Our last day in Morocco was greeted with the news that one of our number had contracted Covid. Some hasty testing increased that number to two. Tearful farewell embraces were abruptly replaced with vague expressions of good will shouted at each other from opposite ends of the largest rooms we could find. The hotel staff got quite annoyed when I lit a purification fire in the lobby but I’m sure they’ll appreciate it in the long run.
One by one those of us who could feign good health slunk off towards the airport or other means of egress from the country. My own flight wasn’t due to leave until late afternoon but a warning from an early leaver that the airport was crowded prompted me to bring my departure forward.
As it turned out when I arrived at the airport in the early afternoon I was pretty much the only person there. The security guards intercepted me not because I was being suspicious but because they had nobody else to talk to. After some polite chit chat I was graciously permitted to check in. Which is when I discovered my flight had been delayed by fifty minutes. This was a concern as I had a connecting flight in Lisbon only about an hour or so later.
I needn’t have worried. TAP Air Portugal put me down on the runway at Lisbon with fifteen minutes to spare and then the plane taxied so far away from the building I suspect we were halfway back to Marrakech. Despite this and a slight security glitch I managed to hurl myself onto my connecting flight about thirty seconds before they locked the doors in my face.
I spent the entire flight in a state of mild panic about my luggage. Surely they hadn’t had time to transfer that from one plane to another. It turns out they had and by 10.30 in the evening I was standing outside Heathrow wondering why it was so cold. After a couple of false starts I found my hotel and settled in for a few hours sleep. The next day I would fly to Gibraltar.
Or would I? While sitting at the departure gate waiting for my aircraft to be rubbed down and readied for service an announcement came that there was the possibility that the plane wouldn’t be going to Gibraltar at all. Gibraltar airport isn’t exactly huge and if the wind was problematic then we would divert to Malaga instead. I hastily googled Malaga to find out where the hell that was. It seemed to be a discouraging distance from Gibraltar.
Fortunately when I was onboard the plane the captain spoke reassuringly from the cockpit. We were definitely going to Gibraltar, the announcement had been a bit alarmist. The wind was an issue but he was confident of putting us on the ground at Gibraltar. This assurance kept me calm and happy right until the last moment of landing when the pilot slammed on the power and headed us skyward again. Turns out the wind was a bit trickier than anticipated.
We would wait a little the captain announced and try again. If he couldn’t put the plane on the ground this time we would indeed have to head for Malaga. Fortunately for his reputation the pilot did indeed manage to put the plane on the runway at the second time of asking with enough of a bang to assure us that he had been serious about the difficulties.
Customs and security at Gibraltar can best be described as light touch and soon I was waiting for a taxi to take me to a small cruise liner now doing service as a hotel. Ahead of me not one but two separate people were having difficulties persuading the concierges to give them rooms without apparently having booked or paid for any such thing. I made it past the front desk in about thirty seconds and settled down for a brief stay in Gibraltar.
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