Sunday, January 3, 2010

Amazon Adventure Day 31 Home again

I should have put up a posting on the return trip as I kind of left you out in the middle of the ocean. Obviously you knew I made it home as you didn’t read of some disastrous airplane crash. I have always liked that old airplane joke about Florida airplane crashes, where one alligator at the crash site says to the other alligator, “I don’t know why everyone hates airline food. I think it tastes pretty good.”

We took the expedited disembarking route and wheeled our own luggage off the ship. The schedule was set for 7:30 Am and we were down stairs with our luggage but the US Boarder Service wasn’t there. So the ship wasn’t cleared for landing. We stood in the stair well for about an hour waiting. Little did we realize it would be a day of hurry up and wait. Finally the ship is cleared by customs and we are on our way. Jim grabs a cab and heads for the airport. He is going to get a rental car and drive us to the airport, and he and Sandra are going to fly home from Miami. So we sat on the bench to wait for Jim’s return. An hour later we are on our way. With the lack of internet our priority is to find WiFi. We stop at a McDonalds which has WiFi but they want you to sign up with your credit card and then charge you $3.00. Jim does so and the link lasts 20 seconds and then won’t let him back on. Perfect! I wasn’t putting my credit card on an unsecured link. So we headed off. We found one at the condo lobby where were staying on the way down.

After the internet Jim drove us on to the airport and we checked in (more waiting in line). Once we got behind security we found out the flight was going to be an hour late. However that turned into two hours. Finally we are on our way to Toronto. At Toronto we had a three hour layover but we are two hours late so we should have an hour to clear customs, go through security and find our gate. Wrong we have three because the flight to Calgary is late as well. More waiting.

Finally we are on our way again. Agnes has called Kurt and organized him to pick us up at the airport. So after we landed and collected our luggage seeing Kurt was the best sight we had seen all day. I was great to be home. A total of 23 hours since we started down the stair case on the Prinsendam in Fort Lauderdale. What a great adventure!

It is always so much fun to head out on an adventure. However arriving home is great too.

I can’t wait for the next one.

Terry

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