Tropical Fever - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 8

I've seen SUVs bigger than the plane we took from San Juan (the capital of Puerto Rico),
to Vieques Island. To be honest, I'm never at my best in small aircraft. The pilots always
strike me as being far too young and relaxed. I prefer my pilots middle-aged and tense.
Luckily I was seated next to a woman who talked non-stop about her brilliant son the
whole flight. It seemed he'd recently been named general manager of the new resort on the
island and was destined to become a supernova in the firmament of the hospitality industry.
(We heard later that he was canned for gross incompetence.)
The barrage of information she supplied about her son, in a loud braying voice, had a
deliciously stupefying effect on me. In fact, after about ten minutes, I was so anesthetized
with boredom that I actually hazarded a look out the window. For a couple of carefree mo-
ments I managed to forget that we were hurtling through space in a rickety box, borne aloft
by a spinning blade. Unfortunately, my new-found courage deserted me as we began our
descent.
Let's face it, one doesn't actually land in a plane that size, so much as just plop down
out of the sky. For a proper landing one needs a DC-10 or an Airbus, something with jet
engines and real brakes, something that doesn't realign your vertebrae when you make con-
tact with terra firma .
The approach to Vieques is particularly alarming. (Culebra, the next-door island, is
even worse, but let's not think about that.) For one thing, the plane makes a loud beeping
sound as the ground approaches and a recorded voice says (in what always strikes me as a
decidedly pessimistic tone), “Five hundred feet.”
Then the pilot, smacking his gum, essentially begins shutting down the plane—flipping
off switches, pushing levers, etc.—until an eerie silence descends on the whole enterprise.
The tiny runway, squeezed in between hills to the right and the sea to the left, appears to
wobble unsteadily as the plane plunges towards it.
This is always my worst moment, the time when I start imagining my mother going
through my dresser after the memorial service and gasping at the sad state of my under-
pants.
But relief comes fast. By the time we've wrestled our way through the munchkin-sized
plane door and are standing on the tarmac in the fragrant heat, I'm ready for anything.
☼ ☼ ☼
A harried-looking woman named Felicity met us outside the terminal. She was cordial in a
distracted fashion.
What I remember most about our first few minutes in Vieques was the acrid smell of the
Turkish cigarettes Felicity chain-smoked and how fast she drove along the island's curving
roads. Despite her heavy foot we were able to catch fleeting glimpses of verdant overgrown
fields on one side and pristine beaches on the other.
So far so good.