June 27

Montana got up and was out of the room by 2:20 a. m. in order to get the 2:30 a.m. shuttle. I was able to go back to sleep until 5:00 a.m. when we had to get up. We checked out and then went and got a little food from the breakfast buffet. My stomach did not want to eat; I did not want to eat, but I did not know when the next food would be available. We then after a short breakfast, caught the 6:00 a.m. shuttle and arrived at the airport at 6:10 a.m. The baggage drop line at Avianca was extremely long.

We waited well over an hour in a snaking line that was very slow. There was a couple in front of us from Colombia going to Aruba for vacation, and she had lived for a short time near Charlotte, NC. One does meet interesting people when traveling.

Finally, we got our bags checked and we proceeded to immigration. The line was equally long here, too. When we finally arrived at our gate, which was the last one in the terminal, it had been a full two hours since we had arrived at the airport. The agent in immigration said that it was because it was vacation time in Colombia. It was good that we allowed as much time as we did as we boarded our plane about 10 minutes after arriving at the gate. There was no time to grab a snack at the airport lounge today.

I took some time while people were boarding to write some on my blog.  After we took off, I took advantage of the opportunity to watch a movie. I watched, The 15:17 to Paris. This movie was based on the story of the terrorist attack on the train in France. It told the story of the three men as they grew up, and until after the attack. One of the men was quoted as saying, “In a time of crisis, we have to be prepared to respond.” I found the movie had a good message to present and from which to learn. 

I still had more time, and watched a second movie—that is almost unheard of for me!  I chose the movie Stronger.  It was the story of the man who had both of his legs blown off in the Boston Marathon bombing.  It portrayed his struggles to overcome his disability and his ability to deal with the publicity that he faced.  It, too, had some valuable lessons to learn about responsibility, follow through and commitment. 

We landed in Fort Lauderdale.  We were told that we would have to reclaim our luggage and recheck it.  This is normal when one is making an international connection.  The problem was that after we collected our luggage, there was no airline desk for either Avianca airlines or Silver Airlines which we were flying.  We went upstairs in the terminal and found the Avianca desk.  We asked for help from some Avianca agent, who spoke little English. She tore our bag tags off and threw them in the trash.  Scott asked her not to do so, and she ignored him and did it anyway. Scott knew we were going to have “fun” now…but still had his bag claim checks to verify! We went to another agent and explained our situation.  She said she could not tag our bag here, and that we had to go to another terminal, and that we needed our bag tags.  Scott dug the tags out of the trash; now they would not stick, but at least we had them.

We had to go downstairs, outside, walk to the end of the terminal (about 100 yards), and wait for the airport shuttle bus that would take us from terminal three to terminal one.  We stood in the hot, humid Florida sun. We lugged our big luggage onto the bus, off the bus, into the terminal, up two long escalators, and finally found the Silver Airlines desk at the end of the terminal.  The lady said she could not print bag tags there, so we resurrected our old tags and stapled them on to the suitcase.  We got our boarding pass and went through security.  After all this running around, we had less than an hour until our flight was to board.  We decided that we did not need to travel through the Fort Lauderdale airport again.  We don’t like the Miami airport, but Miami is better than Fort Lauderdale.

We stopped at Chili’s as we thought we could get in and out pretty quickly.  We ordered a Grilled Chicken Salad.  Even though Scott is tired of chicken, he said this tasted good.  It is amazing what a few spices will do. Starbuck’s was right next door.  Oh, what a delicious cup of coffee that was!

We boarded our flight.  I took the opportunity to write some more on my blogs on this flight.  Scott had a really chatty lady from California next to him.  She was an artist, sculptor, and into alternative medicine. He said she was a bit more chatty than he liked, but she was interesting. We flew to Orlando where we had to deplane and then get back on another plane about 20 minutes later.  Dark clouds were threatening storms in the west, so we were praying that we could take off before they delayed us.  We were able to leave on time and flew to Pensacola.

A very joyful Daniel met us after we retrieved our luggage.  We drove back to Spanish Fort and enjoyed a meal with Daniel before he dropped us off safely at home.  It was a successful trip!  It is good to be back home!