Trip to Cuba becomes 'vacation from hell'

Trip to Cuba becomes 'vacation from hell'
By DEBORA VAN BRENK, THE LONDON FREE PRESS
Last Updated: February 23, 2010 1:17pm

About 180 Canadians — including four Huron County women – are back home
from a Cuban vacation after departure delays that left them stranded for
hours at a small airport terminal without food, water or an explanation.

"We were abandoned, 100% abandoned," said said Karrie Howe of Goderich,
who arrived home Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. "It was horrible."

She was to have been home by 7:30 a.m. Monday, after spending a week
vacationing with friends at a resort in Cayo Coco.

But when they arrived at the airport Sunday night, the group of about
200 passengers was told the plane had a flat tire.

When passengers complained they'd had no food or water, food was carried
off the plane: each passenger received a sandwich, and a small bottle of
water to share among four people.

"They wouldn't let us get to our luggage, so there were little kids
walking around with T-shirts as diapers."

People needing medications had no access to them. Even toothpaste, soap
and toilet paper weren't available.

Airport staff had no answers. Flight personnel were nowhere to be found.

After a long delay, the vacationers were told to board a bus — but
weren't told where they were going until they arrived at a hotel 90
minutes later.

"There were bloodstains on the sheets and cockroaches everywhere" and
young teenage prostitutes at the front doors, she said. Instead of locks
on doors, there was only duct tape.

A few hours later they were again packed into buses — that's when the
tour guide left and didn't return — and were driven back to the airport.

But this time the plane had brake problems, they were told.

They watched as that plane took off, with only the pilot and co-pilot
aboard.

They waited.

Howe said the only way they could find out what was happening was from
family members in Canada making phone calls on their behalf to the tour
operator and the airline — it was a CanJet charter through HolaSun tours
— who texted updates to the stranded passengers.

There was no pay phone at the airport, Howe said, and she estimates she
sent 300 text messages on behalf of passengers, until her cellphone died.

A new plane arrived at 2 a.m. Tuesday, the new pilot apologized and they
took off for home by 3 a.m..

They landed at Pearson Airport at 6:30 a.m., but no one from the airline
or the tour company was there to meet the passengers, she said.

Howe said the three women she travelled with are all still waiting for
an explanation, an apology and some reimbursement.

Calls to the airline and tour operator were not immediately returned.

"It was the vacation from hell," Howe said.

Debora Van Brenk is a Free Press reporter.

Trip to Cuba becomes 'vacation from hell' | London | News | London Free
Press (23 February 2010)
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2010/02/23/12995246.html