Davis - Near Death

Near Death
As we boarded the plane the excitement in our whole group was building once again. Out excitement quickly died down though because we were all so tired from not sleeping the night before. Everyone was looking forward to sleeping on the flight, but we find out shortly that the trip was only about 4 hours long. Most of us fell asleep pretty quickly to try and make the most of the short flight. We were all awakened as the pilot announced that we were going entering or final approach to land, but that we would be going through some turbulence as we did. No one expected what was about to happen. As we made our approach the turbulence was much worse than anyone expected. Our plane was bouncing around like a kangaroo the whole way down. As we got closer and closer though the turbulence got worse and worse until eventually we has to have been rising and falling at least 50 feet every few seconds...a dangerous thing when your plane is only 200 feet from the ground. The pilot continued on his course towards the runaway though, fighting the violent bouncing of the plane the whole way. Everyone on the plane was praying that we would at least make out through that landing alive. By far the scariest moment was when the plane was no more than 50 feet above land and people’s houses. Everyone was sure we were going to crash. At long last, just before we were surely headed for the side of a mountain, the pilot pulled the plane out and, at full throttle, narrowly escaped certain death. The storm on the ground was so bad that the pilot had had to take us all to Belize to sit there fora few hours while we waited out the storm. After a few hours of sitting on the plane on the tarmac in Belize we took off again to attempt a landing in Roatan once more. When we made our second approach the storm had not quite blown over yet, but at least it wasn't as bad as it was on our first attempt. During the approach the plane was still bouncing almost just as violently, but to our relief our pilot, the hero of the day, finally landed us safely in Roatan.