I'll save the stuff from the last night in Cayenne for another post, and we'll start with the trip to the airport. My Creole teacher— essentially the only person I know with a car— came to my apartment and picked me up. We drove to the airport and he told me much more about French Guiana including a funny story about problems with census taking in the department. The short version is that he was in the jungle in the interior without any means of getting gasoline for his car. He found someone who said to him, "Wait here" (like he was going anywhere— he was out of gas in the middle of the freakin' jungle). An hour and a half later, the guy returned with gas and a few other things, because he knew the paths of the jungle and was able to get to an officially undocumented village settled by Brazilians who immigrated to illegally prospect for gold. Imagine, then, trying to do a census on the interior of the largest department of France, when people avoid the main roads and instead rely on secret paths to get to illicit settlements.
We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. He stuck around for a while, talking to me, correcting my creole (e.g. I said that the airline employee 'spoke to me in English' when I should have said she 'spoke English with me'), and buying me lunch. When he left, I went to board the plane, with no real problems to speak of. After a brief stop in Martinique, I landed in Guadeloupe. And there began the nightmare.
Disembarking was a disaster. We were held in various different hallways, with them not letting us proceed to the airport itself for several minutes at a time, mainly due to us having to go through fire exits. I really don't know why they had us go this way, but that's what they did. In any event, a little bit after we finally got into the airport, we were informed that the flight to Miami was cancelled. I was mortified, as my flight home was unconnected to the flight to Miami, and therefore I'd have to miss it. I didn't have enough credit on my phone to call the airline to switch it either, so I just hoped for the best. Despite this setback I had a pretty good time because AirFrance put me up in a four-star hotel, La Créole Beach. Check it out here. The room itself was over 130€ with breakfast, the delicious buffet dinner was 31€, and lunch was 21€, but that didn't matter to me because AirFrance paid it all. The only thing they didn't pay for was the 4€ bottle of Diet Coke, which I had specifically told the server I was ordering 'because AirFrance is paying.' It was a really nice place to stay for 24 hours, even though I couldn't do many of the fun things like go in the pool or on the beach due to the poor weather.
On our way back to the airport the next day, I made the taxi turn around, as I'd forgotten my wallet (and digital recorder, though I didn't realize it) in the lobby. Once at the airport, things went much more smoothly, except for a further delay in the take-off time. We finally got to Miami after a one-hour stop in Port-au-Prince. By the way, the security at the Port-au-Prince airport consists of one person checking your bag and another frisking you (and a dollop of hope, I gather).
Miami was another story. Quickly making my way through customs, I got to the U.S. Airways desk at midnight, where a sign said they would open at 2 a.m. Rather than trying to sleep I decided to stay up. I spent the time talking to a nice pair of folks who'd met on a flight back from Barbados, one of whom was from the same town that I live in. After chitchatting for two hours, I went to the U.S. Airways desk, which was still abandoned, so I went back to rejoin the two people I'd met, but they had disappeared (one mentioned something about having a hotel room and they seemed kind of into each other). I killed the downtime by shaving and brushing my teeth, eating at Subway, and talking to a very nice Argentinean woman who was visiting her nephew in L.A. At 4 a.m. U.S. Airways finally opened, and I was able to get my flight changed free of charge (though at first they told me it would be $150). From there it was a smooth ride to Philadelphia (where I missed my sister's call to surprise me at the airport), and then to Indy. One shuttle ride back and I was home at last.
EPIC!
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