Trinidad and Santiago De Cuba

We arrived in Trinidad later than we expected, at about 8pm, slightly concerned that we didn’t have a place to stay arranged but it looked like there were lots of Casas in the area, so our plan was to knock on some doors and hope they had vacancies. As soon as we got off the bus, we realised that there was definitely going to be no problem- About 10 ladies were gathered at the exit, shouting and waving pictures of their Casa at us in the hope we would go with them. As convenient as this was, we now didn’t know which one to choose, which caused the ladies to become more frantic in their shouts, they had surrounded us and were getting louder and louder to the point we couldn’t distinguish one from the other. At this point I had enough, broke my way through the mob and started walking away from them, I was done with being hassled. But no, this was not allowed, the mob followed us down the road still shouting in our faces. In the end we gave up and picked one at random, which thankfully meant the others dispersed. We were lead to the Casa, where the lady running it had to call her friend to help as she could not read and write to fill in the form with our details.

You work it, clown

...if you are lucky

Trinidad was a lot smaller than we expected, but was very pretty, with colourful colonial buildings and cobbled streets, great for the sounds of the horse and carts passing through, not so wonderful wearing flip flops when its pouring with rain. Unfortunately, the majority of the first day was either overcast or heavy downpours, so after walking around exploring the town, we retreated to a cocktail bar to take advantage of their happy hour.

The 'WiFi zone' in town

...Of course making pup friends along the way

Well, if we must

The following day the weather had cleared up so we took a taxi to the beach about 15km away, Playa Ancon. Although busier than we expected, it was a beautiful place and easy to spend a few hours dozing and enjoying the amazingly clear water.

Taxi to the beach

After some crazy rain

Our next destination was Santiago De Cuba, nearly 500 km away. The bus schedule said it would take 11 hours, and unfortunately there was no night bus option so we would need the full day to travel there. The buses in Cuba are old, and whilst they are not the worst buses we have taken on our trip, it was not a comfortable way to spend a whole day. This also wasn’t helped by the fact Jonno started to have a migraine a few hours into the journey. There was only one stop for food at 11am, and the bus was also slowed down by the rain which at times was so heavy it was impossible to see the road. By the time we reached Santiago De Cuba, it had taken us 13 and a half hours and we were exhausted and hungry, and thankfully instead of the harassment we received in Trinidad, there was one lady offering a Casa which we happily took. The lady did not live in the Casa herself, it was run by a retired man who wanted to hug us a lot, and cooked us some food before we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. It also turned out he was extremely patriotic, he told us how strong the Cuban people were, how they would never let America take over and how great all the systems in Cuba were.

'Champion', who always wanted to know what was happening

The faces of the Fatherland

The only option without access to tinder

A lot more rustic than Trinidad

Our first day in Santiago was spent walking around the streets, it’s the second biggest city in Cuba after Havana but a lot more run down. However, there was a lot to see walking down the streets, there is more of an Afro-Carribean population here and while women sit outside their front doors in a rocking chair, the old men hang out in the plazas and play intense games of chess and dominoes. After finding an amazingly cheap cafe ($0.25 for 2 cappuchinos!) we walked to the Moncada Barracks which is now part museum and part school. Although all of the museum was in Spanish, we managed to work out parts of it, with some extra research afterwards. This museum was the site of the first revolutionary attempt made by Fidel Castro on the 26^th July 1953, which was unsuccessful but assisted in gaining more support from the people of Cuba. There were a few more museums we passed but they were all in Spanish which we concluded meant we wouldn’t get that much out of.

There was a mask and costume museum which when we passed, we were told had a dance performance at 4pm which we returned for. Initially there were only 2 other tourists there which felt a bit intimidating, although a few more people arrived later. The performance was good, with some very intense dancing and inevitably we were dragged up to dance too, although at the end after we had given them a tip, they were still trying to pressure us to buy a CD. We walked towards the Malecon, the coastline, but got hassled a lot on the way so didn’t spend long there.

Serious chess game in action

Including lots of macho talk

Pretend capitalist food

Some intense dancing

We were planning on leaving the next day, but the man at the Casa told us the next day there would be big celebrations for the 1^st May and that we should stay and experience it. There was a large gathering at one of the plazas, although by the time we arrived it had dispersed. There was, however, a lot of street parties going on, with music, food stalls and people drinking neat rum from the bottle. We walked around for a while but decided we were not in a day drinking frame of mind so head back towards the centre of the city. We were recommended to visit the nearby cemetery, the burial site of Jose Marti, the first Cuban revolutionary, and also more recently, Fidel Castro. This was a 1km walk from town, but we still had bicycle taxis hassling us along the way to take us, one even cycling all the way there next to us to try and pounce on us on the way out. Fidel Castro’s grave was extremely modest compared to Jose Marti, although this may be temporary place while something more fancy is being constructed.

