This post will take me several days to finish, so bear with me.  Our trip did not go as planned (at all), but it was still a great trip.  Barbados is definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen and we know that we will go back.  So here begins our vacation saga.

We were packed and ready to go on time, our driver Ren was on time, we arrived at the airport on time.  Our flight was scheduled for 5:20 and we were in line at the Liat desk at 3:30.  After sitting in a line that wasn’t moving for about a half hour, they asked everyone on the flight to Barbados to move to another line.  It was then that we were told that the airport had just closed “because of weather.”  We proceeded through security anyway, saying our prayers that the “weather” would clear up.  The funny thing is, there was just a little bit of rain.  There was no wind, the visibility was fine, just a wee bit of rain.  As 5:30 neared, the sky started to darken, an ominous sign considering there are no lights on the runway.  At the same time, there was an American Eagle flight set to leave ten minutes after us.  At 5:30, they made an announcement that the American flight was canceled due to weather.  At 5:32 the American Airlines flight landed.  At 5:34, they began boarding that flight.  At 5:35, they told us our Liat flight was canceled “due to weather.”  At 5:40, the American Airlines flight left.  Hmmm.  Does something sound fishy in all this?  Welcome to Liat, the airline of the Caribbean.  So we filed back into the departure area and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  After a half hour, they gave us back the bags we had checked.  After another 45 minutes, they finally announced that our flight was rescheduled for 9:30 the next morning, meaning we had to be back at the airport at 7:30.

This began our inner turmoil.  Do we take a taxi home?  Do we find a hotel in Marigot (where the airport is) but risk the possibility of bugs, filthy sheets, unsanitary conditions, etc.?  Do we trust that a taxi that Liat would arrange for us is actually going to pick us up on time?  At this point, a woman on our flight approached me and asked if we were tourists and had a place to stay.  I told her that we had a place, that we were Ross students, but that we were concerned about driving all that way home and back again the next morning and paying for it (a taxi there and back would be 300 EC – added on to the 120 EC we’d already paid).  She and her husband then offered to take us to their home and bring us back in their car the next morning.  Now, looking back, this sounds really weird.  I think if we weren’t tired, frustrated, disappointed, and angry, we would have just gone home.  Nevertheless, we opted to take them up on their hospitality and accept the free ride, the free lodging, and the guarantee of arrival on time the next day.

We had spent the last hour or hour and a half with this couple and had pretty much established that they weren’t crazy.  They were middle aged, from Zimbabwe originally, but had spent the last 30 years in Britain and around the world.  They work as consultants for the EU, monitoring and surveying the roads in Dominica, in hopes of determining whether further investment from the EU would benefit not only Dominica, but the EU at large (apparently France and Germany had already staked a bit of money into improving the roads here but are undecided as to whether they’ll continue).  They’ve lived all over the world – South Africa, Nepal, Hong Kong, Dominica, London – and had loads of interesting stories to share.  The only problem was that they lived just outside Roseau, which is a much longer distance than the trip back to Portsmouth.  We still opted to go with them, but we both felt pretty sick after all that driving on those miserable Dominican roads (total driving time so far: 2 hours 45 minutes).

When we arrived at Jeremy and Mary’s house we were amazed that such a beautiful work of craftsmanship could exist in Dominica.  The stone floors were gorgeous, the stairs and wood floors upstairs were a beautiful, polished mahogany imported from Guadeloupe.  The architect was also a sailor, so there were nautical touches throughout.  The view was beautiful and it was high up in the mountains so the breeze was quite cool.  We ate a small dinner of things they had in their house (naturally, there wasn’t much since they were about to leave for Barbados, too) – carrots, baked beans, corn, a roll.  We went to bed immediately after, as we had to get up at 5:30 the next morning to leave in time for the airport.

Fast forward to the next morning.  We began driving, when along the road Jeremy and Mary spotted a local they knew.  He was coming from the airport and told us that they had canceled the first morning flight to Antigua because of a strike.  Andy and I looked at each other feeling helpless and a little bit alarmed – maybe this was the real reason we couldn’t get out the night before.  We continued driving and arrived at the airport right on time – at 7:30 (total time in car: 4 hours 15 minutes).  We waited in those hopeless lines again before moving into another line.  A Liat worker brought over a giant pile of receipts – our boarding passes for the flight – in no particular order.  He began mumbling names at random, as people crept ever closer to the desk to hear what he was saying.  He also made the announcement that the flight was now at 11:15, so Liat offered to buy us lunch at the snack shop at the airport.  All they had were ham sandwiches and tuna sandwiches, which didn’t sound particularly appetizing, so we just got bottles of water, went through security and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  11:15 came and went.  11:30 came and went.  11:45 came and went.  No news.  No announcements.  No acknowledgement of any kind that our plane was late, delayed, or canceled.  By now, three flights had bottlenecked and the tiny room they call the departure lounge (which is sans air conditioning or ceiling fans), which accommodates roughly 130 people was teeming with nearly 180 grouchy, sweaty passengers.  Finally, a Liat employee announced that three planes were about to land and that we would all be out of there within 20 minutes.  For the first time in 24 hours, someone told us the truth.  Three planes landed within 10 minutes and we had boarded the plane by about 12:10.  Once we were airborne, there were no further incidents.  Customs and immigration moved quickly, our bags came off the carousel immediately, and changed our money without incident.  We hopped on a taxi and were at the Hilton by 1:30.  Finally, after 24 hours of torture, we were in Barbados.