Cap Haitien International Airport

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Cap Haitien International Airport

The Cap Haitien Airport has a daily flight to and from Miami on American Airlines. I decided to fly out of there rather than Port au Prince on my most recent flight. Cap’s small airport is very easy and quick to navigate. Not many guys were waiting to help me in with my luggage, and they were not pushy. I had all carry-on and one guy asked once if I needed help. I said no and he moved on to someone else. After checking in at the AA counter, you go through security screening only once, and the immigration booth is right there as you exit the screening room into the waiting area. The bathrooms are clean. Upstairs from the waiting area are a couple small shops and a food place that has meatball sandwiches and spaghetti, and an espresso machine. The $4 cappuccino was only about 6 ounces, but good and strong. In the waiting area a guy came around and collected our tickets, giving us back the seat stub. They called out rows of seats for boarding, but since you have to exit the airport and walk across the tarmac to get on the plane, it became a free for all about what order you actually board. The large plane was only about ½ full.

The road to Cap from Pignon in central Haiti was a different matter. The 40 mile trip took 4 hours! It was raining on and off so the road was slick, and the 4wd truck I was in had trouble getting up one hill, and then fishtailed in places on the muddy flat road. Only in a couple places was it paved until we arrived at the outskirts of Cap. This trip was through Ranquitte, Bahon, and Grand Riviere du Nord – see the map for times it took to get to these places. On a previous trip I had taken highway 3 through Dondon where you can see the Citadelle in the distance. That time the road was dry and the taptap that I caught in Pignon had no troubles.