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Satisfied we could do no more, the anchor was pulled, and we bid a fond farewell to Rochelais Reef, now affectionately known as Conch Island, then set a course back to the Cormier Plage Hotel. We had a few rough hours battling choppy seas, but it actually became relaxing after a while. I was transfixed, staring at the color of the water in this part of the Caribbean. It was not the blue-green turquoise of shallow water around the reefs and islands. This was deep water, the fathometer showing three thousand feet to the bottom, and the color was a deep violet, almost purple.
Two days later, we docked near the hotel, amused at having the land seeming to sway around us after seven days without stepping foot off the boat. Everyone relaxed on the beach and in the hotel bar and talked long into the night about what we had found. The following morning, the whole team departed for Fort Lauderdale by boat while I made arrangements to fly out later that afternoon. We said our good-byes and I took a shower, packed my bags, and breathed a sigh of relief that I was escaping Haiti without being bitten by a ring-necked fuzz-wort or infected with Haitian jungle fever.
I sallied forth, expecting a car to carry me to the airport, but the local police thought Jean Claude had failed to pay his license fee and confiscated his Land Rover. I was pointed to a battered, dust-laden little Nissan pickup.
Any port in a storm.
One of the workers at Jean Claude’s hotel drove me over the obstacle course road to Cape Haitian, picking up hitchhikers along the way and then throwing them all around the bed of the truck before they would pound on the roof to be let out. Once we reached the city, I noticed it was the same filthy mess, with nonexistent pavement, traffic surging nowhere, and pollution that would have sent an environmentalist into cardiac arrest. My only apprehension now was whether my fax passport would get me passed through immigration.
We arrived at the Lynx Airlines boarding shack. If I’ve ever made a wise move in my life, it was when I told the driver to wait just in case the flight was canceled. I entered the shack, counting the minutes until I would be in the wild blue yonder to the U.S. of A.
“You’re too late,” said the attendant behind a counter I didn’t dare lean on or touch with my bare hands.
“What do you mean I’m late?” I replied indignantly, naively thinking she was kidding me. I pointed at the time printed on my ticket. “This says departure time is twelve-thirty. It is now only eleven-twenty. I have an hour and ten minutes.”
She glanced at the ticket and shrugged. “That’s Miami time.”
“You don’t print your tickets with local arrival or departure time?” I was begi
“No, you should have been here an hour ago. Now it’s too late. The plane is taking off in five minutes.”
“Let me talk to the pilots,” I pleaded in desperation.
She nodded and accompanied me out through a weed-covered field to the airplane, where the pilots were standing with hands in their pockets. I pleaded my case to no avail.
The chief pilot shrugged. “You’ll never get through immigration in time.”
“Let me try?” I begged.
Then the pilot and copilot gri
There I stood, like a kid who’d had his bicycle stolen. My only salvation came from the airline attendant, who promised me a seat on the next day’s flight. “You get here two hours early” she admonished me. “You hear?”
I heard.
Never in my life have I felt so miserable. Thank God I had the foresight to ask the driver to wait for me. If he had driven off and left me stranded in the mob at the airport, I’d probably have been torn limb from limb for my Nike sneakers.
Now it was time for another ride through the wretchedness and over the road to hell. I felt like Roy Scheider transporting nitroglycerin through the jungles in the movie Wages of Fear. Distress turned into rage at having been abandoned in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. If I had known that while I was in Haiti an American businessman had been shot and killed and two others taken hostage, I would have really been depressed.
Back to my room, where I lay in bed that afternoon, staring at the whirling blades of the overhead fans. A lonely meal, and then I headed for the bar, where I was lucky enough to join the company of some young Americans who worked for Carnival Cruise Lines over in the cove where the big ships docked. I enjoyed the conversation and several beers before retiring for the night with visions of my own bed dancing in my head.
No fooling around this time. I hauled the driver, who spoke almost no English, to the truck and gestured at the steering wheel. He got the drift from the devil expression on my face. By now you know the routine to reach the airport. This time, however, there was no stopping and picking up hitchhikers. If the driver even thought about stopping, I stomped my foot on his foot and mashed the gas pedal to the floor. We jolted over the road like a race car in an endurance rally.
By now, with lots of practice, I was immune to the misery and poverty. Watching people taking home garbage no longer offended me. That was simply their life and the way they had to live it. Perhaps someday, when their internal struggles are over, the country will return to the lovely paradise it once was.
I burst into the Lynx shack two hours early. The attendant smiled and gave me a boarding pass. One hurdle down, immigration to go. There I sat in an unventilated shack in the middle of the day with eighteen Haitians, mostly women and children. They do like perfume and cologne. I passed the time reading a book on the battle of Gettysburg and realized I didn’t have it so bad after all.
The scary part was coming up. I had been told the night before that if you didn’t have a valid passport, the airline pilots would not allow you to board. It seems they’re none too happy if American immigration officials won’t let you into the country. Not only were they liable for a hefty fine, but they had to transport you back to Haiti at their expense. I began to hope that being a hotshot author might carry an ounce of weight.
At twelve noon on the dot, the plane’s engines could be heard through the cracks in the walls as it landed and taxied toward the shack. After a few minutes, a blond-haired pilot opened the door and stepped into the waiting room. He walked right up to me and handed me an envelope.
“I hope to enjoy your book,” he said, smiling.
I stared at the envelope and looked up questioningly. “Book?”
“Yes, your friend gave me one of your books in Fort Lauderdale. He figured I’d know you by the author’s photo on the book jacket.”
Craig Dirgo, bless his heart, had driven to the airport and given my passport to the pilot to give to me. The sun burst through the clouds. Then came the sound of trumpets, a drum-roll, and harp music. Home was just over the horizon at last.
Haitian immigration whisked me through, and I ran, not walked, out to the airplane. Then there was a wait, while an official riffled through every passenger’s luggage. I’m sure he wished he had a different job when it came to my bag. It was filled with two-week-old laundry. We guys are like that. Why do laundry when you have someone waiting to do it at home?
I don’t know if I was ever happier than when the wheels left the ground. For the next hour, I listened to the beat of the engines, making sure they were hitting on all cylinders. I couldn’t conceive of a mechanical problem that would force us to return to the bedlam of Cape Haitian.
After a short hop, we landed on Caicos Island to refuel and were asked to leave the airplane and wait in the terminal as a safety precaution. Simple Simon Cussler, of course, walks through the wrong door into the heart of the terminal, finds the bar, and has a cold beer. Figuring it’s time to go back, I walked toward the exit door and was promptly stopped by a security guard the size of a redwood tree.