Stranded!

[Deleted]

Have you ever been stranded somewhere? No flights, no buses, terrible weather, all transportation cancelled? Or maybe because all of your stuff was stolen or you were hospitalized in a strange country?

I'm sure there are some stories worth telling.

[bixaorellana]

I've been stranded, but no really good stories. I was stuck in the tiny airport in Wichita, Kansas because of a blizzard. My fellow strandees were the Olympia Brass Band.

Also couldn't get out of Chilpancingo, Guerrero because -- as far as I can figure -- it was Sunday and it was raining. After traipsing back and forth across the street between the 1st & 2nd class bus stations, I finally just went to Taxco even though I wanted to go to Telpancingo.

[tillystar]

I was nearly stranded twice, but both times on Greek islands and both times saved by lovely people who have no fear of driving very fast on curvy roads!

On the Greek island of Ios my friend and I were reclining on hammocks after a hard day at the beach with a cold beer in hand. Our ferry back to Crete was at midnight and so we had plenty of time to get back to our tent and pack up. We were chatting to the bar owner and telling him that we were leaving and were catching the midnight ferry back to Crete to pick up our plane. He looked panicked for us and said his borther was a ferry driver and had told him that there was a storm coming in and the last ferry for the next 48 hours was due to leave in an hour. This would have meant we would have missed our plane and been well and truely stuck a we had no credit cards or any other means of replacing our tickets.

We looked at the bright blue sky and laughed at him but he was very serious and finally we bleived him and he insisted on driving us to our campsite, he helped us pack up our tent and then drove us across to the ferry port on the other side of the island at break neck speed to catch our ferry literally seconds before the doors closed! We got on the ferry and realised we had been in such a rush we hadn't even paid our bar bill... We wrote to him and thanked him but never heard back. If I am ever back there I owe that man one big drink!

[tillystar]

The second Greek island adventure was only a few years ago. Mr Star and I had a very quiet relaxing holiday in Lefkas, but the final night we got chatting to a guy who ran the bar we were in after dinner and ended up drinking and drinking and chatting and chatting until the wee hours.

We suddenly realised it was 5am and we had to leave for the airport at 9am that morning so had to leave. We went outside and realised that there was a terrible storm, this we hadn't noticed in the basement bar! It was hammering it down with rain and blowing a gale and the town was deserted at that time, not a taxi in sight. We walked about an hour soaking wet in our summer clothes to get back to our apartment where we discovered we had left the keys in bar!

We had the hire car keys in my bag so soaking wet got into the car and fell asleep...putting the keys in the ignition for a bit of warmth before we nodded off. We woke up with the sun streaming in and saw that cleaning lady was going through the apartments and so asked her to let us in. It was 8.30am and we should be leaving in half an hour, but it was OK we ran around and threw everything in our suit cases and jumped in the car on time as planned.

Only to find the car was dead. No battery whatsoever. Mr Star had knocked the lights with his knees on when we fell asleep in the car and had killed it.

Our apartments were in the middle of nowhere and we couldn't get the car to start. Luckily the apartment owner had popped in and saw us panicking and offered to drive us to the airport. He was a lovely man and found it hilarious! He was saying that all week we hadn't needed any help or contacted him and that that never happens and he had bee surprised but he was pleased we had been saving it for the end. His wife worked in air traffic control so as he drove like a maniac round tiny roads he kept calling his wife for updates on the planes which had been delayed.

He got us there just on time and as he knew people in the airport persuaded them to let us on even though check-in time was past. He also knew the people in the car hire booth and smoothed it over and arranged for pick-up of our car with no extra charges.

He and his wife were from the UK and on the journey to the airport he had been talling us the little things he missed about home, mainly Christmas related things. It was October so a month later we sent him and his wife a big parcel of Christmas pudding, brandy butter, mince pies, and of course marmite - etc etc.

What a man!

[Deleted]

I have often not been able to board flights that I wanted, but that’s all part of the game when you are an airline employee flying standby. So I have spent unexpected nights in a myriad of places ranging from Tahiti to Cleveland and from Toronto to Karachi.

However, on the memorable trip when I took my mother halfway around the world, it was in India where we had problems. Between the time I had started preparing this excursion and the time that our trip took place, India had suddenly eliminated its visa exemptions and was requiring visas from all visitors. So we were refused entry into the country in Bombay, where we had arrived late one afternoon.

