Red Tricycle is a painting by Nancy Sisco

Honeymoon

 

 

We flew to Iguazu early in the morning, leaving Buenos Aires behind. We were looking forward to our day tour, seeing these magnificent waterfalls on the border between Argentina and Brazil we heard so much about. 

We bought the flight tickets in Santa-Fe in the last week of our stay in Argentina. Santa-Fe, a medium-sized town on the Parana River's shores, was where my parents resided at the time as part of my father's appointment to run the local Jewish school. 

"You cannot leave without seeing the falls," my mother urged. "They are considered one of the biggest in the world, and the butterflies that sit on your hands, wholly unafraid, are fantastic. As proof, she pointed towards a bright blue butterfly mounted and framed in a small wooden frame she brought from her visit there. 

I did not look forward to the bus ride to Buenos Aires, where the flight originated. The bus ride was eight hours long; it crossed the flat pampas dotted with cows and nothing else to look at.

At that time, four weeks into our visit with my parents, the tension between my mother and husband was culminating. I was tired of being put in the middle, so I said, "Sure, Iguazu, here we come." 

We rechecked the tickets that we bought in the small traveling office in Santa-Fe in Buenos Aires, the home office of Aerolíneas Argentinas, just to make sure. They were round trip tickets to Iguazu and back on the same day.

A romantic day with my husband, strolling between cascading waterfalls, surrounded by shimmering butterflies, away from my parents, it finally felt like the honeymoon we had in mind when we planned our trip.  

When the plane landed, my husband said:

"Let's take a minute and find out the exact time of the flight back."

Newly married or not, I learned to respect Chuck's obsession with details; also, South Americans we learned from other incidents had a nonchalant attitude towards time.

We approached the agent in the small booth at the airport entrance, presented our tickets, and asked for the information. 

He gave us a tired look (stupid tourists with their foolish questions), waved his hand in desperation, and declared in Spanish "no hay vuelo."

Even with our lack of Spanish, we got it. We froze, try to argue using our best hand gestures, but he kept repeating, "No flight, no flight,"

Panic-stricken, we found the one cab that was idling outside the tiny airport and asked the driver to take us to the town and the local airline's office. Inside the office, a small room with one counter and another tired clerk, we got a slightly more elaborate explanation in broken English. Our four o'clock flight to Buenos Aires was canceled a year ago. These stupid, lazy agents in the main office should have updated the schedule, but they did not. Every day, people scream at him for no fault of his own. He had enough. With that, he whispered as if sharing a top-secret, "Try to catch the three o'clock, be early and be ready to run." He slammed the half-broken window leaving us standing there wondering what to do next. 

We had a total of four hours to wander and admire the waterfalls with their big attraction, butterflies that are not afraid of people. 

"Nice," my husband said, apparently unimpressed after the second blue butterfly fluttered in the air in front of us. 

"We should grab something to eat and go back to the airport. I am not spending the night here." He declared and added, "If needed, I will be the first person on the landing strip and get us a seat on the damn plane."

I just nodded, thinking about what I will tell my parents in Santa-Fe, who urged us to see this attraction. 

Half an hour later, we stood amongst a big group of raging tourists in the airport, looking at the single, asphalt cracked, airstrip, inching our way to a set of glass doors, our promised release.

"When you see the plane, you run out," my husband delivered the last minute instructions. 

"Don't look back, don't be your usual nice self, this is a war we need to win."

My husband, I learned, tends to be a bit dramatic. Still, his ability to thrive in intense situations was one of the qualities that drew me to him. A minute later, he was gone, and all I could see was the top of his head moving with determination in an unclear direction. He appeared as a man with a plan though I had no idea what the plan was. 

I just stood there looking out of the big glass doors at the black tarmac, shutting off the frustrated passengers' enraged noises that rose around me like a stormy ocean. 

There was a dot out there, a tiny speck that kept moving in our direction, and I kept my eyes on it mesmerized. Someone was moving slowly towards the doors in a slightly crooked line. As it came closer, I closed my eyes with disbelief and then opened them again. It was a kid on a red tricycle driving around and around in circles on the deserted runway. A movement was forming inside me, and before my mind was fully aware of what I was going to do, I felt my hand touch the door handle. A minute later, I was outside running towards the kid.

I heard people screaming, I heard the roaring sound of an airplane over my head, and someone was grabbing my arm, stopping me from my blind sprint along the tarmac. 

"Hey, slow down," it was my husband. 

"Why do you have to be so literal?" He was smiling. 

"You did save the day, though, no doubt about it, as we're now the first in line for the 3:00pm plane."

I looked back, still breathing hard. Behind me, I could see the faces of the other travelers pressed against the glass doors. Further, away the sun augmented the red tricycle rolling towards a door with the sign – Exit. 

The flight back was uneventful. Like the rest of the crowd that had tickets for the unexciting flight, we had to stand in the plane's aisle, stabilizing ourselves by holding onto whatever we found. I leaned against my husband and thought of this honeymoon story that no one will believe years from now. 

The next day in Buenos Aires, we boarded our planned flight to Santiago, Chile. It left on time. As the plane ascended, I could see from my window seat the one tone green Pampas, dotted with black and white cows. 

Years later when I asked my husband about this flight, he remembered the mad rush to the plane, and standing in the aisle all during the flight but he couldn’t recall a kid on a tricycle.