We are all here safe and sound. However, we have defintely entered a different culture. Things went pretty smooth on the red eye to Miami. We knew something had changed though when we sat down at our gate to wait for our flight to Port-a-Prince. We were surrounded by folks who looked different than us and spoke different than us. When they announced that they were boarding everyone went rushing toward the gate It was a little chaotic. It took about three times as usual to get everyone to find and stay in their seat,which really wasn't a big deal because the plane left one hour late (we had definitely entered Haitian time).
The flight went well until the very end where the landing was a little rockier than usual, but for the Haitians that wasn't a big deal as one lady had decided to get up from her seat and walk down the aisle as we were landing. She had made her way right up to the stewardess when the plane touched down. Needless to say most everyone was up and getting their things before the plane had stopped and the "fasten your seat belts" sign went off. The crew didn't even bother asking people to sit down. We were in Haiti now.
It was hot out but there was a decent breeze blowing so it wasn't to bad. It took almost another 45 minutes to hunt down all of our bags. They took a long time coming and some seemed to be taken off the luggage belt and set aside for no apparent reason. We were in Haiti. We then fought our way through the hundreds of taxi's and luggage handlers to the bus that would take us 15 minutes down the road to another airport where our charter flight was suppose to be waiting. Of course we had to rehaggle over the price and wait for them to be ready for us. When we finally were ready to leave they informed us that we had too much luggage and couldn't take it all. At this point we just chuckled, after all we are now in Haiti. We finally negotiated that all our personal bags would make the flight and the rest would be trucked to us the following day.
We got on a small hopper plane (It had 18 seats but because some of the luggage had to go in seats, the King kids doubled up in seats). We finally landed on a grass landing strip about 4 hours later than expected. One rocky bus ride twenty minutes up the mountain and we were home. Everyone is in good spirits and looking forward to a good nights sleep. Who knows what adventures tomorrow might bring. After all we are in Haiti :)