Look, up in the sky! It's ... it's ... Part II !!
So, by now you must have figured out that among my many addictions, I am also addicted to a certain couple of tropical islands ... and I'll probably keep penning these little memoirs of past and present events, occurrences and general island nonsense, until I have bored every last person who is reading them! After all, it's my blog and I'll do what I want ... OK, this is where the angels in the backgroud spin that old tune on the turntable, "It's my party, and I'll do what I want, I'll do ...." well, you get the picture. Or the sound, in this case. Be warned, this is a long one ... and I have no pictures to accompany this part of my story.
Part II of this particular St. Kitts "so-long-ago-it's-almost-like-it-never-even-happened" saga, was to have been put up here a while ago, but I got side-tracked by autumn activities, cookie-baking, night school and finally the Christmas season. At the start of all this flury of activity, I was reading about the ongoing power failures and load shedding in St. Kitts and Nevis, resulting from a fire in one of the transformers ... and then there was hurricane Omar in October. All that talk of rain, floods and no electricity on St. Kitts and Nevis brought it all back.
OK, picture this: It's still that same October day in 1988 and .... the excitement of the earlier part of the day didn't end when we landed back in St. Kitts safe and sound after the harrowing plane ride from St. Martin/St. Maarten. It was a bad hurricane season in other parts of the Caribbean and this was the same year that Hurricane Gilbert smashed into Jamaica and later, Mexico. I was definitely not keen on experiencing that level of weather drama during my "tour of duty" on St. Kitts! I was not nearly as worried as my friend, whom we affectionately called Lady Di, and who had recently been deployed to St. Kitts by her bosses at a Canadian tour operator, after she had lived through full fury of Gilbert while she was stationed in Cancun. When I first met her, she was still suffering some post-traumatic symptoms and she always seemed rather trembly and frayed around the edges. A few gusts of wind would send her into a "deer-caught-in-the-headlights" trance-state. Lucky for me ... and her ... there was no hurricane threat this night, but the fun was definitely not over yet.
The humidity that accompanies tropical storm season can be stiffling at times. That particular night, the mugginess sat on me like an extra layer of damp, tight clothing. I was running out of ideas to deal with the whole perspiration issue, and I really didn't think that walking around in my undies would be an option, as I was unofficially "on duty" all the time. Nice way to make sure I would be taken seriously in my role of personal assistant to the owner of the hotel. OK, really I wasn't much more than a travelling, glorified secretary, or as my friend Dr. J liked to call me, the "executive-everything-trainee." But I digress!
Mosquitoes and insects in general were also an occupational hazzard on this island. While Miss M and I sat outside that evening, lathered in sweat (the kind that happens even if you sit absolutely still) and insect repellent, we watched the nightly invasion of these big flying insects - much larger, but less aggressive and less sadistic than mosquitoes - I think they were beetles. These critters weren't so much flying by as they were gliding into the property on the evening breezes. Then they would land all around us. Thanks to the power outage, the hotel was running on back-up generator and I was pretty sure that the "bug-zappers" would not be working that evening, either. The hotel was equipped with those "black boxes" - a sort of electronic square contraption, mounted around the pillars and posts that formed the open walls of the outdoor dining area. After a few months I had grown accustomed to the sound of bugs being zapped and frizzled as they flew into these zappers.
Many an evening, Miss M, Lady Di and I would virtually fall out of our chairs at dinner - not because we were tipsy, though I am sure we often were, but because of our efforts to hide our gales of hysterical (and immature, I might add) laughter, when the larger and heartier of those gliding beetles would slam into the bug-zapping boxes. You see, they would somehow fly in at just the precise angle that would result in what we started calling "the rebound effect." This was a phonomenon that we witnessed over and over each night, when a usually very large, and usually, but not always electrocuted, sizzling hot bug would bounce back across the room - and land either on the buffet table or on some poor, unsuspecting guest's dinner plate! Of course, two months earlier, I was utterly horrified the first time one of these creatures landed on my dinner! Nothing a double shot of CSR and Ting couldn't cure for me though! Still, on this particular evening, I was sufficiently "acclimatized" and not much could put me off my dinner!
