Trip Bingo: The Blackout Trip

Airline issues: The aviation powers that be are not on our side

• HQ group has pre-trip discovery that itinerary and airline disagree on departure time. Airline says it is one hour later, cutting our 2 hour layover into 1 hour.
• First leg of flight leaves 30ish minutes late. Layover is now 30 minutes. 
• Second leg of flight leaves one hour late because a passenger has been ill. 
• One of our Brazilians' flights is cancelled.
• The other Brazilian hasn't had enough time between his vaccine so isn't allowed to fly for 3 days.
• My group's flight to St. Kitt's left after it was supposed to land in St. Kitts.
• The Tortola/Antigua group's flight to Antigua was cancelled with no rebooking.
• Our flight to Dominica made a stop on another island en route to pick up stranded passengers. Which, honestly, was more entertaining than inconvenient.
• Our 1:00 am flight home was delayed until 2:40 am. 
• Which meant we missed the connecting flight. But, we were rebooked.
• Unfortunately, this meant my boss would miss leaving with his family on family vacation. But he found a flight that connected him to where they were!
• Also, the flight I was rebooked on left 10 minutes after we landed. But somehow, my coworker and I made the flight!
• Our flight from Houston was delayed by an hour.
• Another coworker had ALL of his flights delayed, and a second one missed and rebooked. 
• The inter-island flights were very particular about luggage. At one point, we were told our carry on bag could only weigh 5 lbs. Which meant checking the carry-on for $50. I had wanted them to check it at the beginning of the trip, and if they would have just listened to me, I could have saved a lot of headache. And money.

Immigration:

• One employee gets interrogated by US Immigration twice. The first time, he misses his flight. The second time the flight waited for him, for an hour. 
• My group on the small islands got met by Immigration in St. Kitts and for about an hour didn't know if they'd let us in the country.
• I got caught in the crosshairs of an inter-personnel war. It involved the quality of the immigration stamp in my passport. Good times.
• I filled out 4 e-tickets. It was way too many. And one of them would not enter the correct date in any of the fields the first time, no matter what I did.
• Not exactly an immigration thing, but we had a scare where we thought someone had lost their passport. After twenty or so minutes of stress, she did a second search and found it in her suitcase.

Weather:

• Pre-trip, there were worries about a tropical storm, but it passed by with no problems. So, close call but not a bingo.
• Heat and humidity everywhere. Eventually you just lean in and embrace the soaking wetness.

Vehicle trouble:

• Two dead batteries. (One eventually started up on its own, the other had to be jumped.)
• One semi-flat tire, but we refilled it and there were no further issues. 
• One taxi driver who kept showing up to pick us up an hour or two early.
• One taxi driver who threatened to abandon us (he had told us when he dropped us off that he had to leave at a specific time).
• We did get sort of lost at one point. The taxi driver got us into town but then didn't know where to go from there. But I found the address on my phone and we got there. 
• The front bumper started falling off of one of the rental cars. Not our fault, but it sure had the renter stressed out.

Minor mishaps:

• I had a hair dryer catch on fire. Fortunately, my hair did not catch on fire.
• I dropped my camera and broke my lens. But, the camera body was fine and I had two other lenses, so could have been worse.
• At one hotel, they didn't have someone's reservation. But they were able to get her a room. The first one they gave her was already assigned to another coworker, so that was fun. But it got squared away.
• Someone else lost his luggage key, so had to break the lock.
• We almost had a lost cell phone. 
• Someone else's phone wouldn't charge because of humidity. It finally dried out.
• The boss got impaled by a swordfish (that was on display in one of the restaurants)

Health:

• I threw up on 4 different occasions, which I swear is not normal. 
• The last time I threw up, I kept throwing up (even throwing up the water I drank after throwing up), and ended up in the ER. Probably dehydration. Scared the bejeebies out of my team. 
• At one of the places we did interviews, a kid fell and hit his head and had to go to the hospital. Far more stressful for them than for us. 
• I did get a blister but didn't have any band-aids, so at one point it started bleeding, but in comparison, it wasn't very significant. 

Yeah. It was a lot. But we survived.