Républica Dominicana: Day Nine

Sunday February 24, 2008

Ahhhh...4:00am. Time to get up and shower and bring our suitcase (just one this time) downstairs in time for a 5:00am departure on the bus for our 4-hour drive to Santo Domingo. All 40 of us are on the bus. The Charlotte folks de-bus at Santo Domingo, then the Raleigh travelers continue on to La Romana for their later flight.

Our 11:15am American Airlines flight is delayed due to mechanical failure. Then delayed again. Then delayed some more. And finally....canceled. CANCELED. Crap. They open three lines to rebook the travelers, and whoever reaches their desk first is to rebook all 20 of us Charlotte passengers. Luckily our "group leader" made it to her line first and rebooked us all on Delta. Kicker is, we have to go get our luggage and recheck them at the Delta counter. It is now 3:00pm and the flight is at 4:09. Time to book it over there.

Sadly, baggage claim is through immigration. So we have to convince the immigration folks (who have already stamped our passports as exited) to allow us through. We get to baggage claim and we wait. And wait. And wait. By the time we get our luggage, we have to have the supervisor bypass us through customs. We make it back up to the main entrance to the airport at 4:00 for the 4:09 flight, and the entire Delta check-in counter is closed. CLOSED! The Delta supervisor in their office says it is not their fault we were late for boarding, as their plane was running on time.

So now American is off the hook for getting us a hotel voucher and dinner voucher since they got us a flight on Delta. Not American's fault baggage claim took so long to make us late. And it's not Delta's fault as they had nothing to do with American's cancellation nor the tardy baggage claim.

So we are refugees, passport stamped as exited the country with no plane reservations to get us out of the country. Literally hours and hours of wrangling with American Airlines supervisors finally gets some resolution. We will all be on a 7:45am plane to Miami, but then we split up into hodgepodge trips either through Atlanta, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, or for me a direct flight into Greensboro with a mere 11-hour layover in Miami.

Hotel vouchers are for Hotel Santo Domingo in town. Trying to ask our cab driver what the hotel was like ("Bueno? or mal?") got us an answer that it was "3-star" and "old". Great. La cucharacha running amok.

We pull into Hotel Santo Domingo at 8:30pm to find a gorgeous hotel that rivals the Rennaisance in downtown Cleveland. Beautiful. And the bonus is that our rooms are on the Executive Level which require our room key to select that floor from the elevator. Nice. Finally something good happened today. Welcomed luxury for these smelly refugees.