Up In The Air
April 3, 2007
Let’s get caught up.
School ended on Thursday, March 29 with a big party for one of our students who will not be returning. I had a blast throwing kids around in the pool. Friday we woke up early and got on the charter for Bamako. I noticed that my back was sore from the day before. We spent the day there with our friends Ray and Geri, heading off to the airport at 1:00 a.m.
We arrived at the airport with our six parcels and hung out until our Royal Air Maroc flight left at 3:30. We were tired, but anxious to get on our way. Ray and Geri were going as far as Casablanca where they were to transfer to a plane to Amsterdam. We had a three hour layover in Casablanca. I boarded the flight in agony; my back hurt so bad I could barely stand it. Carrie gave me some drugs and I promptly fell asleep; awakening in time for landing in Morocco.
We thought Geri was kidding when she told us that we were actually in Fez, not Casablanca. Unfortunately however, she was not. Because of fog in Casablanca we were diverted to Fez. There we sat for an hour before heading off again. When we finally landed we had less than an hour to get to our New York bound plane.
We got off the plane and onto a bus that took us to the main terminal. There we went through security and hung out in a room to wait for another bus. With five minutes left, the bus showed up. It took us to another building where we went through more security and waited for another bus. This bus finally took us to our awaiting plane. After an hour we took off for JFK.
We disembarked with less than two hours before our final flight to Seattle. We went through immigration, found our six boxes at baggage claim, and headed off for customs. There we were detained because they wanted to inspect my drum with the goat skin head. After struggling with the wrapping, etc. the guy finally said forget it and sent us on our way with about 45 minutes left till departure. We waited in line to drop off our bags with Royal Air Maroc, then ran out the door and down the sidewalk to our terminal two doors down. We found a luggage cart, loaded Zman onto it and took off. My back was screaming the entire time.
Upon entering terminal three we were forced to wait in line to tell the man we had no liquids. He took my lighter and sent us to get our boarding passes checked. The lady checking passes had never seen one like ours. We told her it had been issued by Royal Air Maroc at the ticket counter in Bamako, Mali, but she insisted on getting it checked with someone else. It is hard in these instances not to get impatient. We had less than thirty minutes before our plane left and this lady isn’t sure about our boarding pass even though it says “BOARDING PASS DELTA AIRLINES” right on it. After confirmation (and five excruciating minutes) she let us go. We O.J. Simpsoned through the terminal, arriving at our gate with no time to spare. The ladies there were equally confused by our passes, but ultimately let us on the plane. Seven hours later we arrived in Seattle, except none of our six bags made it. Fortunately we discovered that none of the folks who had come from Casablanca (and there were more than you would think) had bags. All six packages arrived the next day.
Now we rest in a beautiful little apartment with a great view of Lake Washington. We shall now spend the next week accumulating documents and doing paper work to prepare for our impending trip to Venezuela. This may even include a trip to San Francisco to visit the Venezuelan consulate. It’s all a bit of a pain in the ass, but necessary to get us where we need to go.
MJR
Let’s get caught up.
School ended on Thursday, March 29 with a big party for one of our students who will not be returning. I had a blast throwing kids around in the pool. Friday we woke up early and got on the charter for Bamako. I noticed that my back was sore from the day before. We spent the day there with our friends Ray and Geri, heading off to the airport at 1:00 a.m.
We arrived at the airport with our six parcels and hung out until our Royal Air Maroc flight left at 3:30. We were tired, but anxious to get on our way. Ray and Geri were going as far as Casablanca where they were to transfer to a plane to Amsterdam. We had a three hour layover in Casablanca. I boarded the flight in agony; my back hurt so bad I could barely stand it. Carrie gave me some drugs and I promptly fell asleep; awakening in time for landing in Morocco.
We thought Geri was kidding when she told us that we were actually in Fez, not Casablanca. Unfortunately however, she was not. Because of fog in Casablanca we were diverted to Fez. There we sat for an hour before heading off again. When we finally landed we had less than an hour to get to our New York bound plane.
We got off the plane and onto a bus that took us to the main terminal. There we went through security and hung out in a room to wait for another bus. With five minutes left, the bus showed up. It took us to another building where we went through more security and waited for another bus. This bus finally took us to our awaiting plane. After an hour we took off for JFK.
We disembarked with less than two hours before our final flight to Seattle. We went through immigration, found our six boxes at baggage claim, and headed off for customs. There we were detained because they wanted to inspect my drum with the goat skin head. After struggling with the wrapping, etc. the guy finally said forget it and sent us on our way with about 45 minutes left till departure. We waited in line to drop off our bags with Royal Air Maroc, then ran out the door and down the sidewalk to our terminal two doors down. We found a luggage cart, loaded Zman onto it and took off. My back was screaming the entire time.
Upon entering terminal three we were forced to wait in line to tell the man we had no liquids. He took my lighter and sent us to get our boarding passes checked. The lady checking passes had never seen one like ours. We told her it had been issued by Royal Air Maroc at the ticket counter in Bamako, Mali, but she insisted on getting it checked with someone else. It is hard in these instances not to get impatient. We had less than thirty minutes before our plane left and this lady isn’t sure about our boarding pass even though it says “BOARDING PASS DELTA AIRLINES” right on it. After confirmation (and five excruciating minutes) she let us go. We O.J. Simpsoned through the terminal, arriving at our gate with no time to spare. The ladies there were equally confused by our passes, but ultimately let us on the plane. Seven hours later we arrived in Seattle, except none of our six bags made it. Fortunately we discovered that none of the folks who had come from Casablanca (and there were more than you would think) had bags. All six packages arrived the next day.
Now we rest in a beautiful little apartment with a great view of Lake Washington. We shall now spend the next week accumulating documents and doing paper work to prepare for our impending trip to Venezuela. This may even include a trip to San Francisco to visit the Venezuelan consulate. It’s all a bit of a pain in the ass, but necessary to get us where we need to go.
MJR
posted by Bronx to Timbuktu at 11:08 PM
1 Comments:
You should be able to get a Visa service to get your visas without travelling to San Francisco. Try www.traveldocuments.com. My friend, Cheryl, who went with me to Brazil, got hers in about a week. I think it cost her about $75 for the service, plus the cost of the visa - much cheaper than a flight to SF.
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