Day Two - Monday, September 24

Rebekah woke up as the sun was rising over the western coast of Portugal and we were just moments from landing. Flying into Lisbon was not what I expected. I imagined seeing a reasonably large and modern city with a complex system of shipping ports due to its proximity to the Atlantic. Instead, we flew farther inland than I would have guessed over farmland before approaching the airport set in the middle of the city itself. The buildings were modest and old and nearly every single one had a red clay roof. I'm sure I didn't get enough of a look at Lisbon, though, to think my description is exhaustive.

The tailwind across the ocean must have been pretty significant because we got into the airport an hour and a half earlier than we thought we would. I didn't get a wink of sleep the whole way and I was starting to feel it. I really wanted to find a safe place in the airport to get some rest. Today was the day we would be meeting Hugo and I didn't want to be completely exhausted when we finally arrived in Ghana at the end of this long travel day.

We landed just before 8 a.m. local time and didn't have the outgoing flight to Accra until 3:45 p.m. In contrast to the Newark airport, the Lisbon airport was one long, straight hallway with about 25 gates and one place to eat. We were hungry but decided to sleep first. We found an empty gate and were just nodding off when security came along and told us we weren't allowed to be at a gate unless we had a flight scheduled there. We found our own gate and quickly fell asleep. Rebekah woke up before me and decided to document the occasion.

We spent the day sleeping, walking, drinking coffee, and eating at the food joint where all the prices were in Euros and I had no idea what I was actually spending. We were hoping for wifi but couldn't get it so we spent a very boring day just waiting for time to pass.

The plane finally boarded. Rather than walking down the skywalk to the plane door, we were loaded onto a bus and driven out to the tarmac to board the plane the old fashioned way. Mercifully, the plane was not nearly filled to capacity so there was plenty of room to spread out once we took off.

Leaving Lisbon, we flew south over the Atlantic again and eventually got our first glimpse of Africa. When we passed over the Sahara Desert and could see an ocean of brown in every direction, the reality of what we were doing finally started to set in. The desert looked exactly like the ocean except brown. The sand laid in waves and crests in what would seem to be an uninhabitable land except that occasionally we would see a small city below. This was a sight I thought I would never see, even from 35,000 feet, and we started thinking about the little African boy who was waiting for us at the end of this crazy ride.

We landed in Accra and exited the plane right onto the tarmac. The first sign that we were in Africa was the heat. It was hot and muggy at about 9 p.m. We negotiated customs which included a check of our yellow fever vaccination cards, waiting in a very long line, and then the usual interview with the customs officer. We had no idea what Boat, our contact in Ghana, looked like but we were eagerly looking around every turn for a man with a little boy. When we finally found him, holding a Faith International Adoption sign, he did not have Hugo with him. He told us it was too late to bring him to the airport, and while we were sure he was right, it was a huge let down.

Boat helped us negotiate the airport exit which was no small matter since there were men everywhere trying to force their help on us. One man was so insistent that I was pretty sure that he was there with Boat as some sort of helper. I finally figured out that he was a stranger when he tried to tell me that I owed him a tip even though he hadn't done anything. We loaded in a van and drove at a high rate of speed to the Mensvic Hotel. We couldn't see much of Accra at night but it was obvious that we were in a very different kind of place. When we finally got to the room, Rebekah and I just sat and marveled, not for the last time, that we were in Ghana. Crazy.