It was a moving experience to fly over the archipelago again. I was exhausted from leaving Mexico, from all my half-endings, from the layover in Bogotá. After an hour and a half in the air, I felt the shift of the initial descent, and green streaks appeared in the dark blue expanse. I closed my eyes and started to imagine my body immersed in salt water. Soon the southeast cays appeared. From above – I didn’t remember, or maybe I’d never noticed – they form an enormous butterfly edged with the white foam of waves breaking against the reef. The plane veers to the right, descends a little lower, and something incredible emerges from the clouds: the famous seahorse, surrendered to its element, outlined by the coast of rocks and beaches. The island looks like a tiny animal, a sailor, a piece of this archipelago and its fantastical coincidences. It’s so tiny. The plane cruises along the eastern part, over the ocean, until it touches down and brakes immediately on the short runway of the northern tip. The passengers applauded the landing that day: they’d reached paradise at last. Although, flanking the runway on both sides, the little brick houses look flayed, the streets dusty and exposed. When the doors opened, I was hit by that singular smell: salt, coconut, the fishy whiff of a fresh catch. I grumbled: would we still have to take the stairs off the plane, stumbling around with our carry-ons? I glanced to my right, to the house of triangular roofs that is the airport. Both boarding bridges hung flaccid from the shoddily painted building. I felt a surge of irritation. Then I looked in front of me and saw the canoes and motorboats stationed beyond the little fishermen’s wharf, the road past the end of the runway, and Johnny Cay, the islet, which looked enormous to me, as if it had drifted closer to San Andrés. I forgot my annoyance and stared out at the wheeling seagulls and frigatebirds. I was soon flooded with a sense of gratitude so fierce I nearly wept. Two more planes released their passengers onto the unmarked platform. Three men clumsily lowered a wheelchair-bound old woman down the staircase of an Airbus operated by an airline I didn’t recognise.

After I walked down the ramp and overtook the Colombian tourists using selfie sticks to capture themselves with the plane in the background, the tall woman choreographing new arrivals invited me to join the queue of passengers from the previous flight. I attempted a smile that was more like a flippant grimace and kept inching my way towards the cubicle where residents and Raizals are registered.