I'm back from Nicaragua but still not in Havana.
Laurie met me at the airport in Orlando and we went directly to the kids' camp out, which was at Disney. I had thought it was Saturday night only, but it was Friday and Saturday.
Like my last trip to Fort Wilderness, it rained, but at least yesterday's weather was good.
Their Scouts den leader works at Disney and arranged the trip, which helps them earn a couple of badges. We went to Animal Kingdom for so they could research their naturalist badges and also took a ride on Mount Everest.
I still have yet to report on Nicaragua, and that'll come once I'm back on my own computer. Right now, I am using Chris' in an effort to catch up on a backlog.
We arrived safely Friday after a fantastic trip.
The Managua-Miami flight back was just fine. The Miami-Orlando one, though, even at only 30 minutes, was the most turbulent one I've ever been on. It was thunderstormy so I understood some, but the climb ... oh, the climb. We went up and down so many times I was about sick, and some people screamed.
I wanted to in the Miami airport. THAT place is a nightmare. We got in and only had about an hour and a half between flights, which is cutting it close for customs/gate change in any large airport.
But Miami isn't just any large airport. It's worse. Holy God, was it worse.
After the 20 of us gathered, one discovered he'd left his wallet on the plane. He, his wife and the one person who didn't have to make the connection ran back to the gate and the other 17 legged it to immigration.
There, hundreds of people stood in lines waiting to get in. Never has "Everybody's Got a Cousin in Miami" rang louder in my brain. People were everywhere, only they weren't US citizens. The first lines were for foreigners, so our group, now of 17, ran to lines 8-12, where the lines were for US citizens.
And they weren't moving. We stood for 15 minutes until I heard some announcement saying something about lines 1-12 being for US citizens. I was in line 9, and I'd noticed line 8 was moving more quickly than lines 9-12's not at all.
Turns out, there IS someone behind the curtains -- or wall, in this case. There were seven other lines moving rapidly, but you couldn't see them from where everyone else (and not just our team) could see them.
I ran over and got into line 1, with most people following. Then I got through with just a "are you traveling alone?" as a question.
Went down to baggage claim, where I found two guys had gotten their checked bags and just left the others sitting there. We'd checked five, assigning them to different people to avoid any charges.
I sent the two guys into the LONG customs line to save our spots, then grabbed the other three bags myself. By then, others had arrived and we determined the long line was for everyone, not just those with checked bags.
By then, all but one of us had made it through customs. We were missing one guy, and, after dispatching the rest of the group to stand in the every-growing line with our earlier guys, I waited by the elevator.
After about 10 more minutes, he made it down, saying the woman in charge refused to let him leave his line 9, even though others were and it wasn't moving. Insane.
It struck me fully, like it did in LA, that the American workers were totally rude at the airports. Our Managua airport personnel were so nice, but immediately after landing on US soil, the attitudes changed. Rude, rude, rude.
Anyway, our line of 19 now -- the lost wallet couple had already gotten the wallet and headed through and the other guy caught up with us -- slowly inched up, eying the clock the whole time.
The line was organic. The sucker kept growing. Picture your average-sized gymnasium, the kind high-schoolers play basketball in.
The line wound around from the front corner all the way around, to the point where, by the time we got up to the front, the back had begun to snake around a second time.
Once we got through that, though, it again broke into smaller, quicker-moving lines. We still had issues, though. Holy cow.
At one point, our two brothers realized they needed their customs form, which was with their dad, who was about five people back, in the neighboring line. We pulled him up to them and my God, some man who worked there took exception and yelled at us, saying we were cutting. Uh, no. We're all in line here. You can take the two boys our and move them back two steps and tick off everyone behind them, or you can bump the dad up five people, wave a blue piece of paper and move on.
We muddled through that, then had the issue of rechecking the five bags. There were no signs, though, and people kept going everywhere. In one case, the guy went too far down a hall and got yelled at for not knowing he was supposed to be somewhere else. Hello, you could have warned him as he walked by, you know?
It ended up we wound up re-checking bags in three different places. We couldn't hang around as that was against some rule, although there appeared to be nothing preventing people from coming in from the outside world and sticking something into our checked bags.
Speaking of the outside world, Miami is one of those stupid airports, like LAX, where international passengers have to exit the terminal completely and go again through security starting at Square One.
Definitely, passengers need the security -- Manauga hadn't cared about liquids, for example -- but for God's sake, don't make them go through the "Everybody" lines.
But we had to. Our gate being D43 -- and by this time, thank God, our flight delayed half an hour -- we had to go out and come back. The line, again, was out the door.
I showed the attendant my boarding pass, said we left in half an hour, could we go someplace else? -- and she, thankfully, directed me to the next terminal over.. I grabbed the 6-7 people I was with and we ran back the way we'd come, running into a few more people as we went. There were others already deep into the D line but I couldn't get to them.
Finally, we got through and made it, where we learned out flight had been delayed another half hour. Never have I been so relieved for that delay. I'm sure other MIA-MCO flyers were ticked, but for me, it was an answer to prayer that the 19 of us made the flight. And due to the extra half-hour, the guys bought pizza for lunch.
Next time, I'll pay $75 extra and fly Delta out of Atlanta. I'm not doing MIA again.
My airport snack was a Coke. In true MIA fashion, when I went to pay for it -- exactly the same place and register I'd bought one on the way out -- the worker tried to ring it up, then handed it back to me, saying it wouldn't scan and I'd have to go stand in another line.
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