The Writing Imp

~ Tales from the Existential Laundry Basket

The Writing Imp

Category Archives: Pindar

#19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

16 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in fiction, holidays, humour, life, Mexico, Pindar, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

manatee-dominican-republic-01

This is the end, my beautiful friends – The Mermaids

We are in two minds to go and swim with whale sharks in Holbox, but this is a pain in the rectum to get to and will take up two solid days of the six we have left. So, we opt for opulence and relaxation on the Isle of Mujeres, after this we will be back in England the fattening pens of work. I have already occurred the wrath of the grammar school I’m going back to, but we will never get the chance to take two and half months off again until we are either retired or dead. Term started three days back, and they have not been able to find a teacher that can teach Chemistry. My blaze attitude of: ‘If you can’t find any one, I’m back in the country on the 14th September I’m happy to come back then.’ My laidback outlook is not what the leadership, and helicopter parents of tomorrow’s professionals want to hear – but needs must when the Devil drives, even in a Catholic school!7024c70e46e93458343991aab3304695

So, we are on a bus travelling to and through Cancun, there has been a gang shooting a few days before in the centre. The east side of Mexico is far safer than the lawless west side – I am aware I sound like a gangster writing that, ‘I’m Eastside’ (Not sure if I’m doing the arthritic ‘sign language fingers’ right?, if nothing else I look like a younger Richard Madeley/older Ali G, or a confused Albanian doing an injured eagle on the freeway, heading to the service station of liberty – it has an M&S.

South-Point-Isla-Mujeres-18

We don’t get shot at and it’s not long before we are shooting the short distance across the sea to the Women Island, which appears to be Golf buggy island as we step off the boat. We have opted to stay out of the middle at the top of the island at Maria’s Kin Kan. The wife is neither happy with the location, the room or the price (I’ve booked it!); location from the centre about four miles, the room – not on the sea front, she makes her annoyance abundantly clear to a perplexed Maria, it is crafty ploy to try and get us upgraded – it does not work! Price: £600 for 6 nights, I point out this is reasonable, £100 a night for a place like this, is very good value, we are only getting it this cheap as it’s out of season and I have booked at the last minute, it is normally twice this price. The rooms at the front are booked out in a few days’ time, Maria does not have the super power to move the hotel a few miles down the seafront. The Wife goes to unpack while I give a DNA sample and passport details. “She’ll be fine, Maria, once I give her the right balance of mogadons and white wine and lie to her about our finances.”

IMG_0409

The hotel is fantastic, ok the room does not overlook the sea, but there is a private white sandy beach, a jetty, infinity pool, the twinkling lights of Cancun at night, the underwater museum two kilometres off shore. We are one of five guests staying here, by the next day we will be the only ones for two days. We are A list VIP Royals, the chef, Gas from Argentina, will become our exclusive chef for the next day (I will have a face-lift and a lobotomy, and the wife will have a bum-tuck and breast augmentation – I think I may be getting carried away with the situation?), “Whatever you want, doesn’t matter if it’s not on the menu, I will cook it for you.” Hey, what’s not to like?

For me, if you are after a package holiday to the ‘Eastside’ (arthritis pose) of Mexico, Isla Mujeres is a far better option than Cancun itself.

By breakfast The Wife has calmed down, which is good as the only other people at breakfast are the owners. “I’ve been thinking about the money–” “You can’t take it with you, there’s no pockets in a shroud.” Just before she can reply the chef is upon us asking what we want for dinner. “Red snapper and squid,” I snap back, readily. He suggests other meals, now he has a free hand, he’s worked all around the world, large stints in Spain and Italy. The food on the island is generally great.

Stitched Panorama

The island is incredibly small, a golf buggy will do you. There are mainly Americans without children around, the shops sell trinkets aimed at sports fans, of teams I don’t know well; Minnesota Musk Oxen, Arizonia Alpha-males, Santa Monica Serial Killers, The Michigan Muscleations, New York Dolls and The San Francisco Friends of Dorothy. We buy Christmas tree baubles, this has become a travel ritual now, it’s nice in the warm glow of Christmas to be reminded of exciting travels past (–the ghost that never visits in your youth!) Baubles for the children started with my sister in law, she buys them Villeroy and Boch, posh ceramic ones in the January sales and gifts them over eleven months later, (very organised, but then again, she does most of her Christmas cooking in October and freezes it!), it’s a great gift idea, the offspring are already adamant they are taking them with them when they leave the nest, so that is testament to how much they are treasured. They have some in-joke, that we don’t fully understand, about a ‘fat Mexican’ so we hunt down the ‘fat Mexican’ in baubalised form. The ones we buy are of a fat Mexican with ‘very’ flexible feet: Roberto! (sorry)

cancun_underwater_museum_jason_decaires_taylor9

We kayak out to the Cancun Underwater Statue Museum, I have read an article about this, and it looks amazing. It’s an easy two km paddle. I would have liked to have dived it, but snorkelling will do. The Wife is not sure she will be able to clamber back on board the slippery kayak, but there’s no way I’m not having a look. It’s a little limited to what you can see without a guide and an aqualung, but I manage to see the terracotta figures, cars (VW), large heads and few mooning arses. Well worth a visit, especially if you’re a diver.

On the penultimate day I come down with a fever, sweating away even in the air-conditioned room. I have recovered a little by the last day, but still under the weather, there is a seven-hour flight to recuperate on. My body is having an allergic reaction to working again, that and some dodgy seafood from down by the catamaran port.

On the last night, the Wife says, “You were right about this place, it’s been absolutely amazing, you’re always right.” I write that down, remind her what she has just said, and it’s going on her gravestone.” ‘Eventually’, can take a while to occur sometimes!

Isla Mujeres, Maria’s, is a long way from landing at Manchester airport, dumping my bags at home, quickly saying hello to our daughter, put my suit on and being in work less than two hours after touching down. It will start again, work, the existential life-laundry struggle, amassing enough money to escape again, enough pension-pot not to have to drink your own urine, but the memories of a month in Cuba, hummingbirds, pumas, manatees, friendships forged. They will keep us warm when we are old and voting to re-join the European union. These jaunts away that make you feel alive (at least in your imagination), restore your faith in humanity, give you the freedom to take risks, remind you that life’s for the living, these are what separate YOU and I from the also rans.

So, when the stories and anecdotes have been recounted, the odd person would tentatively ask: How much did it cost all together? The meticulous accounts of The Wife’s: £10,166 exactly. Seems a lot, but that is the equivalent of five two-week holidays. I know large families that go away for two weeks in the summer and spent four grand – seems a bargain now, maybe?

IMG_0418

BIG LOVE and Happy holidays, my fellow humans.

 

I had to give evidence to the Manchester bomb inquiry, the bomber Salman Abedi – a mass murderer who I met several times as a teenager, but never directly taught, went to the school I worked at for years. I couldn’t the authorities anything meaningful, he was a fickle boy and was not radicalised during his time at the school.

7c9e077d99f4ddf4a540b7152d33f110

What I will say is: Don’t look back in anger, ‘cos you’re not going in that direction, and if you are, have a change of direction.

 

Bit longer this week, but that’s it then for a while. The end of this travel journey documented. I would like to dedicate these blogs to Trevor Wolfe from Boulder, Colorado. Trevor and Olivia, we met in Costa Rica. He had a degree in Botany, worked in the burgeoning marijuana business and we would often chat on Facebook, about many things, his horror and shame of Trump, my shame of leaving the brotherhood/sisterhood of the EU, both add up to the same thing, our collective fear of the rise of nationalism and self-interest, that then gives birth to xenophobia, that appears to be igniting globally – divide and rule, fanned by neo-liberal sponsored division. Then the communication went dead, when I was asking him about the legalisation of pot in the North Americas. I wanted to buy some shares and he had the inside track. This was strange, he was usually very prompt in replying. I saw something with his name on and a college friend writing a eulogy. I dismissed it thinking it must have been his father with the same name, and… this was the reason why he was not getting back to me, I don’t go on Facebook much. A few days later, I realised it was Trevor that had died, aged just 30 years of age. Both The Wife and I cried, we had only met Trevor a few times, but he was one of those beautiful, beautiful, people that restored your faith in humanity and Americans, the world is a much sadder place without him. Life is an absolute bastard sometimes, and if nothing else, reminds you: to love is to suffer. RIP Trev, and let all that partake raise their joints in your honour.

