‘Bucolic’ was the term some former resident used to describe Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to a news anchor recently. I don’t know what part he was remembering but this dusty, cactus and iguana-strewn section of Cuba is the most uniformly unlovely piece of land I have ever seen. Then again, it makes sense to have lowered expectations since we’re just renting the place from Castro.

We first flew into the Caribbean Sahara one blustery Friday in February. The military charter flight left from Jacksonville, Florida, at 9:30 in the morning.

There is a strange twist to flying with the Military Airlift Command, (generically known as ‘MAC’ flights). If you don’t have a paid ticket or official orders, your chances of a seat depend on a combination of rank, reason for travel and the date your written request for travel is received and logged in.

            With military Space-A (‘A’ is for Available) travel, you must also check in by Show Time. Wearing a little clown hat and Groucho Marx glasses.

            Since the military has a restricted sense of humor, scratch that last and substitute a valid photo i.d., birth certificate, military i.d., N.R.A. membership card and a notarized statement from your tenth grade Civics teacher attesting to the fact that you do not now, nor have you ever subscribed to Mother Jones, The Nation or The Progressive.

            Show time is at least several hours before flight time. It’s good to be able to accurately budget waiting times. And even more enjoyable to have those extra hours of tension as to whether you’ve made the cut. It’s a status thing and difficult to know if you’ve been bumped for legitimate ‘mission-related’ reasons or because the civilian with the pot belly and grey pony-tail brought bottles of cheap Captain Morgan rum (to stateside terminals) or Krispy Kreme doughnuts (to Cuba) for the Passenger Service workers.

            We made the flight that day because we had tickets and a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call.

In the six years since, we’ve been bumped five times. We learned ways around that. Pay for a seat on Island Hopper Airlines where the pilot assigns seats based on passenger weight, the cabin heater hasn’t worked since 1985 and the windows have duct tape along the inside frames. But there’s no waiting, it always leaves on time, the Danish butter cookies are in the tin in the middle of the aisle all through the flight and Fort Lauderdale is just a distended bladder away. And if you take the flight on to Sarasota, you just may get to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. But that was before 9/11.

Before September 11, 2001, Gitmo had limped along for a few years without a reason for being. A relic of the Spanish-American War from 1898, the area became strategically important in the early 1900’s for aviation activities because of the climate and surrounding water. There was even a balloon station and mooring mast until aeronautical engineers discovered a connection between limp blimps and mosquitoes with comically high voices.

During the Second World War, the base was formally established as a Naval Air Station and used as a transit point for convoys. The isolated location turned Gitmo into the World’s Most Exclusive Pit Stop.