October 21, 2012 Part II

Part II October 21, 2012

 

Kellie called Dad to say she was at the airport and he filled her in on what we were doing.  He told her that we would call when we were through customs on out whereabouts.

The customs woman called us up one by one to the counter to type in our information including copying things off our passports.  When Dad’s turn came, he received a long lecture from the woman about calling ahead and getting an official flight plan.  This seemed to last forever.

We were then asked to bring our luggage around the corner to a table where the customs woman could go through it.  One by one we opened all our bags and the woman made a couple quips to show us there were no hard feelings.  Finally, we were cleared and ushered through to the other side.  Dad went outside to meet Kellie then we all dragged our baggage out to meet her.

By this time it was almost 9:00 PM.  The car rental shops had long since closed.  We were counting on Kellie for a ride.  It was our only option and we weren’t sure what to expect.

A small woman with curly blonde hair appeared and introduced herself to us.  Her mannerisms and appearance reminded me of my aunt Nikki.  She was very friendly but when she saw our luggage, she frowned.  She told her car was packed with supplies and it was going to be a tight squeeze.  Trying to remain optimistic in spite of the day’s earlier events, the men ensure Kellie we can sit with stuff and that we’d make it work.

When Kellie pulled her jeep up and the back seats were laid down, the trunk full of tents and signs, we get a little worried.  Somehow, after much rearranging and stuffing, we did indeed make it work.  Everyone squeezed in like sardines with our luggage on our laps and then some.

On the drive, Kellie told us all about the FIXIT foundation in which she had co-founded with a friend.  She also spoke of the history of the feral animals on the island.

Remembering that we hadn’t eaten, Kellie kept her eyes peeled for a place that was still open where we could stop.  We settled for Wendy’s which seemed to be the only place with the light still on.  For being 9:15 PM, it was amazingly crowded.  The drive-thru line was long so Brad offered to run inside.  Dad went with him.  Inside, the line must have also been long because they were inside a good while.

Emerging from the fast food restaurant, bags of food in hand, the men finally returned and we were on our way again.  It was only then that I noticed that Kellie was driving on the left side of the road.  I don’t think I could ever get use to that.

Kellie informs us that when they made arrangements for us they had thought two of us were a married couple.  Therefore, there were only 2 rooms.  Brad says he plans to get a hotel but not tonight due to how late it was becoming.

The drive to the house was anything but pleasant.  The windy roads were very dark.  There weren’t any street lamps to light the way.  We were beginning to wonder if we’d ever make it there.  Kellie even tells us she doesn’t like driving at night and she’d only been to the house we were heading to a few times.  In spite of our concerns, we did make it, after passing the street twice.

  The drop for the driveway seemed very steep and appeared out of no-where.  Dad said Kellie seemed to be “taking a leap of faith” when she chose where to drive down.  Kellie parked and we began to unload.  I was a little leery when we followed Kellie down a set of very steep worn-away and over grown stone steps but was pleasantly surprised when we stepped inside.

The beautiful house was a breath of fresh air compared to the day we had.  It was right on the water and you can even hear the waves caressing the shoreline from any place in the house.

In the main living area there is a kitchen and a small room with a bed attached to the laundry room with a bathroom and shower.  Once stepping outside the back door, you were on a back porch that ran the length of the house.  It was the only connection to the 2 bedrooms.  The middle room is furnanced with 2 double beds.  Attached is a bathroom with a bathtub/shower and a his and hers sinks.  The master bedroom is located on the far end of the house.  Inside sits a king-sized bed with the master bathroom containing a double-sized walk-in shower.

After falling in love with the cozy house, Brad decides he will be staying here and not getting a hotel.  Kellie tells us the owner of the house normally rents it out but currently it is off season so we are lucking out.  Before she leaves us to get settled in, we ask Kellie how prevalent centipedes and scorpions are to the area.  She tells us she isn’t sure, she doesn’t think they are a problem, but not to “lose our guard”.  We thank her and she leaves us to our element.


 Now we have to decide who sleeps where.  I am very uneasy about the small room (no light switch) not just due to its size.  Being the smallest and personally not paying for the trip as much as the others, I know I should be the one to offer to sleep in it anyway.  Sensing my concerns about the room, Dad lies down and immediately notices a couple things.
            1. There is no head board
            2. There are ants crawling up and down the wall directly beside where you lay your head.

Upon further inspection, there are ants in the bed, under the covers, and crawling all over the pillows.  The final straw for me was seeing a millipede on the floor by the bed.  At first glance it looked like a slug.  Looking closer, it was definitely a multi-legged creepy crawler.  ICK!!!

