The first time I bought booze abroad cured me from ever wanting to do it again.
I’d been sailing out of Tortola in the Virgin Islands, and during a week of sunsets and steel bands I developed a particular fondness for the local rum. It’s called Pusser’s, and it lays claim to having been the official rum of the British Navy back in the days of wooden ships, which makes for a nice sales pitch if you put aside the fact that the British Navy bought vast quantities of rum from everywhere rum was made and that the officers who bought that rum favored wine and port for themselves and did not have a high regard for the palates of the ordinary seamen whom they kept more or less sedated by administering the daily tot of rum. (And the sailors didn’t want the rum until the supply of beer ran out. They got a gallon of beer a day.)
But I digress, for I’m writing about airports, not naval history. Anyway, I had four half-gallons of Pusser’s packed in an appropriate cardboard carton, and it wasn’t until we were airborne in the puddle hopper flying from Tortola to San Juan that I recognized that the strong aroma of rum was not being carried on the breath of anyone present on the plane. No, one of the bottles was leaking, a fact confirmed when I noticed a fairly steady drip from the overhead compartment.
Rum was running down my arm like light syrup by the time I’d lugged the box across the tarmac and into the U.S. Customs arrival area.
The place was a fetid sauna. The lines stretched to South America and moved with the speed of continental drift. The only good thing that could be said of smelling like a distillery was that my odor of rum overwhelmed the sweaty stink of the crowd, which grew surly as the wait passed the half-hour mark.
Suffice to say, I made no new friends in that line and came close to losing a few old ones.
When finally I cleared the customs officer — “Yes, sir, that’s rum you smell” — I headed right for the men’s room to open the carton and discard the cracked bottle. My girlfriend, who had been patient throughout the comedy, met me just outside with the cheery news that the airport women’s room had been closed by a broken pipe. Her only option, she’d been told, was to use the men’s room.
This men’s room was big enough to serve the entire airport, and, if it had any virtue at that particular moment, it was that the smell of rum had overcome the smell of stale urine. For five minutes I stood outside the entrance waving my arms like a windmill on amphetamines, begging men and boys alike to stand clear while my girlfriend made use of the place.
Those memories of San Juan Airport lasted longer than either the rum or the girlfriend.
So it is with particular personal delight that I inform you that the hellhole San Juan Airport — unair-conditioned and without a single quality to recommend it — is no more.
You will recognize the new San Juan Airport, not because it in any way resembles the old one but because it is virtually identical to every other modern airport in America.
And you most likely will have the opportunity to make that comparison if you intend to visit the Caribbean this winter, because San Juan’s claim to being the “gateway to the Caribbean” has become even more pronounced as American Airlines has solidified its dominance of air travel in the region. The final piece of the new airport, which has been under renovation for about nine years, was nearing completion when I passed through a few months ago. The ribbon-cutting for terminal C, the new American Airlines beehive, was on Oct. 31.
American has been serving the Caribbean for 25 years, and after the failure of the region’s top U.S. carrier — Eastern Airlines — American took charge.
Along with its little brother, American Eagle, the airline says it now carries more than 7 million passengers each year, with service to 34 Caribbean islands. The majority of those passengers fly through San Juan.
A simple illustration of American’s dominance is evidenced in the new airport, where about 50 ticket windows bear the American logo. No other airline has more than a half-dozen windows. Close to 60 percent of the 9.7 million passengers expected to pass through here this year will fly American.
American says it pumped about $220 million into the San Juan facility, and it appears that investment has its privileges. American has its own terminal and its own customs clearing area.
My American flight from Grenada a few months ago arrived within minutes of big jetliners coming in from St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic.
This time I approached customs burdened by a 2-year-old who, I think, is similar in weight to about two gallons of rum, but the miracle properties of modern diapers rendered him dripless. Nonetheless, I was eager to give customs its due as rapidly as possible, particularly because I wanted to rid myself of the company of two sun-roasted matrons from Philadelphia who had been snarling at the least hint of inconvenience ever since Grenada.
The mob scene in the customs hall sent them into spasms of twitching from which recovery seemed at best a remote chance.
But the line moved with astonishing speed. And in cool, air-conditioned comfort. Where once the luggage of almost everyone required close scrutiny, now only a random few people were singled out, and they needed only to put their bags through an X-ray machine rather than open them for inspection.
I was silently rooting for my unhappy fellow Philadelphians to get the hook, but it appeared that only those carrying very large bags or suspicious 2-year-olds were pulled out of the fast lane.
Several hundred passengers managed to shuffle through customs in just a few minutes. And just beyond the gate, American Airlines service people waited to relieve us of our checked bags so that we could continue unencumbered.
Then, in keeping with the sense of strict security evident elsewhere in the airport, the arriving passengers were required to pass through a metal detector before entering the main terminal.
The terminal has a variety of restaurants, at least a couple of bars, and a whole lot of bathrooms. It even has an off-track betting parlor. It has a lots of gift shops if you need to pick up something cute for the folks back home. And, if you’re more daring or stupid than I am, they even sell rum.
