08 April 2010

arriving alone

I was supposed to land in San Pedro Sula at 11:58 pm on Tuesday night, but the plane was delayed in Fort Lauderdale, and by the time we landed, the pilot announced that it was 2:11 am. What the...? I don't wear a watch anymore (the face of mine shattered when I slammed it against a doorknob - oops - and I haven't bothered to get another), and my cell phone did not get a signal in Honduras (unlike Vietnam), but seriously, that delay + flight did not feel that long. Spirit Airlines, I concluded, must have screwed up the Daylight Savings Time change when they calculated that flight.

I immediately began to worry, because I had booked a hotel for the seven hours that I was scheduled to be in San Pedro, and I was desperate for some sleep, and I worried that the hotel owner/driver would have given up on me and left.

I sailed though immigration and walked directly out through customs. I was the first person out, because I hadn't checked any baggage, and everyone stared at me as I walked out of International Arrivals, but no one had a sign with my name. No one leapt to greet me.

It's always good to pretend that you know what you are doing when you arrive in a new city, even if you don't, and even if you suddenly realized right before you left on your trip that you have never actually been, say, alone in a city in Latin America. I marched over to a security guard and opened my mouth to ask him about my hotel. Nothing came out. My brain was like a broken computer, flashing English-French-Spanish-English-French-Spanish. We stumbled though, but didn't really understand each other. Clearly, Spanish was going to take a day or two to kick in.

Finally, I retreated off to the side, where two backpackers were sleeping up against a wall. If they can do it, I thought, I guess I can, too. I tried to get comfortable. I laid my head down on my backpack. Then I popped back up again, unable to rest in the noise and light. Two guys from my plane came over and sat near me, also intending to spend the night in the airport.

The security guy who had not understood me sent someone else from our plane over to talk to me. "It's almost three am," that man said, tapping his watch. "If you have a flight to Tegucigalpa at 7, you might as well stay here."

I sighed, and chatted with the guys from the plane, until suddenly a man came over, holding a piece of lined paper with some words on it in hard-to-read pen. "Is this you?" he asked, and I squinted.

"Oh! It is me!" I said. "Are you A.?"

"Yes, I am. Your plane was late," he said, "so I went outside. When I came back, they said only a few people had come out, so I thought it was okay."

"I was the first one to come out," I said. "But... it's so late now. It's almost 3 am. I don't even know if it's worth trying to sleep."

"It's not even 1 am," A. said.

Apparently Spirit Airlines can't tell time. At all. We landed at 12:11 am Honduras time. It was 2:11 am in Florida which, guess what? Is a place where we were not.

It's amazing how wonderful four hours of sleep in a real bed seems, not to mention a sink and toilet, when you thought you were going to be spending three hours trying to sleep on the tile floor of an airport. The guys from my plane gave up their airport floor space and came along, and cut my transportation fee into thirds. Victory, I thought. My first night alone in a city in Latin America: success.

1 comment:

traci said...

this is a great story, for so many reasons. xo