Thursday, January 2, 2025

Last night we went to bed at 10:30pm, I woke up at 6am, but stayed in bed until Teresa woke up at 6:30am.

We had our last breakfast buffet in their restaurant then stopped in the Vacation Center and reserved our ride to the airport for 11:30. The airport is 30 minutes away so we should have time for everything.

We finished our last-minute packing…then brought our bags downstairs and had our last coffee. During check-out I happened to mention we didn’t touch anything in the refrigerator. I understood from the look on her face that that’s included in the All-Inclusive price also.

We took a van to the airport and it was 25 minutes from our hotel.

Teresa received a text from Julian that he was passing us off to a friend named Jorge for airport pick-up.

At the Avianca machines we printed our boarding passes and luggage tags. We checked our 2 suitcases without any problem.

We went through customs, TSA check, and immigration without any problem.

We had about 40 minutes before our boarding time and Teresa chose Wendy’s to get something to eat. I believe last time we were here we had chicken wraps but they didn’t have them this time so we each had a simple burger and Coke for a total of $22.  (In the DR they take DR pesos or American Dollars.)

We were at our gate and it seemed to take a while to start boarding.

We had aisle seats across from each other and Teresa told me the guy sitting next to her was sick. After takeoff and as the plane was climbing the guy next to her frantically pulled out a plastic bag and started throwing up repeatedly into it. The woman next to him (wife?) helped him get cleaned up. He then went towards the back of the plan I suppose to use the restroom and his wife soon followed him. They didn’t return to their seats for the rest of the flight.

We landed about 4pm and as usual lots of people got on their feet and stood in the aisle so I followed their example. When nobody moved 5 minutes later a broadcast was made and most people returned to their seats.

It was another 15-20 minutes before deplaning began.

In Immigration Teresa went to the Colombians only line while I made a trip to the restroom then got in the Foreigners line. Her line was so short maybe that’s a reason for me to pursue citizenship. From where I was I figured it would be about 90 minutes to get through like last April.

At 5:25 she texted and asked if I was nearly finished. I told her it would be probably another 45 minutes. About 10 minutes later a female official caught me at a turn and asked how old I was. When I replied 79 she said to follow her. She led me to the other side to the blue line for pregnant, ill, handicapped, children, and old people.

I now only had 3 families ahead of me but there was only one officer working us so it still went slow. For some reason there was a line of people sitting against the wall. When it was my turn I handed the officer my passport and my paperwork. He went through and asked for my Visa. I pointed to my paper and he said that isn’t a Visa, where’s my Visa and the only one in my passport had expired this year. He didn’t speak English so I tried to communicate to him that I had my Visa renewed through an agency. He said, “call them”. I did and got voice mail with each number I tried. I really thought he wasn’t going to allow me to enter but he told me to get my Visa and he let me proceed.

I quickly found Teresa who had been waiting about 2 hours and she called our driver. He arrived in person about 5 minutes later and helped us with our bags to his car in an upper-level parking area.

The trunk of the car wasn’t large enough for everything and Teresa had to ride in the back with one of our suitcases. The car didn’t have much power and at one point the driver moved into a wrong lane and someone gave him the horn.

Back at the apt I gave our driver 200,000 pesos because he had to wait so long at the airport. Teresa and I discussed it and we’re tired of riding in these little cars so next time we’ll probably take an airport taxi.

I made a trip to Ara and bought a bag of milk, a small carton of eggs, and a package of arepas and Teresa made arepas with scrambled eggs.

She went to bed at 9:15 and I managed to stay up until 10pm.

 

JUST FUNNY