April 10, 2011
April 10 - Flying and Taxi Rides: Toronto to Varadero via WestJet, then Taxi to Las Terrazas
Hotel La Moka, Las Terrazas, CUC$120
I'D FALLEN asleep before finishing my book so when I awoke at 2 am I quickly read the last two chapters in which Mr. Peart described the border crossing from Cameroon to Chad (?). All kinds of problems that would drive me crazy. Premonitions of things to come?
We were down with our cargo by 4 am and struggled onto the bus with our nine bags and boxes. The bus was packed. We were last on with the bikes at the doors and fortunately he stopped at Terminal 3 first; so, we were out of there right away and out of everyone's way.
Our enormous load fit onto one trolley so we wheeled to the rather short line. A WestJet employee helped me choose our seats then we made our way to the check-in counter.
Surprise! Wouldn't you know it. We were asked if we knew there would be a fee for our bikes? Glowing red, I'm sure, I told them that I had called three times and was assured there was no fee for bikes and they could be accepted at no charge. They were very pleasant and waived the fee but I also took their names since I want to write Westjet to suggest they have no bike fee. A big person pays the same as me so my luggage should be like others - allowed.
Once the luggage was checked we made our way to the CATSA check-in where my silly shoe shanks made the detector detect. I had to go through and back and forth and again. And one girl was really barking orders - her co-worker was laughing quietly when i looked over at him, so I mentioned to him I felt sorry for whoever was married to her!
While waiting for the plane we met a woman from near peggy's Covev who is an artist and travels around giving art classes. She even seemed interested in coming to Cochrane to do a course. The waiting went quickly. The flight boarded and we left on time, arriving thirty minutes early. Then the fun began.
I ran into the airport worker we had met last year and he helped us to get our gear, though it took about 30 minutes for it to finally show up. We rolled to the final customs check where the big medical bags sent the detectors a-beeping. When they saw how much we had they had to call over a doctor who eventually ambled over. She separated the new from the expired. Where I got kind of nervous was when they got what looked like a jail-green suit and plastic handcuffs. Was I never to see my little boy and girl grow up?
They wanted to know where we got the meds. If we had friends in Cuba. Where we would be staying during our visit to Cuba. How long we would be in each town. How many times we had been before. After about an hour of paper-work and questions they finally allowed us to continue with the 5 lb of unexpired meds and bicycle parts. The rest was confiscate and to be destroyed.
The fun continued. We had requested and paid for a van since we had two bikes to bring along with us - a small car would simply not do. Instead, was a little hatch-back that we had to cram our nine big bags and ourselves into. By now quite discouraged, we just wanted to dump our meds or even go home. I just sulked in the car and let my mind float away.
We had asked our driver to stop at Breezes Jibacoa to leave the bicycle boxes. There were a number of the staff who happily welcomed us back, including Adrian Bernal. Sadly, we had to leave, but at least they could keep the boxes for our return trip.
Next we stopped at the Cuban family's where we saw Mama and asked her if we could leave a few extra pieces of luggage for the resort part of the trip during our second week in Cuba - which they were more than willing to do. Josbany was not there but what we did see was a little 'cafeteria' selling drinks and donuts down by the road in front of their homes. Entrepreneurship!
Having dropped everything, we headed west towards La Moka hotel. Most of the drive was fairly familiar and i dozed a bit of the way. But the sun was brilliant. It was about 34 C and the climb from the highway through Soroa and to La Moka was breathtakingly beautiful. It was a bit scary though to see how hilly it was from Las Terrazas to Villa Soroa. Kind of forgot, really!
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Once we arrived at the hotel, as we were dumping our gear from the taxi to the parking lot, along came Sophie who said she and her boyfriend Renald from montreal were cycling from Matanzas to Vinales - pretty much the same route as us for the most part.
Over the nxt while I assembled the two bikes while MA brought things over to our room, number 24. I had checked in when I asked about a clinic to drop the meds and there is once just across the village and it will be open in the morning.
Two new little hitches... The first was that the storage room for bikes was full so we would have to lock them in the parking lot - I said I had no lock (a little white lie) so after much discussion amongst themselves, the staff said that though they were not allowed to have the bikes in the room, if security looked the other way they would 'not see' us put them into the room and a secret could be kept.
The second hitch. As I was re-attaching my front rack one of the bolts must have been cross-threaded so I had to improvise in order to stabilize the rack. Luckily, though I almost left it at home, I had packed a little bag of nuts, bolts, and brackets so I was able to rig something up. I hope it holds. By the way, it was MA's great idea to un-bend a c-clamp and use it as a straight bracket.
Adversity kept popping up and though I did not deal with it too well, everything ended up turning out just fine. It was almost 7 pm so to make it even more fine we went to the lobby bar for the welcome drink called a Moka - lime juice, sugar, soda water, coffee liqueur and rum. It was pretty fine.
It was now time to eat and MA wanted to go to La Ermita for a repeat of last year's vegetarian spaghetti in garlic and basil olive oil. I was so hungry I gobbled it down with a Bucanero before carefully climbing all of the stairs back up to the hotel. Carefully so I would not stub my toe before we even got onto the bikes.
We stopped to see the other cyclists again. They gave us their address in Vinales in case we chose to share a van back to Havana/Matanzas with us. It is fairly costly in Cuba to hire a taxi so sharing might work out well. Plus, we'll get to Vinales on either Thursday or Friday so might be ready to leave by then, anyway.
Back in the room we were able to slow down and re-organize ourselves. We did our laundry. Showered... in the full-window shower. Packed our gear into our eight panniers and prepared to deliver a pile of medications to the medical clinic tomorrow morning before departing. We have a lot to carry, but we're going to lighten the load quite a lot by doing this.
What a tiring day, though everything turned out fairly well and we met some good people who we will likely see on the road over the next week. What is the moral of the story? Keep a positive attitude and don't sweat everything. I hope I'm listening to that one!
Maybe because of this, but I find myself really missing Camryn and Alex today.
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