So, with the sound of beetles frying around us, we sat down to dinner and tucked into another evening of people-watching. This was a pass-time that both Ms. M and I never tired of. We would often notice that "fresh-off-the plane" tourists slowly alter their behaviour as the slow process of unwinding took over at the start of their vacations. Some folks might say that we actually stalked these folks at times. I guess there wasn't always that much to do in the evenings, as cable t.v. was a recent arrival on this island, and after a while, all the programming kept repeating. I could only take so many "I Love Lucy" and "All in the Family" reruns, after all! So, Miss M and I took to watching tourists mellow out, and shed their buttoned-up attitudes and behaviours during the short time they were with us. But that is a whole other story!
When we saw Lady Di earlier that day, she had metionted that the weekly charter from Toronto was delayed and that there was a chance it wouldn't land in St. Kitts at all this day. Since the flight was already in the air, we wondered where it would land? We pondered this question again at dinner that night, because we thought we might have to alter our people-watching strategies. Normally, we could work our schedules to coincide with the new arrivals and we could be spotted nonchalantly lurking in the lobby, pretending to doing something official, as we scoped out the new tourists. The real fun in the game was to spot someone who looked REALLY uptight, uncomfortable, overworked, conservative ... and then keep tabs on them over the course of their stay to track their various stages of relaxing, getting into the island groove - or not. Some just became "miserabler and miserabler." So, I would pick one and Ms. M would pick one and then we would make predictions based on which direction we thought the transformation would take - island groove or "get me outa here." Whoever made the most accurate prediction was then treated to dinner at Fisherman's Wharf or at the OTI buffet on the following Friday night.
Now all we needed was a full restoration of power so that the charter flight could land. Of course, all the flying insect activity at dinner, made us remember the incoming flight. Where was it, we asked? We waited, as we watched clouds form again, that ambled across the night sky, then dispersed as they passed by the full moon. It was even prettier than the harvest moon that we would have been gazing on back home, during this late October evening. We were joined intermittently by several ex-pats and locals who worked in the casino. Business was slow that night because the outgoing hotel guests were at the airport waiting for their flight out - and of course, the new arrivals hadn't actually landed yet. We wondered how our friend, Lady Di was fairing back at the airport, where she was stuck "shepherding" about 150 travellers in her charge - travellers who were supposed to be headed back to Southern Ontario and Upstate New York. They had been at the airport since about noon that day! We had spotted her on our way out of the airport earlier that afternoon and we had noticed several very disgruntled passengers . Of course, I worried about Lady Di - how would her jangled nerves deal with the pressure of all those cranky folks that wanted to either get back to the hotel for some dinner or get on a dam plane and get outta here already!
Our friends who worked in the casino kept stopping by the table and we were also joined by several young Kittitian fellows who had recently returned to St. Kitts after studying abroad. One of them was hoping to get a job at the hotel, while the other stopped by regularly in the hopes of meeting eligible you female tourists. The whole group of them were very affable, amiable and vested with a wickedly dry sense of humour. They were in peak form that night as they provided us with with an entertaining account, speculation really, about what must be happening at the airport, and on the charter flight, which was still unaccounted for. These fellows often regaled us with stories and advice on island life, since Miss M and I were still novices here in St. Kitts, ourselves.
Since most of our friends at the table that night were casino employees, naturally, they soon began to take bets on whether or not the plane would ever land that night; if it didn't land, which island it would be re-routed to; whether it would land the next day and what time, and of course, if the plane did not land, what time Lady D would arrive back at the hotel with the same group of passengers she had escorted to the airport eight hours earlier. This led to more discussion: what would happen to her passengers? Would they be tired, cranky, hungry? Would the kitchen be able to feed all of them at this hour, with the power shortage? Perhaps the chef would prepare a barbeque for them? What if the charcoal had been drenched in the rain? The biggest odds were on how the scenario would be handled if the outgoing and incoming travellers ended up at the hotel at the same time, say, if the flight did manage to land, and was subsequently grounded due to the fact that it was now after curfew, AND what if the plane had to refuel?