Graphic1

Next time: There is no next time. Only the now… Don’t dream it, be it!

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp middle patternIan M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar 

BookCoverImage

I was asked what books I read while I was away, and the fact you are probably reading this on the Goodreads site, here goes, by far the most read, and often re-read where the Rough Guides to; Cuba and Central America.

The others were, in this order;

& Sons                       David Gilbert

The Curry Mile          Zahid Hussain

England, England    Julian Barnes

Version of Us            Laura Barnett

Breathing Lessons  Anne Tyler

God in Ruins            Kate Atkinson

The Amateurs           John Niven

…and they say men don’t read fiction, and those that do don’t read women authors!

#18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

24 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in fiction, Mexico, Pindar, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

manatee-dominican-republic-01

We could have spent longer on Caye Caulker, but we have sampled all it has to offer except Zika virus, the accommodation owners have both had it a few weeks back and we are keen to avoid it. The fast boat to Chetumal in Mexico leaves at 7am, stopping at San Pedro (last night I dreamt of San Pedro – there’s your earworm), so we can pay our tourist tax to Belizean government – B$38. A Dutch guy in the queue discovers he has left his passport back in Caulker, that’s a bad start to any day.

The same tourist taxation occurs in Mexico at the port – US$20, not Mexican pesos, but painfully slow, we are glad there are only 20 on the boat and not 200! We decide to get the bus to Tulum, along with bunch of insular young Israelis and a friendlier older travel companion in his thirties. All except him are very aggressive to the driver, whose job is to get us to Tulum asap, but says he will stop somewhere so they can eat. When he passes several potential eateries, they become even more aggressive. The older traveller has lived in San Francisco for the last seven years, working in IT, he has a more placid personality, until the driver stops at a roadside restaurant, probably taking commission on the passing trade. The older Israeli guy is now not happy with the menu and he’s now stomping his feet and threatening to cancel his bank payment. It is interesting to observe them, they should be happy-go-lucky laid-back travellers, but they are a far cry from that, all bar him have just finished their national service, before that, uni, maybe this is a factor? I honestly don’t know is the truth, but as a bunch they are unpleasant and bullying, and I know that may make me sound anti-sematic, which I’m not, but I am ant-Zionist, but they are two separate issues, even if the right-wing media melds them together, as a young female Israeli once told my wife years ago whilst fleeing her national service, ‘We Israelis have a siege mentality, it is part of our DNA, can you imagine not being able to go on holiday to any of the countries surrounding you because they hate us, welcome to the Israeli psyche!’ Luckily the driver is an ‘unpopular’ Mexican and not Palestinian!

Beach-in-Tulum-5846e27b5f9b5851e502e481

We jump out in Tulum, none of the Israelis say goodbye except the older guy. Hey, maybe they don’t want to chat to a middle-aged English couple, maybe they have each other for that, but I know if I was in in my mid-twenties and a middle-aged English couple that had just been on the road for two months in Central America, I would want to know more! Also sounding like an old fart, travel is so much easier these days, I have browsed a couple of sites and booked our low budget hotel literally on the road. Tulum has a fantastic coastal Mayan site which you can get around in over an hour without a guide, Iguanas abound, worth a night to see.

16592665459_0a9189e36a_b

After two nights we travel onwards to Valladolid, travel is easy in Mexico. Saying ‘Valladolid’ isn’t. The trick is to say it fast like you have a speech impediment and throw a cheerful ‘yeah’ in middle somewhere. We stay at a small boutique hotel with a plunge pool. Like most central and South American towns and cities, it is a variation on a theme, large church or cathedral, unless you are devoutly religious, there is only so many houses of God you can look at, and even if you are, there can only be so many times you can observe Jesus in excruciating pain nailed to a cross. Then there’s the square, surrounded by the restaurants and top end hotels. But Valladolid has something special, it has a cenote, a what?, I hear you say, a cenote is a beautiful deep sink hole fashioned within the sedimentary rock, and there are many in Mexico, but this one could not be more convenient. The morning we have a dip there, we only come across two other people using it, I’m told not many locals can swim, as they are not taught in school. Whenever there is a drowning, it is normally a local. Not sure the sign in English ‘If you cannot swim, avoid accidents’ helps? These ‘plunge holes’ are also a great place to escape the heat of summer.

Valladolid-Cenotes-770x512

We are staying here so we can visit the best-preserved UNESCO protected Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. Go early, as early as you can, this place gets rammed, and we are there out of season. It’s difficult not to overstate the tackiness the huge number of vendors within the complex detracts from the magnificence of the place. We are there quite early, we catch the public bus, and by the time we leave there must be over a hundred pitches trying to sell you tat. You can accept the people, after all they are coming for the same reason you are, but the tackiness of the place -Tacksville, with a capital, bold and underlined ‘T’! Saying that, you should see it, it is magnificent, the main temple is enormous and restored. The most interesting building is the ball court, two teams would complete to get a rubber ball through their opponents’ hoop, and the captain of the winning team would have their heart pulled out of their body and sacrificed to the Gods! This is the winner!! This was an honour, you got to dwell with the Gods. This is what Paul Pogba probably feared at Manchester United, this would explain why he played so badly when he was captain. Hire a guide, ours, Irvin, is incredibly knowledgeable and interesting.

 

Chichen Itza ballcourt2394

chichen

Chichen-Itza-its-all-about-the-junk

I get my haircut in Yeahadod by an old hand, Michello, confident in my Spanish and his experience. I think I have asked for cross between a Bowie 80’s cut and a Rupert Everett 90’s. A female hairdresser comes to my aid, “He thinks you want a long back and front.” I’m interested to find out what that might look like, but I suspect I might look like the lead singer of Kasabian after a heavy night out. When I was a student in the 80’s you could model for designer saloons, and I visited a posh one on King’s Street, Manchester, and after a wait, a man that was dressed like Roy Chubby Brown on a stag do appeared, he even had the goggles on his head (honestly), camper than a row of illuminated taffeta Christmas trees, he uninvitedly ran his fingers through my hair and exclaimed in a camp vibrato, “I’ll shave it aaalll offf, and leave a single thin whisp to flick across. That’s all I can offer you!” “No, you fucking won’t.” With that my hair modelling days were gone in the caress of an effete hairdresser’s moisturised fingers. I would have looked like I was emphasising with cancer patients. About this time, I had a number 3 all over, and thought it looked quite suave, picture a cross between Brad Pitt and Jude Law, my girlfriend at the time took one look and said, “You look like you’ve just come out a concentration camp!” – unkind, to say the least, apologies Brad and Jude.

david-bowie-db001sr

rcb_roy_chubby_brown

We go a day trip to Rio Lagratos, – Alligator River, there are no alligators, only crocodiles. It is a great place to see flamingos, eat fresh fish, and just to prove you are a proper tourist cover yourself in think grey mineral mud, which supposedly exfoliates the skin and makes you live for a thousand years, and also give you an opportunity to look (more) ridiculous on social media.

dd7b6bc2a6a6ba2f39eea6902a50798f

IMG_6484

We fully access all areas of another interesting Mayan ruin on the journey back, Ek Balam, our Guide, Roberto, knows everyone, this proves useful as an Archaeologist from the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City is working on preserving, an already well-preserved freeze, because this particular chamber has been completely hermetically sealed for 1,000 years, not seen by another human eye. We are invited in like VIPs. I try to think what I was doing a 1,000 years ago? Catching the plague and dying.

waystoplay-ruins-ekbalam

The roads on the Yucatan are straight, Romanesque, there are no meanders or deviations to keep you awake, you can see the vanishing distant point, clearly, like when you had to draw railway lines in junior school. The worry now is Roberta’s head is lightly lilting to the ‘eyes closed’ position, I offer to drive several times when I think he is going to give us a closer look at the adjacent roadside ditches – spoiler alert, we don’t crash, but our chances would have been greatly increased if I had fallen asleep as well.

