Today, I find myself seated in a squeaky, Styrofoam seat in the gaudy and somewhat stuffy departure lounge of Grand Caymans International airport, reading Alain De Bottom’s brilliant book; ‘the art of travel’ whilst waiting for my 5:05pm Island-hop flight to Cayman Brac. It’s 5:40, I’m hungry, we’re late, but most worryingly of all nobody seems to be overly bothered. Apparently, these island hop flights are not unlike a Caribbean bus service; i.e. you leave when the pilot decides to show up. Adherence to timetables was never part of the passengers charter - it’s the Caymans maan – get over it!
In a heroic attempt to try and get the plane to take-off, short of trying to lift it off the ground, I walk towards a female attendant at the boarding gate. Before I’ve even opened my mouth, the weary look in her eyes, and the chewing gum in her mouth zapping from one end of her palette to the other like a fly swatter, tells me that this may be a dumb ass idea. But it’s too late:
‘Hi, Good afternoon Mam, I was just wondering when the flight to Cayman Brac will be leaving?’
The attendant, who is from Jamaica and has peroxide hair with an extra dollop of gel with the consistency of tarmac, gives me a look that has her whole life emblazened on it in neon lettering ; i.e. I never wanted this job in the first place, I’m only here cos I have to support the kids, whose father has incidentally decided to set up shop with another women etc…
‘The flight will leave when the plane is on the runway’ she says in a thick Jamaican accent.
Nah! You don’t say…needless to say, I decide to duck out of any further probing forays into this particular women’s mind.
The spare time allows me to treat myself to a spot of sightseeing. Ah yes, the Duty Free departure lounge. I’m sure when this particular departure lounge was built in the 60’s it was art nouvea – post modernism incarnate. But for everybody the 60’s came and went, and the new millennium was ushered forth in spectacular pomp and jizz. But a few stubborn departure lounges still cling to the past. A past that was never kind to them in the first place. I mean look around, and you see garish dark mahogany wood paneling straight out of a colonial Gentleman’s club. The seats are painted yellow; a ghastly, fluorescent yellow like parking lines.
The general consensus amongst my senses is that this particular departure lounge resembles a run-down, ravaged, community centre in some back water of the Mongolian desert bowl…barren, skimpy and containing not a single item worth spending your dollars on; unless you have a fetish for Tortuga Rum cake – The Islands perennial favourite export.
The departure lounge is also devoid of any intelligent life forms, unless you include the usual loud and jovial American tourists with the complementary fat child nagging behind. But I don’t think they qualify.
I find departure lounges curious places; for here, within these little bubbles, lies a microcosm of humanity. People from all over the globe mingling, talking and soiling the floral upholstery. Departure lounges should also carry a health warning for they are amongst the unhealthiest places on earth; for apart from the Duty Free trade, there is another form of trade that occurs here. The trade of germs and nasty bugs. For where else can you say hello to both the scabby flesh eating bug of the Congo and the intestinal ringworm of the lower Amazon basin.
It is my theory, and I hope to prove it one day, that most lethal diseases are contracted in airport departure lounges.
Finally, just when I was rather enjoying watching fat American tourists and calculating which part of the departure lounge would be the least likely place to catch Lower Nile dysentery, we are ushered towards our plane. It soon transpires that the ‘vessel’ that will transport us across a narrow strip of the Caribbean sea is a 15-seater, twin propeller, Otter – straight out of Indiana Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark… Or, as I would like to call it; A flying coffin. It’s small, it’s tight, and I’ve got a window seat…er…actually everybody has a window seat!
I’m disappointed to discover that there’s no lovely cabin crew to serve refreshments, no in-flight entertainment, no duty free selection. I was hoping to purchase a Cartier…This us no-frills ultimatere – Easy Jet eat your heart out!
I strap myself in securely, expecting a bumpy ride and some serious turbulence. Disappointingly the ride is silky smooth. Grand Cayman disappears beneath us. The swampy marshlands and golden coral outcrops give way to a rich azure sea. As we climb higher to a cruising altitude of 1,800 ft, looking out the window you can see the clouds forming shadows over the water with the last remnants of the sun dancing merrily on their canopies.
The flight takes 45 minutes to traverse a distance of roughly 90 miles (at an average cruising speed of 150 mph), before we finally land at Cayman Brac ‘airport’ – there’s no livestock roaming around in this one, but there is a football net on one side of the runway…Mmmm
Cayman Brac is small. 1,500 people small. It is so amazingly titchy that when you eventually see someone they wave at you and local protocol is to wave back. Let me make this clear. Everybody says Hi to everybody. If you’re driving, you say hi to the car approaching. If you’re walking you say hi to the cars passing. It takes a bit of getting used to, but very soon I’m flaffin my arms around like a deranged idiot and saying hi to all manner of strangers and anything that moves…looks like I’m settling in just fine…as a great Jamiacan Philosopher and advocate of Ganja once sang: every little ting, iz gonna be awite.
In the evening, I’m sitting outside at the ‘Captains Table’ restaurant and bar. Sitting on my left is Vincent, a local retired elderly Caymanian who can trace his ancestry back to the 1800’s and who is half Portuguese and half Jewish. He used to be a seafarer, has travelled the world, and is a repository of all that is wise. To my right is Wayne who’s from Haiti and has some Jamaican genes juggling inside as well. The barman serving me is from Mexico (Meckico). I order my food; the cook turns out to be from Honduras. The gravity of this suddenly hits me and leaves me reeling…I’m in a daze trying to fathom what it all means…But I’ll leave it for another time…I think I better have my steak before it gets cold…
