Piecemeal baggage claim....

Lorrie and I get to the airport about 4:50. The Cape Air plane should be landing within the next 20 mins or so. We just sit in the Jeep watching for the plane to come in. When we finally see it we both head downstairs to claim our baggage. Doesn't take long and Lorrie see's the first piece. Alright...I"m thinking..one more bag and we can finally get this show started. The bag Lorrie has is the one with all our snorkel gear in it. I can't wait to get the other bag so I can get out of these blue-jeans and this knit shirt.  Doesn't take long for all the bags to come in...but no more for us?

Oh no....you've got to be kidding me.

I go back to the Cape Air counter and ask the guy about our "other" bag. He calls SJU and tells me it's coming over on the 7:40 flight. Ah...jeez..this kinda sucks. We've got blue-jeans on and 3 hours to burn. We decide to head to Esperanza and grab a bite to eat at Duffy's. The food was great. The service was great. Our waitress was working her fanny off now, I'm here to tell ya. We paid for the meal and as we were walking back to the Jeep my phone rang. It was the guy from Cape Air and he told me our luggage was coming on the 7:40 flight for sure. So..we head back to the airport...again.

When we get to the airport our bag is waiting for us. With our luggage finally in hand we head back to Los Frutales or should I say "Cartoon Network". More to come on that.

Hasta Manana

Our Bags are MIA......

So...we head into the airport and wait for our bags. Bluewater picks hers up....and no more bags? Oh sheit. We ask the Cape Air representative where our bags are? He calls and finds out that they are coming over on the 4:40 flight. Well..no big deal. We can call Maritzas and get our Jeep. Then we can call Mike and go to the house. By that time our bags should be on the island. I phone Maritzas and tell them we've arrived and need picked up. It's about 3:00. After 30 mins I call again, thinking maybe somehow they got mixed up. Another 20 mins and no Maritzas. I know, being a seasoned Vieques visitor, that you can just about drive to anyplace on this island in 20 mins. We've been waiting for 40 now. I call again, telling myself "Curt be calm, your on vacation", this time  a woman assures me that they've left and our in transit. Finally about 4:00pm a Maritzas van shows up. We waited an hour on them, that's a first. They've always been very prompt. So we go  to the office, get the Jeep, and I call Mike. He meets us at Maritzas and we head to the house. When we drive up to it both Lorrie and I get a sick feeling in our stomachs. What have we  rented this time? Lorrie doesn't even get out of the Jeep. I park on the road and go into the place with Mike. I get the quick tour, I've really already seen enough from the entrance, but Mike is very nice and shows me around.  After the house tour it's nearly 4:30 so with headaches from not enough food, Lorrie and I head back to the airport to claim our luggage.

:-)

Sorry...that flight has been closed

So...do you want the good news or the bad news?

Good news...well ok.

The scotch was great!

The bad news...we sat on the plane at SJU for nearly and hour waiting..and waiting to get off. It was 1:45 when we finally got off the thing. US Air never said a thing over the intercom about what the heck was going on. We had been on that plane for nearly 4 1/2 hours. Lorrie and I finally get off the plane, we were seated in row 28 this time. No first class upgrades were available. Darn the luck. Anyway...we finally get off the plane and head towards baggage claim. Now I'm watching where we are going and it suddenly dawns on me that we are going to have to leave the secure area of the airport to pick up our bags. Which means that we will have to go back thru airport security after we check our bags with Cape Air. Gawd...I can't believe I forgot about that. So..we get our bags and rush to the Cape Air desk. The guy behind the counter tells me "Sorry that fight has been closed." Jeez...what a way to start our trip. So I ask the guy..fine...when can you get us out? I can get you on the 4:40 flight, he tells me. So we get our boarding pass and just as we are leaving the counter the guy says " I'll put you on stand by and maybe they'll let you on the flight."

Yikes!!!! Lorrie and I rush to airport security, stripping off cloths faster than Lindsay Lohan can rack up misdemeanors. We fly thru and rush to the Cape Air gate. It's 2:15 when we get there. They let us on the fight. Yeah!!!!

As we're walking out to board the plane I notice that there's only 4 of us? hmm...where's everybody else at? And why in the world was it such a problem to let us on the flight? Who knows...I did though  get to meet Bluewater43 from Trip Advisor on the flight. We exchanged notes on the Caribbean. Hopefully Lorrie and I will get to see her during our two weeks.  Our pilot was Dave, and no it's not the Dave we've flown with before. Great flight...2:50pm and we are on the island, finally.

:-)

Getting to the island....

We got up @ 3am this morning. Left the house @ 4am and arrived at Indy-Park & Fly about 5:30am. Check in at US Air was smooth and fast. I can't say the same thing for Airport security. We stood in line for EVER. They've got new scanners, at least I think they're new? Anyway...made it through with about 30-40 mins to spare. When we arrived at the gate I heard an announcement about some upgrades they had available. I had tried, the night before, when I was checking in on-line to do an upgrade, but for some reason the US Air web site wouldn't allow it. We were able to upgrade to first-class for $50 a ticket. Made for a comfortable first leg of our trip.



When we made it to Charlotte we had just enough time to grab a sandwich. We arrived at the gate and they were calling for last boarding? It was almost an hour before flight time? So we boarded and then we sat on the plane for nearly an hour. Next the captain says "Folks we're having some problems with our pre-flight checkout". Deja vu. Our November trip last year had the exact same problem and we didn't get onto the island under 9pm. The thing about this trip though is that our Cape Air tickets were booked separately. So we need to make that 2:25 flight out of San Juan.



It's 10:30 and we're finally taking off. If the flight takes the 3 hrs, like the captain says it will, we'll have right at an hour to get our bags, check them in with Cape Air, make it to the Cape Air gate and make our flight. We'll see. For right now...I'm getting a Glenlivet and just enjoying the flight. Lorrie's having a Gin-tonic.

Vieques here we come.

Houston...we have a problem

Well we made it to San Juan...just 2 hours late. This was the reason I decided NOT to try and make it to Vieques tonight.  There were  people on the plane  that had connecting flights with Cape Air on to Vieques. When were checking into the Best Western we ran into one of the couples on the plane that were supposed to go to Vieques via Cape Air. They missed their flight and didn't have any  place to stay in San Juan.  Not a bad decision we made to wait till the a.m. to make the flight to the island.

The problem originated in Houston. First they overbooked the flight and were asking for someone to give up a seat in exchange for $400 ticked credit and a room for the night. They would fly you out 24hrs later in a first class seat. We had a flight with Cape Air the next day @ 8 am, so that set up wouldn't  work. This put the boarding process back about 15 mins. I shot some video while we were waiting at the airport:





 Finally they found a taker and we boarded. We were sitting there on the plane and it had yet to pull away from the gate. That's when the captain told us there was a mechanical problem with the plane. I got some video of it when we got the news:





So we got off the plane, and anyone that flys knows how much of a pain it is to wait on all the passengers to get their carry-ons out of the overhead storage. Then we headed to the other end of the airport to board another plane. They also had to take all of the loaded luggage out and re-load onto our new plane.

So here we sit in our little room at the San Juan airport. I shot some video of it:




 We left the house @ 3am this morning. It's 7:10pm now. We fly over to the island at 8am tomorrow. The plane we'll be flying tomorrow only seats 9 people so surely it won't be overbooked.