 

Next time: This is the end, my beautiful friends.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (6)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

 

#17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

27 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in Belize, holidays, Pindar, Uncategorized, wildlife, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Belize, Caye Caulker, crabs, manatees, sharks, Stephen King

manatee-dominican-republic-01

The bus across Belize to Belize City, not the capital, at one-point cuts through a quiet cemetery, not a deviation, the main route, like you might stop off on a sightseeing tour to observe the resting places of the dead. We have just missed the ferry out to Caye Caulker, this allows us to wander around the city centre, the people are friendly, there is a distinct Caribbean feel with New Zealand architecture. We sit on a restaurant veranda people watching. Talking to the manager, I’m still not up to speed with everyone speaking English. He tells us of the corruption at the top of the government and by several wealthy families, this is a familiar story.

I’ve always wanted to visit Belize, it has an amazing biodiversity. When I first started teaching I used to play an ecology board game with the pupils, based in Belize, but I will admit I had to look up where it was beforehand. The SAS do their jungle training here, but I never saw any – hey have been camouflaged? We’ve done enough jungles, so we are hurtling across the Caribbean Sea to Caye Caulker, the sun bouncing off everything, past the stilted wooden fishing huts.

Caye-Caulker-Roads

We have a westerly sea-front apartment, it’s quite magnificent, we’ve gone up market, this opulence was on the bucket list before we set off. The coffee machine is a delight, air conditioned, and you can see why the Canadian couple that run the place have semi-retired here. There is something here for everyone, we bump into many people we have befriended previously, that night, you can’t miss people on Caulker – both an advantage and a disadvantage! It also reminds you that as much as you think you are a cutting-edge independent traveller, you are only beating the track many thousands have already beaten. We meet David that night, you can party hard here, and he looks as though he has just come out of a hostage situation, followed by a festival, he wearily tells us he doesn’t think he can manage another night ‘on it’, and his Canadian friend, Marco has partied so hard, he has run out of the onward funds to get to his sister’s wedding in Ireland in a few weeks. The Split bar at the end of the island, with the fast-flowing tidal current is the place for the young to go and exchange travel stories and bodily fluids.

maxresdefault

The mini-supermarkets all appear to be run by Chinese, Caulker is a stepping stone for them, corruption revolves around getting a passport, and once you have one, you can move onto America more easily. The wife asks the young female assistant if they have any long-life milk and she returns with fly-catching paper! I pretend to be a self-milking cow and she returns with a police officer, only joking, two police officers!, only joking… long life milk – there are no cows on Caye Caulker, but there are plenty of mosquitoes and as we walk back in the semi-darkness, a lot of scuttling. The scuttling turns out be various species of quite large crabs, if you are afraid of crabs, especially ones you can’t see until you are upon them, avoid Caulker. Think of the yet unwritten Stephen King book, The Crabs. There is a very large stubborn one on our porch, which I have to shoo off, it looks at me as if to say, ‘I know where you live, and I have these nipping castanets!’

p10005841

One of the many joys of the tiny island is the bakery where the bread and sweet delights are baked daily. I pop out on a borrowed push bike every morning and sing, ‘Rain Drops keep falling on my Head’ in a jovial ironic out of tune way.

DSC_6775 copy

Another reason we have come to Belize is for me to dive the Great Blue Hole, a beautiful dive site 70km off the coast, as the name aptly suggests it is a big blue hole, and divers hold it up there as a must dive. I’m chatting to a dive master about it, telling him about our previous travels and he advises, ‘It is just a deep blue hole on a reef, the dugongs have come in to breed, we have spotted them every day for almost a week, this side of the reef, that would be better for you, I think?’ I have seen most animals and fish in the sea, but the only animal I want to see are dugongs (manatees, sea-cows), I even considered going to the Gulf of California to observe them, but then the chances are slim. So instead of travelling to look at a 124m deep by 318m wide oubliette, we are now going looking for manatees. To say I’m excited is an understatement, when the dive master cautiously says there is never a 100% chance of a sighting, but I would say there’s  minimum of 80%.

pc1bluehole0001sm

There are only seven passengers on the boat the next day, among them a newly-wed Scouse couple, Lianne and Simon – an ex-diving instructor. We spot the most beautiful of the turtles – a Hudson turtle, rays, dolphins and many species of shark, including nurse sharks, these ‘couch potatoes of the sea’ are usually solitary and nocturnal, but have changed their behaviour as they are constantly fed by tourists, this angers Lianne, a member of the Shark Conservation Trust.

greenseaturtle_reef_hawaii_istock

On the last snorkelling stop of the day, where he says we have the most chance of spotting the manatees, the captain points to the water and I think he’s saying, here is the best spot, but he is pointing to say he has seen one. I don’t believe him, as we can see nothing. I’m about to burst with excitement, along with Lianne and James, the wife is observing us, trying to make sense of it all, telling me not to get my hopes too high. Visibility is about 30m and we swim off as a group in the direction the captain is adamant they will be found. We search for about 15 minutes, then I spot a solitary one in the distance, I can feel the adrenalin making me smile under the water and I approach it guardedly. It laconically swims up to me, two feet from my face for a closer look – they have very poor eye-sight. I’m face to face with a male dugong, it casually turns and flippers off – mariners used to think they we mermaids due to their body shape and rear flipper (tail fluke). He dives towards a sleeping female on the sandy seabed. We float and watch from the surface; another female appears, and her and the male kiss. Simon has an underwater camera and is taking photos. We watch them until it is time to go, get back on the boat, unable to contain our excitement, this is the most amazing sea-spectacle I have ever witness in my life, and a toss-up with pink-river dolphins in the Amazon.

‘Is this better than seeing pumas in the wild?’ The Wife asks me aloud and the sharp look that Simon, Lianne and I give her is her answer.

980x

Vs

You decide?

We cruise past a mangrove swamp on the way home, but everything else that day will be anticlimactic. The wife has too much rocket-fuel rum punch and in her inebriated state tries to get $20,000 out of the service till. We meet up with Simon and Lianne later and I start to catch up the wife’s intoxicated state. To celebrate life, travels, and most of all magnificent creatures of the ocean, already knowing that the memories of three sea mammals in distant warm tropical waters will wash over us and warm us forever.

 

Next time: From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (3)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

Key words:

#11  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in holidays, Pindar, travel, wildlife, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Costa Rica

two manatees

Corcovado National Park is magical. I was hoping to see turtles nesting at night on the huge golden deserted beaches, but we are not in luck, neither are the young British volunteers, and they’ve been out every night for a week.

leatherback-nesting

The highlight is tracking and finding pumas, a mother and a juvenile. They often leave the thick cover of the forest at this time of year in search of the newly laid turtle eggs.

3129500749_cd9c90e8e8

This will be the wildlife highlight for The Wife, but will be secondary for me, as the photo at the start may indicate. I particularly like the tame band (I looked it up) of coatis, that carry on eating around you like animated characters from a Disney cartoon as you pass them in the jungle.

coatimundi5b

The place we have stayed in, Finca Exotica Eco Lodge is fantastic, but a tad expensive, for example, a glass of wine is $7, I drink beer to help or finances, but the budget is shot, and we both have a spare kidney to sell when we get home. Our room has open sides and bats fly through at night – not scary, very exciting. All guests eat together, which adds to the community feel of the place, as like-minded people share stories and break bread. I would highly recommend it, especially if you are only away for a few weeks. You can actually fly in, as there is rudimentary airstrip, that was once part of the gold mining in the area a century back. ‘The plane, boss, the plane’, is what it feels like when a plane arrives.

Home_4

The only drawback of being slap bang in the middle of a rain forest is all your clothes get damp, even the ones in your case, it’s a small inconvenience. If you are going for the wildlife alone, I would make the journey to The Amazon, everywhere is secondary to there. The collective is just as invigorating on the way back to Puerto Jimenez. The young guy in charge of the tickets has laconically said he will sort us a small hire-car out at what seems like a ridiculously low price for the nine days we have left in the country, it is the low season, and he has.

62867334

So, we have wheels, something we should have done a week before and cut out a lot of hassle. We drive back to the seafront where we meet Tim and Chloe yet again. They have adopted a stray ranch dog they have found on the street in San Miguel, that kept following them. They are paying for the vets bills and the air flight to get him back to Colorado, about a US$1,000. In a way it’s commendable, although, I wouldn’t do it – all paid for by marijuana growing, you can add your own moral to this story.

