Traveling Travesties Part 3

I still can’t believe that it is the end of November. This will be my final blog about the summer. One more trip to that infamous JFK Airport. When we called the airline, they said the flight was on schedule. We have heard that line one too many times! What would we find there? For starters, it was the longest check in line I have ever been in. We must have been in line for over two hours, and we came 3 hours early. The flight was supposed to depart at 10 PM. It was already postponed two hours. Kim and Bekah joined us for one last snack at Mc Donald’s, then they left us. Security was rather chaotic with people going on many different flights – it was past midnight before we got through. Then, we made the trek to our gate and sat down for what would probably be a long night. Finally, we got the call to board the plane. They actually took us on a small shuttle bus out to the tarmac where we boarded. This was well after 2 AM. After a long wait in the plane on the tarmac, an announcement came that there was too much luggage and some would have to be off loaded. Uh oh! We could only imagine what that would mean at the other end of this trip. I think we finally departed from New York around 4 AM. They actually served us a regular meal – I don’t even remember what it was, but I was hungry and ate it up. We touched down in Guyana around 10:00 AM. There were many unhappy faces at the luggage claim area, because hardly any luggage arrived. We received one out of four suitcases. Some people received none, and I felt sorry for them because they were only here for 1 or 2 weeks, and had no clothes or other necessary items. It isn’t like you can run over to a local Wal-Mart and get a couple of items cheaply. Two of our suitcases arrived two days later, but the last one took over 2 weeks and many phone calls and extra trips to the airport. The last leg of our trip involves crossing the Berbice River by ferry. This trip can take many hours if the boats aren’t working well. It had been particularly bad in the two months we were gone. Surprisingly, we got across in a pretty reasonable amount of time. I hope I don’t have to fly any airplanes again for a long time!! However, we still have to cross the river on the ferry if we want to come to Georgetown, and it is running slower than ever!! (Alas, our “traveling travesties” will continue, but we won’t talk about them again!) Finis.
P.S. Our most recent ferry crossings involved waits of 4 hours one way and 3 hours the other. Thank God for Church's Fried Chicken(restaurant) and good books!!