Back!

In each of my trips down to Cayenne, I have become increasingly paranoid that during my overnight layover, I won’t wake up in time to make the morning flight out, the one and only flight that can get me to Cayenne on time. This has driven me to pull all-nighters each time that I stay in the airport. As a result, I am utterly exhausted on the plane and sleep like a baby during the flight. Actually, having sat next to a baby on the very first flight, I’d say I sleep way better than a baby (though to be fair, babies are really bad at most things, so I shouldn’t really be bragging). This caused me to miss the free lunch—if you believe that there is such a thing— that they handed out on the plane, which was a disappointment. Luckily, at the layover in Guadeloupe, they actually had food, a pleasant change from earlier trips when there was almost nothing to eat. When I wasn’t sleeping, I had an audiobook to listen to on my iPod, Tina Fey’s Bossypants, a very funny autobiography slash management advice book.

At long last, I arrived at Cayenne, much earlier than my previous flights here. I took a taxi home, and I could tell early on that the driver was taking advantage of me. Instead of going directly to Cayenne, he took me through a nearby town. In his defense, the house where I’m staying is close to the border with that town, but still, it added extra time to the drive. And then when I got here, he tried to charge me an “airport tax”, and that was it for me. Having made this trip twice and having never heard of such a charge, I paid him what it said on the meter and not a Eurocent more. I said if there was an additional tax that wasn’t going to show up on the meter, he should have said so before the trip, or he should have put it on the meter. He was pissed but he left without issue, only telling me I should look it up.

And unfortunately, no one was home in time to open the house for me, so I had to wait for someone to get home. Or so I thought. In reality, Joris was home and simply didn’t hear me knock. After an hour, his father — who lives rather close — came looking for him and found me waiting on the back terrace. He was able to call him, and lo and behold, I was able to finally get in the house after an hour. And now, I will finally be able to sleep.