En Route To Cuba

Smallest commercial plane I've ever been on. 19 seats. Look how askew my shoulders are just to fit between the others in my row. From left to right we are: good-natured, double-chinned stranger; me; my father.

Another view at the 19 seat plane. I was in the middle seat of the last row and took this shot from there.

I crammed into the tiniest of airplane seats today and rode an hour with my shoulders jammed between my father and the stranger at my right. This was our flight from Tampa to Miami, a 19 passenger Gulf Stream with every seat occupied and the three largest passengers (my father, me, and the very good-natured, multiple-chinned man on my right).

Tomorrow morning I'll meet our travel group for the first time. We rally at 5:30AM at Miami International Airport. Our charter flight leaves around 9:30 and we'll arrive in Havana at 10:15. I'm not sure what the deal is with the four hour gap between our rally time and our take off. I somewhat expect the US government to be giving us some sort of anti-Cuba speech in that time period. I'll find out soon enough. Will keep taking pics and posting as I go too.

I read online today that the internet in Cuba is only for the highly privileged - those with a government pass - and that it is heavily censored and monitored by the government; emails are monitored and read too. (I WILL have internet in my hotel, though... so if I don't make it back to America, assume I'm being held captive as an internet user [kidding, I hope]). Cuba also has the lowest per capita computer ownership of any nation in the world... or it did until 2007 when the government legalized computer ownership. No kidding. It was illegal to own a computer. The Cuban government was protecting its people from the internet, which it called "the great disease of the 21st century." And I thought the US government was a nanny-state for pulling Four Locos off the market.

So, as I said, I'll keep writing my notes to myself on here and I'll keep posting pics too as I take them. I'll be in Cuba manana!