Saturday, June 28, 2014 - Homeward Bound

Rough night.  I woke up at 2:00 a.m.  It was super windy outside and these large nuts were falling from the trees and hitting the deck.  It was really loud!  I slept on and off until around 5:30 a.m. when our new neighbors were out on their deck talking so loudly it woke us all up.  I still can’t believe they were that loud that early in the morning.  On the bright side, it was the only time we heard anyone during our entire stay. So maybe it is good that we are leaving now.  I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to get up and shower.

The shower was really nice.  Danika was up when I got out and Jason got up shortly after.  We went and had a nice relaxing slow breakfast and then headed back to the room to brush our teeth and finish packing.  Then David and I went to the front desk to check out.  We went back to the room to get the kids and our back packs (luggage had already been taken by the staff!).  David had to take a picture of a Belize license plate before we left.

It was a lovely half hour drive to Dangriga airport.  We waited about 15 minutes with Nancy and Jeff from Virginia.  This is our plane, waiting for us to board.

 Then it was a short 15 minute flight to Belize City.  The flight was great in the small plane.  

You could see everything because the wings were above the windows.  This picture is leaving Dangriga.

The view of the river was amazing...

 The kids were put in the very back seats, side by side, no aisle in between.

This is us coming in for a landing in Belize City.

It took us a very long time to get through customs in Belize City.  At least it was fairly cool as the fans were going and you really didn’t notice that it wasn’t air conditioned.  Although it is a small airport, there were tons of shops to keep us occupied while we waited for our flight.  I almost wish I had bought a hammock to remind me of the ones at Pook’s and Hamanasi.

Leo, the guy who booked our flights, really did us proud.  He had us set as Sky Priority, so our bags were tagged that way and we were in Business class, rows 2 and 3 for the flight to Atlanta.  That was great because they served us a fabulous lunch.  The kids were amazed at how well we were treated.  It was so nice to be pampered at a time when we knew we had a long day of travel ahead and we were sad to say goodbye to Belize.  The other really nice thing was that the flight attendant came up to us and asked us if Danika and Jason were our kids.  We said yes, and he proceeded to tell us how nice it was to have such well-behaved and polite kids in business class.  He said it doesn't happen very often and that we should be proud of them.  It is such a great feeling to hear nice things about your kids!

In Atlanta we split up to go through customs because David has a U.K. passport with a green card, and we have U.S. passports, and we didn't know we could stay together.  David had no one in his line so he was through really quickly and he went to get the bags.  Our bags were first off due to the priority tags!  Meanwhile I was with the kids in a LONG line of U.S. citizens.  There was a new system that had only been in place a few months.  You stand in line and then they send a bunch of you into this big corral of kiosks and they tell you to find one with a green light.  We saw one in the distance but by the time we got there, it wasn’t green anymore.  By the time we made it around again, many people that were behind us in line had gotten to kiosks that had freed up.  We finally got one though.  We scanned each passport individually.  The machine takes your picture if you are an adult.  Then it prints out passes. 

Danika’s had an X across it, so when we went to the next long line to get stamped in, they pulled us aside to go through stricter customs.  The great thing about that is that there wasn’t a line for that, so we got right through.  The customs agent there was great, really nice. 

We finally met up with David and were surprised that he already had the luggage.   So we were able to get through reasonably quickly and drop off our luggage on the other side to be checked through to Missoula, but we had to go through security again.  We all had forgotten about that, so all of our water bottles were full and our backpacks were recalled!

We had a little trouble with Delta trying to get our seats moved up because we were in row 33 for the flight to Minneapolis and we only had a half an hour connection to our Missoula flight.  Delta moved Danika and Jason to row 30, which didn't help.  They couldn't move us to 19 because there was an extra charge.  We ended up all sitting in 33 as we traded with really nice people to get back our original seats. 

Our flight was out of Atlanta was delayed, and we really thought we would miss the connection and have to stay in Minneapolis, but luckily the gate for the Missoula flight was right next to the one we arrived at, so we made the flight no problem.  The flight to Missoula was not full, so Danika and Jason had the three seats behind us, and David and I had three seats to ourselves.  We mostly slept.  We arrived at 11:30 p.m. and Paul met us at the airport.  We were home by midnight.  It was so nice to sleep in our own beds!