Today was a travel day. We woke up at 6 am, to shower, eat breakfast and finish packing to leave. Arlene, our hostess had arranged for Gideon’s Taxi Service to pick us up at 8 am and deposit us at the airport.
The airline had emailed a day or two ago, moving our flight from 10:35 am to 9:35 am and asking us to arrive an hour in advance. I thought that was a little excessive since we had seen how small the airport was on our arrival.
Well, perhaps not. There were three parties getting on our flight; two couples and a family with teenagers. We checked in with the airline, waited to have our bags searched (by hand!), and then filled out our immigration forms. The same employees doing the bag search herded us over to the woman at immigration.
Up until now, we were afraid we were going to have way too many EC left over. We ate a nice dinner last night, with dessert, the first of the trip. Then we had to tip the housekeeping staff and pay for the ride to the airport. That left roughly 220 EC leftover which is about 80 USD. Way more foreign currency than we would want.
Luckily for us, there’s a 100 EC per person departure tax which I was somewhat aware of at one time, but had not thought about or prepared for. The taxi ride was also 10 EC more than the taxi when we arrived and now we only have 10 extra EC, which I donated to Action Bequia in the airport.
After paying the departure tax, the same employees who search our bags searched our bodies with the wand thingy. The airport has a metal detector that you walkthrough, but it wasn’t plugged in, and the fellow was picking it up like it was made out of cardboard, so maybe it was just a spray-painted prop.
We all made it through security and hopped aboard our little plane for the 45-minute ride to Barbados. In Barbados, we killed time by shopping the airport stores and reading. At 3 pm we set off for Panama City, the Panama version, and not the spring break Florida version.
We landed in Panama, cleared customs and immigration, and Ubered to our hotel, which is actually a youth hostel. The noisiest, most party happy youth hostel. Our earplugs will come in handy tonight.
Tomorrow we will see the sights of Panama City, which may include a danger noodle sighting. We’re not sure what that is, but you’d better believe we’ll Google it just as soon as we stop laughing.