Winter 04

Havanna promenade another old building Movie theatre showing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen taxis waiting for tourists police stopped a car seemingly without a reason, later we learned that they are everywhere and you may be stopped at any time to have your papers checked. Havanna main "shopping" street by midnight under the full moon. It was the people that made it scary though. Man with cigar - in fact the only man I saw smoking a cigar that didn't do it just to pose for the cameras, getting a few dollars to let his photograph be taken. Love the grafitti on the wall too. (some more of it...) When the city of Havanna stressed us out, we had a secret hiding place, where there would be no one at day time, and close to no one at night. At the top of our hotel, there would be no singers asking for money if we wanted to sit down and relax, maybe have a drink or two and it was our favorite place in the entire Havanna. We also enjoyed to see some young cubans that showed off their skills in capoeira, who seemed to have a good time, and no one tried to ask us for money or if we wanted a taxi, and we could stand there watching them until we got tired of it.
After our pre-booked days in Havanna were over, we took a very delayed bus to go further east. We had a short stop on the way there at a small café, the bus driver said we had 15 minutes, but before 5 had passed, everybody was told to get back on the bus, and we left. It took about 10 minutes before a car passing by managed to get the driver to understand that the tour guide was missing - he had been to the toilet when the bus left without him, and so we had a scary moment while the busdriver turned the bus right there in the middle of the narrow road. We found the guide back at the café - It was the only fun moment during the entire bus ride, and a nice break!- to Varaderos - the tourist trap. View from (first) hotel room. Interior from first hotel room. One of those nice old cars. View from a local café, serving 1/2 chicken, banana chips, rice and a glass of local lemonade for a few dollars. And here Kristian at the same café. (must be before food, as he is still smiling ;P) scary body found in the street. we gave it a proper burial. A trip to the famous apotheque from some houndreds of years ago, still intact as it was with bottles, medicines and prescription logs. The place looked just like any other building from the outside, we would definately have passed it by if it wasn't for the guide. (I had to pay for taking these photographs, they told me after..) The theatre was no longer being used, but still looked pretty on the outside. (Think it was rather old) Volveran! - not a series of cartoon heroes, but real life heroes in Cuba - and one day the will return. (or at least that is what they hope). Cool old blue car! One day we joined the local minibus heading to the butcher town. And outside the city was a cave that a farmer once found the entrance to, and now it serves as one of the tourist attractions. We were guided down lots of small, wet steps made of stone, down a huge cave with both stalagmites and stalactites on both sides. The guide took us through tunnels that went on for kilometers. Which was scary enough, but then also the power wasn't too reliable, and sometimes all the lights would go out, and you'd be stuck far below ground, waiting for the lights to return. The guide thought it was a funny moment, well, he was the one with the flashlight that also happened to know the way around the caves, which we didn't. The picture is from a place where one of the tunnels would narrow and be just about one meter wide, but still would go on for kilometers. We didn't test any of those, and were quite happy to see the sun again, although we couldn't escape the annoying musicians begging for money at this place either. The bus wouldn't pick us up until we had had plenty of time to sit in the only shadow we could find, listening to the band playing. Kristian waved them away saying we weren't interested in the music, and got ugly stares both from the musicians and the other tourists.
We moved to another hotel again, and found "Los Dolphines" - a place we visited one evening and found to be perfectly quiet, with swimming pool, and a nice location close to the beach. It was a bit more expensive, 100 USD a night for a room, but we figured it was well worth it. We didn't find the swimming pool to be of the safe kind, not for diving any way. View of the road outside the hotel one early morning waiting for the bus to pick us up. Old style building that still looks nice from a distance. A left over resort from the 50's when the americans lived there. And right across the street, some new houses were built. Not exactly the same colonial style about them...
The bus took us to Trinidad, where we had a guided tour of the city. We passed these kids that had a break from begging for candy and money, and just acted like normal kids do. It was sad to see the kids running towards us, following us wherever we went. We escaped as quickly as we could up some very narrow steps to get to the top of the highest building in the town to get a nice overview. When we got back to the hotel, we were tired after a whole day in the sun and on a badly airconditioned bus, and looked forward to a quiet night. Of course we didn't have that much luck, and just as we started to relax in front of the tv, loud music reached us from outside. Looking out the french window, we saw that a crowd was sitting there facing a stage, where the music came from, and to top it all, there was a hostess who greeted everyone, in what we thought was italian, but that might have been some spanish dialect. Not only was this right outside our room, it was also necessary to use extremely big speakers to make sure the sound got to us through ear plugs, heads under pillows.. We thought if you can't beat them then join them, and sat outside on the small balcony watching the spectacle. It was a cuban fashion show and well, it was more than an amateur performance. There were only two male and perhaps four female models. The girls were showing different see-through garments on top of some small bikinis, and of course, they also showed just the bikinis (as if we hadn't seen them at all the previous walks.) And the men had to go on stage while the women were changing behind the scene, but they didn't have more than one set of clothes, so they basically showed that one set of clothes a total of 20 times. Very exciting!!
