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Non-Fiction
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| The Journey | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||||
| 21 November 2006 | ||||||||||||||||
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It's not where you travel that counts, it's how. My company wanted me to do some work for the Russian Mafia in the Caribbean. But that’s another story. This is the story of the journey there. First, the owner of the company asked me to find the route there that worked best for me and cost the least for her. On the InterWeb I located an airline that would fly me from my preferred airport (Gatwick) to the Commonwealth of Dominica in one day. I would leave Blighty at 10:00 am and arrive at 10:00 pm local time (OK, technically it wasn’t the same day back home, but the body can so easily be fooled by this). The price was in dollars. Maybe the price was different if I bought it from the UK offices. I phoned the company and explained the flight I wanted. Could they tell me the price? The woman I spoke to was very apologetic. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t fly from Gatwick to Dominica.” “But your web site says you do.” I quoted her the flight numbers. “You’re right, sir. I don’t know why that didn’t show up on my search.” And she told me the price in sterling. Ho to the boss, who approved it. I phoned the airline again to buy the ticket. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t fly from Gatwick to Dominica.” “But your web site says you do.” I quoted her the flight numbers. “I’m sorry sir, but we cannot sell you that ticket, as it involves only our partners, and not one of our own planes.” “But your web site is selling it.” “Then can I suggest that you buy it from the web site, sir.” I bit down my suggestion as to what she might care to do and ordered it from the web site. Next I would need some cash to flash. I went across the road to the Thomas Cook. I liked this branch. The first time I had gone in there the manager had greeted me at the door and asked how she could help me. I had got a Thomas Cook privilege card in the post some weeks before, so I waved the card at her and told her that it meant she had to call me sir, and smile like she meant it. We laughed, and on the two or three occasions I had been back over the last two years she had always made a point of greeting me by name and smiling as though she meant it. That sort of attitude goes a long way with me, as I descend each year further into a Victor Meldrew persona. So I entered into Mr Cook’s establishment. Sadly, my manager (she was always ‘my’ manager) was no longer there. No matter. I went up to the foreign currency till. “I am off to the Commonwealth of Dominica. Would it be better to change my money into US dollars or the local currency?” I made a point of pronouncing it the correct way – Domin-ee-ka – accent on the third syllable, and specifying ‘Commonwealth’. I had done my homework. The Republic of Dominica (short ‘i’ for the third syllable) was 500 miles away and a tourist destination. The slip of a girl behind the desk (do they really allow 14-year-olds to handle cash? I was getting old) looked up something on her computer. “The currency in Dominica is the Dominican Peso. We can order that for you.” “No, I don’t think so.” The island had always been under either French or British dominion. Why would they have the peso as the currency? “Are you sure that you are looking up the Commonwealth of Dominica?” “Yes, sir. The currency of the Republic of Dominica is the Dominican Peso.” “No, not the Republic, the Commonwealth of Dominica. It’s a different place.” She looked confused. “I’ll phone our head office to make sure.” As she phoned I noticed the big sign across the far wall behind her. ‘Thomas Cook. Experts in Foreign Currency’. “Hi, it’s Holburn branch… Yes, can you tell me the currency for the Republic of Dominica.” “No” I cried out through the bullet-proof screen, put there to prevent frustrated travellers from carving their destination on the foreheads of YTS morons with the cheap biro chained to the desk. “Not Republic, Commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Dominica” “Oh, I expect that they’ll accept the Peso there anyway” she assured me. I left empty-handed. I hadn’t even got a smile from them. The date of my departure arrived. I would fly Virgin Atlantic to Antigua aboard a jumbo, then hop the final 150 km to Dominica via Air Liat. I got to the check-in in plenty of time. My first hint that there was something afoot was the check-in line. It stretched through the wibbly-wobbly queue section, along the entire width of the check-in hall and then snaked along the length. It was huge. I joined the line, inching along. Finally, after a lifetime, I got in front of a check-in lady. “Have you been advised of the delay?” “No” “There is a two hour delay to the take-off. Do you have a connecting flight?” “Yes.” This meant that I had to arrange hotels, alternative