We are trying to get to Monteverde cloud forest, but we are lost in the dark on a Friday night, weekend nights in Costa Rica are notorious for drunk/drug drivers, and we are on route 1, The Trans Pan-American Highway, full of uncompromising trucks and cars that don’t always dip their beams as the hurtle towards you. I’ve been driving for four hours and need to get off the road. We end up in a town called Oronita, driving the wrong way down a main one-way street, this is a strong indication it is time to rest. The people are friendly, the food is good. Our Friday is spent with the locals, mainly men, in bar singing karaoke songs. It is an interesting night, a window on another world: same but different. When the same very pissed guy tries to focus hard on The Wife’s face, but his eyes seem to go in and out of vision on her breasts, and when they abate for a second, he asks her to dance again. Forgetting she has refused him the first time, it is probably time for bed, and The Wife chooses me!

karaoke-quotes-funny

Next Time: #12 Crocodiles, Cloud Forests & Selfies: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (6)

 

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

#9 Then the food changed into Technicolor! Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by thewritingimp in holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

two manatees

Your world can only be viewed in black and white like you have been transported down a worm-hole to 1940’s Britain, rationing is still stalking the nation. You have been asked to cook a Michelin star meal for Winston Churchill with no alcohol, only three ingredients and a broken oven that uses marsh gas – You might kill yourself by accident, or on purpose. I’m painting a picture, an Alan Partridgesque picture for dramatic effect, but not with oil paints, sat a modern desktop computer. Then you are transported in the opposite direction through another worm-hole, what are the chances – ‘improbable’ would be a layman’s evaluation. You are now in a hotel in Mexico City, the capitol city of Mexico, that has all the internet in the world, you are tired after travelling, it’s late at night and you order a green ensalada tortilla, you put a spoonful in your mouth and you literally explode in ecstasy, fragments of you are stuck all over the walls, blood, sinew, brain and viscera drip everywhere, it’s that good (well, it is after a month in Cuba), you want to cry – happy tears, not sad ones, and the world turns from black and white into Technicolour.

1200x630bb

You’re in your own heavenly scene from the Wizard of Oz, but not being attacked by deranged monkeys and the nasty witches are all dead – Ding! Dong”!

Wizard_of_Oz

That’s what it felt like, an epicurean delight. A friend once told me that he went for a posh meal on a significant birthday, and the sticky toffee pudding was so good he cried. If I had not received an Alan Partridge book for Christmas, that’s how I might have explained it! Another friend told me that when her grandma came over from India in the 1970’s she looked behind the tele to try and see the little men inside. This is how having the internet for the first two days felt like, the last two times in Havana, where you have to go to a public space to use the internet, it had either not worked or been so slow, you just gave in.

Mexico City is great place to visit, we are only here for three nights, mainly as it is the cheapest way to fly out of Cuba. The only thing that is disconcerting about the centre is the groups of armed riot police. On our meanderings we spot three lots of about twenty police-officers. Normally bored, playing on their phones. I ask many people why? I get variations on a theme, to protect the people, protect property, for reassurance, it has the opposite effect on me – It all adds up to the same thing, Mexico can be a dangerous place! Although we never saw any trouble, between 15,000 to 25,000 people die every year in the drug war related deaths. Take the average of those figures, and it’s a fifth of a million people in ten years!! This is the reason we will be flying over El Salvador, which is even worse than Mexico. What is worrying and quite eerie is how fast the centre of the heavily protected Mexico City shuts down on an early evening, by nine it’s dead. One instant all the shops are open, crowds of people throng the streets, and then virtually nothing, a few convenience stores and a smattering of restaurants. It is so spooky we decide to eat in the hotel the second evening, we are just behind the main cathedral –  The Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven – if she’s not got in, there is little chance for anyone else! The reason I suspect there is such a large visible police presence on the streets is to protect tourists. A dead foreign tourist is bound to make the news back home, another dead Mexican is very unlikely!

APTOPIX Mexico Clowns Pilgrimage

Due to time restrictions we take two bus tours. The place you have to visit is the Anthropological Museum, always in the top ten of world museums. It’s a spectacular building, filled with the most amazing Mayan, Incan and Aztec collections. The Sun Stone (The Stone of the Five Eras) at 24 tons and 3.5m in diameter is a must-see. Due to time constraints it is the only museum we actually visit – less is definitely more in this case.

National-Museum-of-Anthropology-Mexico-City-with-Kids-6

The Wife has been here before. Towards the end of our visit to the anthropological museum she casually says. ‘Yeah, I’ve been to this museum before with the Chicas.’ ‘The Chicas’ are set of her female friends that go away most years to drink cocktails in hot countries. ‘You leave it until now to casually tell me this?’ ‘Yeah, if I’d have told you earlier, you would have expected me to know a lot more, and where things are.’

I am glad we have visited Mexico City, it was much more invigorating and exciting than I envisaged. We are flying to San Jose in Costa Rica. The rich-coast country is top of my list for the two and half months we are away, simply for the wildlife. It’s early in the morning at the airport, we have our outbound tickets out with Interjet, but they are scamming us, and many others. Telling us we need some proof of leaving Costa Rica, The Costa Ricans don’t care and don’t enforce this, but it is an easy way of Mexican airlines making a lot of money. We have to change our tickets from 9am to 8pm to sort out what to do – a full day in an airport. When I ask where we change our ticket with their airline, the attendant casually points to the terminal next to him, ‘This is our travel agent!’ This is very annoying curveball and in retrospect, quite easily avoidable, happens in other South and Central American countries regularly, so, beware. Two options are either to buy a cheap bus ticket over the boarder out of the country you are flying to, even if you don’t use it, or another great alternative is FlyOnward.com. This company basically lets you rent an onward ticket for US$9.99. They purchase it in your name, send you the confirmation via e-mail, and you can show / print to convince the airline. (Fly Onward cancels the ticket after two days – you can’t actually use the ticket.) It is quick to do, and great if you are actually undecided where to go next. The beauty is you don’t spend hours trying to get a refund for a ticket you don’t actually use.

Like I’ve said, Mexico is the cheapest way to get out of Cuba, and if you’ve never been to Mexico City – go, it’s wonderful. We went before Mr Trump was elected and the talk of an enormous pantomime wall to be paid for by the Mexicans themselves was not an imagined reality. If you are an American at the airport pretend to be a democrat, even if you’re not, and when they look suspiciously at your passport and then accusingly back up at you, get in first blow with ‘The wall is fake news!’ (Don’t do the accent, or sex-pest any women, or call Mexico a shit-hole, nothing good will come of that,) if that fails, pretend to be Canadian!

 

Next Time: They come in threes.

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp all black

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

#7 THE bus toilet incident (The walk of shame!) Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, fiction, holidays, humour, Pindar, religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Baracoa, Build it and they will come, Cuba, Field of Dreams, Guantamemaro, Guantanamo, Lechita sauce, Spandau ballet, walk of shame

two manatees

There are two reasons we are making the six-hour journey to the farthest end of Cuba to Baracoa, firstly we have not been bowled over by Santiago, and secondly, I’m adamant that ‘there must be’ some tasty food somewhere on this island of 11.5 million people, and Baracoa is renowned for its ‘special’ Caribbean spicy sauce.

600x600bf

We pass through Guantánamo, famous for two things to the outside world, Guantanamera (there’s only one Guantananera-a-a), the patriotic song about the girl from Guantanamo (Guantanamera is the Spanish for Guantanamo), and,

160815192134-guantanamo-bay-super-tease

the American sponsored Muslim holiday camp, in no way illegal and a breach of any human rights, this for me is like Trump getting elected, an illegal interrogation (Interrogation is American-English for torture!) centre, by a prozy country that hates you, and the people in power in the country you are detained in now have the other Castro brother in charge, that have both survived dozens of assignation attempts (although Fidel was the decoy for Raul), that would quite happily torture, the torturers happily torturing! (Wheels within wheels, outside wheels! – You can’t make this stuff up!) For this reason and many more I crane my neck as we get somewhere near the GITMO naval base, home to nearly ten-thousand American service personnel, allegedly protecting the Panama Canal – I wonder if the Chinese will set up a naval base to protect their investment in the Guatemala ship canal they are building to rival the Panama one? – We all know the answer already! All I can make out from the distance is a watch-tower and defiant stars and stripes flying aloft in the breeze.

guantanamobay_1

Apparently, inmates, both captives and interrogators were subjected to thirty-hours of the same song on a loop; Queens, We are the Champions of the World, Take Your Best Shot by Dope and Fuck You God, by Deicide, I understand the irony of the first two, but the last one is sending out very some mixed messages to monotheistic religions with the big fella at the pyramid! Saturday Night Fever is a strange choice, surely, Stayin Alive would have worked much better?

