Ultimate Destruction

This is my writing blog, but for today, it's the saga of how I couldn't get back to Spain from the Bahamas, because I should explain why I haven't been writing on my writing blog.

So.   I was supposed to arrive in Spain last Thursday (today is Wednesday, I arrived last night.)   Now, I'll start by saying that I'm very thankful for the extra few days in the Bahamas, that's always good, so all of this is by no means me complaining.   It just feels like a story worth telling.

On Monday it became clear that then-tropical storm Irene was headed in the general direction of Nassau, and my flight was scheduled to leave on Wednesday night.   I dunno, maybe I'd get out beforehand, maybe not.   On Tuesday, British Airways canceled the flight for Wednesday night.   They had good reason, I've gotta say.   See, the flight from Nassau to London is technically the return journey of the BA plane, it leaves from London, stops in Nassau, and goes on to either Providenciales or Grand Cayman, and then it goes back the same way.   Understandably, British Airways didn't want to fly 400 or so tourists out into the path of an oncoming hurricane, so the flight never left London.   So it clearly couldn't leave from Nassau.

So my flight on Wednesday didn't leave.   Hurricane Irene turned slightly east on Thursday, so Nassau only really got a glancing blow from the hurricane's western edge.   The power went out for part of a day, or a few days, depending on where on the island you were, and the internet went down for about 4 days.   There are quite a few funny stories to be had about that, like relations in faraway countries getting better information about hurricane Irene online than us in Nassau were getting from the local radio.  

So, my flight was rescheduled to Sunday night.   Come Sunday night, I went to check in, and was informed that the flight had been delayed until 7 AM Monday morning.   You see, BEC (the local power company) had not yet restored power to the airport, so the airport had been running on a generator.   The previous night, the flight I was supposed to be taking left from Providenciales, on its way to Nassau and then on to London.   But the generator at Nassau airport died, whether it ran out of fuel or broke, I'm not sure.   But that meant all the lights on the runway went out, so the plane couldn't land.   It had to return to Providenciales (gotta say, I'm glad I wasn't in that part of the journey) and wait.   It flew back to Nassau as soon as possible, and all seemed to be good to go the next morning.

With all however-many of us on the plane at 7:05 AM (had to be at the airport just after 5), we sat there at the runway.   And we sat there.   The pilot explained that local air traffic control didn't have the proper records of their flight path for them to take off, and they were trying to deal with that.   We finally left at 9:05 AM.   Would've been cool to only have to arrive at the airport at 7.

Anyway, also, as we had been informed earlier but I haven't mentioned until now, the flight's catering, the food, hadn't lasted because of the delays.   (As one would expect.)   But there is no catering service at Nassau airport.   So one of the local hotels was hired out to do catering for the flight, but of course, they didn't have the standard foil containers needed to heat the meals on the plane.   So cold food all the way to London, I'm glad I sleep well on planes, otherwise I might have been quite hungry.

Then a relatively uneventful, though not completely run-of-the-mill overnight in London, and I left from Gatwick, on time, the next day, and arrived in Malaga.   All in good fun, and my phone seriously saved my bacon a few times.

All in all it was an eventful trip, and despite all that, I'd definitely do it again.   It was a fun visit, and I'm looking forward to another one next year.

In other news, those of you who are reading my ongoing writing works, I've just finished Chapter 28 of Songlord.   You should read it.