The predicted travail of my travel to Honduras (discussed in my previous post) did not take long to materialize.
The second leg of our trip (after the drive to the airport in San Francisco) took us from SFO to San Salvador (the city), El Salvador (the country), on an adult-sized plane with these big jet-thingie engines; in this case, it was on a Taca Airlines Airbus 320.
While we were waiting to board our flight for the hop over the mountains to Roatan, we witnessed a probably not-so-rare baggage handling boo-boo; we watched a number of pieces of luggage get spilled off one of those carts that they haul around the flight-line tarmac.
Oops.
(The consequences of this scene plays itself out, shortly.)
While we were sequestered in the transit area of the terminal, I wandered over to the adjoining boarding gate and noticed, that if I was willing to abandon my scuba trip to Roatan, I could whip out a few (thousand) pesos and get my long desired trip for the sensory pleasures of the land of Castro.
Unfortunately, I could not find a cancellation clause in my travel insurance policy due to fine cigars, aged rum, magical music, and classic cars, so I opted to stay with our dive group, and we boarded the kid-sized plane with, what appeared as, wind-up propellers.
We weren’t on the Taca Airlines ATR-42 but a few moments when the announcement came from the flight attendant,
“We appologize for the delay, but the airport in Roatan is closed due to [life-threatening severe] weather”
Understand that the verbage contained within the “[...]” are my words, but you have to assume that is what is implied.
After all, the only other conclusion is that the weather in Roatan was just so damn nice that all the airport employees went outside for a picnic, leaving no one in the control tower.
We finally did take off and we did survive our landing in Honduras (truth-be-told, it was raining when we got there, so maybe my picnic theory was ill-founded).
After we cleared customs, we did the typical routine of intently watching the luggage belt go around, while we pray to see our bags.
As we were standing around, one of the official airport staff looked at our large dive group and said,
“It will be a miracle if all the bags make it here from San Salvador.”
Well, the miracle did not occur (recall the tarmac “spillage” back in El Salvador), and a number of bags did not show up. This creates particular problems when it comes to scuba diving, as a lack of a mask, fins, regulator, buoyancy vest, etc. makes you basically a beach-bound shore swimmer.
I did wonder if those bags might have been put on the Cuba-bound flight, instead.
Unfortunately, they did not accept my volunteering to go find out.
Please excuse more than my normal amount of misspelling, poor grammar, and lack of clarity.
Here at the CoCo View Resort, it is 9:00 p.m., otherwise known as divers midnight, and I have been consuming fine quantities of Honduran rum.
Or, is it quantities of fine Honduran rum.
