First off, this is really a tech blog, so normally I don’t post these kind of things, but it’s also about security and this is even SOMEWHAT to technology related. US homeland security is really tight on airports in the US but what we went thru in Cuba was pretty drastic.

Over Christmas, I went finally on a longer vacation, visiting the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. It has to be said, it was VERY nice and all went well. We flew there via Paris and Mexico City. Because we are traveling with a small child, we took the shortest way back: Cuba, Paris. short flight and a stopover of about 5 hours in Cuba. Great, the day of our return comes and we have 3 suitcases and the Baby stroller/pram all packed neatly and the suitcases had a tying belt around it, so that in case of inspection it CAN be opened without breaking anything. We check in and in my hand luggage was only the bare necessary and the video camera bag. We land in Cuba and we are in transit, everyone else stayed there, so we walk through the halls of the airport and we see PASAJEROS EN TRANSITO (passengers in transit) signs, follow them and get to a doorway where a friendly Cuban officer stands. We say ” we are in transit” He says” good, but you need to go down to immigration”. Right, well socialist state and whatever, I thought oh well. So we go down a long hallway, down some stairs to the “welcoming area” with queues. When I saw some lady with a uniform I asked her:” we are just in transit” and she replies:” No problem, see that lady over there, she can help you with that”. I walk over and there is some people already talking to her. She is filling out some papers and handing out stamps and whatnot to them. Each one of them hands her a Bill, 1USD, 5USD etc. Her right hand was FULL of cash. I asked her about the transit thing and she goes:” Ok, sir, I need your passports and your connecting tickets” which I handed over. She leads us to a door to a room where 6!! border-guards were sitting around a table muttering. She waited until she is asked to enter and hands over our papers. EACH one of them inspected our passports and made some notes. Then she comes back out and asks us to follow her. She leads us to an elevator and when we get in she uses a key to select a floor. I wasn’t watching but I was surprised that we ended up in the same hallway again as before where the doorway was. She asks us to wait OUTSIDE the transit gateway standing while she gets our “documentos”.

Great, here is where the security bit comes in: The man in uniform inspected EVERY persons ID tag. This is quite neat from a security perspective but he did so with the EVERY person going in or out. There were airport employees that came out for a minute and went back in, never leaving his sight, yet he still had to inspect their tags and EVERYONE then got a clap on the back when they “were allowed in”. We were standing within 5 m of him the entire time, in front of a luggage scanner. The lady took about 45 minutes to return. 45 MINUTES!! During that time another lady came out through “THE GATE” -inspected, and turned the Chinese scanner on (it had Chinese writing all over) and scanned out hand luggage. Then turned the machine off again and walked back into “THE GATE” - inspected. After 45 minutes, the document lady comes back out of “THE GATE” - inspected, and hands us our boarding passes etc. GREAT. She looked expectantly at us and I pointedly ignored her eagerness for cash, as I only carried bigger Euro bills. We said thanks and walked to the inspector, who then requested ALL our documents and inspected them, we were “cleared” and as I walked by I got the familiar clap on the back. Must have been hard since I was about 2 heads taller then him.

So we are in the “tax-free/transit” area and have 4 hours to kill. We were hungry so I bought 2 sandwiches, 2 cans of coke and some cookies. And paid 20 Euros for it. The food sucked! But anyway, I have to say this, EVERYONE was extremely nice to us and the Cubans are very friendly. So we see a children’s corner, toys etc. for the small one, we put her there to play and sat down. Everything was ok we just had to kill about 3.5 hours by then. In the children’s corner was a PC and I thought: Hey Cuba is on an embargo, lets see what it runs. To my disappointment it ran Windows XP as administrator, hooked up to a network, and had a Intel Pentium 4D inside with 512MB ram. Not bad for a country that has an embargo but anyway. Plane arrives and we board and we fly back to home. Nice. Remember, our stop over was close to 5 hours, the airport is about 1/25th the size of say Mexico City. It has only 2 halls.

Good we arrived in the afternoon on our home base and - SURPRISE, NO luggage. nothing, nada. We make a formal “complaint” and the explanation is, that “It didn’t make it in Cuba to the connecting flight”. How can 4 pieces of luggage NOT make it in 5 hours from the 1 flight that arrived during that time to one of 2 flights leaving 5 hours later? Well it got clear to me, when we got our luggage. EVERY piece of electronics was missing. EVERYTHING. We had our laptops, some other parts etc. in there and everything had vanished. but the suitcases were neatly closed, except the tying belts. They were wrapped around the handle! I felt kind of like someone saying:” let’s take all their “expensive” stuff but leave them the belts”. Normally I wouldn’t put electronics into suitcases, so yea dumb of me, but I thought, hey let’s make this trip as “light” as possible. Next time I know better. On the flight back we sat next to a couple that told us how their luggage was opened and stuff taken out in Cuba when they arrived.

To me this is unacceptable behavior. The entire “high security” and “we have to check everyone” attitude is complete bull. Corruption is high and they take what they want from you, what are you gonna do about it anyway? Friendly or not, this was the LAST time i go anywhere near Cuba and I bet it is not the only time this happened. Good thing for travel insurance and receipts of purchases!

//Flosse

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