Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

Adrienne's parents were kind enough to give us a ride to DFW at 5am. I slept for much of the flight to Charlotte, and read for most of the flight to Providenciales. That was the whitest flight I've been on in a long time, and clearly the airline sensed an affluent captive audience because they tried to get everyone to apply for their credit card.

We landed in Providenciales, and were happy to discover that our phones had data service, at least. However, we were unhappy about the time. According to our phones, it was 3:45, but our next flight was supposed to leave at 3:15. Oops. I double-checked the schedule, which really did have our plane arriving at 2:45, not 3:45, so I was worried that I'd gotten the time zone wrong or something.

When we mentioned to the airport staff that we were trying to make a connection to Salt Cay, they had us duck out of the Foreigners line and into the Belongers line at immigration, and then go to the front at customs. Luckily, we found a man waiting just outside of customs with our airline's logo on his shirt, who was as relieved as we were when we said we were the passengers he'd been waiting for for the Salt Cay flight.

It turned out that our phones were just wrong about what time it was, which is a first for me. Usually the cell network handles that sort of thing properly.

We passed through security again, where they almost confiscated my scissors before I was able to make the case that they have rounded tips.

Our next two flights were on a little Cessna 402 C, a 10-seater with a random passenger acting as "co-pilot". It's fun to be in a plane that small.

The "Airport" in Salt Cay is basically just a one-room house by the airstrip, and we were met there by Debbie, who runs Salt Cay Divers, who introduced us to Maurice. He gave us a ride out to our cottage (about a mile from the airport) and gave us some tips about the town. He took us over to a little store, where we picked up some staples for breakfasts and some Egg Nog (!) for the holidays.

We had dinner at the restaurant at Salt Cay Divers, and met some of the people we'll be diving with for the next couple days. Most of them are returnees, back at Salt Cay—a good sign.