081017-travolta-hmed-7a.grid-6x2

But there is one, that baffles me, and it’s one of my very favourite tunes of all time, David Gray’s, Babylon. Chosen because of its biblical connotations, eh up, surely after a day of listening to this on a loop very loud, you realise there is not much ‘religious connotation’ in it, unless love and ecstasy are a new religion?

hqdefault

I could quite easily listen to this on a loop interspersed with being force feed through a tube and waterboarded – total disclosure, I have never tried it! If you’re as baffled as me by all this, read more here: https://mic.com/articles/87851/11-popular-songs-the-cia-used-to-torture-prisoners-in-the-war-on-terror#.63IUyMIGw

 

Baracoa is a strange but enchanting place, sometimes as a traveller/tourist you step outside your body and observe yourself observing the new environment/culture/people. Here feels like that to me, the people going about their everyday business and you watching them in a Truman Showesque way. Baseball is the national sport of Cuba, at the end of pretty much the only sandy beach in the town is a baseball stadium, it is an impressive structure, especially from a distance, enormous in relation to all around – pretty much only a few low-level houses, a bit of sand and a flat sea, it rises up incongruously, white and spectacular.

Baracoa-Cuba-04027

It draws you in, but as you get closer and up to it, it’s fighting a constant battle against the briny sea air, and looks like it’s coming off second best, inside it’s just as impressive. This stadium, and I exaggerate not, is actually on the beach! It is ‘Fields of Dreams.’ ‘Build it and they will come!’, but there are only about 80,000 people close enough to come. This stadium will stay with me forever, I get chatting to a craftsman inside the empty stadium and he fills me in with lots of facts, they can’t obviously compete with the big cities; Havana, Santiago, Cienfuegos and Camaguey, they are the Leicester City of Cuban Baseball. He tells me there are trials in a few days’ time, free to the public. I would be there, but we have booked onto a tour of the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park – I would love to see and hear the thwack of leather on wood in this mesmerising place – I’m so tempted to cancel the national park – I have no interest in baseball normally, it’s just ‘men-rounders’ and I have a degree in Ecology and a love of natural history. This is how captivating this stadium on the beach is!

Alain L. Gutiérrez Almeida

So, Lechita sauce (coconut, tomatoes, garlic and spices) is one of the reasons we have travelled to the farthest end of the island from Havana. In all honesty it is tastiest food I’ve sampled in Cuba, but it is no better than you would get in a supermarket packet back home, we are discussing this when the proud manager of the restaurant with the best Trip Advisor reputation (not much competition) sidles up to our table and asks, what we think of the food, as I’m about to give an honest considered opinion, The Wife espouses,

“It’s, just okay!” He turns and with a humph of his shoulders, disappears to more agreeable patrons from North Korea!

“Have you got Asperger’s?”

“Well, it is, just okay, isn’t it?” (Total disclosure, she does not have Asperger’s syndrome, just a poor filter and lack of tact.)

We are setting off from Baraco to Santiago, a five-hour journey, the bus is well over an hour late coming into the station and when it arrives the rear side front and stairs have been partly mangled, the lights smashed, and the windscreen has a crack running through it and the door is held shut with string, it has hit a lorry in the mountains and come off second best.

We have been happily chatting to an English couple from London, the husband has per-chance bumped into a Cuban-national friend he met here 15 years before, it is heart-warming to watch them at the station, like they are off to war on opposite sides, they are very unlikely to meet again, that’s sad, but this is the gripping hands across the divide stuff – ‘And we made our love on wasteland, And through the barricades,’ I don’t know why I think of the lyrics from this Spandau Ballet song as I watch two men hug and depart, probably forever, this is humanity acting locally, but thinking globally, something the people that run our countries could heed… That was a party-political broadcast from the ‘Global Common-Sense Party!’ The English couple have two very young children, a nine-month and a two-year old, I know what fun looks like, and two under twos travelling independently is not ‘it’, e.g. The wife is juggling a whinging the nine-month old later on the bus, whilst trying to read a novel, this looks like extreme reading to me, and could only be harder if she were trying in to do it under water and ironing at the same time! My wife says maybe we should help, I inform her I’ve done larval stage with my own children, and just watching this couple is absolutely exhausting.

After an hour and a half, we stop at the brother in laws place in the hills for refreshments, my bowels are corrugating. I try to relieve them, but they are like a lone-wolf misanthrope and refuse to be relieved. I think I hear them say, ‘keep your friends close, keep your enemas closer still’, I know which I am! The bus sets off again, then my bowels ebb and flow with greater potency and I’m caught in the bob and swell. Total disclosure, number three, there is a toilet at the back of the coach, that you can smell every time the door opens and what is about to depart from me should not be inflicted on humans with any sense of smell, never mind those in unfortunate close proximity to the washroom, believe me Americans, you would not wash in there afterwards, even euphemistically! So, for the second time I approach the co-driver and in my best Spanish taught to me by a Nazi (see last week’s blog), I proclaim, ‘Estoy un poco enfermo’, (I’m a little ill), forgetting the bus is held together by string. They inform me the bus will stop in San Antonio, I know this is before Guantánamo, so I think I can hang on a few minutes, a few minutes turn into twenty-five, The Wife is holding up a 5 CUC coin and asking me what it is worth in Cuban pesos, this is not a difficult calculation, but the bus has pulled over and the driver has climbed out of his window, I’m thinking I should do the same, he has gone to buy bananas, it is a national holiday the next day, inconveniencing fifty passengers and one in particular, I think this is it, toilet nirvana, and as I get up, he jumps back in and drives off again, the bastard! The Wife is still wittering on about the coin’s value held between us like a two-year old, she has an O-Level in maths! I get up and proclaim louder and more assertively this time to the co-driver, ‘Mi poco enfermo’, they feel obliged to pull over at a row of modern double-storey hoses, I’m watching like a hawk a very old-man leave his dwelling while the co-driver disentangles the string to open the door, I leap from the bus, just as the old-man turns the key in the lock and places it deep within his jacket pocket – the bastard!, by the time I have explained and he has unlocked it, it will be too late – if a siren is not going off, it should be! So, I burst through the open door of the house next door to the surprise of a startled middle-aged women watching tele. ‘mi poco enfermo’ and I vigorously rub my stomach, whilst looking pained, which is not hard, ‘oh,’, she replies and thinks I have come to call for her son!! She shouts up the stairs for Estevo, I’m very close to the worst of all social embarrassments now and I’m thinking the toilet has to be upstairs and just making a dash for it, I repeat my plea and pathos to Estevo as he descends into the living room, and thankfully he understands the strange gringos urgency and points to the back of the house and right, I just, only just, make it, relieved I get up only to have to sit down again, I’m in toilet-nirvana, now, eventually, it’s safe for everyone, if I get back on the bus. I try to give them money but ironically only have my emergency bus station toilet money, about twenty pence, the lovely Cuban people in the middle of nowhere with a flushing toilet are obviously offended, but I have made the gesture.(StCP!)

0505dc060ca7bd989949bfdc5a0ee803b6b8c9-wide-thumbnail

Meanwhile The wife is telling the inquisitive bus that think I have a long-lost friend here, like the English guy earlier, about my toilet abrupta exploits, someone is translating for the benefit of the Spanish speakers (I am not making this up for comic effect, unfortunately!) As I leave the house fifty pairs of eyes are fixed on me as I make the walk of shame up the path of the house, and then the full length of the pavement adjacent to the bus, I feel obliged to report back to the whole bus when three people ask if I’m ok now? – as I make the second walk of shame back to my seat in the middle. The Wife is confused and I’m reticent to tell her all the full details unless she stands up and broadcasts it to the other passengers to be followed by laughter, then a second wave of laughter when translated!

