Dominican Journeys: Puerto Plata - Saturday, February 9, 2019

Well, Friday was quite a day. Up at 8 a.m. Last minute purchases made. Tried to rest for the day ahead. Dropped the car at our son's house and hitched a ride with a friend to the church in Norval where we had stowed all our bags. Now about 10 p.m. Fine tuned the packing of many bags. Waited fitfully for Aeroport taxi to pick us up at 2 a.m. Crazy trip - up to 140 kph in a minivan full of over 700 pounds of passengers and bags in blowing snow. Luckily the 401 was amazingly quite dry. Arrived to a mostly deserted Terminal 3 and searched around for someone to direct us to the Air Transat counters. Finally struggled there with our 3 groaning carts.

Bea pushing 2 monster carts of baggage. Actually a 'photo op'.

Bea and I checked our bags and got our boarding passes. The 3rd member of Journey 2019, Vic Lytle from Kitchener arrived pushing his walker, around 4 a.m. to join the maddening crowd of 100's of Caribbean bound mostly seniors. After checking his bags, Bea and I left him to the mercy of the GTAA team of wheelchair jockeys while we proceeded to Gate B29 to await our aircraft. Vic arrived about an hour later, looking a bit frazzled, and immediately asked for a coffee. I obliged him within 15 minutes by locating a less popular venue than Tim's or Starbucks, which had massive lineups.

Boarding was a tedious affair, involving an initial fleet of wheelchair-bound passengers who were delayed in the near freezing loading ramp for 10 minutes while the plane crew made final preps for boarding. Once the wheelchair contingent was aboard, loading proceeded without further incident and the plane actually left on time - 6:30 a.m. The Jet Stream Gods favoured us and pushed the plane to it's destination nearly 15 minutes early. However, the Resort Gods conspired against us and without our rooms until 2 p.m. so we passed the time with a leisurely lunch and puttered around for awhile, sweating and trying to remain calm.

The resort where we are staying was recently renovated following extensive damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Track of Hurricane Maria in September 2017

After settling into our room, Bea and I toured the resort and took a few pics for you to see where we will be staying. We will be working on Servant's Heart Ministries projects during the daytime and recuperating at night.