So today was the day! Sadly it started at 4am. We had all planned to get to the airport together because as some of you may know, San Pedro Sula is a known murder capital of the world so traveling alone was not an option, especially since we had a bunch of minors with us. I woke up to a very very awake Codee bouncing off of the walls and very, awake. I, on the other hand, was a complete zombie! Olivia pulled Grace and me out of our giant, warm, cozy beds and onto the freezing tile floors. We all trundled our stuff down to the lobby (mind you this place had the tiniest elevator I have ever been in second to the one at Hotel Paris in La Ceiba) to find out that those who were not on the flights at 7 & 7:30 am cold go back to bed for a few more hours! What an amazing thing to hear even if I had been pulled out of bed already.
At some point Olivia got Grace and me up for the second time and pulled us out of the room and up to the top level of the hotel with a wall of windows looking down on the rest of the city to eat breakfast. Dante had good breakfasts, but this was a very very satisfying one for sure. There were fried eggs, tamales, beans, and sweet plantain and later on I discovered some tasty rice pudding. It was a really good last meal in Honduras especially for a hotel.
Next was the taxi debacle. Everyone was trying to get rid of as many Lempiras as possible before we left the country and we had to get three taxis for all of the stuff. I think that Olivia definitely wins the award for lightest packed person. In the first week Gilchrist told her that she needed to get longer fins so she wouldn't get exhausted from swimming around so much. Olivia ended up buy these fins as well because it was cheaper to buy as opposed to renting them for some absurd price per day. Anyway, she managed to get BOTH pairs into the smallest suitcase out of all of us. I think by just suitcase I may have come in second, but with all my camera stuff in my backpack I had much more.
The ride over to the airport was..... interesting. I am pretty sure the 3 cab drivers were racing because at one intersection our drive said "Adios Senor XYZ!!" and then pealed a wheel and proceeded to to weave in and out of the rest of the cars at a solid 50mph. I can say for sure that I was glad to get out of the taxi at the airport.
Check in was smooth sailing and I think I made it through all of customs and security that I normally do at the Atlanta airport flying domestically. The entire airport was tiny when we finally got it with 6 gates in total. When we arrived Gilchrist and surprisingly Carlos were waiting for us. As it turned out, Carlos was the only person in the earlier crew that had been bumped back to the 1:45pm flight while Thomas had managed to get on the flight to Miami at the right time but had had the second leg of his flight from Miami to Tampa completely cancelled and no alternative flight arranged (and he was a Platinum member as well!). Reminds me never to fly on United, especially international for a while until they get their mess figured out. Olivia and I walked up and down looking for a Delta plane due to the lack of signage everywhere else. Finally I found a fellow, extremely buff Asian man who was flying back to the states on the same flight as me and got directed to the correct gate.
I was off after a quick check through my bags for any weird foods or plants I suppose. The woman ahead of me had a massive melon shaped object in her suitcase but the security people didn't even blink an eye! The plane ride wasn't bad. I slept the first 2/3 and then the last 1/3 I got to talk to a cool middle aged dad who had a bunch of really great diving stories from Utila where he had been for the last 5 days. I can't image such a short trip into another country now.
Upon walking off the plane I was flagged down by a kind woman who sent me with 3 other people through a maze of hallways, escalators, and moving side walks. Just as I was thinking she had sent us on a wild goose chase to customs we walked out into a giant room with lines and lines of people waiting to be processed by customs. My group just breezed through and out we went into the main room where my family was waiting. I had made it back!
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