Last time I talked about how amazing our trip was...this time I'll talk about the not-so-amazing ending. :) We can laugh about it now, but it was not a fun 48 hours. Everything went as planned Saturday morning...we were geared up for a long day of travel and excited to see Silas and Ivy that evening. We woke up at 4AM to catch the first flight from Tobago to the main island of Trinidad, leaving us an hour to make our flight to Houston. Trouble was, when we got to Trinidad the United check-in counter was closed down. When we asked at the Information Center, they told us the United people had already left the counter and were at the gate. They essentially said, sorry, you should have been here two hours ahead.
It was so frustrating to know our plane hadn't even begun boarding yet, and even more so when we learned that the next United flight was at the same time the next morning. The phone store was closed that early, so we couldn't make any calls. They tourism booth was closed until 3pm, so we couldn't try to find a hotel. Some kind men lent us their phone and helped talk us through our options. Even in an English-speaking country, it was so difficult to know where to begin when figuring out our plan for the next 24 hours. I can't imagine if we had been trying to do it in another language. Meanwhile, it was only like 8am and we had a whole day ahead of waiting around with an infant.
After eating a dry muffin and drying our (okay, my) tears, we perked up when we remembered some friends (one of them Trinidadian) who were flying back to the main island (we thought) later that morning. After waiting anxiously at the gate for quite a while, we were so thankful when we saw their sweet faces! Keon helped us find a place to stay, as well as a friend to drive us around! We were so thankful for the Lord's provision...those 24 hours would have been quite different without Keon and his friend Garvin.
So we found a hotel but couldn't check in until 2pm. Garvin took us to a mall food court where we hoped to find some lunch and hopefully wireless internet. We scored on both points! The wireless was located in this pizza place called Mario's. We were desperate to try to rebook our flights, as well as contact my parents, who were going to leave that afternoon to bring our kids home to Indianapolis, thinking we would be there. All was going smoothly until Pizza Day happened.
This video hardly does this scene justice. When the music started blaring from the speakers, we just looked at each other in disbelief. We took turns standing just outside the restaurant, holding the iPad up to our ears to hear. It was pretty funny.
After making the necessary calls, Garvin helped us kill time by driving us around the city, taking us to a museum and an ice cream shop among other places. Best coconut ice cream ever.
The hotel was fine, but they didn't have a baby bed, or even a bathtub for a makeshift bed. I had to make a fort with furniture and suitcases for poor little Duncan. He escaped my first fort, but the second one was a winner. His exhaustion probably helped.
The travel home was way more stressful than the way there. Picture an overtired, cranky infant climbing on you for 5 hours straight, and you get an idea of what our life was like that day. Thankfully he took a couple of snoozes.
All that to say, we had a great time in Tobago but were MORE than happy to finally see our sweet kids and be home in our own beds! :)
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