It’s always night when I arrive.
The little Embraer 145 lands and shudders to a heavily braked stop at the end of the runway. Then turns and taxis back toward the terminal. Where an air-stair is wheeled up to the side of the plane and we, the passengers, descend.
The air is warm and damp, and smells of wood smoke, jet fuel, silt, and drains.
At the bottom of the stairs I pick up the carry on luggage that never fits in the overhead bins. Then pull my clicking, wheeled bags across the tarmac and onto the concrete sidewalk under a canopy beside a patch of coarse, unnaturally green grass.
The Arrival Hall is a fluorescent lit, eight-foot wide corridor full of gringos attempting to puzzle out the immigration form with its dense, cryptic, oh so foreign instructions.
I am anointed as “one who knows” not for my awful Spanish, but because of my ability to properly fill out this form — information repeated twice. Once in ample spaces at the top of the form. And then again at the bottom in tiny spaces barely big enough for your initials let alone your Appelidos and Nombres. Continue reading