Travel to Port-au-Prince

My trip began the day before flying to Port-au-Prince.  I flew from Pennsylvania to Miami and stayed overnight, because there weren’t any flights which would get me to Miami early enough for the 10 am American Airlines flight to Haiti.  This turned out to be an extra blessing, because I was able to connect with a good friend who had moved to Miami a few years ago.  We spent a wonderful afternoon together at her house. 

Thank you, dear friend!

Also, since a bunch of us from the group were all staying at the same hotel, the Crowne Plaza, we had dinner together that night.  This was the first time we had meet in person, though some of us had already gotten to know each other a bit through a special group Facebook page (which was how we planned to meet for dinner). Becca, our Compassion co-leader set the page up a few weeks before the trip.  She also sent us a series of emails the last couple of weeks to make sure we had all the information we needed.  I would recommend the hotel, as it offered a Compassion corporate rate, it was near the airport with a free shuttle running every 20 minutes, and was a pleasant place to stay.  I arrived before check-in time and they had no problem letting me use the room early.  If you need to make a reservation for a Compassion trip, the people at Compassion Experience will even set it up for you.

Early the next morning, filled with excitement, we took the hotel shuttle to the airport.  It was then I had my first little glitch!  When I tried to use the kiosk to check-in, it couldn’t find my reservation in the Compassion group list.  An airport employee came over to help me, and she couldn’t find it either.   Everyone else who had come in my group from the hotel was checking in (I could see their names on the list but not mine)!  I was getting a little nervous.  But the lady sent me up to the counter, and the man there checked me right in.  So I’m not sure what happened, but I was glad to be “found”!  

My suitcase had weighted 50.5 pounds (half a pound overweight) when I checked it at my home airport, but no one said anything.  This time, I didn’t see what the scale said, but once again, no one said anything.  I felt I had made the most of my suitcase weight allowance!

Even though we had only met the night before, we were already a “group” so we went thru security together and found our gate.  Then we had the usual waiting time since we were there 3 hours ahead of our flight time.  The time went by quickly though, getting coffee or breakfast, and most of all, meeting new arrivals to the group (easy to pick out because everyone was wearing their name tags).  It was fun chatting and getting to know each other.  There were 25 of us, which included Becca and Jason, our two co-leaders from Compassion.  

 Sad to say, my seat on the plane was right in the middle, so I wasn’t able to get any aerial photos on our way in to Haiti. I did get a window seat on the way home (by switching with one of my traveling companions, Jill, who was happy NOT to have to sit by the window!), so I’ll have  some neat aerial photos to share with you when I get to that part of the story.  We arrived later than we were supposed to because we were slightly delayed leaving Miami. But it was still a pretty quick flight --only a 2 hour flight between the relatively wealthy city of Miami and the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti.  By about 1 pm we had landed and our real adventure began!