The general consensus at our table was that the flight had landed in Puerto Plata, but it would probably have been given clearance to continue on its journey, because nobody wanted to be stuck with all those travellers overnight on an island that was not even on the itinerary. No sooner had we made our wagers and analyzed our positions, that we noticed, across the smiling face of the full moon a full-size passenger plane making its way across the sky, headed in the direction of the airport. Some of us began to reach for our money, when Casino J spoke up, pointing out that the plane was too high and this indicated that it was continuing on toward Antigua! Master P, a Brit who had been coming to St. Kitts to work as a pit-boss for many years during the tourist season, spoke with some authority, because he had witnessed similar scenarios every single season on this island: the pilot was simply flying at a higher altitude because of the power outages, and would likely turn around and prepare for a descent when the plane got a little further out to sea.
So, I put my money away. Within twenty minutes, there it was again - Master P was right, the plane seemed to be circling and was now flying across the moon from the opposite direction - but it was still too high in the sky to be preparing for a landing. Besides, judging by the direction the plane was headed, it had over-shot the runway. And this island, to this day, only has one runway. So, we watched and speculated some more, had a few more drinks ... and waited ... and waited.
The charter from Toronto never did land that night. We lost track of it, after it made a fourth or fifth pass-by across the moon, like a continuous instant replay of a partial eclipse. Then it disappeared ... for good ...or at least for that night. By midnight we were about to start betting on whether or not the plane had run out of fuel and crashed into the sea, when Lady D arrived from the airport with the tired, hungry and very cranky guests who had checked out of the hotel twelve hours earlier. By now the hotel and kitchen staff were ready for them, as were the bartenders! Some of us made a few dollars, while some of us gave up a few dollars on our wagers.
Lady D joined us and provided an update: the charter had landed in Antigua where it was to stay overnight with the pilot and passengers. At this point, she reached for a bottle of wine and walked towards the barbeque pit, where our friend the evening chef, handed her a plate of food, and we watched her head into the darkness past a mango tree and a clump of oleander bushes, towards her room, stopping from time to time to sip daintily from the wine bottle that she clutched in her left had, while she balanced her dinner plate on a clipboard substituting as a tray, which she steadied with her right hand. The whole balancing act was topped of by a large briefcase, which struggles against her left hip as it was slung with long leather strap across her body.
In the morning the power was back on all over the island. By noon, the guests had left, again, for the airport - their vacation extended for an extra day. Too bad most of it was spent inside that tiny airport, instead of pool-side or at the beach. By now, most of them were quite giddy, either from all-night drinking at the bar that remained open for their convenience ... or because they realized that this would make a wopper of a story when they finally reached home!
Oh, and what about the incoming guests? Well, their story did not end with the layover in Anitigua. What happened there made for a whole other set of stories and ones that we had not considered during our previous evening's betting extravaganza. Although the pilot of the charter had to manouver the plane through a number of "hoops" that were not visible to those of us who were watching from the ground, the plane was actually dangerously close to running out of fuel by the time it had circled St. Kitts for the third or fourth time. When finally receiving permission to land in Antigua to "fuel up", the flight was grounded, because the charter company did not have an account with the Antigua airport authorities. No account, no fuel. The pilot produced his own credit card, but of course the credit limit was not sufficient to purchase fuel, and in fact, the airport personnel did not have the administrative infrastructure in in place to handle a transaction of this nature at this time of night.
Things took an interesting twist though, which eventually led to some creative community building and problem solving on the part of the passesngers: The pilot, evidently unable to contact the appropriate representatives back in Canada, because of the late hour, decided, in his wisdom, to be honest with his passengers. He brought them up to speed on the accounting problems and asked for some input and direction. Well, rather than a mutiny, these passengers took up a collection of cash, in American dollars of course. Each passenger donated a set amount, and only agreed to hand it over to the airport authorities if they were guaranteed to be given clearance to be the first flight to leave Antigua in the morning. Well, money talks and cash is king, becuase, they landed in St. Kitts in the early hours of the morning. And we were treated to the most upbeat, positve rambunctious group of hotel guests that I had ever seen, either before this incident or in all these years afterward. They were all so excited to have finally arrived and really pleased with themselves for having been able to assist the pilot in solving the dilemma.