I took the initiative and suggested Dad and I share the room with the 2 double beds.  And then it was so.  Before settling in for the night, I sat with Dad and Brad as they drank a glass of wine and reflected on the day’s events.  They both laughed over the many memories made in a single day.  And so begins our adventure…

Sunday, October 21, 2012 Part I

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Today was long and treacherous. 1st off, let me start with a couple recommendations for you:

# 1.) DON'T FORGET YOUR PASSPORT

# 2.) IF YOU CAN AVOID TRAVELING ON A SUNDAY, DO SO. Everything closes early.

So to start out our adventurous day, we woke up around 5:00 AM. I called our airport in Ft. Lauderdale around 5:15 and they said they would pick us up in 15 minutes. We strolled downstairs to grab some quick breakfast and noticed the weather was playing on the TV. The newscaster was telling everyone how a cold front had pushed the clouds and rain towards the island so Florida would be clear. Problem is, that is exactly where we are headed.

Around 6:00, we began to worry about our courtesy ride so I called the airport again. Turns out they had gone to the wrong hotel. After hanging up the phone, I hear Dad whispering obscenities under his breath. When I ask him what is wrong, he looks over at me with frustration in his eyes and mutters, "Guess what I forgot… my passport."

After a few minutes of panic, we try to come up with a ground plan. Dad gets on the phone to mom and I jump on the courtesy computer and google it. While surfing the web, Mom confirms that Dad did indeed leave his passport behind. I come across several articles, including one published in USA TODAY in January, of a Canadian who was able to get entry into the USA by pulling up a digital copy of his passport on his IPAD. I fill Dad in on my findings an he asks Mom to scan or take a picture of his passport and send it to him.

Meanwhile, our ride has finally shown up and we start piling our luggage into the van. Dad receives a few unreadable texts from Mom and finally one legible one. Apparently she is unable to scan it.

We pile up the plane and take off… now an hour behind schedule. It was very cloudy and over the radio hazardous weather was reported "heading East over Nassau". Kind of in the same direction we were heading. Dad clicks his spot checker GPS to alert everyone at home that we were okay. Meanwhile dark clouds are starting to appear all around us.

Our first refuel stop is in Exuma, Bahamas. It is a nice big airport. They direct us to customs and we unpack our luggage. Dark clouds were still rolling in and we even heard a distant clap of thunder. We hoped it would pass while we were inside.

Once inside the lobby, we were discouraged by how empty it was. We waited and another group went in and walked behind the yellow line and around the corner. Brad decided to follow suit and charged around the corner as well. He returns with a stack of paperwork for us to fill out. He makes a few more trips and finally Dad follows his around the corner.

I wait patiently with the luggage and then Brad comes back and begins picking up his bags. He tells me not to worry about the paperwork and informs me that we are good to go. I ask where Dad was and Brad replies that he is coming. Concerned about how easy things appeared, I consciously decided to wait and see where Dad was.

Dad then tells us we need to pull all the luggage around to the other side. We oblige and Dad is in deep conversation with a man at a desk and still filling out some forms. The man asks to see our passports and Brad and I whip ours out. Dad shows the man the picture Mom had texted and starts explaining his story. This is where things got complicated. The man, unconfident about what to do next, tells us we have to wait for immigration to get here but not to worry that she would only be 10 minutes. We step aside to wait patiently.

Brad seeming irritated, asks Dad what he had said. I guess if we were headed straight to St. Croix, we'd be fine. However, Dad's small plane would have to make stops to refuel. He had told the man about our flight plan to stop in Inagua and Puerto Rico to refuel and grab a meal.

It takes about an hour for immigration to arrive and Brad starts the talking, stating that our destination is St. Croix. The woman seems annoyed and asks us if we are planning to make any stops in between. Brad says "Just to re-fuel" and is very adamant about it. Finally she clears us and we packed up and left.

As we begin to taxi to the runway, there is a sudden bumpy thump! Dad and Brad turn to see what has happened and somehow we accidentally had knocked against a runway light with the plane.

Our windshields and windows begin to sprinkle with raindrops and we wonder what it will be like in the air.  Once in the blue, Dad makes quite the maneuver to avoid flying into any of the enormous clouds.  In the distance we could see endless clouds that seemed to stretch from “floor to ceiling” per Brad.  Brad and I weren’t worried.  We had full faith in Dad’s flying ability.  Dad, however, later admits to being a little bit nervous.  We made it, considering, and it actually was a very smooth ride, believe it or not.

