A few bumps in the road.

We finally have internet access and it is somewhat limited so thank you for your patience (especially you parents of the boys who are likely waiting for word.)  I will be as succinct as possible and if I can add photos at the end I will.

First - our rebooked American Airlines flight was very late in departing.  So we were pretty sure we weren't going to make our connection to Santiago.  This involved a great deal of alternative planning with Team Shea as things would go quite differently from our original plan if we didn't get on the flight.  Allan and I ran like crazy to a different terminal (it definitely would have been funny to watch) and we actually made it.  Allan made an offhand comment to the guy at the gate about our luggage but he assured us it wouldn't be a problem.  Uh.  Wrong.  We arrived in Santiago with no luggage.  And we had generously decided to take Shea's with us so we all had nothing. 

Meanwhile - back to the kids.  It went well as far as the train to Fort Lauderdale and the meet up with Derek.  When they got to the Spirit Terminal however, they found that their flight - scheduled to leave at midnight was delayed....2 1/2 hours.  They were a little unhappy.  About 11:20 pm the flight was no longer delayed and leaving on time.  Luckily they were in the vicinity and awake enough to notice the change.  They arrived at our hotel in Santiago as scheduled and I was up to greet them.  Shea and I were in contact by text the whole time so that was a good thing.  (The boys did not have to pay for the carryon on Spirit.) 

In the morning after we somewhat dragged Team Shea out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9:45 - we headed to the bus depot.    When we got there they said the bus was full and we couldn't get on til 12:45.  After waking the kids up early I felt pretty bad about that and started looking for options.  Checked another bus company....left even later.  Finally Allan and I took a taxi to another bus company that had smaller buses but they left more frequently.  We sent our cab to pick up Team Shea and they whipped back and we got on a bus right away.  Probably a good thing we had no luggage.  With a quick 1 hour bus ride (online there were really inconsistent reports on the length of this bus ride) we were let out by this bus right at the door of the Riu.

All went well with check in and we were upgraded to ocean side rooms (when we asked.)

Luggage was awhile in coming - it arrived at 6 so that was a bit of a pain.  We were in the same clothes since 4 am the morning before.

Today is a day for enjoying the pool and beach and completely relaxing.  Now I will attempt to load a few pictures but you are up-to-date.