September 1 - Travel day

The travel day started very early, 4am cab; and we both only got about 2 hours of sleep. I know I was thinking about work, so I will be charging overtimeJ. The flight to Newark was on time and smooth and we were able to connect easily to the Newark-Curacao flight. On the Curacao flight I watched the first movie, Oceans 13. Good thing that I didn’t pay to rent that one, two thumbs down. I had already seen the second movie, so took out my laptop and turned it on. The Acer boot screen came up, followed by a blank black screen. The next thing displayed was “Disk error, CTLR-ALT-DEL to restart”. I tried a few times and finally gave up. I assumed that my hard disk had failed and I was not a happy camper. (more on this later!)

We arrived in Curacao about an hour and a half before our next flight and went off looking for the check-in counter for our next flight. We only had our tickets from Ottawa to Curacao, and we needed to pick up the tickets for our final leg from a carrier called Divi-Divi. We looked at all of the check-in counters and were unable to locate our carrier. We went and had some lunch and about an hour before the flight we went back and found that our check-in counter was now open. I have decided that I don’t like the electronic signs; if they had an old technology sign we would have seen that they had a counter, instead of looking around the airport to see if they had a separate ticket office. The individual behind the counter was a young gentleman who was wearing a harness that gives you back support, and looked more like a baggage handler than a ticket agent. The check-in process was slow but no problems; there were about 7 passengers on the flight. At the gate they made the boarding announcement in another language, so we didn’t jump up to board. Eventually we figured it out, but we were at the back of the line.

I have flown Bearskin airlines many times, and small planes are not a problem for me. We approached the plane and it was pretty small, the boarding was done from both sides of the plane; the plane was so small they had no room for carry-on luggage, other than a woman’s hand bag. Trudy and I both hand-checked our luggage; by the time this was done all of the seats were taken except for one. One of the guys on the tarmac motioned to Trudy to get into the plane at the front where the pilot seat was; looking at this she discovered that she would be sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. I immediately volunteered to take the front seat. The pilot got in and started the engines; wow it was loud! It was an amazing view of Bonaire as we approached and landed.

We arrived on Bonaire and discovered that the same guy we have rented our trucks from in the past was also there to give us our truck. We drove to the Cultimara supermarket for some supplies and then headed over to the Golden Reef Inn. On the door was a notice about Hurricane Felix and that we might need to be evacuated because we were located within 500 meters of the ocean. We were told the power on the island would be turned off between 11:30 and 12:00 for the rest of the night.

We unpacked, sort of; I left most of my stuff in the suitcases, so I could move them to higher ground easily if required. I took out the laptop, and removed the PCMCIA card reader that I had put into the slot, and powered up the computer. This time it booted up fine. Phew!

We had some dinner at my favourite “take-away’ restaurant, Bobby Jans, WOW. We then decided to go to bed early so if we got evacuated later we would have had some rest.

Sorry...no pictures.