Honduras 2013 Third Blog

Friday started off as a normal day. We went to the clinic to start seeing patients at 8am.  We finished at 10:30am so that we could go back to the hotel to pack up and leave to Roatan for the weekend. We have to go to LA Ceiba to fly over to Roatan, a small island off the coast. SO first it’s a three hour ride to LA Ceiba airport.  On the way there, it started to rain. Once there we waiting about 90 minutes before getting on the plane.  Then we just sat there.  This was in a small, propeller driven, 19 seater plane. There were no pilots on board- one could see this as it is an open cockpit. It was very hot and humid in the plane.  Fortunately they left the back door open, so I so stood by it to get some air.  It was raining so we were just hanging out on the plane.  I asked a ground crew member what was happening and he just pointed at the cloudy sky and shrugged his shoulders. Finally I ran back to the terminal and asked what was happening.  They said that the airport was closed and that we could all wait in the terminal.  Why they did not tell us that before, who knows.  Back in the terminal, we met up with the other two clinic members who were on the planes after ours. We waited almost three hours. At one point they brought out a jet (the other planes were propellers until and after 30mins said the plane was ready but that the airport- tower- was officially closed. SO it was back to the hotel and check into it and had dinner and hopefully go in the am

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PS all this movement and going back to the hotel (where we do not have reservations) and getting dinner is not easy as we are a group of 75 people. And cancelling our reservations in Roatan. Plus we had a restaurant reserved for Roatan that the foundation has a dinner for everyone.  All that needed to be cancelled.

PSS
The next am (Saturday) the airport was still closed.  So after going out to the airport early, just in case it opened, we made a group decision to stay in La Ceiba and cancel our weekend get a way in Roatan. So no diving for me and a few others. C'est al vie.  La Ceiba has a mall, movie theater and a gym. While some went to the mall or a movie, I and several others went to the gym. We all then spent the rest of the day catching up on e-mails and conversations with the others.  Sunday we all returned to our respective clinics to start again on Monday.