Well finally! Yes, we did make it down here safely. But let me go back to Friday eve. The 4 Illinois girls decided to go to a local mall since they had plenty of time. They ate at a Cuban restaurant, Mojitos and experienced some great food! Then most of us met at the hotel (minus Noah, Max and Ruben because they flew through the night and got to the airport at 5:30 Sat am). We probably visited too long :-(, only got 4 hours of sleep and took off back to the airport.

Saturday was quite the day. First, we were beginning to wonder if we didn't allow enough time for check in because when we arrived the AA agent told us to go back outside and down the sidewalk to another Port-au-Prince special check in counter and that we only had 12 minutes?? Another Haiti bound passenger said it changes every time he goes! I fortunately was able to check my bags all the way through to PAP from Detroit, but none of the other team members were able to?? Then the security line was horrendous and slow with only 2 lines open, but fortunately they opened another check point and we made it through with 45 minutes to spare (relief). It was a very full flight.

When we arrived at PAP I was surprised to be dropped off in a new air conditioned addition to the regular terminal, but that didn't last long as we went down the escalator, back outside and herded onto a packed bus and driven down to the original fan-conditioned customs and baggage claim. We managed to find all of our luggage and we didn't have to open anything! What an experience though getting through the crowd, out of the airport, across the parking lot and onto our bus. This is always the most nerve racking part of the whole trip. Everybody is trying to help you with your luggage. We had a very nice air conditioned bus and they packed all our luggage on a roof rack. We were able to drive past the destroyed presidential palace, cathedral and a few other areas. After we were driving awhile, we heard a thump on the roof and Jeana saw the shadow of someone's legs on top of our bus! We got a little excited and thought our luggage was being stolen, tried to alert our driver (in English) and he just smiled and motioned that it was ok. We finally figured out that he hired someone to ride the entire trip on top to guard our luggage! The team was able to experience the PAP traffic congestion :-0

I noticed the main highway, Rt 2, out of PAP had some earthquake damage also with long rolling cracks and ridges. We made it safely out to Bonne Fin after a few "close calls", we'll leave it at that. Sheila Moser met us along the highway in Cavaillon with the Toyota 4x4 and we transferred everything over, piled on top ourselves and drove the last hour on a gravel mountain road that was fairly maintained (only 1 bridge out).

Once we arrived at the guest house, we unpacked briefly and then enjoyed a fairly standard Haitian meal of white rice, onion meat gravy, fried plantain, chicken, goat, cole slaw, tomatoes, green peppers, some other fried vegetable, fresh coconut cookies... Then we took our medical supplies up to the hospital and the team did rounds, assessing everyone in the hospital (I think) and preparing the lists of priorities for surgery or PT. There was one young girl who was crying while they were trying to redress her broken arm (awaiting surgery), so we went and got a doll for her and another young boy in the same room. Max even got to pull a pin out of someone's leg...his first "surgery"! I asked if they could put it back in so I could pull it out too!! I'm not sure where everyone got their energy from after little to no sleep the night before, but they worked till maybe 11:00 pm. Then we went back and took cold showers. Much colder than I remember.