We tour the area, and visit Paradise Island. Here's the beach.
Not too bad. It is the Caribbean after all!
We go to the airport 2 hours ahead of departure time, buy the Cubana tickets at $201 each round trip, and my baggage is rapidly checked and whisked away with my passport inside. Oops! I am shuttled into a secure area and retrieve my passport under the disapproving eyes of a pair of Bahamian customs agents. We finish the formalities and are issued our boarding passes.
Probably fearing lack of access to junk food in embargoed Cuba, I grab a bag of Crunch 'n' Munch and some Lipton iced tea from the airport convenience store, and we sit down to wait for boarding time. We watch out the window as a crew prepares a pretty nice looking plane for flight, suspecting it might be ours. 45 minutes later, a Cubana plane lands and rolls over near our gate, and passengers disembark and go into the terminal. That's our plane, and it looks like its last coat of fresh paint was applied sometime in the 60's.
A little later we're called to go out to the plane, and we end up standing on tarmac what feels like 100 degrees F, in direct sunlight while something happens inside the plane. Eventually we get up the stairs and into the plane, and go back to our seats. The takeoff and flight are as normal as can be expected for a 40 year old aircraft being maintained by an embargoed country, except for a large amount of fog coming from some vents in the floor. Odd, but apparently harmless.
One of the passengers is having a grand old time, having had plenty to drink before boarding, and having plenty more during the flight. I believe he's Mexican, though why he would be coming from the Bahamas to Havana I don't know. When we get near Cuba, we're told in Spanish that due to weather we're landing in Veradero instead of Havana. That's 2 hours away by car and no one, including the flight attendant, is sure how we're getting from one city to the other.
After disembarking into another 100 degree afternoon and boarding an unairconditioned bus, we wait a long time while the now sick Mexican reveler takes care of business in the airplane's bathroom. Eventually we pull away, leaving him behind with Cuban authorities, and drive 100 yards to the terminal where we get out of the bus and go up into the international departure lounge.
We're finally led to understand we're just sitting out some bad weather Havana is having, and should be able to get back aboard and fly there after an hour or two. After sizing up the situation and being rather hungry, I grab a chicken sandwich and some water and rapidly chow my way through my first Cuban meal. The chicken wasn't all that great ("dark" meat closer to black or green, and some pieces unchewable), and the onions weren't what I expected, but overall it wasn't so bad. After an hour with lots of smokers in the airport we're rounded up and sent to wait in front of a gate with a hired 3 piece band playing "aren't you happy to be in Cuba" songs. We go through and take the 100 yard bus ride to the airplane and get back onboard, this time without the one man party going on across the aisle.
After a short flight with more odd fog coming through the vents, we reach Havana and go through immigration and customs quickly and with no problems. We take a taxi to the hotel, which is a 30 minute scenic drive for $12 or so.
We check in and are given our hotel cards, which will substitute for ID while in town so we don't have to carry our passports with us everywhere. The room turns out to be very nice.
It has very high ceilings, solid wood furniture, lots of closet space, a built-in safe, its own window-unit air conditioner, and double beds. Hmm. I push the two beds together, but they don't really make one big bed that way. The only other bad thing about the hotel is the funny smell the air conditioner makes. For some reason when we have it on, there is a weird Havana exhaust smell in the room. I never figure out why, though I do notice a similar weird smell from another air conditioner once.
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