It seems that the whole plane load of passengers had done some serious bonding as the flight circled over the island, in the dark, during a full moon on the tail of a tropical storm. This was one scenario the casino boys had never predicted - so, no money exchanged hands on this portion of our "off-beach-betting." I heard later, that NOT ONE passenger had asked the tour operator for a reimbursement of the "donation" they made that night. They all considered it part of the entertainment - Caribbean style! Yes, back in the "innocent-eighties" St. Kitts was indeed still the land of flip-flops, frangipani and good, clean fun!
Part II of this particular St. Kitts "so-long-ago-it's-almost-like-it-never-even-happened" saga, was to have been put up here a while ago, but I got side-tracked by autumn activities, cookie-baking, night school and finally the Christmas season. At the start of all this flury of activity, I was reading about the ongoing power failures and load shedding in St. Kitts and Nevis, resulting from a fire in one of the transformers ... and then there was hurricane Omar in October. All that talk of rain, floods and no electricity on St. Kitts and Nevis brought it all back.
OK, picture this: It's still that same October day in 1988 and .... the excitement of the earlier part of the day didn't end when we landed back in St. Kitts safe and sound after the harrowing plane ride from St. Martin/St. Maarten. It was a bad hurricane season in other parts of the Caribbean and this was the same year that Hurricane Gilbert smashed into Jamaica and later, Mexico. I was definitely not keen on experiencing that level of weather drama during my "tour of duty" on St. Kitts! I was not nearly as worried as my friend, whom we affectionately called Lady Di, and who had recently been deployed to St. Kitts by her bosses at a Canadian tour operator, after she had lived through full fury of Gilbert while she was stationed in Cancun. When I first met her, she was still suffering some post-traumatic symptoms and she always seemed rather trembly and frayed around the edges. A few gusts of wind would send her into a "deer-caught-in-the-headlights" trance-state. Lucky for me ... and her ... there was no hurricane threat this night, but the fun was definitely not over yet.
The humidity that accompanies tropical storm season can be stiffling at times. That particular night, the mugginess sat on me like an extra layer of damp, tight clothing. I was running out of ideas to deal with the whole perspiration issue, and I really didn't think that walking around in my undies would be an option, as I was unofficially "on duty" all the time. Nice way to make sure I would be taken seriously in my role of personal assistant to the owner of the hotel. OK, really I wasn't much more than a travelling, glorified secretary, or as my friend Dr. J liked to call me, the "executive-everything-trainee." But I digress!
Mosquitoes and insects in general were also an occupational hazzard on this island. While Miss M and I sat outside that evening, lathered in sweat (the kind that happens even if you sit absolutely still) and insect repellent, we watched the nightly invasion of these big flying insects - much larger, but less aggressive and less sadistic than mosquitoes - I think they were beetles. These critters weren't so much flying by as they were gliding into the property on the evening breezes. Then they would land all around us. Thanks to the power outage, the hotel was running on back-up generator and I was pretty sure that the "bug-zappers" would not be working that evening, either. The hotel was equipped with those "black boxes" - a sort of electronic square contraption, mounted around the pillars and posts that formed the open walls of the outdoor dining area. After a few months I had grown accustomed to the sound of bugs being zapped and frizzled as they flew into these zappers.
Many an evening, Miss M, Lady Di and I would virtually fall out of our chairs at dinner - not because we were tipsy, though I am sure we often were, but because of our efforts to hide our gales of hysterical (and immature, I might add) laughter, when the larger and heartier of those gliding beetles would slam into the bug-zapping boxes. You see, they would somehow fly in at just the precise angle that would result in what we started calling "the rebound effect." This was a phonomenon that we witnessed over and over each night, when a usually very large, and usually, but not always electrocuted, sizzling hot bug would bounce back across the room - and land either on the buffet table or on some poor, unsuspecting guest's dinner plate! Of course, two months earlier, I was utterly horrified the first time one of these creatures landed on my dinner! Nothing a double shot of CSR and Ting couldn't cure for me though! Still, on this particular evening, I was sufficiently "acclimatized" and not much could put me off my dinner!
So, with the sound of beetles frying around us, we sat down to dinner and tucked into another evening of people-watching. This was a pass-time that both Ms. M and I never tired of. We would often notice that "fresh-off-the plane" tourists slowly alter their behaviour as the slow process of unwinding took over at the start of their vacations. Some folks might say that we actually stalked these folks at times. I guess there wasn't always that much to do in the evenings, as cable t.v. was a recent arrival on this island, and after a while, all the programming kept repeating. I could only take so many "I Love Lucy" and "All in the Family" reruns, after all! So, Miss M and I took to watching tourists mellow out, and shed their buttoned-up attitudes and behaviours during the short time they were with us. But that is a whole other story!
