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Published: September 16th 2006
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Dave´s box on arrival
The box is completely open at the top. Someone has tried to repair it with white tape. It is very crumpled. The bike frame has been dented in one place and some paint has been lost. The spare tyre was missing. Having got word that our bikes had arrived at Havana airport, we eagerly made our way from the west of the country back to the capital to collect them. On arrival at the Lost and Found office we were shown a large pile of luggage dumped in the main concourse of the arrivals hall. There were 4 bike boxes there in good condition, but none of them were ours! We eventually communicated this problem to the staff there and they led us into a locked storeroom containing more found luggage. At first, we didn´t recognise our boxes, then it dawned on us that the crumpled pieces of cardboard in the corner were actually ours. It looked as though the boxes had been thrown out of the plane before landing!
A quick check of the contents proved that nothing essential was missing (although later I discovered that the spare tyre was gone).
The problem now was how to repair the boxes so we could use them to fly to Chile the next week. In most other countries, this would be straightforward: go to a bike shop and scrounge another cardboard box or two. However, we were in Cuba where a
Claire´s box on arrival
This is also completely open at the top, with large rips and missing sections. Claire had only a few scratches to the paintwork and nothing was missing. simple cardboard box is hard to come by. Our hosts at the guest house where we were staying, Martha and Alfredo, rang around their network of friends and managed to bring together a collection of sheets of spare cardboard of varying thicknesses. Out of this we succeeded in patching up Dave´s box and building a whole new top for Claire´s. (Martha and Alfredo have been great hosts. No question or help needed is too much trouble, and they are warm and welcoming. They have a central location in Habana Vieja. If you're looking for somewhere as a base for your exploration of Habana, consider dropping them a line at
.)
Next we had to find some tape. We eventually found an office and school supplies shop and queued for 45 minutes with the locals to purchase their last two rolls of packing tape. It got very tense in the queue when we saw the guy 3 places in front of us also buy tape. Luckily we got to the head of the queue before anyone else bought them.
The bikes (and us) made it to Chile in one piece where we can now put air travel behind us Dave´s box repaired
A lot of tape was used and cardboard placed inside for reinforcement and carry on with our plans to ride south to Patagonia. Lessons to be learnt from this experience: never leave anything loose in bike boxes, pad the frames well to avoid losing paint, and never trust airport baggage handlers to care about your precious luggage.
We are now in Santiago de Chile with everything we need (except the spare tyre) and very much looking forward to getting back on the bikes again! It was an adventure going shopping for a screwdriver for some minor repairs, when we couldn´t name what we wanted in Spanish, and didn´t know what kind of shop to look for it in! We are now route-planning and getting excited about leaving the smoggy city behind us.
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Pat and Pete
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Boxing Clever
Did you learn your skills with sticky back plastic on Blue Peter? The Tate may be interested in your sculptures. Glad to hear that you are back on the saddle, and look forward to the next exciting instalment .... daaa d dit daaaaa!