“Did you go behind a bush?” The Wife asks.

“No, in the house there.” I point to my toilet facilitating friends stood in their open doorway waving as we pull off. (Again, I’m not making this up!)

“Some strangers house, what did they say?” She tries to clarify, bemused.

“Not sure, I was trying not to shit myself in a complete strangers Cuban house!” She laughs unkindly.

“What, you just burst in?”

“Yeah, the alternative consequence did not bear thinking about, needs must when the devil drives.” She laughs further, unkindly, then snorts out even more laughter for good measure.

“Did you not just go behind a bush?”

“Can you see any bushes in their front gardens?”

“What, a Complete strangers house?” She is still bemused, or the world’s best actor.

“Estevo was a complete stranger a few minutes ago, not any more, still not sure what mama’s called.” She carries on laughing like an unkind lunatic.

“I’ve never met anyone with such a delicate stomach as you.”

“I have the constitution of a royal, I’m descended from Louis the Fortieth and Beau Brummell, not peasant’s like you.” Occasionally over the next thirty minutes before we pull into Guantamamo, she just looks at me shakes her head and smiles – unkindly.

“At least I can do basic maths, it’s 1.25 pesos, you retard!” I reply, when I’ve have had enough of unkind admonishments.

This is The Wife’s favourite travel anecdote of the jaunt, normally her eyes glaze over when I recount a story from the various slings and arrows of embarrassing misfortune that have befallen me in my existential struggle though life, but this one delights her perversely, to such an extent she will actually say, ‘Tell them about the bus journey in Cuba’ then laugh beforehand, if The Wife laughs with just the strap line it has to be funny, and involve discomfort social-embarrassment and self-effacing parody on my behalf. Then as I start to recount the story, that even I’m getting bored with, she will start to laugh ahead of me and everyone else… unkindly!

* StCP! = Supporting the Cuban People

Next Time: Then the food changed into technicolor!

 

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (3)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

 

BookCoverImage

Key Words: Baracoa, Guantanamo, Guantamemaro, walk of shame, Field of Dreams, Build it and they will come, Lechita sauce, Spandau ballet, Cuba

#5: The revolution starts here. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, hobbits, holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bar El Cambio, Camagüey, Cuba, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Hobbit, Hunter S Thompson, revolution, Santa Clara, toilets, trains

two manatees

Santa Clara slap bang in the middle of Cuba was liberated by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his bandoleros in 1958 when he derailed a military train carrying 350 government troops and munitions, it sounded the death knell for Batista and Guevara is such a hero in these parts that a massive statue is located 2km from the city centre on the outskirts of town. It is the statue, and the museum that marks the spot of the derailing we have mainly come to see, although the museum was shut the day we tried to visit. Santa Clara is supposed to be an artsy edgy cultural centre, it was lovely, but no great shakes if you are on a tight schedule.

Carlo, the casa owner in Trinidad has arranged the next three accommodation places, this is a massive relief for us. I’m not sure if it is because of this, but Maria the owner of the Casa welcomes us like we are her children returning from a bloody war. The bon hommie is smothering, she speaks no English, so we are reliant on my pigeon Spanish, which is fun, but very tiring after a while.

We hired taxi from Trinidad, that we have paid 60CUC (*StCP! – see last week’s blog for average wages in Cuba – $25/month!) and takes an hour and a half, to drop us at the Che memorial first before Maria’s. The imposing Che is keeping watch on the very outskirts of town and fields – in case the local farmers rise up! Unsurprisingly it’s a very impressive memorial to the cigar smoker of the year 1959.

Conjunto-Escultorico-Comandante-Ernesto-Che-Guevara-Plaza-de-la-Revolucion-Santa-Clara-Cuba-3-e1420686795330

statue-of-che-guevara

Fidel Castro won it the year before in my completely made up poll to save time, Winston Churchill had a good run before, J F Kennedy did well just after, if George Burns is still alive(?) I should put him somewhere! Che smoking cigars was quite bad idea as he was a severe asthmatic! Dipping them in honey would have helped very little, but it gives you something to do when your waiting for another guerrilla battle to fight or a train to derail!

Che g.jpg

With no internet we cannot book a bus at the station for the next day, but like the way of the world, Maria knows someone and we are sorted. If you can get a local to book your bus it saves a lot of hassle and queuing. The bus station toilet is up to public Cuban standards, they don’t do minus-star ratings in Cuba for obvious reasons. There is a cubicle designed for a pit pony and men at urinals nonchalantly ignore me, like I’m a naughty dwarf that has been sent out of class for tampering with himself! Until one fella looks in, not hard to achieve, and I reply a belligerent, pitiful ‘hola’, to which, thankfully he does not reply or strike up a conversation! Surprise, surprise, the toilet does not flush and I take the cistern lid off as experience of two previous casas gives me a good idea how to fix plumbing in Cuba, it is half full of water and disintegrating toilet paper! I maybe misguided, but I’m public spirited! Other urinators look on at the gringo on holiday trying to the fix plumbing! My Spanish isn’t good enough to do dismissive Spanish swearing, but I have a GCSE in International Body Language, so I know it is not something the casual toilet visitor would be prepared to undertake! I tell the attendant that the toilet is ‘se rompe’ it is broken, and begrudgingly he brings a bucket in to flush my embarrassment away in what appears to be a pilot episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm!’ I make a quick(ish) exit. The toilet opens into a café and the there’s one door with inadequate plantation shutters, health and safety would be apoplectic!

The bus takes 7 hours instead of 4, not helped by stopping at a Bali Hai type service station for nearly an hour and a half while the tourists held captive are fleeced or go hungry. We eventually reach Camagüey, everyone’s preferred destination except the drivers – there’s always two drivers on a bus in Cuba, the unions would not have it any other way!

rail-map3

This looks like an extensive, efficient rail system  – don’t be fooled! The reality is below.

filename-dscf4337-jpg

There’s a train system in Cuba, honestly, it is mainly a single track between major towns and cities and here the station is literally crumbling to such an extent that it has a metal fence around it for fear of falling debris, although you’re chances of suing someone is about the same as a train arriving on time. I suspect when a train eventually passes through the town people throw a party! I eventually hope to catch the train back from Santigo de Cuba all the way back to Havana, when I suggest this to the casa owner she just belly-laughs at me with contempt. When I eventually see the ‘tourist train’ it has broken windows and looks like it has not moved for months. Avoid the trains, when they run, they usually breakdown, not surprising as they are mainly from the 1960s.

We like Camagüey, Cuba’s third biggest city, it has a real buzzy soul to it, although it takes us all our time there to learn to pronounce it right!

download

My sandals that I have had for nearly ten years have flopped, unbound and become a severe tripping hazard. I bought them in Australia ten years ago, I have become attached to them on the occasions when it’s warm enough to wear them. So, I have to buy some new ones, we traipse around shoe shops losing the will to live until I settle on a pair of leather Adidas slip-ons, that would not be my first choice, but needs must, when otherwise you look like a homeless nomadic sadho! With them being new, cheap and hard to keep on, my feet turn tide-mark brown. I walk around like an oversized Hobbit, and the locals think it’s some form of British holiday ritual. If you want them they are size 9 UK, and would not fit the wide feet of a hobbit.

najarro_48_5

The happy looking fella on the right must have been on holiday we I visited!

We love this city, my favourite place is Bar El Cambio in the corner of Parque Ignacio Agramonte, graffiti splattered walls, a few tables, very surely waiters (even when you order in Spanish!) I have visited this bar before through the writing of Hunter S Thompson, The Great Gozo himself used to drink in here. This for me is better than the tourist trap of the Hemmingway Bar in Havana, this still feels fresh, like he might wander in and join the surely bar staff in misanthropic banter. I could quite easy get pissed in here and be carried home as homage to the great man, wake up with a festival hangover and still smile. Instead of that we have booked a ticket to see some authentic Cuban music on the back of the great music we have sampled in Trinidad. When we get there, it is empty apart from three tables of tourist. It’s Cuba and eventually I have to visit a sit-down toilet, never expect to find a toilet seat and you won’t be disappointed! This toilet, for a mid-range venue does not surprise me and when I return to the table and report on the state of the toilet –The Wife says, “Image what the men’s is like?” I’ve been in the women’s pity pony cubicle, auditioning for yet another episode of ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’. The answer is pretty much the same – where are all the toilet seats? Are there endless gurning competitions occurring in Cuba?

