Today I was leaving Cuba. I woke at 3am and the room was spinning for some reason. After having a shower I came down for breakfast after 7.30. There was a German couple and French couple with daughter about 12.

As usual everyone ignored me so I broke the silence by asking the French couple in French if they were from France or Quebec. They were from France. Then I told the German couple in German that I had an Uncle and Aunt in Munich and can speak some German. Then everyone became friends. The German couple from Stuttgart told us in English how they had been in Cuba for three weeks scuba diving off some island.

The Casa owner played tunes on his guitar during breakfast. Then there was some confusion as he said I had to pay for the room. This was part of the group booking and they didnt know I had a reservation when I arrived. I told him to call Aniorland our group leader to sort it out.

My flight was 1230pm and I had ordered a cab for 8.20am. My tour leader didnt understand why and said I could order one for 10am. This is Cuba where you have to stand in line for everything. I couldnt do my online check in and I had to exchange my cash so I didnt want to leave anything to chance.

The cab driver was on time at 8.20 exactly and it was a 30 min ride on deserted early Sunday morning roads to the airport. I paid $25P with a $1P tip for being so prompt. It was only just 9am and the Air Canada desks did not open till 9.30am. I took my place first in line to get my boarding pass. I told them I couldnt check in online as the wifi is so bad.

Now I had $200P I needed to get rid off. I stood in the money exchange line from 9.30am to 10.15am. There was only one window open and the line wasnt moving. There was a crazy person behind me who got into an arguement with some girls as they were 'getting into his personal space'.

Why was each person at the counter taking so long, what is so hard, you give your pesos and get your currency back? Turns out their float was low so people were having to break their money into multiple currencies. Then they announced they were out of Euros so people had to leave the line to stand another hour in the other money exchange line also with only one window open.

When it was my turn I gave my $200P but he only had $105 Canadian left. The guy before had cleaned out his UK Pounds. I cleaned out his $105 Cdn but was still owed another $100P. I asked for Mexican or Japanese but they had none either. The German girl behind me was going to ask for Swiss Francs so I was saving those for her although they had also run out.

I didnt know what to do as $100P ($120 Cdn) is useless outside the country. Fortunately he had a single $100USD bill left so I took that even though the exchange is bad for USD and he was even out of USD too! I now had $16P left over plus $1P in coins. What was going to happen to all the other people from the Air Canada flight checking in?

Going thru security which was another 30 min line I ran into another girl from our group who had a flight same time to Chicago. We had wanted to take a cab together but our Casa's were too far apart.

After going thru security we bought wifi cards for $1.50P giving 30 mins. I had to clear out this money and there wasnt much to buy. Even here once we had cleared security away from locals getting internet access I couldnt log into the internet and it would kick you out 3-5 mins. I had to keep restarting my phone to log back in.

There was only one place to buy any food, which was just a simple cheese and bacon sandwich but a massive line thru the terminal. With no announcement even in Spanish they randomly changed the gate to downstairs.

There was confusion downstairs between the two gates which one was for our flight and whether we had to take a bus. When we were allowed to go we just had to walk out onto the tarmac.

As we boarded I commented "back to the real world" to the crew. We then had to wait a further 30 mins on the tarmac as the airport only has one water truck to fill all the planes, so it wasnt quite back to the real world yet!