Our next stop is Inagua.  Now let me tell you about Inagua.  We landed in the very small, falling apart airport that is Inagua.  No one to greet us we walked up to a small “T” shaped building with screen doors rusting on the hinges.  Inside there were 2 women: One who is slumped down on a torn up chair bench and another leaning on the doorway of a very small office door.

There is two other offices I can see, one located in the middle of the main room with shaded windows and another where I can just make out the bottom half of a TV screen showing some Juliet Roberts movie.  Across from the shaded office is a door leading to the middle of the “T”.  This long room has double -doors on either side that are torn open.  Then at the base of the “T” are the bathrooms.

 

 

There was no air condition just a few fans randomly hanging throughout the building.  I hurry to the bathroom and when I come out Dad has been chauffeured to the shaded office to pay a landing tax fee and order fuel.  He also asks if there is anywhere close by where we can get lunch.  Unfortunately, there isn’t.  Dad doesn’t want to push his luck without a passport so he pays the tax fee and then we head outside to wait for the fuel truck.

Outside, we try to be patient while standing in the blazing sun.  When a richety old truck comes around the corner, Brad and Dad exchange glances.  A man and a woman hop out of the vehicle and the woman starts to unroll the fuel hose while the man hooks up the battery of the truck to the fuel pump to power it.

The woman tells Dad that there is a fee for fueling the gas on top of the price for the fuel itself.  We have no choice so onward the woman goes to pumping the gas.  It seems to take forever to fill up.  As Brad says, it “trickled out”.

Once we were on our way, we started discussing not stopping in Puerto Rico and heading straight on to St. Croix.  Dad is a little hesitant about whether or not his plane can go without the extra stop for fuel.  There is some more maneuvering around some thunder boomers: very high and build-ups on clouds.  The closer we get to Puerto Rico, we also notice that more than half the calls on the radio were in Spanish.

It is near dusk when we approach Puerto Rico.  Dad and Brad had continue discussing whether or not to stop and where, and the plan decided was that we were going to stay the night in Puerto Rico.  Dad, being very anxious about figuring out where he was going to land, was worried about landing in Puerto Rico (foreign territory) without his passport.

“The winds were with us, weather was holding, and St. Croix is American territory, and I’m an American citizen,” Dad made the conscious decision, called up on the radio and changed his flight plan to go straight to St. Croix.

The trip from Puerto Rico to St. Croix tested Dad’s instruments, he later tells me.  For 60 miles it was completely dark with no land marks.  Dad admits to being more than a little nervous during this time.

Approaching St. Croix, Dad had words with the radio tower.  Since customs closed on Sundays at 6:00 PM and we had stopped in the Bahamas for gas, “we are in trouble”.  Dad’s response was “I’m an American citizen”.

After landing in St. Croix, Brad leapt out of the plane to great an airport staff member.  Dad stayed behind a bit to update his flight log.  Brad comes back to the plan to let us know staff member, “Susan” with the airport’s fire department is bringing over a truck and will be transporting us to customs where they called in a woman from home.

While waiting for Susan to bring back a truck to transport us, Dad called his contact “Kellie” to let her know we arrived while I called Mom and Mark to tell them we were safe and sound and on the ground.

Susan was very nice and helped load up her pick-up truck.  The two men hopped into the bed of the truck and I climbed into the passenger seat.  The cool air condition felt great inside but I did find it odd to see 3 air fresheners hung up all around the passenger side of the vehicle.

Inside the customs building it was empty.  I felt a strange sensation of déjà vu.  Luckily, this time we only waited a few minutes for someone to arrive.  During these few minutes, having skipped lunch and not had dinner, I gulped down my leftover sub I had gotten from Brunswick, GA the previous day for lunch.  Dad and Brad warned me that once customs arrived, it would be tossed.  Sure enough, they were right. 

The customs woman had short dark curly hair and wore reading glasses on the tip of her nose, reminding me of a librarian. The stern look on her face didn’t mask her annoyance of being called in after hours.

The woman dons her latex gloves and wrapped the remains of my sandwich in a clear plastic bag like she was collecting evidence for the police.  She took the bag into the back around the corner to dispose of it.  She handed us a stack of paperwork to work on before she left.  When she returned, she then asked us for our passports.  Dad went into his speal of forgetting it and showed the picture on his phone.  She laughed a little and said she’s get to that part later.  We followed her to the customs desk where she pulled up her computer.  Raising a judgmental eyebrow, she asked if we had a flight plan.

Dad pulled out his “manifest copy” as she called it, which I guess wasn’t official paperwork.  She said it wasn’t in the computer, therefore it didn’t exist and we were an “unplanned arrival”.  Very obviously annoyed, the woman was actually very professional throughout the entire conversation.