Day 16

I woke up this morning at 4:55AM late of course and I scrambled to get things together and made it out to the van at about 5:05AM and we left on our way to Port-au-Prince. On the way out of Hinche we got in a traffic jam and then walked out of the van to find that the road was under about 8ft of water. When it rains heavy here some bridges and roads get overrun with water. So we stood on one side of the road and about 100m out was nothing but water and then the rest of the road. We decided to try the local airport in Hinche so James could fly to PaP, but they didn’t open until 8AM and it was about 5:30AM. So we drove back down to the flooded road and the water had receded some.


Enough for a landrover to cross.


After the land rover crossed several other vehicles followed and the next thing you know we were driving our urvan through the water.


Thankfully we made it across and we headed on our way to PaP. The dirt road were completely muddy which made handling on our urvan almost impossible but we didn’t have near as much trouble as the motorbikes did.



We finally arrived to Port au Prince and head to meet with Daniel Rouzier who heads Food for the Poor. We met him at a GM dealership next to the US embassy. We chatted with Mr. Rouzier about the opening of Center of Hope Haiti and he also explained to us about his Food for the Poor program. Very polite and professional man Mr. Rouzier is and it was a pleasure meeting him.

After that we headed to the airport to drop James off. Its been a fun two weeks working and getting to know James. He does a lot of hard work for Center of Hope and is a good friend.

Next we went to a hardware store in called Eko Depot.


There we bought a few construction supplies for the orphanage and then we headed to another hardware store. This store was called, MSC plus.


MSC plus was better priced than Exo Depot and MSC had prices in USD, and reasonable priced things in US currency. I bought two cans of pringles and a pocket calculator for $5.00!

After we finished shopping there it was time finally for lunch so made the long drive from the side of Port-au-Prince we were on to the restaurant we frequent in Petionville. The restaurant is called Les Jardins de Gérard.


It is one of the best restaurants in the country. I always order the Penne au Poulet, which is a chicken pasta.




After we finsihed eating we drove a short distance down the street to supermarket. This supermarket in Petionville is the closes thing I have seen to a supermarket in the states. They had refrigerated dairy products, a deli, fresh bakery, extensive alcohol collection, and of course regular grocery items. We shopped there for food for center of hope for when we move into the orphanage.


Once we were done with shopping we loaded back into the van and made the long drive across Port-au-Prince and then to Hinche which took all of about 5 hours considering the rain, traffic and rough road conditions.