Canadians looking for a relaxing vacation in Cayo Largo del Sur, Cuba, are experiencing anything but that after the small island’s airport was damaged earlier this week. Travellers were delayed leaving as plans for the repatriation were organized, resulting in reports that one man died at the airport.

It took one, Kingston’s Lisa Crawford, a local VON transportation driver, nearly 20 hours to get home, a journey that included two buses, a ferry to Cuba’s mainland and a flight home.

“I was supposed to come home on Sunday morning,” Crawford told the Whig-Standard after boarding the ferry along with 160 of her fellow vacationers. “It’s just been pack, unpack, pack again. Sit around and wonder if we’re going to go or not.”

The Embassy of Canada in Cuba tweeted on Tuesday that the Cayo Largo del Sur airport was closed and set to reopen on Feb. 28. It did not officially state why the airport was closed, though Crawford, who stayed at the Bella Isla Resort, said they had heard that a large jet from Italy had a hard landing and damaged the runway.

“Travel to/from the island has been disrupted,” the embassy simply said. “Canadians should contact their tour agency for transport by sea to the mainland.”

There is no information listed on the Government of Canada’s Travel Advice and Advisories website. Information about travelling to Cuba can be found online at www.travel.gc.ca/destinations/cuba.

A new itinerary had Crawford and her fellow passengers travelling from their resort to the damaged airport, clearing customs and security, then being ferried to Cuba’s main island. They then took a bus across the island to the Havana airport, from where they flew home.

Crawford said the man who died was staying at her resort and had run out of heart medication. She said the man told her that he was on about six different medications and the local clinic was only able to help him get one of them. She said he was “quite nervous” about the long trip home.

On the day, the man had made it to the Cayo Largo airport to clear security, and that is where the man suffered a heart attack.

“Three people tried to perform CPR; they had no defibrillator at the airport,” Crawford said. “People were pretty traumatized as they were walking around him to go out and get on the bus. It was pretty surreal.”

Crawford said that while some may be happy to be stuck in the Caribbean, she missed three days of work and her insurance hasn’t been willing to cover those days. To stay positive, she called home to her friends and family, tried to enjoy her surroundings and did her daily stretching routines.

Despite the trauma and the marathon of a trip, Crawford was quick to compliment the staff at the resort and all the other stops along the way.

“The Air Transat people worked really hard to make everything go off smoothly and have people there at the airport and on the ferry,” she said. “The Cuban people tried to make the ferry a pleasant experience by having dancers and a band meet us at the ferry dock. They even decorated the industrial sea cans and equipment that was around to make it nicer.”

scrosier@postmedia.com

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