It’s official. Hands On‘s deployment to Gonaives, Haiti has been extended until February 28th and I have some decisions to make. Expensive ones. I, once again, overplanned and bought plane tickets down to my supposed next destination, Buenos Aires, in advance.
I obviously didn’t learn my lesson from the US$500 I threw away on a deposit on a course in Thailand that I didn’t end up attending and now I’m set to lose out on about US$750 on plane tickets. Losing out on the money is annoying but not the end of the world. This thing that scares me is truly not having any plans after February 28th when the deployment ends. It’s so unlike me and I’m kind of scared about it, to be honest. Excited, but scared.
I do still really want to go to Buenos Aires afterwards but I’m thinking now that Central America somewhere makes more sense. I’m not really too interested in travelling down to South America at the moment and will be on the lookout for WWOOFing and volunteering type things but have nothing in mind so far.
As of right now, it looks like I’ll be throwing away my plane ticket fares. The flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami is changeable but would actually end up costing more to change it than the actual ticket. The flight from Miami to Buenos Aires is, I’m told by Travelocity, of the ‘use it or lose it’ variety. A few of the people here are telling that I should call their respective airlines and plead my case for a credit of some kind… does anyone have any experience doing this? I think the first flight is with American Airlines and the second is with Aerolineas Argentinas.
So I need to book my shuttle out of town tonight and that means I need to make the call now. It’s not the end of the world if I can’t go back on the shuttle because it’s full, but it’d be a pain in the arse. I am loving it here at the moment. My body is sore all over but I’m addicted to mud, loving the people that I’m here with and really can’t imagine leaving on January 12th. On the other hand, I had been excited to head to BA and I don’t really want to throw more money away.
Nobody here at the moment seems to want to leave and people are extending and even coming back to Haiti because they’re having so much fun. I think I’ve got a good thing going at the moment so staying seems like a no-brainer… why am I still having a hard time making the call?
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