Cuba - Good Cheer Publishing

Travel Talk

Hot Holiday, Cold War
by Kathryn Harley

With my older son off to university in the fall, I wanted to make sure this March break was truly memorable. I have exceeded my wildest imaginings. The final day of our holiday showed my boys the vestiges of the Cold War, American foreign policy in action, fire engines on the tarmac, paramedics in rescue mode and a four-hour flight stretched into a fifteen-hour adventure.

The day didn't start that way. It began as every day does at the lovely new SuperClubs Breezes Costa Verde, near Guardalavaca, Cuba with bright sun, loud surf, warm greetings from the friendly staff and a buffet breakfast. It was good, too, on the air-conditioned bus to Holguin's Frank Pais International Airport, with its shiningly clean and modern terminal. It seemed okay for the first part of Air Transat's Boeing 757 flight 845 to Halifax. But why after an hour was the seat belt light still on?

The pilot lets us know. The landing gear won't retract completely; we're great for landing, but it's not really good to fly at 30,000 feet with one of your wheels partly down. The airline is in heavy negotiations with Fort Lauderdale and Miami to see if they'll let us land. The pilot will be back to us with more information as soon as possible.

Another hour goes by. Still negotiating. They really don't want us, a plane of sunburned Canadians direct from a frolic in commie Cuba. Ah, come on guys, the Revolution was 40 years ago, get over it -- wasn't Elian embarrassment enough? Apparently not.

More fruitless negotiations. Another announcement from the pilot. Alternative plans they've been working on to fly us to Toronto haven't panned out -- we've burned too much fuel. Finally the Americans give us the go-ahead. We land in Fort Lauderdale, to our own loud applause, just before 6 p.m., three hours after we took off.

Well, we've landed but we sure can't go anywhere. The Americans will not let us off the plane. Meanwhile, a repair crew gets to work on the landing gear. The plane doors by row 11 are open, so we have fresh air, but there's no way out, no gangways, instead an inch-wide strip of yellow-webbing runs waist high across each exit. We can't stand by the doors, either. "Why?" asks a silver-haired man, "Am I going to tell my Cuban secrets to my contact out there?"

Most of us just sit there, though, good Maritimers, touched with a bit of that "we're all in this together" giddiness, the kind you get when it's the first blizzard of the winter or the power's only been out an hour or so.

Meanwhile, the repairs proceed and with them comes my favorite announcement. If the landing gear is repaired, we will need a test flight to check it out but we can't have a test flight if we are on the plane and we're not allowed off the plane so we can't have a test flight.

Well, cool. Catch 22, anyone?

It's not dull as the hours pass, though. For one thing, a piece of equipment being used in the repairs starts smoking. So now as we look out the doors and the windows, we see fire engines, rescue vehicles, police cruisers, men in those hazardous fire suits that look like space gear. Okay, that's taken care of.

Now the poor teenage girl across the aisle, who has been suffering from food poisoning or some other gastric disorder, needs a shot of Gravol; indeed a doctor among the passengers thinks she may need an IV, she's pretty dehydrated. More negotiations. A check of the passengers to see if any of us are not Canadian citizens or Canadian landed immigrants.

They've been showing us our in-flight movie. I'll always have a really strange impression of Almost Famous. And now, four hours or so after we first took off -- about the time we should be landing in Halifax, in fact -- they serve us our meal, cannelloni that really tastes pretty good. We can't have pop or liquor or wine or beer, though. American customs has ordered our plane's bar to stay locked.

Still, things are moving along. A couple of paramedics are allowed on board, pleasant men who assist the sick girl off the plane. We soon hear that even she hasn't been allowed in the terminal. They have to treat her on the tarmac, right by the plane. Fortunately, it turns out she doesn't need an IV.

Then a flight attendant tells us an American customs officer is coming on board, "a very nice man," says the attendant with emphasis, whose visit may perhaps mean we will be allowed off the plane sometime soon.

He is a very nice man. He walks down the aisle and smiles at us and makes a couple of pleasantries and doesn't ask us any individual questions. Maybe we look so shiningly, so hopefully Canadian.

More negotiations. We start to wonder; does George W. himself now think that a group of Canadians are trying illegally to enter the United States of America via Cuba? It's breathtaking.

Then at about a quarter to ten, four hours after we landed, seven since we first took off, the word comes down from Washington, or somewhere -- we can leave the plane. A new plane will be arriving from Mirabel. It's going to get in at one a.m.; we'll probably leave at two. A final message as we leave the plane. We're being allowed off if we promise not to leave Fort Lauderdale Airport. You've got to admire the boldness of the young woman who steps off in the red Che Guevera T-shirt. But all the security people seem very sorry for us. We're getting a bit sorry for us, too. So now we've got four hours to spend here at an airport where everything appears closed or under construction. Still, each clutching the $12 food vouchers we've been given, scores of us stride off to the next terminal where we're told a snack bar may just be open. It is and three sandwiches, seven pops (we were really thirsty by this time) and a bag of chips sets the three of us back $41 -- oh well, only $5 out of pocket.

Eventually, we board our new plane, a far larger Airbus A330, now joined by a large group of people whose original flight, we understand, was to go directly from Fort Lauderdale to Mirabel. Not only are they being diverted to Halifax, but all 200 or so of us are boarded ahead of them. It's fairly smooth flying from here in. True, a women is taken away in an ambulance just as we're about to leave. And, yes, the man next to me needs oxygen at one point (what's his problem, he only joined the flight in Fort Lauderdale?). And, oh dear, the poor mother whose sick teenage daughter is just beginning to feel better, now has a son feeling ill.

They're showing Billy Elliott this flight but I can't take it in. I got up at 6:30 the morning before. We land in Halifax at 7 a.m. We've left 30-degree weather behind; it's minus 6 here. There's the shuttle to the Park On Plane lot, de-icing the windows, and the four-and-a-half hour drive to Fredericton.

Cuba was wonderful, the people delightful, the resort, the scenery and the beaches everything I'd hoped they'd be. People regularly fly there from Halifax in about four hours and fifteen minutes. They fly back in about the same time. Next time I go, it will likely be that way. But this flight was different.

In the future, I bet I'll see familiar faces sometimes. "Weren't you on flight 845?" we'll ask. Something memorable, that's what I promised the boys.

Copyright © Kathryn Harley