There's not much to say about 24 hours of travel tedium: 2 hours delay in Melbourne, 13 hours to Los Angeles, 4 hours wait there then 5&1/2 hours to Montreal - where it all came unglued.
We had 20 minutes to go through immigration into Canada, pick up the baggage (miraculously there and early off the carousel) then customs before connecting to Halifax. Can't be done! So we joined the anxious throng at Air Canada's desk and found that they put us up at the Hilton with a voucher for dinner and breakfast and a flight next morning. All power to Air Canada!
We emerged from the airport to a cold rainy night and a wait for the hotel shuttle enlivened by a party of hunters aged 30 - 40, dressed head to toe in camouflage, fawn printed with twining thorn branches with matching luggage. Each of them had at least 4 pieces, piled high on luggage carts and topped off with locked gun boxes. One saw me staring and said "Hullo ma'am" which I took to be an invitation to ask where they were going. But they had been - 2 plane rides away - "out back in the bush" hunting caribou. They are allowed to shoot 2 each and got the last one at the last possible moment of daylight - "that was up to me". There were 7 hunters but in noise and sheer good spirits of a successful hunt they seemed like 20.
We took a taxi.
No comments:
Post a Comment