Then the venue starts to fill up, the band start a two-hour sound check/tune up. It’s student night, there must be some promotion at the university as everyone is under the age of twenty-five and knows everyone else. They all do the Cuban drinking thing; two-litre bottle of cola and a full bottle of Havana Club per table. It is a surreal evening, the band cannot be heard above the chatter of completely uninterested students, it is like a Venereal Disease waiting room! We feel like middle aged tourists (full disclosure – we are!!) at one of our children’s twenty-firsts. It is absolutely fascinating, I get chatting to a few of the students about Cuba from their young educated viewpoint. They want little of the ‘Old Cuba’, they are looking far beyond the shores for change. They love their country, but as is the prerogative of the young they want so much more than their parents and grandparents had. They become disinterested in me when I tell them I have no sexually transmitted contagions to share, not since 1987 – it was dark, a lot of alcohol was involved and I think it was another human, the clinic told me it was definitely mammalian! They are not sure if I’m being serious, and neither am I after so much Havana Club and an afternoon in Bar El Cambio!

STD and Teen Girls

Next time: When it’s gone, it’s gone: Santigo de Cuba.

* StCP! = Supporting the Cuban People

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

BookCoverImage

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

#3: Getting Ripped off, or supporting the Cuban People?   Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

02 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agatha Christie, AirBnB, Coppelia, public-toiletaphob, queuing, taxis, Viñales

 

two manatees

There is a famous Cuban film called: Strawberry and Chocolate, it won the Oscar for the best foreign film in 1994, as well as lots of other foreign awards, and it is partly set at Havana’s most famous outdoor ice-cream parlour, Coppelia. It is in the modern part of Havana. The guide book tells us that queuing is part of the Havanan experience, when we arrive we are informed we will wait at least one and a half hours to get served, Cubans seem happy to wait, I cannot even find the end of the queue! You can go to the VIP tourist section, pay more, well, get ripped off (supporting the Cuban people! (StCP!)).

Coppelis-parada.jpg

The ice cream can only be described as the quality you would get from a supermarket’s own brand when you are trying to save money and you have invited the whole class to your child’s birthday party, and that may be being generous on quality! The reason I highlight this is two-fold, firstly, I’m not sure Cubans actually know when they are queuing, it is so innate to them, and secondly, you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had it. Crap ice cream and excessive queuing would equate to elevated levels of moaning and complaining for many, dare I say, a first world problem!

st and c

The precursor to this is a journey in a motorised taxi, Havanan taxi drivers will rip you off if you don’t keep your wits about you. We have jumped in this taxi at the start of the Melecón, because it is incredibly hot (35°C), when we stop the driver switches the meter off that he has had on all the way. He times the fare by four! I remonstrate and I refuse to pay the amount he is demanding and tell him I’ll wait for the police – I have no idea the level corruption/integrity of Havana’s finest, but I’m prepared to find out, so is he, and why wouldn’t he if he can make several times his usual fare, (I will take about average wages in Cuba in the next blog). He then negotiates, when he realises I’m being serious. I end up giving him twice the ‘actual’ fare and walk off, he does not follow us, we do not get challenged by the law, unsurprisingly. This is taking StCP! too far. On our return to Havana in three weeks’ time, the taxi we get from the bus station, after 18 hours on a coach, is shared with two local women. We drop them first and they give the driver no money, even though we have agreed to share the cost of the ride. The driver then stops at a garage to get some cigarettes and leaves the meter running! When we get to our accommodation we are paying for the time it took him to laconically purchase cigs, and the two women’s ride home, then he tries to add some more on as well. We refuse to pay the exorbitant amount and he refuses to get our luggage out of the boot. The owner of the AirBnB intervenes and basically says the easiest way to resolve the issue is to pay him the full amount he is demanding! It still annoys me now, we would have given him a tip anyway. Be careful with taxi fares in Havana, negotiate before you get in, and not in a laissez faire/fare? way. If they pretend not to understand English, write it down, or type it into your phone. Nearly ALL Cuban people are lovely, but be wary of the capital’s taxi drivers!

motor taxi

We have explored Havana enough, we have our bearings, it will be great to return more knowledgeable. We are going to Viñales (pronounced Bin-yarl-es), we have by chance managed to share a ride with an Australian couple that are over to get married in Mexico, as it is half the price of doing it in Perth, Australia. Not half the price for their friends and relatives though! They work underground in the mining industry as explosive experts and I have a vision of them emerging from their shifts like the ‘Unbreakable’ Kimmy Schmidt and the Indiana Moles. If you complete twelve hours underground, you must emerge every time and think, ‘This is fucking brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant up here!’ Unless you are emerging into a barren desert, even then it’s probably pretty good. We have debated with an English couple we met on the plane the best way to get to Viñales. It is about three hours on the disserted roads, they have decided to get a collectivo – that is not only packed with other budget ‘cattle’ tourists, there is a good chance of carbon monoxide poisoning – think cloud on unsteady wheels, and just to add double insult to injury we pass them broken down on side of the motorway, when we chat to them later it has taken them 6 hours, compared to our two and a half and they have saved the equivalent of about five US dollars each.

bus+collectivo

Transport in Cuba is interesting, you will see huge numbers of Cubans waiting patiently by the side of the road, waiting to be picked up by anyone, or anything, as public transport is chronic. There is, you guessed it, a queuing system, but priority is given to the old, infirmed and the pregnant, my advice is not to wait outside a maternity hospital.

Viñales is a big tourist trap, it is part of the Cuban Golden ‘package tour’ triangle, along with Trinidad. We have booked accommodation in advance, via our Airbnb, the owner of the accommodation has lied to us to get her to stay at one of her friends places, as when we arrive with our cases the one we think we are staying at is full, but she knows of another less desirable one that is vacant. The Wife has rumbled this quickly, and when the guesthouse owner says something to her about this other place and then shows us the sub-standard accommodation, The Wife is shouting at her, ‘You give Cubans a bad name!’ The female guesthouse owner is shouting back at her in Spanish, I’m walking backwards from this cultural exchange at this point. The Wife doesn’t need my help, she needs a cold drink. I leave her in a bar and go on the hunt for accommodation, which I love, the nosiness, the negotiating and the badinage. Viñales is a tiny farming village of about 300 people that now accommodates 1,500 guests, being a beautiful UNESCO area has helped massively, it is a beautiful place, and you have to go. I find a lovely place with a veranda on a side road, that we discover is a cut through for noisy lorries early in the mornings. I don’t mind as early the next morning a happy farmer in a cart being drawn by two oxen wishes me ‘beunos dias’ and I return the greeting with a big smile and take a picture with my mind’s eye for a future cold dark winter’s mornings in England.

Screen-Shot-2016-03-30-at-12.50.28-PM

We do a few of the tourist activities, tobacco/cigar/coffee production, on a guided walk with a young local woman. I have a dodgy stomach and as we pass her home on the outskirts of the village she points me to her toilet, which is outdoors and involves balancing on a precarious bowing thin plank of wood over a pit. It smells like it has dead mammals that have shat themselves just before they died somewhere in the gloom below – the thought of falling in their appears to cure me instantly. It is the other side of basic, it reminds me of the Australian joke: A Pommy visits an outback pub and is directed to the outdoor toilet by the landlord. Out the back are two open piles of shit, he climbs on the smallest pile and begins his business. Another man appears on the larger mound next to him. “You’re not from around here are you, mate?” “How can you tell?” “You’re in the bloody ladies!”

Viñales is the only pace The Wife gets a dodgy stomach in the entire time we are away – she has the stomach of a peasant, whereas I have the stomach of high-royalty! It is on the only occasion she has the panic-face of impending disaster she shoots into the bar in the corner of the main plaza. She runs past the confused man collecting the 1CUC entrance money and disappears for me to sort. I get drinks in and wait for the dancing to start and on her return when I ask over the state of the toilets she replies, ‘Marginally better than shitting myself!’ Like I said in the first blog, if you are a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the place for you. When we return home, our washing has been taken from the line along with the two French women in the next Casa. When we awake early the next morning to get our bus our washing has been returned, it would make for a dull Agatha Christie, but at least no one got murdered and everyone had clean underwear!

