Lilly and Brigitte preparing sandwiches for the trip home
This is our final day at Guadeloupe. Time has passed really fast. I got up at 7 o'clock and just enjoyed the nice morning. Nobody else was up. The sun was shining. The bread van came by at 7:20 and I bought some bread for the group. Continued packing our things. Fortunately we had made good progress last night. Ate breakfast at our bungalow. By about 9 we were ready to relax a little bit. Sorted out our shared finances with the others. That was a bit tricky this time because we did not use a common pot, like last year. So it was a lot of special case dividing and multiplying. In the end we forgot to include dad and Sophy's outlays into the pot... Lilly and Brigitte prepared some sandwiches for the trip because we knew from last year that we would not be fed much until late in the evening once we'd left San Juan.
Lilly and Brigitte preparing sandwiches for the trip
home
We decided to have a sort of Brunch this morning. We had a lot of leftovers still. I mean really a lot. And they were good ones too. We piled tons of food onto the table by the communal bungalow. It included things like goose liver, sausages, fresh fruits, fish soup, etc, etc. We knew that much of this food would have to hit the bin if we did not eat it now. We could not bring it with us home. It was almost like being locked into the frige in the Titanic, trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Have you ever had baguette with goose liver? There was also a bottle of Champagne left in the frige WITH ice cold glasses as well. Every drop tasted very well. But all good things have to come to an end. We had to get going. Very nice things had to be thrown away. We left unopened things for Jean-Jacques and I tried to entice my dad to take on other things as they are returning a day after us.
Group photo (left to right)
top: Barry, Naveed, Susan, Sophy, CG, Thierry, Brigitte, Lilly, Per
bottom: Erik, Karl, Gaetan, Morgane, Isabella
The plan was to leave by 12:00, but we did not hit the road until 12:30. We felt guilty about not having cleaned Pepita's Cous cousier (again). Stressed we continued down the road. My dad joined us with his car to help us getting our luggage to the airport. Without his help we would not have been able to get to the airport in one trip! Sophy came along as well. We stopped to get some gasoline on the way, with Thierry, while dad continued on towards the airport ahead of us. When it was my time to pay, I wanted to use my VISA card because I had no cash left. That took some time because they could not get the VISA card machine working. I felt the stress building. Tick, tick, tick. Finally, it wasn't plugged in! I raced to the airport where Thierry pulled in after me, having made a wrong turn. At least I was not last! I could see Sophy on the other side of the sidewalk, holding some of our luggage. We unloaded our stuff and started looking around for Susan, Naveed and Barry. No signs of them. We started to worry as we knew we probably had to help Barry explain what happened with the left side panel of their car (when he scraped the pillar a few days ago). We decided to drive down to the rental place and, perhaps, they would be there.
I drove down to the rental place with Brigitte in my coat tail. As I pulled into the rental place, I saw Jean-Jacques walking out of the place. Eh? And Naveed was standing outside. We got out of our cars and walked up to Naveed. He told us that they had had a serious accident with the car just outside of Vernou. By chance Jean-Jacques had spotted them returning back from the airport where he had dropped off his Canadian friends. Susan, Naveed and Barry had basically gone off the road in high speed, not far before the gas station up in Vernou. Nobody was hurt which was good news, aside from a few skin bruises. But the car was a wreck. Jean-Jacques gave them a ride over to the airport while Brigitte and I started working on my paperwork and the tiny little accident that I had had with my car on the first day. We're talking a 1mm (1/16 inch) deep scratch here. It took forever and the bottom line was that I may end up having to eat the bill for repainting the side panel and the front because the driver of the truck that hit me did not sign the accident paperwork. Estimated repair cost would be around $200 for this job. How ironic that it took me as long as or longer than Susan to report a little scratch while they basically totalled their car! Even more ironic is that they did not get to talk to the car rental place about the ding Barry got from the pillar at Jean-Jacques place -- it got attributed to their last accident instead...
Brigitte and I rode back with the rental guy to the airport in his shuttle van. It was hot outside. Better close the windows, he said, so that the air conditioning cools properly. I mentioned to Brigitte that it will not be many hours before we have to close the car window to get the heat working! We met up with the others at the airport. Thierry called his Limo company to confirm his ride and then learned that it was snowing back home! We tried to enjoy every last drop of sweat at the warm airport. I bought two T-shirts in a nice shop there while we were waiting. The plane to San Juan was not full but it still felt crammed because we had so many loaded backpacks and the overhead compartments are so tiny. Erik was looking a bit pale and had not eaten all day. We made sure he drank some water. We ate a sweet-sop on the plane that Brigitte had bought from the lady at the corner of the Traverse in Vernou. It tasted good. The flight to San Juan is not very far, but it does take a while with this rather slow propeller plane. It stays down at 16,000ft.
