the taxi for our trip to the airport showed up, only to have the fixer (a middleman who arranges for taxis and other tourist needs) try to charge us extra because the other two people he had lined up bogued. I did the "let's take it to the police" bit again (without the eruption), and he backed off.
The driver turned out to be a really nice guy (a lawyer, believe it or not) who could make more money driving a taxi. Hard to feel sorry for a lawyer, I know, but feel sorry for him as a Cuban, or better yet, feel sorry for Cuba. Anyway, he spoke excellent English, and let it be known he didn't think much of the fixer, who apparently also works as a pimp. D had a lengthy conversation with him, in English, correcting his grammar and pronunciation with great relish. Most of the route was on the 4 lane autopista, and so we made it in about 2.5 hours.
Not that it did us that much good. D had him drop us Terminal 2, and despite several people telling us the AeroMexico flight to Cancun left from Terminal 3, it took some very sincere begging to get D to give Terminal 3 a look (they were several minutes apart by taxi), and so we finally did that. Terminal 3 was quite new, a stark contrast to 2 (which was primarily domestic), and the place we needed to be.
Not that it did us much good. We saw quite quickly on the departure board that the Aeromexico flight to Cancun was cancelled. Believing the next Aeromexico flight was not until a week later, we wait-listed on a Cubana flight leaving soon and reserved seats for their Saturday flight.
Not that it did us much good. While I was eating lunch, D found an Aeromexico office (down a little hall undergoing a messy remodel - amazing what she can accomplish when motivated by a chance to save a little money) and found out they had a Monday flight with available seats that we could get on for a $100 p/p change fee (more than $230 p/p for the Cubana flight), and we jumped at that, leaving us with three+ days to get in some time beach time at Veradero, on the north coast 130k east of Havana (the Canadian Cancun). Not wanting to waste time with bus/taxi exchanges, we went to the taxi stand, with D determined to get a taxi to Veradero for $80, rather than the $100 the first 5 drivers she talked to insisted it would cost. She succeeded.
Not that it did us much good. As we were working our way through the Havana suburbs, the driver got a call from his boss to come to an urgent meeting, and so he headed into downtown Havana to find a driver who would take us to Veradero, which he did, but he failed to give the new driver the card of the CP we wanted. We eventually gave up on that and told him to just get on with it and so we we finally headed out east along the north coast on another four lane highway that got us there relatively quickly.
Veradero is a 20k long powdery, white sand beach/spit, longest in the Carribean...
Veradero 1
and is totally given over to snowbird tourism from Canada and Europe, e.g. the restaurant where I had an excellent Cuban paella (didn't think there was such a thing), had pear and grape as the juice choices, which we had seen nowhere else in Cuba.
The driver found a decent CP for us, and we will stay here three nights, before spending the last night in Havana, mainly getting in beach time and some snorkeling, maybe a few power walks as well.
Location:Veradero
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