USVI-On-Line

A group of us (5) returned from STJ to Northern NY on Sunday, Oct 29th. It was a long day starting at around 7:30 am waiting for the car barge in Cruz.

We arrived in Red Hook at around 9:00 am and made our way to K-Mart (for last minute booze pick-ups) and then to Charlotte Amalie where we were unable to find any open restaurants. (Of course... Sunday and no cruise ships in port). So we decided to return the Jeep to Dependable and they drove us to the airport.

Even though we were extremely early (about 4 hours)we checked our luggage - 9 pieces in all for our group - which included 5 boxes of booze, assorted bags and a large black suitcase containing about 8 lbs. of frozen fish (from our fishing charter) which was carefully wrapped with ice packs and placed in a small soft sided cooler inside the luggage. We then headed through security and then to the airport loungse where we grabbed a snack and a few drinks.

The long day got longer when our flight was delayed an extra hour. We rushed through San Juan airport to make our connecting flight to Philadelphia.

While at our terminal in Philly we could see baggage being loaded onto our plane. There were a few large black bags that could have been mine (they all look alike from a distance)but no booze boxes. Hmmm...

We inquired at the check in. The woman made some phone calls and said she would try to locate our stuff. We boarded the plane.

At around 11:50pm we arrived at our final flight destination - Burlington,VT. - we went to retrieve out bags. Surprise! Not a single one was there! Further inquires located our bags in San Juan (apparently they weren't ready to come home from vacation.)

We then made the 3 hour drive to Northern NY, exhausted, bagless and fishless. We were told they would be delivered by cab when they arrived - probably Tuesday (today)!

So what are the odds - if the suitcase ever arrives - that anything in the suitcase will be usable?

We found out later we could have used up to 4 1/2 lbs of dry ice and packed the fish as carry-on. (Hmmm... is there a place to buy dry ice in STT?)

Oh well... It's almost 11 am on Oct. 31 - no sign of the booze, luggage or fish...

I'd suspect you'll smell it coming down the road before you see it :p

Was it USairways?

DELETED

Our luggage was finally delivered Halloween nite at around 5:30. The soft sided cooler had been removed from my suitcase and transported separately from San Juan. The driver said it had been refrigerated at various times throughout the trip but since the clothing in my suitcase smelled fishy we figured the fish had been too thawed to eat before they got to it.


We were pretty lucky with our booze, however. Between 5 boxes (1 per person) we only lost 1 bottle.

We figured the lost luggage problem occured in the transfer from our US air flight that landed in San Juan and the American Airlines flight we transferred to.

As for the broken bottle, we witnessed several incidents of baggage handlers of various airlines being unnecessarily rough or careless with the baggage. Our booze boxes were well labled, marked fragile, there was no way they would have been mistaken for anything other than what they obviously were. We had stuffed clothing under and around the bottles for extra protection and even reinforced the bottom and sides of the boxes with packing tape. Still, only 1 bottle broken, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky!