I lost it!

We had an amazing time in St. John. It did not get off to the best start though. We were all flying standby because the flight prices were ridiculous. The Crawford's were leaving on Friday and the King's on Saturday to give everyone a better chance of making the flights. Erik's parents made it on the first flight, barely. Erik then made it on the second flight although I was not so lucky. There was a good 5 hours between the second and third flights. I had some lunch, went to the airport spa for a mani/pedi and read my book. It was actually kind of relaxing.

The last flight was not looking good but I ended up making it. We flew into some bad weather near San Juan. The pilot announced that we were getting ready to land in St. Thomas. I could see the rain and lightening out the window which was kind of scary. We made our decent and then all of a sudden the nose of the plane pulled up. We increased speed and gained altitude really quickly. I have never been on a plane that has done that before. The pilot came on the speaker and said he was not able to land due to visibility. He could not see the runway! We had to circle around in a holding pattern for 45 minutes waiting for the weather to clear.

The pilot came back on and said he was going to try again. You could still not see anything outside due to the rain and fog so this was cause for concern. He said if we could not land we would fly to San Juan, refuel and try again. I was quite tired at this point from being at the airport since 7:30am and it was now 9pm. I just prayed that we would be able to land in St. Thomas. We made our decent again but could still see nothing. All of a sudden we hit the ground. There must have been a ton of water on the runway because it sprayed on the plane and outwards when we hit. Then we began to fishtail and I realized that we were hydroplaning. The pilot slammed on the brakes and eventually got control of the plane.

Once I started breathing again, I realized the entire plane was clapping and cheering. It was by far the scariest landing I have ever had on a plane. I do not want to repeat that one again. Anyway, Erik was waiting for me at the airport. We got in a taxi and told him we wanted to make the 11pm ferry to St. John. He stood outside talking for a good 20 minutes (after the cab was full of people) and then decided to drive us the 45 minute drive to the dock. That was a scary drive being on the hills of St. Thomas with wet roads and a fast driver. We saw the ferry at the dock so we ran off the taxi only to discover we had just missed it by about 15 seconds.

I lost it! I started going off on the taxi driver. I used some very foul language and called him several bad names. After I felt a little better, I just ran into the women's bathroom and cried. I cried for a good ten minutes just letting out all of the frustrations of the day. I was tired, hungry and angry. Luckily, there was one more ferry at midnight. If that had been the last ferry and we were stuck on St. Thomas, that taxi driver would have been paying for my hotel room.

I will continue my story tomorrow and hopefully post some pictures of the trip. Happy Tuesday!