We went out to have a nice dinner inside a park area we had seen in Varaderos, but the guard at the entrance said we could just as well eat just across the street, and pay less for food just as good. So, we decided to follow his advice, and I had a very good grilled lobster. We went there with a Canadian friend of a British guy we met at the bus from Havanna to Varaderos, the brit was nowhere to be seen, and so the three of us had a few beers and food at this restaurant. It was quite nice while eating, the guy wasn't too bad, and only a little too friendly. And we shared emailaddresses, keep in touch, send pictures kinda thing. But when we got into the cab, Kristian sat in the front, and I was left alone with our Canadian friend, who had some ideas of his own where it was natural to put his hands, in the backseat. Luckily it didn't take too long to reach our hotel, because I had a hard time being polite yet firm with the guy, and I think it might have gotten ugly if we weren't in front of the hotel area at the right time. It was another night of entertainment outside our room, and since complaining didn't seem to do the trick, we decided that this time, we'd go for one of the 5* resorts down the road. The following morning, Kristian rented a moped, and tried to find a hotel where we could stay. No matter what we were interested in paying, there just wasn't any room for us.. except this one place that wasn't anything fancy, just another hotel further down the road. We got a room there on the 7th floor, facing the road outside and not the backyard where there could possibly be some entertainment at night, and we said yes thank you and goodbye Dolphinos. Well, the move was a success, the beds weren't too bad, the room was quite big, no noise from the outside, and we went to bed thinking this was it. This was when everything would change to the better, we had booked a trip to Vinales Valley, and the remaining days we would spend on the beach working on that tan. Well, we should have listened to good ol' Murphy. That the power went out for a short bit wasn't anything too worrying. We had read in the guidebooks that such things could happen in the countryside, and since everyone else seemed to have power except our building, we didn't worry too much about it returning. That the water was off during the night, and we couldn't even use the toilet, turned out to be a bit more of a problem, specially being on a cuban diet. We were told not to worry ("it's normal!"), and well, we didn't worry that much, it was just annoying. We got some sleep, when the café across the road (7 floors down) finally closed for the night, and the following morning, we woke up early to heavy traffic outside on the roads, but, managed to fall asleep again to the sound of the AC. Then, a bit later, we woke up, smelling something funny. We couldn't quite figure out what it was, but it smelled a little like gasolin. And we heard voices. And - wasn't that a shadow behind the curtains? Were we still on the 7th floor, and could it possibly be anyone up there? How?
Feeling very small and naked in the bed, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and then we figured out what it was. It was paint. They used some type of petrol in the paint, and of course, this was the day chosen to paint our balcony!!
Good thing we moved - and good thing they could have informed us about this or maybe given us a different room in the reception, huh?
We packed our stuff, and headed outside. To the beach. Or so we thought. Some weird cold weather had hit Cuba, and we had to bring out our jackets for the first time since leaving Norway. The Cubans couldn't tell us what happened, but it sure hadn't happened in many many years that they had such bad weather in February...
We tried the beach, but we were not allowed to swim because of the waves and currents, and it just wasn't possible to stay anywhere because of the wind and the temperature. I'm not sure, but I think I cried at this point. We tried to figure out something to do, just to kill time before we could go home again, and spent some money at the only shopping mall on the entire island. We also tried to check the local bus station to see if there was something we could do, somewhere to go.... transport? don't think so. Oh, and since our trip to Vinales got cancelled ("sorry, but the bus is going to someplace else today, since more people wanted to go there - No, there's no other trip until next Wednesday. Oh, you have left then, too bad. Don't worry!") and it was impossible to get booked on any other guided tours that we hadn't already done, we were pretty much stuck, we couldn't get to vinales that we most of all wanted to see, and we couldn't do anything else. And no sun.
We ended up renting a car. ("no mirror on the right side, don't worry, it's normal!") We tried driving to Vinales in the small rented car, and with only one road map to find (which wasn't very specific) and no signs on the roads (ok, there was one sign on the high way at some point. one!) we felt pretty lucky, and skilled when we were finally (after a couple of attempts that only got us to the airport (again) on the highway heading west from Havanna to Vinales. Unfortunately, darkness found us before we found the Valley, and since we only had parking lights on the car, we decided to stop and have dinner and head home instead. We found Moka Hotel about 7 km up a narrow road, on which we also allowed two cubans to sit in the car most of the way, without being able to say a single word, and had our dinner here. It was a small resort hotel, with mostly upperclass british people, that obviously lived there for their entire stay. It was pretty romantic still, and we returned happily to Varaderos. We were at some point tried stopped by a police car, but we didn't quite realize it was a police car until we had passed it, and by then we didn't dare stop, and decided that our car was a lot faster than his, and if we should be caught, we were just innocent tourists after all... We were probably right, because we had no more troubles on the way home, except a car turning around in the 100 km/hr lane right in front of us, and a road that suddenly ended in a big nothing without any warning. We only had to have a brief visit in Havanna due to some wrong turns (after guessing at what intersection we were currently at, comparing the way they looked on the map with how they looked in rl.) but it was a very happy moment when we saw the big 1 USD toll booths to enter Varaderos. We slept better this night, most of the smell was gone from the painting. Maybe they were done even! Did we enjoy cuba, or even a moment of it? Don't really think so. I've never had a more frustrating vacation. I can't even call it a vacation, and we already decided that we will need some proper vacation come summer. But, we truly enjoyed this last moment, knowing we were about to leave. The airport! Time to go home!