The Relay Race

I was hooked on adventure holidays. Shake and bake on a beach was boring by comparison, so I had no desire to repeat the experience. I did some research and decided on the Philippines, booking with the same scuba dive vacations travel agency as I had for Australia.

Everything looked fantastic. The Nautica was at least as posh as the catamaran had been. The Tubbataha Reef, at the very centre of the Sulu Sea, looked as rich as the Great Barrier Reef. They spoke English there, too. Definitely a plus.

I departed for Toronto on the appointed date, and began my first wait. My connecting flight to San Francisco was in five hours. International transfers are always long, I would discover. I had supper, a drink, a few hours with a novel, and boarded for San Francisco when summoned. I napped on the flight. Everything was going as planned.

I discovered there was a problem upon arriving in San Francisco. There was a delay. Passengers were summoned to the PAL (Philippines Airlines) desk for an update. There were a lot of Asians and Filipinos pressing into the PAL counter, each expressing their displeasure at the same time. I leaned against a pillar, expecting I’d have to wait until their anger to be vented before I’d get a chance to enquire what the issue was. It was, and I did. It turns out the plane had not arrived from Manila.
“How long of a delay,” I asked them once my name was called.

Twenty hours, they said.

Twenty hours? Why twenty hours? Because the plane was broken. It had not yet left Manila. I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d never make the rest of my connections! The dive boat would leave without me! I saw my itinerary crumbling before my eyes.

There were options, they said. I could continue on with Aeroflot. I perked up. Where was hope; I’d make it after all. Would my luggage be accompanying me? No, it wouldn’t. It would have to wait for the next flight. I decided to wait and travel with my gear. A dive vacation without dive gear or clothing seemed a silly proposition at best.

“David?” I heard behind me.

I ignored it. I thought it vain to believe that someone could possibly be calling out my name in the San Francisco airport. It had to be some other David. Obviously some other David.

I received a voucher for a hotel. Two more for a cab to get there and back.

I backed away from the counter and leaned against my pillar again to gather myself before facing the upcoming twenty hours of uncertainty. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly.
“David?” I heard again. I opened my eyes to the only other Caucasian within sight. A woman. Attractive, too. I was confused.

“Are you David?” the brunette asked again.

“I am a David,” I said.

“I’m Jenny,” she said, “from San Raphael Diving.” My tour company. I blinked back my surprise. Here before me was my saviour, and at the moment I needed her most. Glory be!

She explained that she was accompanying my dive vacation as an observer, and that she too was stranded, albeit less so than I; she at least could go home for the ensuing hours of uncertainty.
She explained that she’d called her boss, that her boss was aware of the problem, and that other arrangements were being made as we spoke, that my vacation was delayed, but still on, and that everything would be fine.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I still had eleven hours to hang out in San Fran when I woke. I looked at the phone, then the phone book, wondering if I should contact my cousin David, a resident of San Fran. I wondered if he’d be happy to hear from me, un-looked for, and in the middle of the workweek. There were way too many D. Tishlers in the white pages, so I abandoned that half-baked plan.

I made arrangements with the hotel for a day tour.

A minibus arrived to pick me up, and I was off to see some sights. I retraced Steve McQueen’s route in BULLITT, hung out in Haight Ashbury, and finished up on Fisherman’s Warf, overlooking Alcatraz. There wasn’t nearly enough time left to me to go there, so I settled for some snaps, bought some souvenirs for my parents, and returned to the hotel and the airport with time to spare to catch my plane.
I met up with Jenny and discovered that I had even more time to spare than I’d anticipated. The plane had finally made it to North America, but it was being looked at again. There would be another four-hour delay.

“They definitely didn’t say twenty before four, did they,” I joked.

They hadn’t.

We finally boarded. I took my seat, only to discover that I was seated beside a young mother and her yearling. The baby was already fussing and we hadn’t even left the ground, yet. I despaired. I was in for a long flight.

Jenny came to my seat.

“Holy shit,” she said. “That kid isn’t even two, yet! When we take off,” she continued, “beat it for the back of the plane as soon as the seatbelt sign is turned off.”

I didn’t ask why. I presumed there were seats lacking babies back there. I grabbed my stuff just as instructed, and found the back of the plane nearly empty.

Jenny was already there.

“Take a 4-seater in the middle,” she instructed. She had, so I did too. More people rushed to the back just as we did, they too taking what was left to stretch out.

That sounds selfish, but the flight was over eighteen hours long, and it would have been intolerable beside a screaming baby. And it’s not like the Filipinos weren’t doing the same thing. And I could smoke back there, I realized. PAL was one of the few airlines that still allowed it.

We landed in Manila in the middle of the night. Even at that hour, it was stifling. The air was as thick as soup, so humid that I was stepping in pools of perspiration in my sandals by the gangway’s end.
My gear had arrived with me! Praise be!

There would be yet another delay, I discovered. There was only one flight to Puerto Princesa on Palawan each day, and that was in the late morning, so we were booked into yet another hotel.
It looked colonial, as far as I could tell. I was dog tired. Lights illuminated palm trees, stucco and wrought iron. I was grateful to see a working air conditioning unit in the room, less happy about the bed that drooped much like a hammock from front to back and left to right.

I can’t say that bothered me too much. I undressed fully and collapsed into it and woke sprawled atop the covers the next morning.

Not bothering to dress, I threw the French doors open, pleased at the prospect of the balcony that stretched out before me, less pleased with my view. Rooftops stepped out from the balcony, each as varied in height as the steps of the Giant’s Causeway, fading from view into the brown haze of heat that still hung low and heavy all about me.

I stretched and stepped out onto it, and leaned out over the banister and took it all in.

It was my first good view of the third world.