I am currently in a hotel in downtown Miami. I should be in Honduras but unfortunately, Hoxsie at Miami International Airport check-in had other ideas.
As a UK citizen, you can apply for your Honduran visa on arrival; I knew that, Josh knew that, Jenny at ICYE knew that, everyone in Honduras knew that...Hoxsie did not know that! We were therefore not allowed to check-in until this had been confirmed, as Hoxsie was worried that if this wasn’t the case, and instead of sending volunteers, ICYE’s aims were to sneak us into the country, we would be deported and American Airlines/the airport/America, would be fined!
Hoxsie did not seem to be concerned that our flight was fast approaching! After faffing around for about 2 hours, he finally agreed that, no, we did not need visas. Josh and I were worried we wouldn’t have time to get anything to eat...it turned out we didn’t have time to catch our flight! By the time Hoxsie was satisfied, it was 10 minutes past the 1 hour cut off point for luggage check-ins! He kindly offered to fly us to San Pedro Sula, 111 miles from Tegucigalpa, but eventually booked us onto tomorrow’s flight. We then waited for the shuttle bus to our hotel – we wait 40 minutes and the first bus ignores us and drives on. We wait 1 hour and 40 minutes and we finally get picked up.
I was remarkably calm and found the whole thing rather amusing in its ridiculousness! Mozambique really was good for me. I much prefer the way things work in Mozambique; the buses have no schedule and therefore cannot be late and as things often don’t work, when they do, it’s a cause for celebration rather than the expectations one has in America; it should work and when it doesn’t, it can be bloody annoying!
The one thing that did annoy me was on the hotel voucher which he gave us, not for free but at a ‘discounted’ rate, it said – “American Airlines is not responsible for this delay”...yes they are, they most definitely, 100% are!
Miami Airport has very little going for it in my books, except, the very friendly woman at customs who, with no qualms about holding up the queue, asked for a detailed plot summary of the book I was carrying, The Slap. Thinking it could only be a good thing to have friends in US immigration, I then gave her my copy.
I hadn’t quite realised how Spanish Miami is, especially the downtown area our hotel is in. I still can’t get my head around the switch from Spanish to Portuguese. It all sounds so wrong and every time I try and think in Spanish, Portuguese creeps back in. I’m sure I will speak a horrible Portuñol at first, but it’ll come back at some point.
Fingers crossed, we should be in Honduras by tomorrow afternoon. Hoxsie has promised to fast track us through check-in....
Bienvenido a Miami!
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