Here I will begin my journal entries for each day of the trip with pictures and video as appropriate.
Today was pretty exciting. Everything went smoothly at the church except that we had to pack the extra luggage in Kandy's van. Once to the airport it got a little hectic. That pretty much set the pace for the entire day. Checking 12 people in with 24 checked bags equals a lot of chaos. I managed to get checked in and was paying everyone's extra bag fee of $30 when I realized that Mark Fisher wasn't there. I tried calling his cell phone repeatedly to no avail in between running my Amex for the baggage fees. Finally, I asked Kandy to look up Sandy's number on the emergency trip info sheet. Sandy answered the phone and they were pretty much asleep. This was at 5am. They headed out and thought they could make it. Also in the middle of all of this chaos, Wesley Templeton is introducing me to his friend Rich and explaining how these ceramic water filters work and trying to show me how to hook them up. We say our goodbyes, go through security and make our way to the gate. Kandy calls me and says, why does security have Brett's bag torn apart? So I walk back to security where he is just getting his stuff back together. Evidently they wanted to check out his inverter and knife in his mess kit. As it ended up, Mark didn't make it, but was going to try to catch us in Atlanta.
The flight over was uneventful, the plane was half-empty so it wasn't crowded. I read some of Brainerd's journals and basically finally made it through the intro to J Edwards bio and to the first page of the journals.
| Waiting in Atlanta |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
In Atlanta, we made our way from A to E terminals and to the gate. Most of the guys got some breakfast, and I think Brett Simmons got a 3 course meal that he took on the plane to eat. Mark managed to make it, even though it took Wesley driving 100 MPH and God causing an AL trooper to let them slide without pulling them over. Jim Beard and Jesse Prater met up with us there as well. Jesse's Indiana flight was delayed from de-icing, but he made it just in time.
The flight from Atlanta to the DR was about 3.5 hours. I sat across from Roy and Jesse. This was the first time I have met Jesse so we got a chance to talk a little on this flight.
When we arrived in the airport customs was smooth. We didn't even have to pay the tourist visa since we were going to Haiti. We gathered all of our luggage, all 23 checked bags. I talked to Dickens on the phone and he said he was outside in the parking lot. On the way out the door there was a guy with a sign that said "Jeromie". I said hello and he said to follow me, but he didn't look like the picture of Dickens that I saw. We were walking out and they had some cars for us, but then I found Dickens on the phone and he walked over to where we were. So it turns out that the reservation that Alex, AJ, and I setup via Skype was duplicated with another rental company by Dickens. I talked to Josue and Pastor Lackey and Josue said he didn't have any friends in the DR and to just get the best deal between the two. So after at least 30 minutes of bickering and bartering, I paid the original guy $150 to go away and got the rental Dicken's arranged down to $75 per day instead of $90. We all piled into the 4 SUV's that they had and had to put a bunch of luggage on top of the vehicles. Since Alex and team weren't even here yet with their gear and all of our stuff wouldn’t fit into the 4 SUVs as it was, I decided to try to get 5 SUV's. At the rental company they spent about an hour trying to get the contract filled out. I had to let them copy my passport, driver's license, and Amex. It was $3000 for all 5 SUV's for the week. Once we left the rental place we pulled in to the next gas station to fill up because they rented them to us empty. When we got into the parking lot, Richard said that as soon as he pulled out of the rental lot, a motorcycle smacked into the back of his SUV. It dented the bumper and broke the tail light. We decided that there wasn't anything that we could do about it, and Dickens said that he could have it fixed in Petion-Ville. We gassed up all the vehicles and then tried to pay. It worked out to about $450 USD, but the gas station was charging a premium for the exchange that caused it to be $490 USD. To avoid paying that I got into the car with Dickens and Haiti(Dickens' local contact in Santo Domingo that helped arrange things), and she drove us to a local market that would exchange our US dollars for Dominican Pesos. I felt pretty out of place in this store, and I think the locals were laughing at me, but the exchange went smoothly. We were able to pay the attendant in Dominican Peso's and get on our way to the hotel.
| Bartering with rental companies |
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| From Haiti - Jeff's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeff's Pics |
| Having to pay the extra rental company $150 to go away |
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| From Haiti - Jim Beard's Pics |
| Loading up |
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| From Haiti - Jim Beard's Pics |
| Working out the contract with our professional rental company |
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| From Haiti - Jim Beard's Pics |
Hotel check-in was remarkably smooth. Everyone rested for about 30 minutes and then a group of us went to the store to buy supplies. We took two of our vehicles and followed Haiti and Dickens. There are no traffic laws that I can tell in the Santo Domingo or anywhere else on the island for that matter. People drive wherever and whenever they want. Motorcycles on both sides of the road in between cars that are barely far enough apart to fit, people passing wherever they want into oncoming traffic, it's nuts. The road in front of the store is the Las Americas highway and runs along the coast. The water down there is true to other Caribbean destinations, beautiful. The store that they took us to was underground. The parking lot attendant (with a shotgun) gave us a security pass to get our vehicle out and we went down the escalator type thing down into the store. It was like a big Sam's or Super Wal-Mart. We finally rounded up all of our supplies and went to pay when I discovered that my passport and wallet were not in my pocket. I just about lost it.I sent Josh and Jeff to the car to check if it was there while I walked around the store and looked to see if I might have dropped it. I didn't find it, but Josh came back with it from the car. I was very relieved to find them. So then we checked out and tried to pay with my Amex. It wouldn't go through though. I called the Amex 800 number and they had to remove a security restriction to allow Caribbean charges. After that was taken care of we headed back to the hotel.
Picking them up was easy since they were waiting on the curb when I got there. We got them situated in hotel rooms then went to the hotel restaurant to eat. Someone said that Harrison Ford was in the bar across from the restaurant so we all had to ease in there and "inconspicuously" see if it was him. It was and he was working on getting drunk! He didn't seem interested in conversation, so none of us spoke to him. Anyway, we ate a good dinner and then Alex and I went back to the airport to pickup Dr Jarrett. I waited in the car about 15 minutes, and then Alex came out of the airport with him. We got him situated in a room back at the hotel and got ready for bed.
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