Like I said earlier, Viñales is a tourist trap, but it’s a beautiful tourist trap in a tropical landscape with friendly people and the best food we had in the whole of Cuba. If you’re in Cuba you have to go. You might even see a happy farmer with a smile as wide as his face wishing you ‘good morning’ leaving you in no doubt that it is, and when you reflect back on it and some of your first world problems you might just smile outwardly like a happy looney-ballooney or Nut-Womble!

IMG_5693

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #4: So, you think you’re badly paid!

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I wouldn’t mess with this desperado!

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

monochrome imp swirly letters

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

 

key words:

 

 

Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America. #1: Cuba, da, da, da, da, da, Cuba.

Featured

Posted by thewritingimp in Cuba, family, food, holidays, humour, Pindar, Pindar Family, politics, travel, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cuba, Havana, internet, money

two manatees

So this is ten years on from our family gap year. The kids have grown up, the nest abandoned, for now; The Boy is working/getting drunk, etc in Australia, The Girl is waiting to start Uni. We have planned to go to Cuba for a long time, we nearly went fifteen years ago when we came into a few grand – where there’s a claim, there’s certainly a blame! But I put my foot down which is a rarity in hours for ‘Pushover Pindar’ as the family unit call me, then laugh like psychopaths! Instead we had a new kitchen fitted in the dilapidated basic house which we had just moved into. When I say basic, it had a gas fire and a shower in the kitchen! Yes a shower in the kitchen with no door on it – the house had been a multiple social security tenant’s house. I only tell you this as a few people say we are always travelling, sometimes it’s a fine line between being assertive and relaxed.

It is planned, The Wife has sacked her job off, I’m working at an academic school that is so desperate for Science Teachers, they are letting me go early and come back late – two and a half months we will be away in total, hurrah.

vida vidal

The first and only major hurdle is getting visas for the Republic of Cuba. There is nothing on the online website’s dropdown menu that says we are going for a holiday, or we are tourists. The box you have to tick is ‘supporting the Cuban people!’ This will become our motto whenever we are being ripped off, which when you’re a tourist – ‘supporting the Cuban people’ is quite frequent.

You know you are in underdeveloped country when you have to line up patiently to have a headshot taken with a digital camera from an operative inside the customs both. People get annoyed, but we take it in our stride, it’s all part of the experience, I pass the time thinking of famous people in mug shots, I decide on Steve McQueen.

steve Mcqueen

Everyone’s bags are re-x-rayed, when it looks like we’re through! Money is a hassle in Cuba; there are two currencies that run side by side. The Cuban convertible (CUC) – tourist money and money the rich Cubans use (there are some, they all work in tourism!) and the peso, or local money, in theory only Cuban nationals can use this, but once you get acclimatised, you can buy some things with it, like food, especially in out the way places. We have to queue to get our CUCs as you cannot buy them beforehand; this takes nearly an hour at twelve o’clock at night. Cubans say their greatest exports are: cigars, rum, music and dancing. Whenever a Cuban tells me this I add, ‘queuing’ to the list! It always raises a smile.

The Airbnb we are staying in have ordered us a taxi, but it has not turned up. We have the hassle of negotiating a new one. There are two types of cars in Cuba; new ones, Japanese and Chinese produced, and old ones from before the revolution (1959!) classic American cars. We jump in one of the later and the pollution it’s producing is like something from Wacky Races. Heading into central Havana in an American Studebaker – if that doesn’t make you feel alive, stop the world and get off.

By now it’s 1.30am in the morning and the narrow and on first impression, shady looking and crumbling streets are empty. I pass the taxi driver the address along with my pigeon Spanish and he goes out of his was to make sure someone is home. From the outside, the apartment (112 Villages) looks rough, but inside it is immaculate, large ceilings, colonial elegance, fantastic.

IMG_5613

The government stipulates that all rented tourist’s rooms must have; AC, a fridge, shower/bathroom. We are too wired to sleep, so we head out and find a bar (Monserrate) still open and sip cuba libres. The toilets in Cuba are not for the feint-hearted! This is my first experience, a tiled bathroom, one lone urinal in the corner and one sit-downer, surrounded by an enclosure a pony could easily look over, it has a plantation shuttered saloon door on, with an ironic bolt lock. Anyone that enters the bathroom looks down on you both physically and socially. This is one of the posher bars that tourists frequent! I find it quite amusing, but if you’re a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the ‘sanitised’ place for you!

havana

We wake late to discover we are in the heart of the old town not far from Parque Central. It feels vibrant and safe, we eat brunch in Café Paris, queue for more currency for an hour and a half!, in a beautiful colonial bank. Use a service till if you can, there is no rhyme or reason which ones work, but some do. We go on an open top bus tour with Cuclo, the commentary is rubbish, a half interested young woman that looks as though she has been out clubbing all night tells us the name of every hotel, when it was built and how many people it can accommodate, and little else – I know more about Havana than her, except the history of the hotels! We get our bearings and sunburn.

IMG_5598

That’s me under the tv.

We head to PA’s bar on Agromante for great cold beers, I get chatting to the owner. He has football shirts adorning one wall of the top teams from around the world, with the omission of Man City! After much discussions he reluctantly agrees he should get a City shirt. The Wife asks me in all honesty if I know him! “I do now,’ I reply. The beer, heat and jetlag send us to sleep, we reluctantly pull ourselves out to get in sync with a walk and food in Plaza Vieja. Havana is crumbling, there is little money for renovation except in Vieja and the important public buildings, which have been restored meticulously back to their original architectural splendour. It has been going on since the 1970’s, Eusebio Leal Spengler is the mastermind, and the Habaguanex holding company (WWW.Habaguanex.ohc.cu) a charity that splits the money from tourism equally between restoration and social projects. I read recently there will be as many as 110 direct flights from the USA this year alone – that’s a lot of US dollar! The upside of this is a beautiful decaying city will be brought back to life and lots of people in Cuba will be better off. Havana reminds me of Beunos Aires, a city that is starting to decay around the edges – The Paris of the South, but forty years on from their financial disaster, again precipitated by America!

Cuba already feels good, we are relaxing into it, the people are friendly, and despite reports to the contrary, appear happy and helpful.

 

Here’s my initial/landing top 4 tips for Cuba;

  1. Pay an agency to sort your visa out, it’s not expensive and will save you mucho hassleo.
  2. When you land get enough money for at least three days, if in doubt go for a higher, rather than a lower amount.
  3. Buy an internet card (you put a code in to the only government provider available!) and head to a plaza with everyone else. Expect the connection to be poor to awful! Don’t use one of the big hotels.
  4. Americans only. If you get money out using an American account the Cuban bank/government will charge you 10%, yes 10%! Change all the money you need into Euros and exchange them. Western Union was good option for Americans I met.

15-Havanna-17

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #2: It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba –- Out 18/8/17

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (4)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

 

Recent Posts

  • #19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11 Celebrating the Rain. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

Recent Comments

20: 50 (17-15) mista… on 20: 50 (17-15) mistakes of the…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
thewritingimp on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…

Archives

  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • Australia
  • Belize
  • children
  • Cuba
  • family
  • fiction
  • food
  • gap year
  • hobbits
  • holidays
  • humour
  • life
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand
  • Pindar
  • Pindar Family
  • politics
  • religion
  • south America
  • thewritingIMP
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • wildlife
  • writing

Recent Posts

  • #19  This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #18  From Manatee to Yucatan, Every Woman, Every Man.  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #17 Literally swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11  Oh look, there’s a jungle cat and its offspring: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.
  • #11 Celebrating the Rain. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

Recent Comments

20: 50 (17-15) mista… on 20: 50 (17-15) mistakes of the…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
thewritingimp on 1: So you want to be a fiction…
Graham Mercer on 1: So you want to be a fiction…

Archives

  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • Australia
  • Belize
  • children
  • Cuba
  • family
  • fiction
  • food
  • gap year
  • hobbits
  • holidays
  • humour
  • life
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand
  • Pindar
  • Pindar Family
  • politics
  • religion
  • south America
  • thewritingIMP
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • wildlife
  • writing

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy