Ola from Mexico

Tuesday 10th April – the day we’d originally planned to come home.
Imagine the scene. Sid and Myra on Cubana airline flying from Havana to Cancun. The Russian plane is at least 60 years old. The seats fold down forwards, so Myra `can lay out, as if on a sun lounger. The seat belts don’t ‘clunk click.’ The plane pre-dates ‘fasten your seat belt’ signs. The safety card is in Russian first, then pidgeon English. It shudders at take-off, manages to climb and smoke fills the cabin – it’s just the air-conditioning coolers. He who does not like flying, looks very worried. How did this happen, when we made sure we would not fly on Cubana, in line with Foreign Office advice for British Citizens, as it is among the most accident prone airlines in the world?
Well, we got up at 5am and arrived at Havana airport at 6am for our 7.40 Click Mexicana flight. We queued for just over an hour (those who had got there at 5am to queue were still ahead of us in the line). There was a party of six people ahead of us in the queue, then a lone traveller, then us. Four of the six got through before Click Mexicana admitted to overbooking the flight and said the rest of us (there was one other behind us in the queue) would have to get a later flight. When we said we thought this was a bad idea, the check in guy just shrugged. The Rough Guide to Cuba says, don’t get annoyed or arsey with Cubans when bureaucracy, incompetence or life gets difficult. They put up with frustrations every day and don’t see why tourists should get special treatment. They have a point. Nevertheless, he who doesn’t like flying got very difficult with the Click Mexicana official. Never mind, said the supervisor (not necessarily the Supervisor of all Supervisors – see earlier blog entry for Hanoi), we’ll put you on the Cubana flight at 12.55. She took us into her office (one by one, of course) and made the necessary arrangements. Or so we thought. We then spent a very pleasant couple of hours with a guy called Jean (a Canadian musician living in Chicago and in Havana once a year, for percussion lessons on fusion music – Afro-Cuban). A really lovely, interesting guy and a Mexican doctor in his late 20s, who only spoke Spanish. The two ‘missionaries’ who hadn’t made it with their party of six were also around. At 10.30, as told, we queued for Cubana. When we reached the front of the queue we were told we weren’t booked on that flight and Ms Click Mexicana had done a runner by this time and her office was closed. Anyway, to cut a long story short (it’s not as bad as Supervisor of all Supervisors) after much haranguing and then some quiet words in Spanish from the Mexican doctor it transpired that we were booked on the flight, but all under the name of Click. So that’s how come we were on the flight with the airline we’d deliberately avoided all those months ago when booking. All’s well, etc etc. (and it was the first major snag in travel arrangements)as we arrived in Cancun ok, had got Ms Click to phone our transfer company and so were met with no problem, mid afternoon.