Slingshot

I arranged this week to go to San Salvador for a good friend’s wedding.  It’s a long way to go for a wedding, but the organisation was pretty flawless, with activities and a large group of close friends also in attendance, over a period of a few days.  So I booked the flights a few weeks ago and left Paris on Tuesday 5th November.

My flight to San Salvador routed through George Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas.  It’s a short 70-minute transfer but since it was with the same airline and I had taken the precaution of having no luggage in the hold, I figured I would be all right.

I was wrong.

I was carrying a new passport as the old one is full, and apparently, a shiny new passport is cause for suspicion at the US border.  I had about 50 minutes to catch my flight when I had this conversation with the immigration officer.

What is your purpose in the United States, Sir?
“I’m not going to the United States, I’m passing through on my way to El Salvador, for a wedding.”
“Are you travelling for business or pleasure?”
“Um. Yes. It’s a wedding. I mean for pleasure.”
“Do you have another passport sir?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s full, and this is my new passport.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“Lately? I negotiate contracts in Africa, Australia and the Middle East.”
“Really. What sort of contracts?”
“Mining rights for Uranium.”
There followed a short pause as he tried to figure out if I was joking.
“Who do you work for again?”

I’ll spare you the comical details, but it went on for a while.

I subsequently spent an hour and a half waiting in a somewhat unpleasant little room where a single immigration agent spent 45 minutes interviewing one person and the others discussed what they were going to have for lunch.  I sat in a seat and waited.

And waited.

By the time I was finally called into a room, I had already missed the connecting flight, and my morale was a little low.  The interview lasted all of 5 minutes as a more senior immigration agent quickly figured out there was absolutely nothing wrong with my paperwork or my reasons for travelling.  I sprinted to the gate just in case the flight had been delayed, but it had already pushed back and was on its way to the runway.

To add insult to injury, the flight the next morning was overbooked and so they didn’t think they would be able to get me onto it, but after the exercise of some fairly winning smiles and the deployment of a rather shameless sob story and some outrageous flirting on my part, the lady from Continental airlines relented and managed to find me a place in an exit row.

I found myself a room in one of those completely anonymous hotels that grow spontaneously on the side of American highways, and once checked in, I figured I’d drown my sorrows in a couple of beers.  That’s how I ended up in a weird hotel bar that felt like it had come out of a Coen Brothers movie where everyone was either stranded because of the airport or working on repairing the local infrastructure from the damage caused by the hurricane that passed through a couple of months ago.  I was jetlagged beyond belief, my watch read 5.35am, and the discussion couldn’t have been more surreal if Jessica Rabbit had walked in and started flirting with the overhead power line repair woman (I kid you not) who was also drinking in the bar.

The following morning, I got to the airport in plenty of time, was subjected to some of the most stringent security measures I’ve ever had (you’ve been randomly selected, congratulations, please remove your genitals and place them in the box provided…) and finally got on the plane only to get informed, while we were halfway to the runway, that a technical problem meant we had to return to the gate.

I was beginning to think I was never going to make it to San Salvador when, an hour or so later, they told us they’d fixed the problem (dodgy power unit) and would be sending us to San Salvador shortly.

I am writing this from the plane.  Almost a full day late, and feeling somewhat abused by US Immigration (who couldn’t give a damn the inconvenience they cause), as well as the vagaries of aircraft technology, I hope to arrive in San Salvador in the next couple of hours.