As my Havana flight didn’t leave until 2330 last night, I was banking on getting a late hotel check out but that was not to be as the hotel claimed they were fully booked. So, having mooched around downtown Vancouver for a while, as soon as it started raining (of course) I moved on to the airport arriving a full 6 hours before my scheduled departure. Deep joy!
After studying the fish for a while
I settled down to watch the whole of the Clinton v Trump bear fight. OMG! If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny. Two grown ups acting like children, hurling insults at each other (albeit in quite a one sided way). I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had said “Ya boo sucks to you” to which the other would, of course, have replied “And with knobs on”! Trump is an odious bully (and, I suspect, a pathological liar) although the mediator (if that’s what he was called) was underwhelming as he did little to shut Trump up. But then he works for Fox News which is, of course, fairly right wing. How Clinton didn’t deck The Trump Lump is beyond me. She must have very thick skin! The loser in all of this is, of course, political democracy. Putin must be giggling all his way to the Kremlin!
Air Mexico cannot be called a state of the art airline. Nevertheless, our aged 737 (along with the aged crew whose capabilities didn’t stretch to offering alcohol and only a modest breakfast) sped through the skies and arrived in Mexico City after 5 sleepless hours at 0630hrs . The film about Eddie the Eagle (in Spanish) kept me mildly amused so the time passed reasonably quickly. As Mexico City was merely a transit stop en route to Havana, I fully expected to whiz through any controls there might be and then settle down somewhere to wait for my flight at 18.25 this evening – a mere 12 hours after arrival. Wrong! Mexico City must be the only major international airport in the world that doesn’t have any separate transit facilities. So I had to join the immigration queue.
Some two hours later I emerged battered but unbowed only to find that, in my dazed state, I had left my Kindle on the plane. Ugh! A thorough search (or so they said) revealed nothing so I can only assume that either someone has nicked it or that, with the time it took for me to discover the loss, the plane had already left for another destination. Either way it’s a real bummer as I was looking forward to putting my feet up for the odd day in Havana and finishing my current read, Shantaram. So, I fiddled around with my iPad and learnt how to download books on to that medium but the internet is such pants in Mexico City airport that I have struggled to send emails, never mind downloading something to read! OK, I thought, I will watch some UK TV on FilmOn but that is blocked in Mexico because of ‘unsuitable content’.Midsummer Murders unsuitable? I don’t think so!
Mexico City has a population of 21 million most of whom seem to be at the airport today. So, in the event that I have sporadic internet connection, no book and no Kindle (boo hoo!), to try and stay awake until boarding, I will indulge in a spot of people watching. There’s plenty of opportunity!
Hasta mañana
Richard
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