Hauts et bas

Sometimes, life in the Caribbean feels like a joke.

Ringing in the New Year in Barbados was absolutely fantastic, but the story of getting there warrants its own post, je crois.

When my turn came for passport control in the Fort de France airport, the officer took my passport and boarding pass, looked at me, and then asked, "Est-ce que vous pouvez nous rendre un service?"

I stared at him blankly. The Martiniquais accent is hard to understand at times, and I wasn't sure if I'd heard right.

He repeated the question again, and said, "Je suis sérieux." Okay...?

Then, he said it in English. "Can you do us a favor?"

I still didn't understand.

"We would like to take your boarding pass to purchase at the duty-free store," he said.

And he was serious. I didn't know what to say.

In the line next to me, Alyson hissed, "What's going on? You don't have to do it!"

But was I allowed to refuse? This was an immigration officer, after all, and I did want to be let out of the country.

I gave some sort of assenting signal, and the officer led me into a little side room, where he told me to wait while he went to go take care of some "official" business, or something like that.

About five minutes later, he came back and told me that never mind, we actually don't need you anymore, just kidding. My colleague needed to buy a present for someone in duty-free, but now he doesn't.

Okay.

I left the vestibule, got my passport stamped, and proceeded through security.

Yeah. Talk about professional.

After security, we waited in the waiting area. We were supposed to board at 8:30, but that time came and went, and our plane was nowhere in sight. The Martinique airport is so tiny, you can see all the planes that come and go.

After a few hours, a Liat employee came and told us that our flight would be delayed by two hours, but that we were going to be given meal vouchers and allowed to exit the terminal. Free meal number one turned out to be a Delifrance sandwich with Fanta. It was only 10:30 in the morning, but hey, I'll take a free sandwich if you're offering it.

After that, we had to go through passport control and security again. We all got another stamp on our passports without even leaving the airport.

Finally, we got on the plane. The flight to Castries, Saint Lucia, was about ten minutes long. We were supposed to stop there for fueling and to let more people on the plane before the half-hour flight to Barbados.

When we landed in Saint Lucia, the pilot entered the cabin and told us that sorry, you all have to disembark because the plane has a flat tire. You'll have to go wait in the airport while an engineer gets flown in from Barbados to fix the problem. Because only engineers from Barbados know how to fix a flat tire on an airplane. Also, we don't know how long it's going to be, and we can't tell you anything other than that.

We went into the waiting area. It was truly a mess, Caribbean disorganization at its finest. No one knew what was going on. There was no loudspeaker to announce the problem or to give any updates. If you wanted to know anything, you had to track down a Liat employee and ask yourself -- and they were few and far between.

We eventually were told to fill out a form, allowing us to exit the waiting area and go through customs and passport control (another stamp on the passport without leaving the airport). We were given a second voucher of 25 East Caribbean dollars to spend at the little airport cafe. Second free meal of the day turned out to be a lamb gyro with a lemon-coconut cookie. Pas mal, but it still didn't make up for the five hours of sitting in boredom in the (kind of ghetto) Castries airport.

When we were ready to re-board the plane (at five o'clock at night), we had to go through security again. My bottle of sunscreen had made it through both times at the Martinique airport, and made it through the scanner in Castries, but I was randomly selected for my bag to be searched by hand, and so it was taken.

It was nice stuff, too, titanium dioxide-fortified and all. And consequently, I got really, really brown during the first few days of Barbados. But it was all worth it. Really! More updates to come...