Farewell To Cuba

A long transit day that didn't finish till midnight. Had our last breakfast on the rooftop, chased away the inevitable cat from around your table (there are several in every hotel, eatery, restaurant ....) and walked down to the riverfront to kill a little time before our taxi arrived.

Eventually got to the airport in our clapped out Chinese taxi in plenty of time - I'm pretty sure that the manual recommends that all 4 spark plugs be fitted, but whatever - and waited for the check in line to open.

We thought that we'd do our usual trick of getting through customs and immigration, then spend our last currency having some lunch. Not so easy. Went to take my sandals off at security, as they always set the alarms off, but they were indignant. 'No, no, no', they said. 'Si, si, si', I said. 'No, no, no', they said. 'Beep, beep, beep', said Mandy in her best Spanish. 'No, no, no'. So I left my sandals on, and went through through the gate. 'Beep, beep, beep', went the gate, so I got the full frisking, wanding and pat down.

Finally got through, and made a detour through the duty free shack to see what we could spend out last few pesos on, but in typical Cuban fashion there were hardly any prices on anything. So we moved on to lunch. Well, we would have moved on to lunch had there been any. You could buy half a dozen types of beers, and kiosks full of hard liquor, but the airport had no food to sell. Spotted an ice cream fridge, and got very excited, but it was empty too. Found a sign to a downstairs cafe. That's where the food must be! But it was a mirage. The cafe didn't actually exist, and the one little upstairs food kiosk had empty shelves.

So we returned to the duty free shack. One lady with a calculator. It's the only time I've had lunch from a duty free store. A tin of Pringles, a packet of Oreos and a Mars Bar. Stretched the lady with the calculator somewhat. She added together 4 numbers, then multiplied the total by a random number, and gave me some change that didn't add up to anything anyway. Still, it ensured that we didn't have any left over Pesos.

Wandered over to our gate, but inevitably there wasn't any air-conditioning in the terminal. There had been air-conditioning where the locals were working down in duty free, but several hundred tourists waiting hours for their flight were in no need of similar coddling. Two hours later and a tin of Pringles lighter, with sweat running down our shirts, we finally boarded our flight, and watched out the window as they attempted to load our bags.

Think I've found the reason it took two hours to unload our bags when we arrived. The guys can drop the bags from the plane onto the tarmac fast enough, but there is only one tug to carry the luggage from the plane to the terminal (or the terminal to the plane), and only one driver who seems to be authorised to drive the tug and shift the conveyor belt. So he drives up, runs over to the conveyor truck, positions it, then runs back to the tug, and positions that at the end of the belt, then the four unloaders who have been standing around can start their job. When the truck is full (and there's only one tray), everything stops while the driver takes it all back to the terminal and returns. Now try doing that with three large aircraft arriving one after another, then reverse the process to load up the return flights, and you can see why the arrivals hall is chock full of sweaty travellers.

It rather sums up Cuba. Horribly inefficient, and lacks the basics, but you'd happily stand around in an airless hall for hours to experience it all, cos it's brilliant, and unique, and memorable, and unspoilt. The one intractable problem is that there are no ATMs and no cards accepted. So you have to bring cash and stand outside a bank for hours to convert it. The real issue with that is that once your cash is exhausted, you have no options. You can't transfer more in any fashion. Tour guides have endless stories of tourists being taken to embassies to arrange money to be wired to them, and this stops you from purchasing things like tours or souvenirs that you otherwise might. Left over Cuban pesos are dead money, so you don't change more than you have to. If they could solve that, tourists would spend more, and everybody would be happy.

Anyway, we are now back in homogenised Mexico, and missing Cuba already. After a very long wait at immigration, our bags were sitting on the floor waiting for us so customs didn't take very long. However, we were directed to check-in rather than transfers, so we had to go through the whole 'queue to check your bags in' thing all over again for our next leg.

Finally airside again (I was allowed to take my sandals off, but I also had to produce my phone for individual scanning), I was like a kid in a candy store trying to decide what to have for tea at the food court. There were sugar free drinks, three cake shops and a donut shop - what do you mean I have to eat my vegetables first?

Our flight to Villahermosa was in a little Embraer jet, and we were bussed out to it, so by the time the bus shuttled back and forwards a bit, we left rather late. However, we arrived on time and, being a domestic flight for once, everything was sorted very quickly. So now we've finally crashed in our hotel room trying to recover to start over again tomorrow.

Mandy also keeps a diary, and I often check my facts with her, but I've just ready her entry for today in case I'd forgotten anything, and it says (I quote) "G had to have do inch so we just aid it". If anybody has the foggiest what that means, please let me know so I can include it.