Trip to the States

Joan had breakfast and lunch sandwiches all made up for us to take on our long trip to Port. Our driver arrived at 7:20am with the good news the roads were open and we should be able to make it to the airport at Port-au-Prince with plenty of time to spare. Below the van is getting packed.

Amy found the shells we bought on the primitive Island, they had not been removed from the bag and wow did they smell and yet we packed them. Good-byes were just a bit sad not knowing the next time we will get to see or be with the Reinhards. Our driver put on a cd of Haitian Christmas music and we were off moving as quickly as one does on these winding roads. About an hour into the trip all those in the back started yelling STOP STOP. Poor Caleb was car sick and needed to vomit. I can't believe it but we took the plastic bag of vomit and left it on the side of the road. Don't tell mom we littered, that's like the worst sin one could commit in our family. About that time our driver starts looking for diesel fuel and for the next 4 hours we stopped 5 times with no success, no one had any for sale. We were following this truck that was driving down the road with a flat tire.

As today is Saturday every small town seemed to have market day. Below was a field full of animals to sell.

Each time we got close to a village the streets became crowded and would slow to a crawl.

Diane told us after seeing donkey after donkey loaded down to the hilt, "I'm not an animal person but I really feel bad for the animals in Haiti." At almost every corner there are 10-15 Haitian men sitting on their motorcycles. These are not motorcycle gangs, these are the taxis. It is 50 or 75 cents a ride.

In the picture below the tap tap we were following had 3 guys hanging off the back with their baskets. Another guy tried to jump on and the guy in the middle started fighting to keep his place and knocked the other guy off.

We came to one town that had a police check point.

The one road to Port goes through many small villages and it seems each village has a speed bump or 2. Sometimes they have signs posted on them. We asked Tim what the signs say and his interpretation was: Laying down Policeman or sleeping policeman. I think it was either Hannah or Bethany years ago when they first arrived in Haiti tell their parents if they would just take out all the speed bumps and put them in the pot holes the roads would be smoother. This 125 mile trip that can take as little as 4 hours was taking us over 5 but don't worry we still had plenty of time. And then we reached Port. Trying to drive in that crowded city was something the green truck below actually tried to cut in, hit our van and just kept going.

Our driver didn't even react. Of course all of this was done at a crawl. The next pictures are of the rubble still standing in piles from the earthquake in Jan 2010.

And there are still tent cities, for the most part these Haitians did not have insurance and cannot afford to build.

We finally arrived at the airport with 3 hours to spare. An airport official insists on our driver backing up to a fence and then we are surrounded by Haitian men all trying to sell us something or help with the bags. It was chaos trying to get through, they send us through a door where we go through security, our bags are gone through and we are patted down (at least Diane and I were because we set off the scanner with our artificial hips). Just about that point an official tells us we are in the wrong area takes us back out the way we came and again we are surrounded with sellers and helpers. He takes us to another line where we again have to go through security. About this time we are all out of dollars. Everyone that handles a bag wants a dollar tip and they are grabbing our bags out of our hands over and over. We stand in line for over 2 hours while they again go through our bags, and again need to go through the scanner and be patted down. Then we are sent to another line where 3 different dogs come around to sniff the suitcases. Each dog sniffs for something different. We had those stinky shells in our suitcases and each dog was fascinated with ours drawing lots of attention from the policemen. Below is a dog sniffing Amy's bag.

The line to check in took another hour, their computers were down but finally we walk in where the boarding is ready to start. The escalator is there just not working

We are all sent walking up the escalator carrying our bags where we come to another check point. At this one they we again had to put our carry-on bags up on a counter and have them gone through. We are still in line when the plane was suppose to take off but thankfully it waited for the hundreds of people getting their bags checked for the 3rd time. We are so hot and sticky that when we finally board the plane and see the frost coming out from the airconditioning we are thrilled.

The rest of the story will be told tomorrow, we are exhausted.