Round-trip — Suzey Ingold

The strange feeling in my gut started the week before I was due to fly. A niggling spark of maybe not?; the kind of thing I usually listen to, that keeps me from wandering off down paths I should not be on. But this time, I didn’t listen. This time, I put it down to sheer exhaustion, flaming my anxiety and leaving me with a sense of incapability of dealing with anything, let alone flying 6,000km south to a country I’d never been to before.

As it turns out, I should have listened.

It was dark out by the time the plane started to turn. One minute, we’re still flying in a straight path south over the Gulf of Mexico, some two and half hours from our departure point in Toronto. The next, we’re turning. For half an hour, our plane steadily veers off course to the east. No announcement comes over the speakers. The flight attendants are curiously absent. And beside me, my sleeping neighbour’s flight map continues to show our plane veering toward Florida.

I rest my head against the window. I’d travelled enough to start putting together the possibilities. Travel is all about expecting the unexpected; about being adaptable to that which will fall into your path without a moment’s notice. A missed flight here, an overnight layover here. Departure times changing last minute or falling ill in the middle of the French countryside. I’d been there. Many times.

Here, at least the cause seemed clear. Whatever medical emergency had had them calling for a doctor some hour ago was evidently worse than they had let on. We were going to make an emergency landing – maybe Miami, looking at the map. From there? It was already past nine at night. From there, I just couldn’t be sure.

We make a bumpy landing in Orlando, Florida some forty-five minutes later, after a vague announcement from the crew. At that stage, they were still telling us a passenger was unwell – it wasn’t until hours later that I’d find out it was the pilot. Two ambulances and police cars are there to greet us, a steady drizzle pattering against the window.

“Folks, don’t shoot the messenger–” This ought to be good. “But I think we might be sending you back to Toronto and starting again tomorrow.”

A collective groan goes up. The couple on their honeymoon in the row behind me are good-natured about it. The two women beside me less so. The doctor who had been assisting stands in the aisle a few rows ahead, visibly upset. A woman across the aisle pointedly tells the two women where to shove it and to have some respect. The ambulances pull away.

“For now, we’ve got to get you off the plane.”

I strike up a conversation with someone around my age as we filter through the deserted corridors of Orlando Airport toward immigration. We comment on how, logistically, this can’t possibly work – everyone on this plane wouldn’t have a visa to enter the U.S., so they couldn’t officially let us all into the country.

At that time, I hadn’t yet clicked that I was one of those people. It didn’t click until the border guard scanned my passport and passed it off to his colleague, a tall bearded imposing figure. I glanced at my passport clutched in his hand as he marched me toward an unmarked door.

I did have a valid visa for the US. Until I renewed my passport, rendering it useless. “This is because I don’t have an ESTA anymore, right?” I say, trying to ease the growing unease of being escorted anywhere by someone in a uniform.

He doesn’t agree nor disagree. “Don’t worry,” he says, unlocking the door. “You’ve got company.” He gestures me into one of the few remaining seats available and puts my passport behind a desk of guards.

It feels like a scene from a Ruben Östlund film. The small detention room is filled with Europeans in varying states of holiday-ready attire. No one speaks. A toddler is making the rounds while the border guards wave around their guns as they joke with one another.

A guard comes in off his break and stops short, looking around the room.

“Where did all these people come from?” He asks, bewildered.

“Canada.”

“Canada? What are all these people from Canada doing in here?” The subtext is pretty clear.

They detain me for around two hours. All the while, as I watch them call up each person in turn, asking their series of questions, I’m caught between knowing I have done nothing wrong yet feeling like I must have done something very terribly wrong.

“Sign here.” I’m too tired to even look at the document I’m signing. I clutch my emergency visa and newly returned passport as I’m released from the room. The airport is deserted. I have no idea where I’m supposed to go next.

I find a handful of people by the check-in desks. We’re told we’ll be put on an unnumbered, unofficial flight to Costa Rica the next day. Providing the hurricane doesn’t hit first. My stomach says absolutely not. Something in my brain snaps into gear. Within a few hours, I’m in an airport hotel and have a return flight to Toronto for the next day. It’s two in the morning.

I close my eyes and try to sleep, as the wind picks up outside my window. By morning, there are dark clouds overhead and the local news is reporting on pre-hurricane evacuations. All I have to do is get out, before it makes landfall.

I make it back to Toronto on Tuesday evening, just over 24 hours after I’d left. I’ve barely slept. I’ve barely eaten. But that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about how I have a whole week’s worth of holiday from work left. About how I’m going to go crazy sitting in my apartment in Toronto. After everything this summer had thrown at me, I wouldn’t break now. I couldn’t.

The following night, I was on an overnight flight to Iceland. I drifted straight from my flight to the Blue Lagoon where I cured my jet lag by floating in the geothermal pool as a light, icy rain pattered over my head. For the first time in weeks, I exhaled.

I hadn’t planned to end up in Iceland. Yet, Iceland gave me everything it was I needed at that point in my life. The crisp air blowing through my lungs as I stood by the harbour that evening, a rainbow on the horizon and the sun starting to dip to the west, felt like a new beginning.

I’d wanted to go to Costa Rica, to pick up a surfboard again and doze off in the tropical climate. But sometimes, it’s not about what you want – it’s about what you need. And it turns out what I needed was to hike through the land of my ancestors and to eat fermented shark with strangers.

Walking in the footsteps of my ancestors.

Which leaves only one question. With my third failed attempt to get to Costa Rica in the bag (albeit, the first time I’d actually made it onto the flight), was I ever going to make it?

I’ll get back to you on that one.