Take us to Cuba

Sunday 24th March 2007
A travel day today, three flights in all, but quite relaxed and easy – no real delays and all airports ok and fairly helpful. Of course, there was not a chance of the didge getting on as hand luggage at LA, so it went in the hold, marked ‘fragile’ which gave us a good laugh as we saw the luggage handlers throwing suitcases onto the truck when we arrived in Cancun. We’d flown via Dallas, with just about an hour stopover there and arrived in Cancun with four hours to kill but it passed quickly enough. I think we’ve just learnt to be patient with travel after all these flights. The flight from Cancun to Havana was by Click Mexicana – Mexicana is the national airline of Mexico and ‘Click’ is their budget option so we weren’t expecting much. We were pleasantly surprised. It was an old plane, but with lovely, roomy leather seats and very comfortable for just an hour’s flight. We arrived in Havana at midnight (having left LA at 5am and gone through two time changes). We expected the worse at immigration – long queues and problems with the didge. In fact, it was the fastest immigration procedure of the whole trip so far but they did ask me to open my case because the x-ray machine had spotted all my ‘electrics’. I was a bit concerned about this before I came as it used to be forbidden to bring computers, cd players etc into Cuba but that was relaxed some time ago. As soon as they saw what I had, they let it through with no problem. The didge didn’t even raise an eyebrow for the first flying time since we bought it!

I’d booked the hotels we’d chosen, transfers, some tours and buses to other parts of Cuba through a Cuban agent who’d been recommended to me, as we had specific places we want to see and didn’t want just all the usual tourist places. I’d paid up front back in November, so there was some concern as to whether the company really existed, despite the frequent emails this guy had sent me. All was well. A driver was in the arrivals hall to meet us and take us to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the most famous hotel/landmark in Havana. It has an incredible history which is why we wanted to stay here. And it doesn’t disappoint. Yes, like most things here it could do with a lick of paint here and there, but the room is very large and has everything you would expect from a good standard (Cuban 5* - probably a bit less elsewhere!) hotel. The scale of the hotel is amazing – huge colonial building with fantastic architecture and lots of faded splendour. We had a look in the ‘history room’ where there are photos of everyone who’s stayed here over the years, from Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Mohammed Ali, and just about every head of state, to Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Quite an eclectic mix. We had a drink on one of the many terraces (this was at about 1am) as we were still buzzing and finally got to bed at about 2.30am. A very long day.