Cuban Efficiency Overcomes American Inefficiency

Our friend John Passacantando has a great saying -- "it's not an adventure till the first thing goes wrong."  Carol was more scarred by by our challenge getting through immigration, but I don't consider it as "the first thing going wrong."  I was a bit upset about our not found reservation at dinner the night before, but we ate, so no worries.  But, this blog post covers the event that made the trip an adventure!

So we go into the Hotel Nacional to check in.  There's no line!  (when groups check in, it's a zoo!).  The woman looks at our passports, types something in, and shakes her head.  Then she does some more stuff, and turns to us and asks for a confirmation number -- because she has no booking for us.  Oh, and they are full because of the jazz festival and the movie festival and some other festivals. . .probably even a festival of festivals!

Yikes!

I called up the invoice on my iPad, but it doesn't have a confirmation number (lesson -- always, even in Cuba, get a confirmation number!).  So I panicked. . .Carol was the calm one.  That's a switch.  I pictured us sleeping on a street in Cuba, which is hard for me and even harder for Carol to deal with.  Usually I'm the calm one and Carol goes to the worst case scenario, but not this time.

They sent us to the phone lady to call our travel agent.  So we traipse across the lobby to talk to her. She dials the number we gave her.  I can't reach the woman we dealt with, but since it was 4:20pm, I reached a guy.  He was happy to help. . .but he pulled up our reservation and said, oh, here it is -- oh, you are supposed to be in Varadero!  I replied, crisply -- uh, no, we just came from there!

So, the phone lady at the Nacional helpfully offered to transfer the call to the front desk, but then she unhelpfully hung up the phone (it was an accident -- her finger hit the button by mistake, which would have been a much worse sentence to type in October 1962).

I had to explain to her several times that she had accidentally cut off the phone.  She never believed me, but she did redial.  The phone got transferred.

It turns out our rooms were booked by the agent under the wrong names -- Robert and Carol Bennett.  That didn't make me feel better -- I was worried about being accused of operating under a false name and being thrown out of the country, like a disgraced James Bond.  Obviously there was no international incident, as the Cuban lady easily fixed the US company's mistake.  They sent us up to the sixth floor to check in, after I paid the phone lady nearly $20 CUCs for the right to straighten out someone else's mistake.  The best part of that was the phone lady refusing to give me the amount I owed until I changed dollars for CUCs because she needed American dollars.  So, in return for my $300 US, I was given 270 CUCs.  Somehow that exchange rate still gnaws at me (in case you couldn't tell).

The hotel room was very nice -- two rooms adjoining -- one set up as a living room, which was good for early morning work, blogging, and relaxing.  I went down to the cafeteria (nicest cafeteria I've seen) and got some ice cream and sparkling water.  Also went to the business office and bought an hour of internet for seven CUCs (foreshadowing).

It was now officially an adventure.