Well this is my first blog and no doubt everyone is wondering what the hell I have been doing for it to have taken so long.  I need to go back a bit to catch up to this point.

I finally committed to this trip after procrastinating over the decision for months.  When I did the trip with Fred in 2017 I had thought that I would be doing another in 2018 however for a range of reasons (work, shoulder reconstruction, life) it didn’t happen.

I would like to say that it was a well thought out and planned decision but that is not the case.  One day earlier this year I was at home and for some reason decided to check out the flight costs to LA.  Before I knew it I had booked return flights for both my wife (Helen) and I.  I thought that it might be a lot easier to tell Helen I was going away again for 5 months if I included her!  The second part to this was that she was only coming for the first 4 weeks of the trip but that was an easy sell when I threw in a trip to Cuba.

This time round I was able to churn through the paperwork and customs forms as I had a better understanding of what was required.  Given my previous bad experience where I arrived in LA and had to wait for Fred to turn up I was determined that this would not happen again.

So while I was sorting out the paperwork I also had to get my act together with the bike and gear that I was taking.  I decided for this trip I was going to take Stan.  Stan is a Yamaha 1200XT Super Tenere and is basically still brand new with hardly anything on the clock.

A couple of the major changes included swapping over from hard panniers to soft panniers, adding driving lights (the deer scared me last time) and body protection.  I made a lot of modifications to him and this is how he turned out;

I get Stan sorted and go about getting another Harley Crate for him.  I went around to Bike Works and swapped a carton of Jack Daniels cans for a crate – they even threw in all of the tek screws and tie down straps (keep in mind you can pay $700 for a shipping crate).  I can’t rate these guys highly enough and if ever I did buy a Harley it would be through them.  End result Stan is in his travel bag;

So I keep in touch with the Freighters and I get an urgent phone call to drop everything and get Stan out to the depot so he can be put on a truck to get to Melbourne for shipping.  The depot is a good 1.5hrs drive in traffic but I get him dropped off in time and all appears fine.

Over the next week I continue to get ready and all of the USA customs approvals are completed and I feel pretty good about how organised I am.   I even had the name of the ship Stan was going to be put on together with its departure dates.

Given what happened last time I thought that I would ask for a confirmation receipt from the Freighters that confirmed that Stan was actually on the ship and not just take on face value what I was being told.  You guessed it – he was still sitting at the docks as he had been bumped from that ship to another.   When I asked for an explanation I was told that another client had understated his freight and given I was only shipping one item I was bumped.  Not sure how the person who gets it right is the one bumped!

Long story short Stan was put on another container ship and it is only going to put his arrival back 4 – 5 days.  Thankfully I had factored this drama into the planning and have 2 weeks up my sleeve before I need to pick him up.  There is no way you can believe what you are being told without the proof.

So June 3rd rolls around and Helen and I are up at 4:00am to get to the airport.  The plane is slightly delayed but we arrive in Melbourne nearly on time.  It’s a bit of a rush but we make it through Immigration and get to the gate right on boarding.

We take up our seats and get ourselves settled in for the 13.5hr flight to LA.  Unfortunately there is an announcement where the Captain tells us that due to the heavy rain there will be a slight delay given that they are down to only one operating runway.  This slight delay turned into 45 minutes of going nowhere which was a bit ordinary when you know how long is still in front of you.

The flight to LA was a long haul (as you would expect) but I really rated the service provided by United Airlines.  The crew were excellent and the food was fine.  Leg room was also far better so it was definitely better than what I experienced on my last flight with Delta.

On landing in LA we found it very slow to get thru Immigration – the process of getting your ticket at the automated booth was quick and easy but progressing in the line to get to the officer was at snails pace.

Eventually we get through and collect our bags.  Helen goes off and phones a couple of Hotels that she had inquired about to try and organise a day room for us (we had 13hrs to kill before we flew out to Cuba that night).

I find a Boost mobile phone stand and sort out a SIM card for the US.  I sign up to AT&T again and go on a $50 USD per month plan –  this whole exercise only took about 10 minutes.

Helen comes back and she has organised a day room at the Four Points Hotel which is right next door to LAX and has a free shuttle service.

We are both totally stuffed and have a few hours sleep. We then get up and walk around to the local Starbucks for a coffee. Around 7:00 pm we get on the Hotel shuttle and go back to the Airport. We are flying to Havana with Copa Airlines which is a low cost budget Airline based in Panama. Our flight is not direct and is via Panama where we have to change over.

We do the bag drop and fill out a few forms – one of the forms is a declaration of travel which is given to us by the staff. You have to produce your flight details re leaving the Country as well as your travel insurance. We also confirmed with staff that you can obtain your Cuba entry visa at the departure gate in Panama. You can read a lot about these Cuban forms (people get quite anxious about them) but we found them all straight forward and easily completed.

We kill time and eventually get on board and take off. The seating configuration of the plane is 3 and 3. I should have known when the complete row in front of us was empty right up to the last minute before a family of 6 (Grandparents/Parents/Children) arrived and took over. Anyone who has ever flown has seen/heard of nightmare passengers who make the whole flight about them but this family had it all. Very first thing they did was put all of their seats as far back as they could go. Every time an attendant walked past they had to have 10 different things. They yelled and argued among themselves. I think you get the picture.

The actual 6hr flight to Panama (if you disregarded the family) was fine.

We land in Panama and walk around to the boarding gate for our next flight that gets us to Havana. Helen goes to the Copa counter and obtains our Cuban tourist Visas for $20 USD each. There are no issues and all very quick and straight forward. I had considered getting these Visas back in Australia but the cost of doing that is roughly $85 USD and the advice I was given was that there was no need to panic over them. A lot of travelers do spin out at the thought of not having it prior.

After a short 2.5hr flight we finally land at Havana Airport, Cuba. I will take up my next blog from there.