This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
Night at Bonito Juarez International Airport passes slowly, as the crowds thin, the echoing white tiled spaces become quiet and the rows of restaurants and overpriced souvenir shops close for a few hours.
Around 1am I meet Diana, who I end up talking to for most of the rest of the night. She's a Mexican citizen but has Canadian residency - she's been living in Vancouver for some time with her two children. She's returned here to fly out to her hometown of Reynosa and get married, but within minutes of arriving she had her purse stolen, with her passport and Mexican ID, money and credit cards. She's scared and lost, not least because, as she tells me, getting documents replaced in Mexico is a longwinded nightmare.
She's inquired of the dozens of security staff and police who patrol the airport in dramatic-looking uniforms covered in gold braid and badges, but none of them seem to have any interest in helping her, except one young woman who gave her money for the phone to contact some friends - they'll be coming to help if she's still stuck here in the morning. In the meantime she's waiting for the airline desk to open so she can try and get on her flight to Reynosa without documents.
Diana leaves for the desk at half past five with my best wishes and hopes of a happy conclusion but not much hope on her part, and shortly thereafter I leave myself to make an early check-in for my own flight and get rid of my burdensome rucksack for a while.
Booking in for an international flight turns out to be a mildly annoying and involved process requiring trips to different windows, and at the last minute I have to pay an exit fee of two hundred and thirty pesos to have my visa processed for departure, which was not mentioned at any previous point. Fortunately I have some extra money in my account now, courtesy of my parents, and I'm able to go to an ATM and pay with cash.
The first leg of my flight will be to Chicago O'Hare airport, and on being handed my documentation I find that I will have to pass through an Immigration check between terminals while I'm there, even though I'm in transit. I'm seized by fear - I still have my exit visa for the States attached to my passport, which I was supposed to hand back at the border. Of course I have the very good excuse that I never saw a US border agent, but questions are bound to be asked.
To add to my worry, my paid-up Mexican visa is now stapled to my outgoing ticket, suggesting that it will stay with me on this leg of the journey and provide evidence to the Americans that I didn't leave the States until 10 months after my tourist visa expired. I'm in an intermittent cold sweat as I check through security and take my seat at the gate with a couple of hours to go until my 9:10am flight.
To my relief the Mexican visa is taken away with the rest of my ticket at the desk, and I take only my boarding pass onto the cramped Mexicana Airbus for the four hour flight to Chicago. Nonetheless I don't take my usual joy in that rush of acceleration and leap into the air, the vista of Mexico City falling away below us, the slow rise above the mountains into the white blankets of cloud.
At Chicago we walk off the plane and into Terminal 5, down a series of interminable corridors with brusque notices about bringing infections and foreign plants into the country, particularly voluble on the topic of Foot and Mouth disease (Hoof and Mouth as the US calls it). We are split into groups for arrivals and those in transit, and join long lines between winding red tapes to be interviewed by a US Immigrations Officer.
I'm trying to look nonchalant and cheerful while sweat runs down my back under my shirt. The exit visa may raise questions, my time of stay may have been shared with the Americans by Mexican immigration, or worse still they may have been tracking me my whole time in the US, and just waiting for an agent to encounter me and bring me in (a girl back in New Orleans who'd been working on an expired tourist visa was informed by a friend in the Immigration Department that they'd been tracking her for months, knew exactly what she was earning and just didn't have the budget to bring her in and prosecute her right at that time).
I think about being taken into a bare white room and questioned, missing my (uninsured) flight or worse still being detained indefinitely by Homeland Security - maybe they'll even slap a terrorism charge on me since I have no way to prove my innocence. I plan out every possible branch of the conversation - how far should I go in the lie, which story to use, at what point should I come clean and throw myself on their (probably nonexistent) mercy? It doesn't help that I haven't had a cigarette in over six hours.
When I'm finally called, I step up to the desk with a (hopefully) relaxed grin. "Hi, how are you doing, boss?" The big burly officer sitting behind it makes no expression, says nothing, just reaches for my passport and forms. I hand them over with an arm that barely shakes at all, and wait.
The entire process goes as follows: He instructs me to place my hand on the fingerprint scanner four times - left fingers, left thumb, right fingers, right thumb. He leafs through my passport, asks which flight I'm leaving on, I tell him. He rips my old exit visa out of the book and tosses it over his shoulder into a bin without looking at it. He points me to the door for baggage re-check. He wishes me a pleasant flight. I leave.
Washed over with relief and grinning inanely I re-check my rucksack for the onward flight, smoke an ambrosial menthol outside the doors with a crowd of other gasping addicts then hop on the monorail to Terminal 1 to get ready for my flight. Security check-in is fast and efficient, and the TSA (Transport Security Administration) staff, once again contrary to everyone's warnings, are polite and even jovial.
One huge black TSA officer looks at me, looks down at my passport (which seems the size of a postage stamp in a hand that could crush my head like an egg), looks at me again, back at the passport, then grins widely showing dazzling white teeth: "They didn't feed you in Mexico, sir?" I've lost maybe eleven inches off my waistline since that photo was taken.
I spend the few dollars still rattling around in the bottom of my shoulder bag on two cheeseburgers to tide me over and wait for departure. Now it's just a matter of killing time. Outside the Chicago skies are grey and gloomy, but I'm full of light and happiness.
It's my first time on the big Boeing 767. The interior is pretty luxurious compared to flights I've been on before (mostly domestic, in the US or between England and Ireland). First Class customers have amazing high-tech pods with a luxurious armchair which slides down into a bed and a huge TV screen/monitor with tall speakers. Business class have comfortable armchairs with their own desk and screen configuration. Even my own Economy Plus seat is wide and comfortable with a small screen in the seatback in front of me.
We hurtle down the runway and rise on massive twin jets at an adrenaline-pumping angle into the cloudy sky. I play with the onscreen map and flight stats, which show current altitude, airspeed, time to destination and a tracking display showing the current location and heading of the aircraft and our flightpath across the North Atlantic.
As the flight crew come round with pretzels and soft drinks, the sky outside is already darkening as we leave the sun behind and race ahead of the clock across the timezones. Soon it's dinner time, and I watch The Hulk while munching on lasagna and green salad. The cabin lights are dimmed, the aisles lit only by glowing screens and the odd pool of warmth from a reading light, and I manage to nap on and off for a few hours. Outside the window the moonlit clouds drift by under the wing, lit in green and red pulses by the navigation lights.
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