Photographer's Log:
Bay Islands Beach Resort on the island of Roatan Honduras was our home for a week from August 16th to 22nd 2008. The trip started out for me at 1:30am and a thirty-minute drive to Riverside CA and Anthony Wiley’s SCUBA Locker Where the Supper shuttle would pick our group of 11 up and get all our gear and us to LAX. Or start was good until we arrived at 3:00am at the Continental Airlines Group Counter and was told, “To wait over to the side for the Group Checker inner”. We did and watched as hundreds of people checked in and a couple of lulls came and went! Now the person was “Late” and we had to wait!
Eleven Divers have a lot of gear! So finally the supervisor decided, after we complained, to check us in about 5:00am for a 6:20am flight. We were told that our dive bags would be $15.00 and our second bag $25.00! Even though we book the “Continental Vacation Package” early and on their web site it states that “Dive Gear as the first bag flies for free” and the second bag is $25.00! So now all of us had to pay with our credit cards and do the paper work as we were running out of time!
My HD camera housing is 70lbs packed and nothing will change that, as it was designed that way when the limit was 70lbs. So I was told mine would be $75.00 and they proceeded to charge my card $50.00 after all?
With all this we ended up in a long line and got through TSA with little problem about 5:55am and the plane was boarding as we were heading for the gate, with two hours wasted on BS at the counter! So with no time to spare I walked on the plane with all my gear that used to fly in the Hold and waddled down the isle stuffing it where I could!
A personal note is that I can’t understand why the airlines don’t set a price for sports gear and build in the ticket price! So you know what you have and how to pack, and just what you need to get through the “Mess”!
A little hint for Airports like LAX: If you’re bag will be over-weight it for the 50lbs limit? Hold out your Regulator or Fins and on the way to TSA put them back in the bag! TSA doesn’t put them on the scale again and they don’t get weighed individually again! After all this is war!
Our trip to Huston was very nice and as soon as we landed the sky opened up and it pored down rain and lightening. So we found our gate where four people on our flight were turned away because their Pass Ports were within 6 months of expiring! We had to present them at the Roatan Gate. Now we were on and waiting for the rain to stop. A little over an hour later we were off for a smooth ride to Roatan. We arrived about an hour late at 3:30pm or so and the line to get in is brutal! After an hour in line we picked up our bags and the resort was right there to load everyone and everything for delivery to Bay Islands Beach Resort.
