Homeward Bound

This will be my last blog for this trip. As I've crossed a few time zones today's (28th August) will continue from where I left off yesterday.

On the way to the airport I finally realised why all the cars looked a lot more menacing in Miami they had no number plate on the front (I'm blaming the lack of sleep for not realising sooner). So what normally looks like a nice face now looks a little scary (again lack of sleep!).

To confirm the menacing nature of the cars (and their occupants) a car with its back bumper hanging off tried to push in the queue on the highway. Our taxi driver was having none of it though. He wound down his window, shouted something out of it then creeping forward getting as close as possible to the car in front.

This made the occupants of this particularly menacing albeit lopsided car somewhat angry and out got the driver and came towards our car shouting and waving his fist.

Fortunately he saw Stu and I in the back (we must have been doing a very "menacing face") and he quietly got back into his car before zooming off up ahead to try his luck at pushing in up there.

About 15 minutes later we saw him again several cars behind us. Huh ha!

Whilst we sat in traffic we chatted with our taxi driver Jose from Ecuador. He told is that in Miami there is no regulation on driving hours for taxis and theoretically drivers can work 24 hours a day without penalty (other than getting really tired!). Our driver didn't agree with this as he's seen some really tired drivers endangering the life of passengers. Unfortunately there are no plans to do anything about this :-\

Eventually, with no more incidents, we got to back to Miami airport an hour before boarding. We went straight to our security gate where the person shook their head disapproving as we obviously hadn't left enough time. 30 minutes later with full body scans complete we were through.

First on our (Stu's) list to do was to buy a bag of neodymium magnets. We found the shop and stuffed as many as we could into a small bag (that's how you buy them) with a few peaking out the top.

The shop assistant had been watching us push them in with a big grin on her face which got bigger when we gingerly handed the little bag, full to bursting, over to her hoping none would pop out. I don't think she's used to two adults doing this sort of thing. They're for Stu's teaching...promise!

Mission complete we went to our security gate to board the plane. When we got to our seat I had the joy of sitting next to a kid and his mum. Great we thought, no sleep for us tonight either. We hunted through our bags for the stuff we wanted for the flight then sat down. Unfortunately (again I'm blaming tiredness!) I'd left our eye masks on the previous plane :-(

Shortly after sitting down there was a lot of commotion with a mum complaining her 3 kids couldn't sit together. The air stewards were trying to rearrange the plane to sits families together. Then the kid and mum next to me got up, collected their bags and went to the front of the plane. Result!

Unfortunately the two Italian men who were now sitting next to me were far worse than any child could have been. Playing Tetris on a plane is quite a noisy and lively sport apparently. To add to it the chairs were also extremely uncomfortable. I've been in little pain for the duration of the holiday, rarely needing painkillers but last night was most definitely my worst :-(

Stocked up on painkillers I attempted to sleep, getting just enough to see me through the rest of the day.

Having got out bags we went outside to find our taxi but none was there for us. I rang the taxi company to find out if they were delayed, but what had actually happened was they had lost our booking! Just over an hour later they arrived and finally off we went.

Given we had been traveling for the last 45 hours by taxi, bus, taxi, taxi, plane, taxi, taxi, plane and nothing had gone wrong I guess we were kinda lucky. This was also our first missed connection in a month!

We cat napped in the taxi getting a few more minutes of much needed sleep. When I opened my eyes everything was green. The sight felt so odd. We are used to desert and golden grass, not larger lush green trees everywhere!

We got home to find everything where we'd left it and the garden looking pretty good (next door's grandson, Jack, had been cutting our grass whist we were away and doing a good job too!).

Home at last! It feels strangely good to be home but a little sad it's all over :-)