Bon Voyage Tortola!

*(As you may have guessed, this belated blog post is from early December.)

Well, the time came to depart our marina and head home. 

Christmas was coming after all...

We had about 17+ hours of travel ahead of us...which ALWAYS includes an adventure of some sort. 

And it started with this...

Our cabbie was 30 minutes late. He was as lethargic as they come and said we would take a shortcut to the airport... Which was thru the mountains and up super STEEP "streets of San Francisco" grade hills. He was driving slower than the little old lady from Pasadena...

Everyone passed us. He chatted and with his thick accent we couldn't make out a word he said. You'd think he was speaking swahili. I don't know if this is how he gets his kicks, but he should get his 

fa-la-la's elsewhere instead of from hurried foreigners...

He didn't have a strong enough car to go up hills and didn't have strong enough brakes to go down. 

We even had to stop and wait for construction maintenance on the "shortcut" road to be repaired..

Then.. after what was almost an hour for a 20 min ride, he hits 

a speed bump at full speed and we almost hit the roof. 

Some stunt driver he was...

He was quite apologetic, and I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants as this 

whole cabbie adventure (we always seem to have them!) was a riot!! 

Finally we arrived at the airport...ready to go.

And get our groove on...

At the airport, I spotted Martina Navatalova and Tarcy Austin returning 

from the Necker Cup. They were flying back to Puerto Rico

with us. It doesn't appear they are besties.

My other sightings were the cats wandering the airport, a random songbird or two flying above our heads and a couple feral dogs. Let's not forget the chickens and rooster wandering the perimeter... 

Too funny! Definitely one of the more casual airports we've been to.

And if you get some pre-flight hunger pains, you can head to the local ice cream stand there..

All flights out of Tortola go to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Once we arrived in SJ, we then connected to Charlotte, North Carolina...finally touching down on terra firma in LA. YAY!! I'll be glad when the "3 flights to get to a destination" portion of our adventure is concluded. It is just for this BVI destination luckily.  17+ hours to get to a destination and 3 connections is exhausting. but all part of our crazy fun adventure!

We cleared customs in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As soon as we walked into the customs area we made a beeline for the Global Entry kiosks. For those of you wondering about Global Entry, it's a "fast pass" for getting through customs which I highly recommend. You sign up on their website, get a full background check and vetted through the Department of Homeland Security. Then, you're on your way to speedy checkpoints when re-entering the US from aboard. I always have a little fun at the kiosk and make sure I get a snazzy pose for the customs official when he will collect my receipt.

Case in point below... It keeps me entertained. 

Anyhoo- we are off!

Until next time campers....