flights, etc. She pointed me at another desk, with another queue. Eventually I got to the front of that queue and the nice girl there set me up with an overnight stay in Antigua and a 6:00 am flight to Dominica. The queue for the check-in desks was now even longer. Did I really have to queue up all over again? No, she pointed me out to a uniformed man at the head of the queue. Go over to him and explain the situation. He would let me queue-jump. I spoke to the aforementioned man (did he mind wearing a badge emblazoned ‘virgin’, I wondered to myself?). No problem, could he see my tickets and passport? My tickets were wrong. The girl on the second desk had amended them incorrectly. She would have to amend them again so that I could get to the check-in desk. The queue for the amending-the-ticket-that-is-now-wrong-through-no-fault-of-your-own was now Disneyesque in size. Did I really have to queue a third and fourth time? He called a woman over, who took my tickets and passport from me and would get it amended. Five minute later she returned with the tickets. My passport? Oops. Another five minutes later and she had retrieved that. Flying in a suit did not get me upgraded, sadly. I was the only passenger in economy in a suit, but never mind. The flight was pleasant and uneventful. After initial confusion at Antigua airport (they weren’t expecting to have to book me a hotel) I was ferried to a nearby hotel, past the oddly named ‘Arctic’ army base. By the time I had eaten it was bed time. I had an early start. Of course the taxi never arrived to pick me up, but I squeezed into someone else’s. I queued up at the check-in desk in the pre-dawn dark. The desk was outside the airport, under a veranda. The queue ran along the pavement alongside the taxi drop-off point. Boarding pass in hand, I entered through into the airport. Take-off was due at 06:00. At 06:15 the flight was announced. We walked crocodile formation across the tarmac towards the plane. It was a Dehaviland twin-prop. Have you ever seen Six Days, Seven Nights? I had, about a week before. It is a rom-com where Harrison Ford crashes a twin-prop onto a desert island. This plane was not that far removed form the one in the movie. As I approached the door that doubled as the steps into the plane, a uniformed official by the door started to search his pockets. He eventually produced an envelope and a biro. He drew two vertical lines on the envelope. As each of us reached the foot of the steps he asked “What island you goin’ to?” and added a check mark in the appropriate column. This, I surmised, was the passenger manifest. Inside chaos reigned. None of the thirty or so seats were pre-allocated, and so there was a general mêlée of seat reserving, bag shoving, coat folding, etc. I installed myself in the window seat by the mid emergency exit. I am 6 feet 2 in my socks, and the emergency exit seats give me that vital couple of inches extra. As the confusion continued, I took in my surroundings. The rubber seal between the emergency door and the fuselage had perished. I could see daylight between them. The prop was held still by a thick coil of rope hooked to the wing. The stewardess was stood by the curtain separating us from the pilot, arms folded, head gently shaking, contempt on her face. She seemed to be thinking “Of all the places I could be today, I’m stuck here with you lot”. The envelope scribe climbed aboard, and took his place in the pilot’s seat. As we all became seated she started the obligatory safety mime. I noticed that everyone was paying rapt attention. I wondered if I should take notes. Afterwards she walked the length of the plane, making sure that there were no goats in the aisle, and no crates of chickens that could fall on people’s heads. (OK, I’m exaggerating a little, but not by much). On her return towards the front of the plane I noticed that she had a plastic mister in her hand, and was surreptitiously spraying the carpet as she walked. What was the clear liquid, I pondered? Insecticide, to kill off any inter-island pests? Perfume, to mask the smell of fear? Or holy water? Because that was the only way I could see that this crate would get off the ground. All correct, and the door was closed, the rope tether removed from the props, and an almighty roaring vibration from the props shook the plane. We roared and screamed and bounced down the runway, then miraculously we lifted into the blue sky, studded with the occasional fluffy white cumulus. And there we flew, just about level with the harmless little cotton-ball clouds. Little bundles of fluff that made the plane pitch and roll every time we got close to one. The first island was Guadeloupe. As we circled to land there was the ancient skeleton of a small plane some 100 metres short of the runway. I wondered whether that was an Air Liat plane. When I eventually met my client in Dominica, he was stunned that I had flown Air Liat. “I always catch the ferry. It’s only 14 hours.”
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