SO LONG FOR NOW EUROPE! Cliche aeroplane window photo, check! This is pretty much all I did today, other than wake up at the crack of dawn in the blistering cold to catch my plane to Cuba. Oh and, you know, get detained at the Santa Clara Airport for 3 hours once I arrived.
So, it turns out cuban customs are pretty relentless. I guess the only downside of having dreadlocks is always going to be going through customs, especially in the less accepting countries. Its a small price to pay in the end though as having dreadlocks has more pros than cons, and this experience was quite amusing looking back on it.
I arrived into the Santa Clara airport and while waiting in line to go through immigration I was pulled out of the line by an officer. I was taken to a room where they scrutinised the details of my trip, how long I was staying in Cuba, my profession, my accommodation, my travel insurance, and cash situation, all of which I had read about and was prepared with the correct information and print outs. The woman also of course asked me if I smoked, specifically the herbal kind.
After about 20 minutes of this I was allowed to join the line again. once through the immigration checkpoint and having by carry on scanned a drug sniffer dog was set about all of our luggage on the carousel before we could collect out checked luggage.
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door and was stopped again by a customs officer. He sad they would need to scan my bags again, including my checked luggage, so we had to go back to the scanners and re do the process. Afterwards I was told the drug sniffer dogs would need to sniff my bags again and all of my possessions in my pockets. So we sprawled everything out on the ground and the dog set about slobbering all over my stuff.
Up until this point it was all fine as I knew I had nothing to hide. I thought after the dogs I would be clear to leave and find my way to my Casa Particular. Nope. I guess the custom officers mustn’t have much faith in their sniffer dogs because although they didn’t smell anything they spent the next 90 minutes pulling my bags apart. And I mean apart. They even took the strap system of my backpack apart to check the nooks and crannies, checked in the folds of clothing and pockets, I even had to take off my shoes and the checked my feet and folds of my jeans, my hair, everything except the dreaded cavity search.
While they were searching they were so convinced I had drugs that every two minutes they stopped to ask where the drugs were so they didn’t have to waste their and my time. There was nothing I could do but laugh and tell them to keep searching. He also asked a few times “Are the drugs in your body sir?”. Again I could do nothing but say no, there are no drugs and hope they didn’t want to confirm that part. They did find a lighter and some papers in the bottom of my bag which have been there since Spain or Amsterdam, and some postcards from holland so that really didn’t help my case.
They then started telling me I was going to have a urine test. I took a look around the airport and highly doubted they even had the equipment to do a test and I had nothing to hide so agreed to the test. The urine test never happened and they eventually said “well you have hidden the drugs very well” and then began explaining the concequences of being caught with drugs outside of the airport, all of which I had already read about.
After the drug search they set about trying to figure out what all my camera equipment was for. they plugged in both of my hard drives to check the content, I had to explain that a GoPro Camera is in fact not a transmitting device, Show them that my battery charger was not a wifi hotspot device, show them how my kindle worked and then they set about checking all of the books I had installed and finally demonstrate exactly what each odd looking cable and piece of camera equipment did.
So 3 hours after arriving at the airport I was free to go, it was was about to close so I had to throw everything back in my bag, unaware if anything was even missing and get overcharged by the only taxi left at the airport. but without any other options I jumped in for the amusing ride to my Casa Particular. The Casa is nice, the owners extremely helpful and now looking forward to exploring tomorrow. I had a good laugh about my experience at the airport with a couple who were staying at the same Casa. Turns out they were from Amsterdam and they walked through with no problems. Oh Cuba.
