As arranged in the previous day, a coach picked us up from the hotel shortly after breakfast and took us back to the airport. Once more we had to queue for check-in and go through security checks (Rui wasn't even wearing a belt anymore). Although there was still some suspicion and disgruntle amongst the Havana-bound passengers the moods were definitely better than the day before. Our flight was schedule to departure at 3:45 pm.
The forced co-existence caused by the cancelled flight meant that we kept bumping into the same people over and over: in the coach, during the hotel check-in, at dinner, at breakfast and now once again, in the airport terminal. Inevitably, we began to mentally register some of our fellow passengers. There was the Polish girl and her summer hat (despite the rainy weather in Madrid), the Spanish girl with a diamond-encrusted tooth, the Cuban girl with a tie made of fake diamonds and her chaperone, the man who wore two hats on top of each other all the time and, of course, the Portuguese scaremonger that loved to spread fake rumours about the flights. At the time we wondered if we would see these people again once we landed in Cuba but the size of the country and our commitment to avoid the tourist track dictated that we would not see any of them again.
Due to the cancellation, the airline (Air Europa) had to spread the stranded passengers amongst other flights bound to the Caribbean. Ours had a double stop, first in Havana and then in Santo Domingo.
After the aircraft took off and the excitement of finally being on our way diluted itself in the boredom of a 10-hour journey we began looking for alternative sources of entertainment. The choice of movies on board was limited and poor. I tried to watch an American romantic comedy at one point but there is only so much gender cliche one man can take and had to turn it off after 15 minutes. Fortunately we brought several books for this trip. Here is a list of what we had and who brought them.
- The Road to Wigan Pier
(George Orwell) - me
- Caim
(José Saramago) - Rui
- A Ofensa
(Ricardo Menéndez Salmón) - Joana
- Tres historias de amor
(Manuel Vázquez Montalbán) - Rui
- Ficciones
(Jorge Luis Borges) - me
- Nuclear organization of the genome and the potential for gene regulation (Peter Fraser, Wendy Bickmore) - Rocha
- Narziss and Goldmund
(Hermann Hesse) - Rocha
- Lonely Planet's guide to Cuba
(Brendan Sainsbury) - Rocha
- AA Spiral Guide Cuba
(Andrew Forbes) - me
Of these, the most read during the two weeks was, without any doubt, the Lonely Planet's guide to Cuba followed by Caim, Saramago's grumpy collection of attacks on the bible and Christianity, read by Rui, Joana and Rocha (in this exact order). My main read during the trip was Orwell's digressions on class division and Socialism in 1930's Britain. This book would often haunt or illuminate me during our explorations in Cuba.
And so we went, flying West faster than the speed of Earth's rotation where the borders of today and tomorrow are distorted. At one point, I recorded in my diary, it was 9 pm in Spain, 3 pm in Cuba and we were flying 9000 meters above the Atlantic. In my ear phones Tracy Chapman was singing "Talking about a revolution". A few hours later we landed in Jose Marti International Airport, in Havana.
No comments:
Post a Comment