. However, the flight was almost half empty and we were able to move to an exit row to get more foot room. It was a quick flight, and then we arrived! Went through Immigration, and searched for our bags. (5. one was my personal items, the rest donations) None could be found. My mom talked to the baggage woman and found out they were still in MIA. So, i have no clothes, in the Caribbean. fun.

All in all a fairly decent trip! More updates soon!

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