When we saw Lady Di earlier that day, she had metionted that the weekly charter from Toronto was delayed and that there was a chance it wouldn't land in St. Kitts at all this day. Since the flight was already in the air, we wondered where it would land? We pondered this question again at dinner that night, because we thought we might have to alter our people-watching strategies. Normally, we could work our schedules to coincide with the new arrivals and we could be spotted nonchalantly lurking in the lobby, pretending to doing something official, as we scoped out the new tourists. The real fun in the game was to spot someone who looked REALLY uptight, uncomfortable, overworked, conservative ... and then keep tabs on them over the course of their stay to track their various stages of relaxing, getting into the island groove - or not. Some just became "miserabler and miserabler." So, I would pick one and Ms. M would pick one and then we would make predictions based on which direction we thought the transformation would take - island groove or "get me outa here." Whoever made the most accurate prediction was then treated to dinner at Fisherman's Wharf or at the OTI buffet on the following Friday night.
Now all we needed was a full restoration of power so that the charter flight could land. Of course, all the flying insect activity at dinner, made us remember the incoming flight. Where was it, we asked? We waited, as we watched clouds form again, that ambled across the night sky, then dispersed as they passed by the full moon. It was even prettier than the harvest moon that we would have been gazing on back home, during this late October evening. We were joined intermittently by several ex-pats and locals who worked in the casino. Business was slow that night because the outgoing hotel guests were at the airport waiting for their flight out - and of course, the new arrivals hadn't actually landed yet. We wondered how our friend, Lady Di was fairing back at the airport, where she was stuck "shepherding" about 150 travellers in her charge - travellers who were supposed to be headed back to Southern Ontario and Upstate New York. They had been at the airport since about noon that day! We had spotted her on our way out of the airport earlier that afternoon and we had noticed several very disgruntled passengers . Of course, I worried about Lady Di - how would her jangled nerves deal with the pressure of all those cranky folks that wanted to either get back to the hotel for some dinner or get on a dam plane and get outta here already!
Our friends who worked in the casino kept stopping by the table and we were also joined by several young Kittitian fellows who had recently returned to St. Kitts after studying abroad. One of them was hoping to get a job at the hotel, while the other stopped by regularly in the hopes of meeting eligible you female tourists. The whole group of them were very affable, amiable and vested with a wickedly dry sense of humour. They were in peak form that night as they provided us with with an entertaining account, speculation really, about what must be happening at the airport, and on the charter flight, which was still unaccounted for. These fellows often regaled us with stories and advice on island life, since Miss M and I were still novices here in St. Kitts, ourselves.
Since most of our friends at the table that night were casino employees, naturally, they soon began to take bets on whether or not the plane would ever land that night; if it didn't land, which island it would be re-routed to; whether it would land the next day and what time, and of course, if the plane did not land, what time Lady D would arrive back at the hotel with the same group of passengers she had escorted to the airport eight hours earlier. This led to more discussion: what would happen to her passengers? Would they be tired, cranky, hungry? Would the kitchen be able to feed all of them at this hour, with the power shortage? Perhaps the chef would prepare a barbeque for them? What if the charcoal had been drenched in the rain? The biggest odds were on how the scenario would be handled if the outgoing and incoming travellers ended up at the hotel at the same time, say, if the flight did manage to land, and was subsequently grounded due to the fact that it was now after curfew, AND what if the plane had to refuel?
The general consensus at our table was that the flight had landed in Puerto Plata, but it would probably have been given clearance to continue on its journey, because nobody wanted to be stuck with all those travellers overnight on an island that was not even on the itinerary. No sooner had we made our wagers and analyzed our positions, that we noticed, across the smiling face of the full moon a full-size passenger plane making its way across the sky, headed in the direction of the airport. Some of us began to reach for our money, when Casino J spoke up, pointing out that the plane was too high and this indicated that it was continuing on toward Antigua! Master P, a Brit who had been coming to St. Kitts to work as a pit-boss for many years during the tourist season, spoke with some authority, because he had witnessed similar scenarios every single season on this island: the pilot was simply flying at a higher altitude because of the power outages, and would likely turn around and prepare for a descent when the plane got a little further out to sea.
