September 17, 2012
After two nights in American Samoa, it was time for our flight back to Western Samoa. Neither one of us were very happy about this, and when we told the nice girls at the reception desk we’d be back, we wished we meant it. We turned in our rental car, paid the bill and took a cab to the airport.
Once at the airport, we were confused to find the our airline’s ticketing counter dark and empty. We looked all over and found no one. We finally made our way to their office, which was also dark and empty, but Rich knocked anyway and a guy came out and took our ticket to check it out. When he came back, he gave us the news: our tickets were for tomorrow, not today! In the confusion over making flight and hotel reservations from the other side of the dateline (we had crossed it flying from Apia to Pago Pago), we had scheduled the flight on the wrong day. We took in this news, looked at each other with great big smiles and hailed a cab back to the hotel.
I don’t know that two people have ever been happier to have their flight booked for the wrong date. We were overjoyed to return once again to the garden of earthly delights. Luckily we were able to get a room, but this time we didn’t get a car. Instead, we holed up in the room and watched TV all day and loved every minute of it.
The next day we caught our flight back as scheduled. It wasn’t quite as scenic as the last one, but it was pretty nice. The plane flew unbelievably low over the Apia marina and we got a great picture of our boat from the air. -Cyndi
