The last chapter in Cuba - Airport cast away

When there was a widespread outbreak of the Swine Flu, I was already in Cuba. As Cuba is really a closed-country, there is not much news from the outside world. Besides, the internet service in Cuba is really expensive, that is 5 to 6 CUC per hour (compared with Mexico, it is only less than 1CUC per hour), so I decided to be 'out of civilization' for at least two weeks, without knowing that all of my dear friends were worrying about my situation in Mexico.

I heard about there was a suspenion of all the flights from Mexico to Cuba at the start of my trip, but I was not worried because I was already in Cuba. Then I went for the car trip with my spanish friends for 1 week. I really enjoyed the time and I was not worried about anything at that moment.

When I came back to La Havana, I started to realized that I might not have a return flight back to Mexico. So I called my airline, Cubana, and found out I really needed to change my flight to another airline, Mexicana, as all the flights of Cubana via Mexico had been cancelled.

The process was quite smooth and I successfully changed my ticket to Mexicana, I even met my Australian friend whom I met on the flight when I came to Cuba. But he had bad luck, as he only knew that we could change the ticket to Mexicana after I had told him. And he had been working on the ticket for a week!

So I also changed the date of my flight two days earlier as I was running out of my money in Cuba, and I really missed the good food in Mexico.

On the date of my flight, I went to the airport at 14:15 to catch my flight at 16:30, but I found out the flight had been cancelled! How could they do that without informing the people?

Then it was a chaos. All the passengers were queueing in front of the office of Mexicana. And they said two flights to Mexico were cancelled, the only one remained was the one at 23:40. So all the passengers had to transfer to this flight, but it would only to be first-come, first-serve.

So this arose another chaos, as every body rushed to the line to queue and pushed the line. I was lucky to meet a group of nice US tourists, they let me to queue with their group.

Then I found out they didn't let me to check in as other passenger. Because my ticket was originally from Cubana, so they needed to give priority to the passengers from Mexicana. The only thing I could do at that time was to wait until 22:30, by that time all the passengers of Mexicana should have been checked in, then they would know if there were any vacancies for me.

It was really a shock. But I was not too worried as my connecting flight would be 2 days later(luckily I change my flight to Mexico 2 days earlier, so I was not in a hurry to get on the flight on that day), and I was ready to sleep in the airport that night.

I met my Australian friend again, then I met two other American travellers who are journalists also. And later their journalist friend from the UK. So we worked together to sort out what could we do to get on the plane, as they had connecting flights the next morning, so they were really worried.

The two American journalists even thought about buying the tickets from another airline company to get out of Cuba as soon as possible, because there was no guarantee that if we could get on the flight that night, or the flight the next day.

But the problem was that they are Americans. So they had no access to money and their mobile phone networks are not working also. All ATM or credit cards from the US are not working in Cuba. There is no internet service. And the international call costs 10CUC per minute, and there is no way that we can buy a phone card even though we are willing to pay for that. As there was no cash left in their pocket, so they were totally cast away in the airport. And there was nothing that they could do at that moment.

Cast away at a corner in the airport.

We waited and waited, and we were ready to hold an overnight party at the airport. But by the time of 22:15, we found out after all the passengers had checked in, there were still seats for us! It was such a piece of great news and we were totally grateful for that.

Finally, we were getting on the plance at midnight.

So my last experience in Cuba was really not pleasant at all, which made me don't want to go back to Cuba even though I would have a chance.

And one more recommendation, if you will ever go to Cuba, don't buy the ticket from Cubana Airline, their service are really bad! And bring enough cash with you, remember no USD, but Canadian dollar and Euro are the best.