Travelling to Haiti

We left for Haiti on Sunday, July 1.  We drove to St. Louis and then flew to Miami.  We got settled into our hotel in Miami around 9:30 pm.  We did not get much sleep at all that night, maybe an hour or two.  Just too excited and nervous about the trip, I guess!

Monday morning we got on the airport shuttle at 4:00 am to catch our early morning flight to Port au Prince.  Once we landed at the  Port au Prince airport, we had to take a very short "tap tap" ride ("tap taps" in Haiti are taxi trucks that carry passengers in the back) to a smaller airport.  Once we arrived, we had no idea how long we would have to wait.  We were told that the plane schedule ran on Haitian time, which meant we could be waiting for the plane for 5 minutes or 5 hours!  Here is our group waiting in the Port au Prince airport.

Fortunately, we only had to wait about an hour and a half or so before our plane was ready to go.  It was a small, 19 passenger plane.  It was a very, very bumpy ride.  I usually have no fears about flying, but this flight was making me a little nervous and very nauseous.  We were dropping and bouncing and rocking all over the place.  The alternative to this plane ride was an 8 hour bus ride that would have been even more bumpy.  This flight was only 40 minutes.  I kept telling myself through the flight, "This has to be better than the bus ride.  This has to be better than the bus ride."

That little plane took us to Port du Paix.  From there, a bus from the mission took us on an hour long  trip to St. Louis du Nord.  That bus ride felt like a crazy bumpy ride, but little did I know that it would be one of the smoothest rides we would have in Haiti!  After all that travel, we finally arrived at Northwest Haiti Christian Mission.  It felt like it should be time for bed by that time, but it was only 1:00 in the afternoon.  We got there just in time for lunch!