Traveling crisis management/Carlos Pueblo

Traveling crisis management/Carlos Pueblo

There was crisis during my cruise trip to the Eastern Caribbean this past two

Weeks, one getting on to the ship terminal from San Juan International Airport

and the other one getting home from Houston Intercontinental Airport. Both

crisis required management.

I thought that getting to the old San Juan ship terminal from the airport was easy

because I was there in October, 2016 with Epic disembark and marched toward

two castles easily and San Juan should have some kinds of buses to and from the

old town of the city to the airport. Before the trip, I did Google it and there was

a brief message to take a bus on the second floor bus stop to take a bus to town.

I arrived at 1:00 am with plenty of time to figure out the trip. At 5:00 am, I walked

out from the airport terminal toward right direction and did find a bus stop and a

pretty young lady came by to confirm that there was a bus at 6:30 am. We both

waited until 7:15 am for the upcoming bus in between there was an old van taxi

driver soliciting business and said that it was Sunday therefore the bus was not

coming. She said that what he said. The morning bus did come to take three of us

to some place in town. The transferring bus station was closed and lucky me that

she kindly offered a ride to take me to a light rail station. Her driver took us to pick

up another routine passenger and she explained the new passenger that I was here

to take a cruise in Spanish which I knew few. She explained to me the fare of the light

rail and then the connecting bus to the old San Juan. A lady employee helped me to

get a token to get on the light rail, then I met another senior lady on the train. She

offered me to guide me to the old town. At the final station, she found his friend was

taking a bus to where I wanted to go and explained to him to help me and left with a

waiting taxi.

We were on the city bus toward the old San Juan. After a while we were approaching

the port area and I saw two giant ships standing there and I could read Dawn, then I

thought that was it finally and I could get on the ship early and took a shower and a nap

in my stateroom. It was another problem that I was on the other side of the land with a gulf

separated from the ship. I had to swim across it that what the employees inside the

gates told me. A coast guard gate man told me to march on one direction while at

the Mcdonald’s another uniform worker corrected the direction. I marched toward the

later one till I found that was impossible. On my way back to the other direction, another

employees inside the gate witnessed my struggle and one of them offered to take me

to the ship. He drove me to a freeway and exit to a small airfield with abandoned planes

and I could see vehicles were pulling in and moving out from the ship. He left me in front of

the entrance because he didn’t have the permit to enter.

At the end of the cruise trip, we disembark at the lovely Tampa Bay ship terminal. I did call

the city bus authority before the trip and got the information to take route 8 and transferred

at Meridian Avenue to get on route 60 to the airport; however, I couldn’t locate the bus stop.

To avoid the crisis, I settle with a private shuttle bus with a slightly higher fare, $8 versus $4,

and I learned that I should really learn how to get easy on my money not like a miser.

Arriving at Houston, while waiting at the bus stop outside of the terminal C at a sub zero

temperature, we found out there was no bus scheduled due to the weather, as a matter of

fact all Houston bound flight was cancelled a day before. I was in panic and without a phone

and no coins to dial for help. A gentleman from Seattle kindly allowed me to use his phone to

call Amy for help. I was out on the passenger pick-up area for three hours and after a night

recovering, I looked at the mirror and noticed that I was aging a lot after that suffering.