Yesterday we flew out of Guatemala to Puerto Rico. The flight had to go via Miami and, while the Guatemala section was OK, Miami was a nightmare. We were only in-transit through Miami but the good ol' US of A won't let you transfer in a transit lounge, you have to go through passport control, pick up your luggage, go through customs, re-enter through security, put your luggage back onto a drop-off trolley and get to your departure gate. This whole process took us nearly two hours! At one stage we thought we had lost one of our bags because it didn't turn up on the carousel. It finally arrived about 1.5 hours after the plane had landed and we think it had been opened by the TSA. We had put things we wanted to declare into this bag including a packet of coffee and a packet of chocolate drinking powder. When we checked the contents of the bag we noticed that both of these packets had been opened, so we think it may have been scanned and that the TSA had checked what the contents were. However, we were a bit annoyed that there was no sticker or something that said it had been opened, and they had not made any attempt to reseal the coffee and chocolate so it was loose and spilling the bag.
Now for the transit process. From the plane to immigration was about a 10 minute walk (Miami airport is huge) to a shuttle/train which took us to a station where we had to walk for another 5 minutes to get to passport control. Once there we lined up for half an hour to get through. The we had to walk another 10 minutes to the baggage carousel and go through customs. From customs it was another 10 minute walk to drop off the baggage then jump back on the train to where we originally came from. After that it was another 10 minute walk to the departure lounge. All in all, an absolutely insane and convoluted nightmare.
The flight was uneventful except for one pretty cool aside. We were laughing and chatting with the chief steward about Aussie Rules footy and later he gave us a couple of free G&Ts. Excellent!
Once at Puerto Rico we had a 45 minute wait until Ashley's flight arrived from Dallas. He had just done the flights from Melbourne to San Juan and was pretty knackered. We then took a cab to the hotel, went a couple of doors down for pizza and beer, returned to the hotel and crashed.
Today (Sunday) we went exploring the old city forts and generally had a great day. Puerto Rico is very different to Guatemala, everything is so clean and organised and you can drink tap water!
A view of the old fort from the 'new' fort. The ocean is the Caribbean. This is real pirate territory.
On either side of this port mouth is a fort. If an enemy tried to sail into the harbour the Spanish could fire on them from both sides.
Streetscape in old San Juan.
This statue has stars on it. For those of you who are Dr. Seuss fans it made me think of a star bellied sneetch.
And this is a shot of what's on our bedside table. Three servings of fruit.
Banana, chocolate orange and strawberry air freshener.
Location:Calle Fortaleza,San Juan,Puerto Rico
No comments:
Post a Comment