Road to Indonesia: luggage

 It is never easy, is it?

Our covid test still had not come back at the time we were to take the next test that would release us from quarantine. The doctor did not show up at 9 this morning to take our next covid test either. The hotel said everyone in other hotels was having this problem. Finally, this afternoon they delivered the paper which stated our first test is negative. They said they were appealing to the government to let us leave quarantine and travel on the basis of this paper.  They are sure that this will work, so we have fligths booked at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday to go to the island of Papua.  Considering how everything progresses for us, I am sure that we will eventually get to Hillcrest School, but I am not holding my breath as to when exactly that will be. 

An additional issue that has just come up is that we will be switiching from international travel to domestic travel. Because of this, they will perhaps charge us $300 or more for each piece of overweight luggage, and anything over like 35 pounds is overweight. Wow! (Remember how excited we were to be able to take 2 pieces each of luggage? Well now it is backfiring. Don't be greedy.)  So right this minute we are working on finding out how much weight we can actually take on the plane and then we are going to ship by boat the rest of our luggage.  This means the hotel will have to help us courier our excess luggage to a local mall, to be expedited to the ship. Truly, we could abandon some of the things, so it does not matter if it takes weeks before the things arrive. I think back to our first trip to Ecuador in 1976 when we packed in 50 gallon drums and welded the tops shut.  Then a month after we arrived, I and the school secretary took the overnight bus to the port of Guayaquil.  This was a bit of a ride, with chickens, and drunk vomiting next to us as we traveled. When we got to the port, the customs people duly tried to open the drums. The dear friend, Bruce Breisch, who had welded the drums did an excessive job and then put duct tape around the top. The tape was so sticky when it came off that it stuck to the officials hands and feet and hands again as they tried to get it off. Then the welding was so well done that after many, many minutes of chiseling at the welding, they were only 1/3 of the way around the top of the first barrel and pried the top up to look inside. There were large garbage bags inside which were sealed with more tape. They grimaced and did not try to open any more, but just passed everything through!! As interesting as this trip has been, we have had many, many other times that have been similar: running through airports, visas at the last minute, etc. etc. You just have not heard about them because the means of communication 40 years ago was not as readily available. Anyway, pray that the luggage gets sorted out. We are starting to repack right now.