We booked flights from SFO to Havana by way of Mexico courtesy of AeroMexico. While we experienced some hiccups with the ticketing, AeroMexico stood up to provide a complete product and make the travel a success. One hiccup was AeroMexico losing, in their computers, my flight from Mexico City to Havana and taking three employees about an hour to figure out what to do about it. Then due to the major conflagration in Havana, called Havana Airport, this delayed our return flight several hours and caused us to miss our connecting flight home to SFO. But AeroMexico put us up in a hotel and fed us, making sure we eventually got home the following day.
Overall, the Havana Airport would prove to be the biggest challenge of the trip for me. Hours of delay due to inefficiencies around the operations led to a whole lot of consternation. Arriving to Havana, the operational issues were getting our luggage FOUR hours after arriving. Apparently it is a systemic issue that usually only last TWO hours. Departing from Havana, we verified the TWO hour systemic delay period as our plane had to wait on the tarmac for that time period as ONE guy offloaded and loaded the luggage. He did have several managers with clipboards who would occasionally show up to check on him. Upon arrival to Havana, we did have an additional delay as Keith was sent through customs one more time for having declared on the Cuban customs form that he was bringing in crayons. I think it was more a case of the bureaucrats not knowing what crayons were and classically just wanting to cover their butts. But after waiting another hour after having made it through security myself, I almost got myself arrested as I insisted on speaking to the boss and threatening to make a public spectacle of it all.
I got the wild idea to buy 44 baseball mits and 96 baseballs, and give them to the little boys in Cuba. Afterall, baseball, or la pelota, is the national sport for Cuba. My original plan was to find orphanages to donate the gear or find churches to do so. Both of those ideas fell by the wayside as these two places were difficult to find. So I just gave them away to the occasional kid I would find on the street. That experience turned out to be the best part of the trip for me as I was fortunate to receive genuine gratitude from these young kids with very little.
The food was exceptional in Cuba! Keith and I would describe our experience as 'eating our way through Cuba.' While we did pay NYC prices for food, we definitely enjoyed ourselves. Lots of seafood (and meat), the food had very Spanish roots. Paella, flan, enchilado sauce, plantains, shrimp, fish, pork, and rice/beans. Diversity in food came in the form of spaghetti or pizza, fairly typical in Latin countries.
For all the costs of the tour, it was nice to be driven around in a 1957 Chevy with a beautiful Latina guide. We didn't worry ourselves over anything as both the driver and guide provided us with attentive service. Plus we learned a lot about Cuba, historically and today. For all the negative views of America imperialistic treatment of Cuba, young Cubans could not wait to find someway to escape the country. We discovered that the biggest driver of Cuba opening itself up to world tourism was for it to find additional means of bringing in money to an economically struggling place.
All in all, it was a good trip and fun to share with Keith.
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