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#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

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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!)

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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

 

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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

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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.

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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!

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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!

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

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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!

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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.

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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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Categories

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