THE TRAVEL GODS COME THROUGH FOR US

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and Nancy and I are starting to think about our annual pilgrimage to Utila, a tiny island off the coast of Honduras, where Danielle, Ben and Maxim live.

Utila has both its charms (it is a Caribbean resort, after all, with world-class diving) and its drawbacks (aside from the diving, there are no recreational facilities, and the beaches and restaurants are nothing to twitter home about). All that is pretty much beside the point – seeing our kids is Prioritas Uno. But getting there is something of a hassle.

Though it’s only (!) about 2000 miles away as the crow flies, we haven’t yet found a crow willing to take us there. So the usual routine is to fly to Miami, then to San Pedro Sula (Honduras’ second-largest city), then to La Ceiba (a smaller city on the coast), and then negotiate the last 20 miles to the island itself either by charter or ferry. If everything is on schedule, this takes about sixteen hours; if not, maybe 24. The trip is like recapitulating the history of air travel in reverse: you start out on a 767 and end up on a single-engine four-seat Cessna 172, manufactured sometime during the Ford administration.

A couple of years ago, we tried a different tactic. There’s a somewhat larger island only a few miles away from Utila called Roatan, on which there’s an international airport. It’s possible to fly Continental from NY to Houston to Roatan fairly quickly and easily. The catch is that there’s only one flight a week, going and coming, and you still have to get from Roatan to Utila, which ain’t easy: there are no boats (abortive attempts to run a ferry have all failed, despite the fact that there are always prospective passengers), so you’re back to flying. Anyway, we thought we’d give it a shot: we chartered a Cessna (the air taxi of choice down there) to meet our plane from the States and everything worked perfectly: we were on time into Roatan on a beautiful sunny day, the charter was waiting for us, and a smooth half an hour later we were hugging our family as we stood on the short, pitted tarmac that passes for Utila’s landing strip.

The problem was the return ten days later. Though the rainy season had ended, no one had told the clouds that were massing over the island. Rain started falling early in the morning, and by the time we reached the Utila “airport,” the half-mile-long runway was soggy, its potholes full of water. To make matters worse, there was another couple ahead of us; the Cessna would have to pick them up, turn around in Roatan and come back. When we saw it land, bouncing and splashing, we knew that would never happen. Though the pilot said he’d try his best to return, they barely got airborne, and we mentally kissed them goodbye. We had two hours to make our flight from Roatan to Houston; the next one was the following week.

Baffled, we shrugged at each other as the rain got stronger. We were joined by a girl in her 20’s carrying a large backpack; we asked her what her travel plans were, but she was vague. As we stood there, debating what to do, we heard the sound of engines. Plural. Not the lawn-mower putt-putt of the Cessna, but something more powerful. Out of the clouds appeared a small twin-engine airliner. It landed with no difficulty and taxied over the shed in which we were standing,. On its tail was emblazoned “CENTRAL AMERICAN AIRLINES.” Ben, who’s lived there for fifteen years, shrugged in bewilderment. Central American flies only between Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and San Pedro Sula, its other big city. “That’s my ride,” announced the girl with the backpack, and strode toward the plane, whose passenger door had been opened by a man in a the sort of purser’s uniform that reminded me of Pan-Am clipper days.

I followed her, splashing through the puddles, and as she boarded the plane, I asked the purser, heart in mouth, where he was going. “Roatan,” he replied. “Will you take us?” I demanded. He looked me up and down, chewed his lip, and finally answered, “Only if you pay in cash.” “How much?” “Fifty dollars each,” he said decisively, as if to forestall any bargaining on my part.

I would have paid five hundred. I stuffed bills into his hand, Nancy and I kissed the kids goodbye and hurriedly boarded. There were about 12 rows of seats, and only three passengers -– Nancy, myself, and the backpacker. As we taxied to the end of the runway, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. Now it gets weird. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in barely accented English. “Welcome to Central American Airways Flight Six, from Utila to Roatan. Today we will be flying at an altitude of nine hundred feet, and our estimated flight time is fourteen minutes. Sit back, relax, and have a pleasant journey.” The sense of disconnect was surreal – we were essentially being rescued, but here were all the amenities of “real” air travel,

Fourteen minutes later we landed in Roatan, an hour early for our flight to Houston.
I was profoundly grateful for the travel assist, and entertained by the theatrical veneer of professionalism, which you never get when you fly on Sosa or Copa, the legitimate airlines in that part of the world. Danielle says I should take a lesson from what happened: that some solution to a travel problem always comes along, so I shouldn’t sweat these things as I do. But I think this year, we’ll go back to the longer but somewhat more predictable four-leg version of the journey.