Mesoamerica 2019 - Day Five, Traveling To Cuba

Transit day

We are flying from Guadalajara to the terra incognita of Havana, Cuba. As I write these words I have to laugh because only 4 days ago going to Guadalajara was terra incognita. It has been rather amazing how rapidly I grew to feeling very comfortable being in Mexico. Now of course one should be careful about extrapolating from visiting one city (remember the difference between our experience in Istanbul versus our experience in the agricultural country south of Izmir on the Aegean Coast. I will go into this in much more detail during my usual meeting post-mortem.

So today was almost exclusively traveling. We’d reserved an Uber to take us to the airport which was right on schedule. I had left plenty of time as is my custom (to the frustration of many a family member over the years) but today was measure of exactly why. Guadalajara airport was crazy. Why I have no idea. It took a long time to figure out where our airline was and what was the right line in the airport. Security wasn’t bad but by the time we were all through we had eaten up a lot of our time. We bought some breakfast sandwiches from a US chain (by far the most expensive meal in Mexico to this point!) and they took forever to fill the order leaving us with just minutes to gobble down the meal and make our flight…which of course did not board anywhere near the time they said it would.

We are flying InterJet, a Mexican based discount airline. While the boarding process is a bit mysterious, they are flying Airbus 321’s with plenty of legroom which was nice. In Mexico City we had another ‘use up all our time’ moment because the distance between gates was huge. Then a long wait while an arcane system of boarding ensued. I am sure there is a system but for we foreign language speakers it was hard to figure out. Once on board, there was a Cuban couple that clearly had not done much if any flying before. They were separated so Wife gave up her center seat to one of had an isle seats so the two could sit together…next to me.

What ensued next could have been a comedy skit. They had all these issues with their carry-on bag, fumbling around with it, getting this out and putting that back in…all while the plane is taxiing and it is supposed to be under the seat. The guy, a tall dude who is in the center seat, is moving around with no regard to where his body and his elbows are flying by my face. He can’t figure out how to secure his seat belt which I help him with. The woman talks on her cell phone during takeoff, the back is still on their lap as they are fiddling around with it. I was trying to be very Zen and understanding that these were folk out of their experiential zone.

When we got to Havana, we had issues with customs. You were supposed to fill out a form but it was not clear that you were to do so. AND my transit tag came off my bag (a first in a life time of travel!) which evidently sent the last gatekeeper of customs into fits. So we fiddled around with getting the form and screening my bag so they would let us out.

A brief observation on Havana airport immigration and customs personnel. Most are women, young women, attractive young women. They are all wearing these very military style outfits of a sort of olive brown, with tight skirts and crazy patterned black nylons and high heels. Just a bit surreal.

We met our driver/guide for the next 6 days, Livan.  We drove into Havana and our room at the bed and breakfast type place we are staying at. Wife had a bad night coughing and we don’t even feel like going out. Internet here will be a real challenge. There are only a few hot spots so I do not think we will do any picture posting until we get back to Mexico or the US.

The adventure moves on!