So, I put my money away. Within twenty minutes, there it was again - Master P was right, the plane seemed to be circling and was now flying across the moon from the opposite direction - but it was still too high in the sky to be preparing for a landing. Besides, judging by the direction the plane was headed, it had over-shot the runway. And this island, to this day, only has one runway. So, we watched and speculated some more, had a few more drinks ... and waited ... and waited.
The charter from Toronto never did land that night. We lost track of it, after it made a fourth or fifth pass-by across the moon, like a continuous instant replay of a partial eclipse. Then it disappeared ... for good ...or at least for that night. By midnight we were about to start betting on whether or not the plane had run out of fuel and crashed into the sea, when Lady D arrived from the airport with the tired, hungry and very cranky guests who had checked out of the hotel twelve hours earlier. By now the hotel and kitchen staff were ready for them, as were the bartenders! Some of us made a few dollars, while some of us gave up a few dollars on our wagers.
Lady D joined us and provided an update: the charter had landed in Antigua where it was to stay overnight with the pilot and passengers. At this point, she reached for a bottle of wine and walked towards the barbeque pit, where our friend the evening chef, handed her a plate of food, and we watched her head into the darkness past a mango tree and a clump of oleander bushes, towards her room, stopping from time to time to sip daintily from the wine bottle that she clutched in her left had, while she balanced her dinner plate on a clipboard substituting as a tray, which she steadied with her right hand. The whole balancing act was topped of by a large briefcase, which struggles against her left hip as it was slung with long leather strap across her body.
In the morning the power was back on all over the island. By noon, the guests had left, again, for the airport - their vacation extended for an extra day. Too bad most of it was spent inside that tiny airport, instead of pool-side or at the beach. By now, most of them were quite giddy, either from all-night drinking at the bar that remained open for their convenience ... or because they realized that this would make a wopper of a story when they finally reached home!
Oh, and what about the incoming guests? Well, their story did not end with the layover in Anitigua. What happened there made for a whole other set of stories and ones that we had not considered during our previous evening's betting extravaganza. Although the pilot of the charter had to manouver the plane through a number of "hoops" that were not visible to those of us who were watching from the ground, the plane was actually dangerously close to running out of fuel by the time it had circled St. Kitts for the third or fourth time. When finally receiving permission to land in Antigua to "fuel up", the flight was grounded, because the charter company did not have an account with the Antigua airport authorities. No account, no fuel. The pilot produced his own credit card, but of course the credit limit was not sufficient to purchase fuel, and in fact, the airport personnel did not have the administrative infrastructure in in place to handle a transaction of this nature at this time of night.
Things took an interesting twist though, which eventually led to some creative community building and problem solving on the part of the passesngers: The pilot, evidently unable to contact the appropriate representatives back in Canada, because of the late hour, decided, in his wisdom, to be honest with his passengers. He brought them up to speed on the accounting problems and asked for some input and direction. Well, rather than a mutiny, these passengers took up a collection of cash, in American dollars of course. Each passenger donated a set amount, and only agreed to hand it over to the airport authorities if they were guaranteed to be given clearance to be the first flight to leave Antigua in the morning. Well, money talks and cash is king, becuase, they landed in St. Kitts in the early hours of the morning. And we were treated to the most upbeat, positve rambunctious group of hotel guests that I had ever seen, either before this incident or in all these years afterward. They were all so excited to have finally arrived and really pleased with themselves for having been able to assist the pilot in solving the dilemma.
It seems that the whole plane load of passengers had done some serious bonding as the flight circled over the island, in the dark, during a full moon on the tail of a tropical storm. This was one scenario the casino boys had never predicted - so, no money exchanged hands on this portion of our "off-beach-betting." I heard later, that NOT ONE passenger had asked the tour operator for a reimbursement of the "donation" they made that night. They all considered it part of the entertainment - Caribbean style! Yes, back in the "innocent-eighties" St. Kitts was indeed still the land of flip-flops, frangipani and good, clean fun!
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