LAST DAY IN PARADISE!!! So sad.We woke up at 6am and hauled all of our luggage out to the boat. I rode Cinthia in on my bike so she would be some what worn out. I met madre' at the BC's dock and we went to the airport so I could grab my money and Cinthia's kennel. I walked the kennel and madre' rode my bike with Cinthia to Tropic Cargo. Alberto was there just like he said he would be and we paid for Cinthia, crossed our fingers that she would be on our flight and headed back to the main terminal to wait for our flight. About 5 mins before we were to board madre' saw Cinthia being wheeled to our plane. That was a stress reliever. We said our goodbyes with lots of hugs and kisses (thanks again madre' & padre', love you!) and boarded the plane without making eye contact with Cinthia. We sat at the front of the plane and we saw Cinthia being wheeled away and the plane doors being shut! WTF!
There was nothing we could do but hope that she would be on the next flight out. We flew to Caye Caulker expecting the plane to fill up with more people and maybe two people got on! We were very confused as to why she didn't make it on our flight. We got our luggage at Belize International and Matt went straight up to the Continental desk before they were even open and told them what was going on. The Tropic Air manager walked by and he explained everything to him as well. The manager was irate that cargo didn't fill the plane as they were supposed to. They told us that they would make a few calls and let us know what was going on. Another employee from Tropic air was very helpful in letting us know that cargo didn't fill the plane like they were supposed to because there were supposed to be some passengers on Caye Caulker that didn't show up. They were doing all they could to get little Cinthia on the next flight but they new as the day went on the flights were getting full.
All we could do was sit with our baggage and hope to see her come around the corner. At this point everybody working at the airport knew what was going on. We were told to check in for our 3:50pm flight to Huston, TX and if Cinthia made it in time we could change to the 11am flight. After we were checked in William arrived and we let him know what was going on and would she make it in time to get everything taken care of? He had me give him all of her paperwork so he could start processing it just in case when she arrived all we would have to do is slap some stickers on her kennel. It turns out that Continental hires another company to do all this paper work and that is what the extra $200 BZ is for. William was very professional and efficient. He got all the paper work sorted and we were told that she would be on the 10:15am flight, so says the captain of the plane.
I went down to tell this to William and ask if we should even bother changing our flights or would it be too late? He said yes do it and I looked at the massive line for Continental. He told me to get in line and he would see what he could do. Matt had all of our documents so he took Matt up to the front of the line and spoke with a Continental employee and I could see that they were doing something. William came and got me out of line and told me that they had figured everything out and our flights were changed. What a good guy! We walked down to his desk to pay for Cinthia and he still needed the $200 BZ handling fee, in cash don't forget. I was about to cry from all the stress but I didn't need to worry because my man took care of everything. William ended up taking $50 BZ (that was all the cash we had) and writing us an official receipt for the handling fee. Damn my mans good.
As we were paying for everything Cinthia showed up and was so excited to see us. Matt gave her some kibble and she looked pretty normal for what she had just gone through (not like Kristah who would have been freaking out!) William put all the stickers on her cage and they took her back with the luggage. After we were through security we had enough time to grab a hot dog and a coke for breakfast and then it was time to board. We got the emergency exit and it was so spacious. Once we had landed and got through immigrations we picked up our luggage. We thought for sure that we would have to pick up Cinthia and all go through customs together. We asked several different people and we got "yes" "no" "yes""no". We didn't know what to do. I saw someone at the Continental baggage desk and asked her. She clarified how Cinthia was traveling and said no she will go straight through to Seattle.
We had to trust her, go through customs, recheck our luggage, go through security again and find our gate number to Seattle. I think I could breath at this point and thanked Matt so much for all his hard work communicating with everyone because we both knew if I had to do it, it would come out but, but, but. We had Wendy's for lunch and waited for our flight. This flight is always packed and we took off a little later than expected due to finding space for luggage. Our seats were the first ones in coach but there were two ladies sitting in our seats. Once Matt asked me what seat numbers we had they acted as if they made a mistake and we knew that they did it on purpose because of the leg room at the front...bimbos.
A few of us had to put our luggage in first class because there was just no more room. There was this older man trying to shove his extremely full little suit case in the overhead compartment and the stewardess was almost yelling to him that it would not fit so stop shoving. She told him that they would have to check it and he would have to pick it up at baggage claim. I swear I saw this 70 year old man turn into a 7 year old having a temper tantrum. I squeezed by and sat in my seat. When we landed we let all the first class out so we could get to our bags and the old man saw that someone (the stewardess) had put our laptop on his clothes bag (the kind a suit goes in with the hangers sticking out the top) and he freaked out and threw our laptop into the next overhead compartment. I laughed to myself and told Matt, the stewardess heard me and apologized for the old mans behavior. We caught up to the old man and his wife and Matt politely told him that just because he was upset with the airline does not give him the right to throw around other peoples luggage.
At this point if he was a cartoon his head would be filling with steam and it would be whistling out his ears. He yelled something back and we just laughed at him as his wife was standing in between us trying to direct him forward. It made for a pretty entertaining flight. We got our bags and asked where we should pick up Cinthia. They gave us a map and said the cargo building a couple of miles away.
Karlene was right on time and we headed straight for the cargo building. With the way our day was going I thought for sure that it would be closed. They were open and we signed for Cinthia and got her from the back. She was so excited to see us and I leashed her up and we went outside for a potty. I wanted to give her a drink but her food and water bowls were not with her kennel (like the website told us to have accessible). I went back in to ask were they were and they said they did not see them but gave me a little bowl and water.
As we drove home we sussed out a plan for Kristah to meet Cinthia. I knew if we walked her in the house Kristah would freak out and bark at her so we had Karlene hold her on a leash in the front yard while we went in to say high and get love. She loved us all right but could smell Cinthia all over us. After a couple of minutes we opened the door for them to meet and it went pretty well. Kristah didn't bark once but she wasn't wiggling her tail she was too busy investigating. Cinthia of course wanted to jump all over Kristah so we took them both in the house and out to the backyard for another potty before bedtime.
