El­sa Wrench

Sleep­ing bag. Check. Snake re­pel­lent. Check. Wa­ter­proof pouch for match­es. Check. Ster­il­is­ing wa­ter tablets. Check.Stop dis­tract­ing me. Can't you see I am mak­ing my sur­vival list for my im­mi­nent trip to the Ama­zon jun­gle? I have the next ten years in which to make the trip but why wait.This trip is nec­es­sary in or­der to jus­ti­fy the $300 spent on a yel­low fever vac­cine which has no pur­pose un­less I make it to the wilds of South Amer­i­ca or Africa. I got a vac­cine by vaps and I feel a sense of ad­ven­ture as a re­sult.

It all hap­pened a few weeks ago when I was try­ing to get to Ba­hamas. Not the most orig­i­nal idea I had de­vel­oped late­ly but du­ty called. Opin­ion­istas are in high de­mand re­gion­al­ly.So there I was, all sleep-de­prived (but still rock­ing the span­gled bal­let flats) at the air­port more than two hours be­fore the 6.35 am de­par­ture. First, the check-in agent couldn't find my name in her lit­tle com­put­er; then af­ter she found it, she de­cid­ed, mis­tak­en­ly, that the tick­et had not been paid for.Small thing com­pared to what lay ahead. "Do you have your vac­ci­na­tion card?'' she asked, much too perk­i­ly for that hour of the morn­ing.

My what? News flash: trav­ellers can't en­ter the Ba­hamas with­out a vac­ci­na­tion for yel­low fever. The pol­i­cy had "al­ways been there," the agent in­formed me, but was be­ing en­forced since Feb­ru­ary. Yel­low fever is a nasty busi­ness which roasts the kid­neys and heart.I was turned away, drag­ging my re­ject­ed suit­case be­hind me like a sad pup­py.The long and short of it is that an­oth­er check-in agent took pity on me, and put me on a much lat­er stand-by flight; I got the wretched vac­cine (owwww!) and made it to Nas­sau–af­ter bare­ly catch­ing the last con­nect­ing flight in Mi­a­mi. I am talk­ing hi­jack­ing a golf cart and los­ing a few tail feath­ers as I tor­pe­doed my body through the clos­ing doors.

When I got to Nas­sau, did any­body at im­mi­gra­tion ask me for a vac­ci­na­tion card? Was there a sin­gle poster warn­ing pas­sen­gers that they need­ed the vac­cine? Take win, if you an­swered no, hell, no.Worse, oth­er pas­sen­gers who had en­coun­tered the se­cret pol­i­cy at the Pi­ar­co check-in counter had got on their flights with­out any vac­ci­na­tion. How? Brace your­self. This idea is so rev­o­lu­tion­ary, you might choke on it. The check-in agent used a tele­phone! To call the Ba­hamas au­thor­i­ties, who said no such vac­ci­na­tion was nec­es­sary.On­ly Ms Perky seemed to know about the in­vis­i­ble threat. When I had asked that a call be made, and a fel­low trav­eller even of­fered a cell phone for the task, I was told noth­ing could be done, that the pol­i­cy was cast in con­crete. On­ly af­ter my book­ing had been can­celled did an­oth­er check-in agent, who had been glanc­ing sur­rep­ti­tious­ly at her col­league, men­tion that she had sent through two non-vac­ci­nat­ed pas­sen­gers af­ter call­ing the Ba­hamas. Gr­rrrr!

Couldn't she have told Ms Perky that be­fore I got creamed?I have sent a strong­ly word­ed let­ter to the air­line–not Caribbean Air­lines, by the way–con­tain­ing the words "shocked'' "ap­palled" and "trau­mat­ic''. No doubt my free life­time trav­el pass is in the mail.I have al­so asked these ge­nius­es in the air trav­el busi­ness to do me a favour while they are ad­dress­ing their minds to my com­pen­sa­tion. Could some­one solve the fol­low­ing puz­zle: how is it that for the long week­end I could have flown to Mi­a­mi for US$396 and ar­rived there in four hours but fly­ing to Bar­ba­dos would have cost me US$683, ten hours and a ner­vous break­down?

Share your trav­el or oth­er dilem­mas with El­sa at wrenchel­sa@hot­mail.com