When we got to San Juan there was congestion on the tarmac. Lilly had talked to another lady who was heading up to the US. She had talked about missing her outbound flight to Guadeloupe because she only had a 40 minute connection time (before her plane was delayed). This time she had about the same amount of time (before we got stuck in the queue). We must have been there for about 15-20 minutes. That lady probably missed her connecting flight.
The weather was no different from Guadeloupe; nice and warm. Technically, San Juan is part of the USA so we have to go through immigration and customs here. Immigrations is easy and they have plenty of staff and the lines are nice and short. We were through in a matter of minutes. The next thing was taking care of the baggage. You have to pick up your luggage, take it through customs, and then drop it off on the other side for the next flight, even though the bags are checked through all the way. They were all out of baggage carts and the area was packed with people. I finally managed to flag down a guy working there and he got me two carts. I had marked on my customs form that we were bringing food with us, but the officer just waved me through. A second officer asked Lilly about the flowers she'd gotten from dad and Sophy (as a birthday gift) and we were asked to go through a second check line. Rather than opening our bags, they just ran things through what looked like huge X-ray machines. They did open Lilly's flower box. We were almost certain that they were going to confiscate them, but they did not. They had a pile of pineapples on the counter that they had just confiscated from someone. We were through customs quickly as well, thanks to a very smooth customs line (well staffed).
When we met Brigitte after customs she said one of her bags had been badly damaged and she needed tape. Ours was deep in one of our hard suitcases and I did not know which one. They asked around and found someone with tape. We walked over to the gate for the Boston bound plane. That was just around the corner from customs. This terminal is only American Airlines. It is not huge and things are easy to find. The flight to Boston was a bit delayed. We sat down on the floor and ate the sandwiches we had prepared in Guadeloupe. Some of us, like me, ate baguette with fois gras. Yea! By chance we learned that we had to redo our boarding cards for this gate even though American themselves had issued them in Guadeloupe. They called up families with children in the speakers. We walked up. Isabella mentioned to me that "Wasn't it nice to have kids so that you could skip the line?". I told her that I needed more than just skipping lines to break even :-) We walked on the plane as one of the early ones but got a sour nod from one of the AA staff members saying that they only meant to board families with infant children early, not families with larger children such as ours.
Enjoying a snack at the AA gate in San Juan
The plane was more than 1/2 hour late for takeoff. Karl fell asleep in his seat. When time came to get our food served (choice of either BBQ:d chicken or pasta) Erik threw up several times. He was not able to reach the barf bag in time. It just kept coming. By luck the serving cart blocked the view of his isle seat for others. All of it came on his pants and stuffed animals. It smelled awful, but the smell was drenched by the "stinky" food we were being served. Lilly got two large plastic bags from AA and just collected things together. Erik did not eat, but seemed very relieved after he was done. He complained that I was annoying him by asking if he felt good!
We arrived in Boston just a bit later than planned. But we ended up being stuck for over an hour at the luggage area, with hundreds of others, waiting for bags that never showed up. We could see a whole train of baggage just sitting behind the luggage belt curtains, waiting to be loaded onto the belts, but there was nobody there doing the work. The AA staff in ther terminal was of no use as they had no idea why it was taking so long (or did not seem to want to help except coming up with excuses such as workers having called in sick, etc). We said good-bye to Thierry and Brigitte and headed home in the 8 passenger stretch limo we had rented with a driver. Very nice. It even had a cieling with stars in it! On the way home I saw several serious snow related car accidents and there were fire trucks and police out to help handle traffic. The others were asleep for most of the ride.
We were not sure if the limo would be able to get into our driveway because we were not sure if there had been a lot of snow or not. Everything was fine home, even though a bit cold. Driver was able to get up. It was now midnight. The first thing Karl did when he got home was to turn on the TV and watch Cartoon Network! We unloaded some bags and then went to bed at 1:30 in the morning.
Flowers from Guadeloupe looking out at the unfamiliar snow
in Merrimack