O’ MY AMERICA MY NEW FOUND LAND June 14, 2022

Unfortunately, no sooner had we settled into our room in the Seaside Chateau and connected to the internet than I learned the sad news of the death of my step mother, Daphne. It was distressing. Then, when I tried to get in touch with my stepsister, Cathy, our communication problems multiplied. With clouds lowering and Hurricane Agatha forming over Mexico and moving across The Gulf, the great adventure was not feeling quite so safe. But the universe had determined that we should see more of Belize City and that was a good move on its part. We witnessed the Graduation Day Rehearsal of the students at the Anglican Cathedral College, visited an ex- prison (now a museum) and traipsed around a cemetery and enjoyed what we assumed were the extra marital arrangements of our guide.

 

The following morning Howell (Howeel),who  had dropped us off, picked us up at The Radisson along with a pleasant young couple who were disappointed by the poor weather in San Pedro which unfortunately had begun the day they arrived. It rains even is paradise! The one-way system in Belize City was like being in the middle of a game of Pacman and I lost my sense of direction quickly. Howeel, however, got us to the airport and we tipped him extra. Now we had to get Covid Tests which we had  found out about the day before. Only $75 each. A bargain! A masked lady behind a two-foot square glass window with a half inch gap at the bottom passed the forms back and forth. We sat. We waited. A couple with two children whose noses were never  more than six inches from their phones, waited. Finally, we were called in to a small waiting room. I must have flinched because the technician assured me the swab, which I thought she was about to stuff up into the recesses my nose, wouldn’t hurt. She touched the end of my nose gently. Mmmmm. That didn’t seem so bad.  We received our official looking certificates,

 A bit more tipping and we got in line there was someone at a computer who knew the ropes. No need  to go to Dallas. Catch today’s flight to Miami and get the same plane to Medellin we would have caught had we gone via Dallas. She couldn’t book the luggage through to Medellin because the Colombian authorities required entry visas, supplied on line to Americans through an organization at a special price of $150! As with the Covid test, I smelled a little financial mouse. I had the feeling we were being taken for a couple of American turkeys whose feathers were asking to be plucked. No choice!

Miami Airport? Big! We were definitely back in the US. It was pouring rain. The company in charge of the handicapped busied themselves with  I-Pads coordinating the operation. Everything was in Spanish. We waited. More handicapped people arrived along with some hangers on like me. A large slug -like young airport official with a baby face, had wedged himself  in a corner by the handicapped seats. Everyone deferred to him and asked him about the next step in the operation. He shuffled his feet, raised his eyebrows, and assured everyone that someone was coming and then returned to the video he was watching on his cell phone. We waited. Information had to be prised out of him and I gleaned that without special assistance the lines at immigration would be long. Finally, after almost an hour, a gentleman with a wheelchair came. He had Marney’s name written in large letters on his I Pad, and we were off.

 

Angels do appear in the most unlikely places. With only a few words of English and close to retirement, ours took charge of us, shepherded us through the lines and immigration, then to the baggage claim and finally through the swirling, anxious, snaking lines of travelers waiting at AA customer service.  We managed to get our free hotel and transport and finally to another line in the car park to wait for the Hotel shuttle. Whehhhh. Blessed be the wheelchair and its angel attendant for it parted the crowds at the airport as Moses parted the Red Sea and… it only took two hours. He was a laconic, patient man with a sense of humor who knew all the moves. We did our best to chat across the language barrier. His patience was unshakeable and amazingly he was not in any hurry. We felt blessed and told him we would need his services the next day. Unfortunately, angels are picky and, having loaded us onto the shuttle bus, disappeared to rescue more lost souls with gammy legs and frail bodies and we never saw him again. 

 

America was founded by the entrepreneurial spirit. You don’t subdue a continent with four cows, a wagon, a bag of flour and beans without a sense that by dint of hard work and a freewheeling spirit and, of course, God’s help, fortunes are to be made. The same optimism had invaded the hotel shuttle driver who timed his journey perfectly to collect passengers from the airport and take them to their hotel.  Polite requests for gratuities were posted twice in English and Spanish. No seat in the shuttle was left unoccupied, which could have explained why we waited for 30 minutes watching half-filled shuttles from every other hotel but ours pick up passengers. The driver was charming and voluble and despite the weather, cheerful.

 

As American Airline passengers on the cheapest flight available, our status was particularly low and we were accorded Homewood Suites, the poor man’s Hilton, which seemed a long way from the airport. The lady in control, seated on a throne between the shop and the entrance, controlled the button on the automatic door.  This was her hotel. Not exactly The Dorchester.  I struggled in with the luggage and presented my voucher. She peered at it as if I was some newly escaped refugee from across the border, flicked her fingers across the keyboard and gave me two plastic cards. “It’s down there,” she nodded. “On the right” and with another nod granted me leave to borrow a cart. After colliding with the wall and the knees of another inmate, I discovered that pulling the cart rather than pushing it worked considerably better. I turned right, followed the numbers down a long, long corridor, then right again, then left and there by the fire exit was the handicapped suite. I was in the right place.

 

Marney had sat up front on the shuttle and become friends with the jolly driver and when she explained we were hungry, followed his advice to get off at the adjacent Hilton Garden Inn where there was a restaurant and bar and where I joined her eventually soaked through by the storm.

 

The next morning, we got off at the wrong level of the airport car park, struggled through customs and waylaid one of the porters with a wheelchair  who then raced miles to the correct gate where our flight, luckily for us, was delayed. Finally, we were on our way to Medellin … no, no, no… Agatha conspired with the rain Gods who were looking for something to do that morning.  It was all getting a bit much, so I had to have a long private word with the elements that control all human affairs, the universe, electromagnetism, energy, and dark matter.  Religious people call it prayer, I think. “I am tired of airports, and hotels and being mucked about. I am going to Medellin in Columbia. I’ll say it again. Marney and I are going to Medellin. This flight is going to take off. No discussion. Understand?”  But first, The Gods of everything, had to have a discussion so…after boarding the aircraft we spent an hour touring all the runways looking at water pouring down the windows of the plane and rivers streaming past us. “No more discussion,” I repeated quietly. Silence. The pilot said nothing. The skies brightened and in a great cloud of spray we took to the skies and headed to Columbia. 

Medellin at night