The Baggage Dilemma

As we are preparing for the last leg of our journey to Papua New Guinea, we are faced with the issue of our baggage, again.  Our original goal was to have our luggage at 8 bags at 50lbs each, 4 rolling carry-ons, and 4 backpacks.  That was an ambitious goal.  We ended up with 13 checked bags, 4 rolling carry-ons, and 4 backpacks.  Yes, that is a lot.  Here's a visual.

This is Mom & Dad's van.
It is stuffed solid with our luggage.

The poor skycap

Yep, we had a LOT of bags. OUR plan was to check our bags in Tampa all the way through to Cairns, Australia.  Our carry-on bags had everything we needed to get us to Australia.  Sounds great.  Well, we hit the first snag in Tampa.  After paying our excess baggage fee, we discover they will not check our bags all the way through because our layover in Dallas is more than 12 hours.   Hmmm, problem number 1.  We made sure that after paying that baggage fee, we wouldn't have to pay it again in Dallas or any other leg of our journey.  We were assured that it would get us through.  

We searched DFW website for a place to store our luggage.  Apparently they have no where.  Dean Hart to the rescue.  He just rents a U Haul to pick us up at the airport.  OK, so you know you have a lot of luggage when you have a UHaul pick you up at the airport.  That worked out great.  

We re-checked all of our luggage at DFW and it was checked through all the way to Cairns, Australia.  Everything looked great.  They verified the fee we had already paid covered us all the way to Australia.  Great, sounds like a plan.

We arrive in Tokyo after being on a plane for 13+ hours.  We are tired and just want to get through customs, get our next boarding pass, and go take a nap and shower in our reserved day rooms. (Narita, Japan has rooms that you can rent by the hour that have two twin beds and a shower for travelers.  We had reserved two of them in advance.)

Andrew CRASHED on the airport floor.
Tim decided to join him.

We went to the counter, and were told that we couldn't take all of our luggage on our next flight without paying an additional excess baggage fee.  WHAT???  Yeah, didn't make us feel all warm and fuzzy, that is for sure.  We showed her our receipt for the fee and explained what we had been told in Tampa and Dallas.  The lady at the airlines earned her pay that day!  She kept going back and forth and trying to figure out what was going on.  She spoke a little English.  I'm not sure she thought we understood what she was trying to say, and we weren't sure she understood what we were trying to say.  She was going to try to contact a supervisor, so we sat down.  Andrew had already crashed next to the check-in counter, so Tim had to carry the boy over to our seats to let him lie on the floor, out of the way.  By the time she came back, we had missed our check-in time for our dayrooms at the airport.  The supervisor would not be there until 5pm, so we went to try to find something to eat and hope maybe there was still a dayroom open for us.  We agreed to be back over at the gate at 5:00 to talk with the supervisor.  

We prayed, and asked some of our friends to pray.  Of course it was the middle of the night back in Georgia, but we know we serve a mighty God!

We met with our friend at around 5:00 as we were headed to find some dinner.  She had found out that the airline was going to charge us overweight fee.  Originally they wanted $3,000 for the overweight baggage.  Our friend was able to get them to do for only $1,800.  At that, we might as well leave all the extras back in Japan and just buy new stuff in Australia and PNG.  After another hour and a half of negotiating and Tim talking with the people at the American Airlines counter, they finally said just go.  All of our luggage had been checked through and there would be no additional charge!  PRAISE GOD!

So, we finally enjoyed some dinner at a restaurant in the airport.  

Poor Bekah was so tired that she fell asleep sitting up in her chair while we were eating dinner.

All of our luggage made it to Australia!  We made it through customs without any problems.  We had four luggage trolleys.  It was crazy!  

Now we are preparing to go to Papua New Guinea.  We are able to leave some of our luggage here in Cairns to be shipped to Ukarumpa, PNG, which is where we will be living.  That is a huge praise because it saves us about 6 bags and was going to be shipped from Port Moresby to Papua New Guinea.  

Today we are not quite sure what our limits are for our flights.  Apparently it is all up to the ticketing agent.  Please pray that we are allowed the maximum for travel to/from US.  Pray that we are able to get the remaining through at a reasonable amount per kg.  We are only able to take our backpacks on the plane, so we have to check our small rolling luggage.  I think we are at 11 checked bags.  None of those bags are at the 70lbs that is permitted for each checked bag travelling to/from the US.  Pray for wisdom as we go through the travel.  

I'll keep you posted!