Flauderdale!

After waking Mae up at 8 instead of 10 like she expected because of the time difference we went off to the info desk to see if we could check in for our flight. We had ended up in the departure lounge since we technically had a connecting flight, which meant no roll mats for sleeping :( and no new stamp in our passports :,( Finding the Taca desk since Spirit didn't have one, the man told us that the only thing to do was to show up to the gate and check in there, we gave him our luggage tag numbers so he could transfer them to Spirit for us. Slightly happier that we had some idea what to do we went to get a coffee and a croissant each for breakfast, this came to a ridiculous total of $8!! We then sat down near our gate to wait for the Spirit people to arrive. When they eventually did about 30mins late we asked them what to do and they quickly sorted everything out for us so all we had to do was sit and wait for the flight to leave, it was so simple in fact that we were completely shocked by it. (we were expecting traditional South American uselessness!) We finally boarded our flight around 11:30 and by the time all the Latinos had faffed about putting things into the overhead compartments, then deciding they need something so they dragged the stuff out again after which they could no longer fit it back in (not to mention that half the women are too short to reach and too stupid to ask someone to help!) we were almost 2 hours late before we had even left. The flight was uneventful, being a low cost airline there wasn't even films or food to tell you about and both the people next to me slept the entire time anyway, Mae apparently talked for the entire 6 hours to the 2 people next to her (being a 'budget airline we didn't get to choose our seats and were miles apart!). We arrived at F'lauderdale (Fort Lauderdale) around 6:30 only 1 ½ hours late and passed through immigration with barely a second glance. Straight away we went to the check in desk to find out if we could skip the next 2 flights and just stay here, but after eventually finding all our reservations (there are 6 separate confirmations codes) they informed us that although they agreed it was a stupid situation, the booking system is set up in such a way that it isn't possible to miss the first part of a connecting flight and join it later on. In effect we have to fly to Puerto Rico and then back again! Slightly disappointed we went to get some food in the substantially cheaper places available in an American airport. We ended up having spaghetti marinara each which came with a free garlic bread roll (NOM!!) and even had enough money left to splash out on a coffee (8 times the size of the one in Lima that morning for the same price.) and a blueberry doughnut. (NOM,NOM,NOM!!) We then passed through the silly security procedures to get to our flight gate where we charged the computer a little and boarded our 2 hour flight to San Juan. We arrived at about 2 am and since Puerto Rico is a de-facto state of the US there was no immigration process. We soon found the sleeping area, where pretty much everyone who was staying the night had decided to camp because it's the only bit which is dark and settled down for the night on our roll mats.