Travelling Idiots in “The BIG COUNTRY”, airlines, airports, wallets.
The December blog will cover our adventures in the Grand Caymans, getting to the Grand Caymans through the US of A and towards the end of the month, Honduras where Super Bridget has treated us to all sorts of adventures.
So now we’re in the Grand Cayman Islands, Georgetown.
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| Chooks near George Town CBD |
We love it here – there are chooks (chickens for the Brits) scratching around just behind the “CBD”.
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| View from our apartment pool |
This is the view of the beach from our unit, kindly booked by Super Bridget.
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| The Hammerhead Bar |
We found this bar near Bridget’s office. How could you not go in for a drink on a hot day? Or a cold day for that matter, although these are few and far between in the Caribbean.
The outward journey had its share of heart stopping moments. You’ve heard of the Travelling Wilburys, well, meet the Travelling Idiots.
The first disaster took place at Brisbane Airport where, shame on us, we turned up without a visa for the US of A. Now if there’s one place on God’s earth where one needs a visa, the US of A is it, visa hell in fact. Panic isn’t the word. We found out later that it is quick and painless to apply on line for a bit of paper that says you don’t need another bit of paper (technically a visa waiver) and as far as we could tell, no one ever looks at the bit of paper although no doubt if we didn’t have one, they’d know – they probably have cameras in the departure hall linked to the White House. We tried the Telstra Internet terminals to do the online application – Ha! Ha! Ha! Even the one that worked didn’t work – it was time to lob a pity grenade into Qantas and sure enough, God Bless ‘Em, they produced the most polite, unflappable angel masquerading as a check in manager, Scott Hayward. He sat down at his terminal in his office, filled out the forms for us, printed them out, checked us in and got us on the plane with minutes to spare. Good on yer Sam and Qantas.
Now, I accept that we were a bit slack as far as the visas were concerned; however, we booked all this through a travel agent who one would expect to have this bureaucratic stuff covered. It’s not in the nature of this little blog to run people down (well, not too much anyway), however, in the case of the Flight Centre in Toowong, I will make an exception. All I will say is “Be super careful when you consider a travel agent”. Best find one more suited to the Travelling Idiots.
Service levels at the American Airline check are at the other end of the spectrum. Fat Barbie on check in at DFW to Miami (MIA) clocked off duty just as we were at the head of the queue. No explanations. She just packed up and went, leaving a long queue wondering how they were going to check in. Sure, someone arrived bit later, but leaving a queue like this would never happen at a Qantas, Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines counters. It got worse – even when they do deign to check people in, they don’t bother about carry-on luggage, so on board the plane, there was nowhere for about a third of the bags and apparently no room in the hold. This gives a whole new meaning to Christmas. Imagine Mary and Joseph checking in to AA. “Sorry dear, no room in the overhead lockers – you’ll have to wait in departures for the next plane.” Imagine JC as a Texan eh? To be fair to AA, our one case which Kidner Jeremy surrendered to the luggage Nazis arrived safe and sound at Miami.
We opted to fly to Dallas Fort Worth airport (FW) because LA in Kidner Jeremy’s business travel days was the world’s busiest shit ‘ole. It turns out that DFW is the headquarters of American Airlines which is in Chapter 11. It seems I am not the only one who doesn’t like the airline. Alec Baldwin has a feud with them arising out of an incident in which he was playing with himself “Word with Friends” whatever that is, so they booted him off the flight. He’s responded with a faux apology on TV in which he impersonates an AA pilot. To be honest, I’m with AA here – why should Baldwin keep his electronic gizmo on when I can’t?
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| John, The Travelling Idiot and THE WALLET |
The second disaster of our journey happened when I left my wallet in the taxi from the airport to our hotel in Fort Worth. The taxi was driven by John, originally from the Ivory Coast. I had to cancel all my credit cards, which is toll free (you pay for local calls in the rest of the world for the benefit of Hong Kongees) and quite efficient, although I don’t recommend losing them to discover this. Then, wonder of wonders, John appears the next day with my wallet, all intact (the wallet that is, not John). Tracking him down was not possible – Dallas doesn’t have a centralised system for taxis, so we were in his hands completely and, God Bless him, he didn’t let us down. Good on yer John!
Next week – living in the Cayman Paradise. Keep Well, Stay Safe
Kidner J and Mrs K
