Saturday...until Monday

Sorry it has taken me a while to make this post, we had a few days of no internet access and then I need some time to rest and recover once we did get home.
On Saturday the group of 8 of us who were flying back that evening checked out of our hotel, loaded our luggage onto Juan's bus and headed to Danny and Vanessa's house for lunch. We had pizza from Talita Cumi, which they make as a fundraiser and we also had bagels from Cristo Viene. We enjoyed some relaxing time with Danny and Vanessa before going to the sand dunes. The sand dunes were absolutely amazing and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. Some team members boarded down the dunes and then we watched the sunset at the dunes. This absolute nature beauty could only come from God, the amazing creator that He is. After the sun sat we went back to Danny and Vanessa's to "shop". I had asked if there was anywhere we could go to get some Bolivian made things, so Vanessa called her neighbor, whose maid is also a seamstress. That lady has taught several other women to sew and they make bags, aprons, pot holders, book covers, etc. So they brought over lots of things that these ladies had made for us to look through and purchase.
We said goodbye to Vanessa, Lucianna, Isaiah, Janene, and Corrie before leaving to get dinner and go to the airport. We had dinner at Roky's, which had really good chicken and steak. Juan took us for one last ride, to the airport. We got checked in and said goodbye to Danny before going through security. Our flight was supposed to leave at 11:10, after being told several times they would let us know when we would depart, finally after 1 am they said our flight was cancelled. We sent John to the ticket counter to try to get us on the 9 am flight and we went to collect our bags. The 8 of us were able to get on the 9 am flight to Miami. So the airline provided taxis and hotel rooms. We loaded our luggage into the cabs and headed to Hotel Arenal, at about 80 miles an hour. It was after 3 am when we got to the hotel and got checked in. We met in the lobby at 5:45 am to get back to the airport. We got checked in again and I was not assigned a seat number, but everyone else was. John worked his magic at the ticket counter and I was assigned a seat number, at least I knew I was going to be able to head to Miami with the others. :) We flew to Miami, went through customs, etc. with no trouble. We went to give our luggage to the AA people and they said we had missed our flight to Cincinnati. So we head back to the ticket counter and try to come up with a plan B. We end up flying to Chicago that evening and staying overnight there. We were in a Raddison, which was very nice compared to the hotel arenal. We took the shuttle to the hotel and got about 4 hours of sleep before taking the shuttle back to the hotel at 4:30 am. In Chicago our flight was delayed almost an hour because the pilot didn't show up, so they got another pilot and we were on our way to Cincinnati. We got to Cincinnati, got our bags (all but Dale) and drove back to Lexington. We got to Lexington around 11:30 am/noon on Monday, when we should have been back by around 6 Sunday evening. We finally made it back, safe and sound. It is hard to believe that this amazing adventure had finally come to an end.