Back to our roots: Traveling adventures (Day 2)

We awoke early in the morning to grab a complimentary hot breakfast in the hotel, packed up and got on the shuttle back to the airport.

The whole family in the lobby before the shuttle

Checking our luggage was free (literally) and easy, and we were on our way to the gate to board our flight to Port of Spain, Trinidad.

On the plane to POS

The flight was a little long but we occupied ourselves with books and our Nintendo DSs.

Before we knew it we were landing on the island of Trinidad. We took this quick picture in the terminal before we were told that photos were not allowed in that area.

At this point in our wonderful vacation story, we hit a snag. Our flight from Miami landed around 1:40 and we booked our flight from Trinidad to Tobago (they are two separate islands, with a 20 min flight connecting them) at 3:30. I have been to Mexico and to Europe before and never had problems with immigration or customs taking 2 hours… that’s where I would be wrong. Dad went through the “citizens” line while the rest of us stood in the “visitors” line… Dad forgot to give us a name, number or address for the place we were staying in Tobago so all we had written on our form was “Cannan, Tobago”… that didn’t fly so much with the immigration officer. We were told that we needed a name, number or address, which we didn’t have since Dad had already gone through his line on the way to customs. After a little panic and my brother’s now infamous line “Where does it say I’m going” while throwing his paper down at the officer (not something you want to do in a foreign country) the officer took pity on us and let us just put down Dad’s name since he was a citizen of the country.

By the time we cleared immigration, we were running to make it through customs (another long line) and of course missed our 3:30 flight to Tobago. The lady behind the counter informed us that all the flights were full, but that we would be added to the stand by list. Not a great start to the trip! We ate some Churches chicken in the airport and waited as 2 flights passed by before getting called to pick up our stand by tickets.

It seemed like by the time we reached our flying level we were already descending onto the island of Tobago. It was raining as we walked from the plane to the airport (good thing my poncho was packed in my carry on) and were picked up by my Dad’s childhood friend Fitzroy aka Stumpy. Stumpy was amazing and booked us rooms at the Coco Reef where we checked in, enjoyed some welcome drinks and a night cap before calling it a night.

Welcome drinks at Coco Reef

Our Bed

Family nightcap

Stay tuned for our first full day in Tobago