I would have felt very ignorant, except that there was a whole refugee camp of would-be tourists trapped in the transit zone for the same reason, many of whom had cheap non-exchangeable tickets that were suddenly worthless and no money to buy a new one. There were Brazilians and Swiss and Americans and Australians, and we heard all of their stories because they needed to talk to somebody new. The airport was rather tattered in those days; some of the duty free shops were abandoned. On an old filthy carpet in one of the shopfronts, there was an elderly couple sleeping on plastic bags. “You see them? They’ve been here for 4 days and are trying to get to New York.”

I negotiated with representatives of my airline, and they said that we would be allowed into the city for 48 hours if we left our passports with the authorities. This sounded pretty good to me, but my mother refused because she only had one passport and was not about to abandon it anywhere (I had two!). So I asked to borrow a current copy of the OAG World Airways Guide which lists every scheduled flight in the world and closely examined the Bombay pages to see how the hell we could get out of there as quickly as possible. One of the good things about having standby airline employee tickets is that they can be quite flexible if you can find a sympathetic ear. I finally unearthed a promising flight – British Airways to Hong Kong coming through around 5 a.m.

“Is there a British Airways representative that I can talk to? I need to know if they will accept these tickets and if there are seats on the flight.”

“Oh, they won’t come on duty here until 2 a.m., but I will take your tickets and ask at the main airport office. I will come back soon.”

I wasn’t too thrilled about giving up the tickets, but it was indeed an employee of my company, so it seemed worth taking the risk.
That was a truly endless night. I kept my eyes riveted on the employee security passage, hoping to see the familiar uniform return, but the hours passed and nobody ever showed up. We ate a few shitty snacks, but the whole terminal stank and the air conditioning was on its last legs, just blowing muggy air around us, but not hard enough to keep the mosquitoes off. I would walk over to the glass partition and crane my neck to see if I could attract anybody’s attention but I had clearly become invisible.

At one time my mother went to the restroom and came back with a weird expression. “Don’t go to the toilet if you can hold it,” she said. “I think they’ve been playing basketball with used sanitary napkins in the ladies’ room.” Naturally I had to go and see the men’s room for myself, but there was nothing disgusting about it. This is often the case in many of these places – all of the cleaning staff were men, so they almost never got a chance to clean the women’s toilets. I’ve seen this in Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf countries also – the men’s restrooms are spotless and cleaned constantly by a plethora of staff while the women’s place is cleaned perhaps once every 24 hours.

I kept staring at the doorway through which our tickets had disappeared although every now and then I would drift off to sleep. We had been up since about 5 a.m. that day and had already taken a 5 or 6 hour flight. But at one moment in the middle of the night I opened my eyes and saw a cleaning man looking around, maybe 50 meters away, holding some tickets whose color scheme I recognized instantly. I was by his side in 2 seconds. “Yes, yes, these are mine!” I told him. “Will British Airways accept them?” He didn’t speak English but he gave me the tickets.

The other refugees would emerge from slumber from time to time and then go back to sleep. They saw no reason for such agitation, because for some of them their only hope for a flight was in another 48 hours or so. A lot of places didn’t have daily flights!

Perhaps an hour later the British Airways counter in the transit zone finally opened, and our names were actually on a list in their possession, so the first employee had indeed done something. They collected the coupons and gave us boarding passes. Hallelujah.

We never even felt the plane leave the boarding gate or take off, because we were fast asleep. The flight attendants woke us for breakfast, though, and after the night we had spent, that was one of the best breakfasts that I have ever eaten.

I did feel a tinge of regret for the other refugees, though, who were probably wondering how we had managed to escape after just one night while they were trapped indefinitely.

[Deleted]

That pales any stranded airport story I've ever experienced. I love your mother's sense of humor with the bathroom situation.
Tilly, I love your Greek Island tales that you tell. Do you have any pics from these trips you so wonderfully describe? Would love to see and vicariously transport myself there.

[bixaorellana]

Aiiiieeee, Kerouac! Even though I knew you'd gotten out of that situation, since you're writing about it here, reading about it made my stomach knot with anxiety. I imagine you all wanted to kiss the threshold of the British Airways plane.

Tilly ~~ your goodness must show through wherever you go, or you have a particularly powerful guardian angel!
Both of your saviors were so kind and willing to go out of their way -- you certainly wouldn't have made it otherwise. I think even now the echo of the woeful cursing that must have issued from that rental car at 8:30 in the morning can still be heard!

[tillystar]

Tilly ~~ your goodness must show through wherever you go, or you have a particularly powerful guardian angel!

Or I just do a really pitiful panic face