Northern South America Travel Diary

2012

Northern South America Travel Diary 2012

 

Day 1 - Houston to Paramaribo via Curaçao

Sunday

24 June 2012

As readers of my earlier trip diaries might remember, my summer trips often seem to have problematic beginnings.  This year’s trip to some of the lesser known northern countries of South America has been no exception.

My journey began this morning at 4 am when I dutifully rolled out of bed to the sound of my alarm, despite having had just a little over four hours of sleep.  I had packed everything I needed for my trip the night before (or so I hoped), so after a quick shower and getting dressed, I was on my way to the airport at about 4:30 am.  I prefer to arrive early at American airports in case of delays or something going wrong – in this case, both occurred.

The first leg of my flight was from Houston to Miami on United Airlines.  The newly amalgamated United Airlines seems to place a priority on checking in the maximum number of passengers using lots of machines but the minimum number of humans.

Within seconds of starting my automated check-in process, the machine went into apoplexy and with a huge blue and yellow exclamation mark filling the screen demanded that an attendant attend to my case (after all, that’s what attendants do, isn’t it!).  Unfortunately, the ‘minimal humans’ policy meant that there were no attendants whatsoever to be seen.  Others found themselves in a similar situation, and tempers started to rise as passengers realized they were going to miss their flights because no-one was there to assist or to accept check-in baggage.

I pride myself that I was waiting more patiently than most, not that it did much good.  After 25 minutes of watching a frustratingly bright exclamation mark on my screen, then having the machine automatically ask me to start again because it was taking so long, over and over again, someone eventually arrived.  “Can you please help me with this?” I asked with a smile.  “Don’t you shout at me, I have only just got here” came the immediate and curt reply as she walked on past the line of frustrated passengers and behind a wall.  She emerged again, this time with a second attendant, about five minutes later, and after dealing with a couple of other passengers whose timing was even tighter than mine, she started to process my check-in and that of a family beside me simultaneously.

Her attempt to multi-task was going well, until she quickly attached the bag-tag for the luggage of the person next to me (destination: Washington DC), and swiftly threw the bag on the belt as I was trying to tell her to stop.  “I’ll do my job; you attend to yours” was the rapid response.

“But that was my bag you just loaded, and I have an international connection through Miami”.

“Oh.  Then I’ll have to go downstairs and get the bag back.  Don’t go away”.

I didn’t, at least not for the further 20 minutes I stood there waiting for her to return.  Eventually, she did return with my bag, muttering something about the TSA.  My bag was duly tagged and sent on its way to Miami.  The problem was that having spent well over an hour at the efficient automatic check-in machines, there was a real danger that my bag would arrive but I might not.

America is very egalitarian when it comes to security queues – you take your place in the line whether you are likely to miss your flight or not.   Fortunately, being a fairly frequent traveller through Houston-Bush Airport, I knew a place in Terminal E (I was in Terminal C) where the queues were generally shorter.  I headed there, and it was a wise move – I passed through security and went directly to my gate, where I was one of the last people to board.  I took my place in seat 27B – one of those horrid middle seats near the back of the place, squashed between a huge Italian soccer player and (thankfully) a more averagely-sized Chinese woman – and I almost happily endured the turbulence of a tropical depression over the Gulf of Mexico as I flew on to Miami.

I had made it, in spite of United Airlines’ glaring inefficiency and, amazingly, anyone’s willingness to say “sorry” at any point of the transaction.  Maybe I should have set the alarm for 3:00 am instead of 4:00 am, but this was a 7:15 am flight we are talking about here.

Luggage arrived in Miami after a wait of only 45 minutes – I wonder, am I expecting things to happen too quickly because I am not yet in ‘holiday mode’?

My onward flight from Miami was with an airline I had never flown with before – Insel Air.  This is the national airline of Curaçao (part of the former Netherlands Antilles), and they have just five aircraft.  I counted myself as fortunate because my plane, a McDonnell-Douglas MD-82, was the youngest in the fleet at just 22 years old.

Check-in was a bit ‘third-worldish’ (compared to my expectations of a major airport such as Miami) as passengers had to carry their own suitcases after check-in to manually propelled luggage carts (no conveyor belt), but after the experience that morning in Houston, I found this quaintly reassuring.  After all, if ‘third-worldish’ means interacting with humans rather than poorly programmed machines, then I am all for it.

After leaving half an hour late, as the flight crew arrived late to the airport), my flight to Curaçao was much smoother than the one to Miami, although I did find myself wondering whether the older planes in the Insel fleet could possibly have had seats that creaked more than mine every time I moved.  (That question was answered on my later flight connecting flight from Curaçao to Paramaribo, when I caught the oldest jet in Insel Air’s fleet, a 30 year old MD-82; the seat didn’t creak and groan this time).

I had a couple of hours transit time in Curaçao, which given the tiny size of this newly independent country, was sufficient to clear immigration and do a little exploring.  My exploration was limited to some walking around the airport zone; time was too limited to go and explore Curaçao’s colorful capital city (capital town?), Willemstad.  Nonetheless, I got some much needed fresh air in my lungs as well as a good feel for this quite well developed, friendly and efficient little nation.

I was getting fairly tired by the time of my third and final flight of the day.  A two and a half hour night flight landed me at Suriname’s main international airport, Zandery, at a few minutes before midnight, although by the time I reached immigration, midnight had passed and thus my passport shows an entry stamp of 25th July.

Zandery is about 45 kilometres from Suriname’s capital, Paramaribo, where I was staying.  A minibus covered the journey in a little less than an hour, and after a very long day’s travelling, I was in my room by 1:50 am and asleep by 2:00 am.