airport story

First of all, it is inhuman to need to leave the house at 4:30 am, especially on vacation. I realized late the night before that we had to pack up and do the dishes before we left at that ungodly hour. I didn’t sleep much. Finally decided to sleep for an hour or so, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the flight in the morning. Finally started packing up at 3am. Left at 430, during a tropical rainstorm. I thought of asking our driver if he thought this rain would delay the plane. But I didnt. When in doubt, listen to the small quiet voice.

Airports have begun to take on a comical air in my view. The one guy manning the ticket counters didn’t speak English. He started asking things far beyond my meager grasp of Spanish. Impasse. So he called over one of the local passengers to translate. Thru her we reached and understanding about passengers and bags. As we sat waiting for security to open, we watched several native Indians in full traditional dress go thru the lines. Security at this small airport has one security person. I figured it would be a small plane. I didn’t think it would be along the lines of what we find in museums of air and space. The stairs for it opened out of the side as a door instead of having a ramp to it. Shannon made it up the stairs. Amazing for her. Inside, double seats sat across the aisle from single seats. And these are small seats. American seats would have only fit 2 across total. And the cockpit…had little dials and levers. We took off, watched a beautiful sunrise. Flew over the coast, the jungle, another coast; always skirting the thunderheads. Finally we dove into a raincloud. Rain, turbulence, even a few small flashes of lightning somewhere in the cloud. After a rather forceful bit of turbulence, the female co-pilot looked back to how many of us looked worried. And then more flying along the coast. We landed on a tiny airstrip on an inland. The strip stretched from water to water on the island. We stopped with 50 feet of pavement to go. The woman next to us and I were laughing hysterically at this tiny plane landing on this tiny airstrip on a tiny island. The situation was almost comical. The captain turned around and jabbered something in Spanish. Much confusion ensued, which is weird cuz most of the flight understood Spanish. After a few minutes of the pilot and copilot watching our faces, the copilot translated into English. The gist being something about bad weather and unable to see the runway on our destination island, so for the good of all those aboard, they decided not to risk it. We all heartily agreed with this wisdom, but were still confused as to the “what now?”. Return to panama. …ok. What then? No answer. So we headed back over the isthmus of panama, back over the jungles, and rivers, and mists. Arrive at the larger airport. Unload, show passports to enter the building again. Two groups form to hear instruction in 2 languages. The gist? Wait, and try again in 2 hours. Oi. I don’t want to wait and try again. I want to sleep. No sleep. But coffee. Yay coffee. And food. And bottles of water. And so we wait. And I type a story for my friends back home.

Oh, we made a new friend from south Africa. Jenny(Gene) was intrigued by Shannon’s strong and obviously adventuresome spirit, and the one who was laughing with me. So now we have banded together in camaraderie in the hopes of all getting to the islands. Hopefully the second time is the charm. I don’t think Shannon is up for a third time.

Second time didn’t happen. We went back thru security (so easy in this country) and waited in the waiting room trying to guess which small plane was designated for us. We kept seeing airport workers counting us to see what size plane they needed. Finally, after another hour, they said the weather over the islands had gotten worse, not better. The flight was cancelled but we were welcome to try again in the morning. Post haste everyone wanted to make arrangements for the night. But we had to get our luggage. Wait, wait, we have to wait here? Our luggage is coming here? Yes, yes, stay here. Actually, all our luggage was at the other end of the airport waiting for us. Oi.

The upshot is that we had to return to old town and hang out till tomorrow. So tomorrow we wake at the same ungodly hour and try again to go to the san blas. So yeah, very tired.