Thursday, July 23, 2009

Preparations and Travel

9:20 am We are ready. Our bags are packed, a diaper bag is filled, girls' hair is done for the get together at Travis' school tonight, and we are waiting for Patsy to arrive. I am taking Trajun into Travis so Trevin and I can get a ride to the airport. I wish I were taking one or both of the girls or a girlfriend with me! But quiet time and shopping will be fun too.
Trinton, Taleah, Taya, and Patsy will go into town later today to meet Travis and Trajun for the get together/awards/dinner party.

1:30pm Sitting in the airport. It was quite a journey just to get here. The Trafalgar road is closed due to semi-truck sized potholes from the recent monsoons, so we went the long way through Wotten Waven. The road was fine except that it has about twice as many turns as the Trafalgar road. I should have brought the mints with me. We arrived in Roseau about 10:30am to meet Travis and drop off Trajun, met Ash and left for the airport. Ash said he wanted to “take it slow”. Since when is a bat out of… well… slow? I almost puked and I was sitting in the front seat with the window down all the way. We arrived at the airport at about 12:30 after a harrowing, queasy ride. Drat those potholed, narrow, curving Dominica roads!!
Right after arriving we checked in and went directly the bathroom. Then on to the “bar”, the local name for snack bar. They do have alcohol, but I found I could refrain. We tried to order Chicken and fries to be told that they don’t have fries. Then we tried a salad, they don’t have salad. Finally we settled on a ham sandwich for Trevin and a chicken lunch for me. Have you ever had a local Dominica lunch? It’ll do. It includes a pseudo salad, veggie which was eggplant with cheese, one chicken leg, rice covered in tomato sauce, and local provisions: dasheen (a pasty type of root veggie), fig (cooked green banana), and breadfruit (like slimy potato that tastes like baby barf). I just can’t stand local provisions. Except boiled ripe plantain. Poor Travis, he likes all three provisions!
I found out I forgot to bring an inverter to plug in my US-type charger to a UK-type outlet. Oops! So this will not get online until much later. ( I don’t have internet at the airport in Dominica anyway.) I will type again in San Juan.

11:30pm What a day!! We were early arriving into San Juan, but Trevin’s plane to Tampa was late by over an hour. I waited there for him to get on the plane and leave so I did not have to come back or pay for another taxi ride if his flight was cancelled. So after 8:45pm I finally left the airport and took a $20 US cab to my hotel.
I was going to head to Walmart to shop. Well, even the best laid plans go awry. After that lovely day, I just wanted to walk (and I asked the taxi driver how much it would be to go to Walmart and then the airport- $50 US!!). I took off down the road towards the food joints. I was hungry. I got down there and found a Walgreens! For those of you unfamiliar, Walgreens is like a mini-Walmart. They have the basic groceries, not a huge selections, but they equate to a minimart of Walmart. Inexpensive. Variety. Just what I needed close to my hotel. Nix that $50 US taxi ride, I was going to Walgreens. Of course, Walgreens is about ½ to ¾ mile away, but hey, I am gaining a bit of fat, why not help to keep trim while saving money? That is $50 more to spend at Walgreens!

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