No sign of a party yet

Found them

Nice boulder for Fidel

..Not so modest for Jose Marti

Jose Marti watching over Jose Marti

A pretty cemetery as cemeteries go

Walking back towards the city

The other place we were recommended was the Castle El Morro, a taxi ride away, which was built to help Santiago defend itself from pirates, although apparently by the time it was finished there were not many pirates left so it was pretty redundant. It was a pretty building though, even though the only attacks it now received were from seagulls dropping crabs in an attempt to break them and get to the meat, so the place looked like a scene from a crab horror movie.

Built to watch out for the real Pirates of the Caribbean

HE SAW TOO MUCH

On our way back from dinner that evening, we were approached by a guy with some very sorry looking dreadlocks, who asked us to talk to him as he wanted to make friends with tourists. He started off by telling us that he was happy in his life, but he didn't like the police and when they detained him and wanted bribe money he said 'FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU' (with rapid middle finger gestures). After various other police hating stories he then asked us if we would buy him some balloons. Umm no. He then stopped talking and just glared at us, so we decided to make our quick exit before we were asked for any other party items.

We had a look at the bus timetable and the buses to our next destination- Baracoa- left at either 7am or the even earlier 2.30am, which didn’t really appeal to us, so we chose to take a collectivo at a more reasonable 8am the following morning.

CUBA- Havana part 1, Vinales and Varadero

Onwards to communism! Our flight to Cuba was via Panama City, simple enough but took a good while. We didn’t arrive into Havana until 11.00pm, and ended up spending a good 45 minutes getting through passport control and waiting for our bags. Bearing in mind the time had gone back an hour of so also, we were absolutely shattered. Baggage took forever to come through, as I get the impression when people leave Cuba and come back they bring back literally everything they possibly can, as the import limitations are still somewhat difficult from my understanding. For some reason, communism also meant that all the women in customs were equal parts intimidating and angry looking as they were sexy, all wearing short skirts and fishnet tights.

We eventually got through and managed to withdraw some cash from an ATM, something we weren’t too sure if we’d be able to do as for a very long time (pre Obama), Mastercard wasn’t widely accepted and would require going to a bank. Normally when we enter a country we look around for the cheapest ATMs to use as the fees can rack up otherwise (every country except Argentina so far we managed to find free ones), however this country had a single bank, with a single ATM provider, so we saved ourselves a lot of time there at least. I will point out, anyone planning to visit, you’ll be charged 3% at time of writing, at least for UK Mastercard on ATMs. It added up a fair amount by the end..!

We got a taxi to our AirBnb, where we hoped our host would still be around and waiting for us as we had no way to contact him. Airports usually provide free WiFi everywhere else, not the case here, just the state-run WiFi point that required a username and password from a prepaid card. I asked the taxi driver to wait whilst we tried to get in. Bearing in mind it was gone 12am now, we were relieved when he ran over to us and introduced himself.

Daniel was his name. We brought our bags up to the room and had a quick chat with him in Spanglish (He spoke a little average English, we spoke a little poor Spanish). He told us some of the basics of being in Cuba, like how many of the local currency to the ‘convertible’ currency, then proceeded to test me on it. Ta..! Cuba runs on a dual currency system, with the local (moneda nacional, CUP as a code) currency being valued at 25 to 1 ‘convertible (CUC as a code)’, which in turn mirrored the US dollar. 1 USD = 1 CUC = 25 CUP. At what point would this even become vaguely confusing? Apparently a common scam is for locals to give tourists their CUC change in CUP notes, meaning a misvaluation of 25x. Youch.

He also mentioned if we wanted he would include a free 4 hour tour of the city. Whilst we were here we planned to meet up with Monica and Courtney who were visiting on holiday, so we let him know we were unsure of our plans and would let him know if we wanted it. He didn’t seem too convinced by that option, so asked us what time he should meet us the next day to show us stuff. We eventually agreed to meet him at 10am so we could find some nearby things, like places to buy water or breakfast, and then we’d go on to the Hotel Nacional where Monica and Courtney were staying and say our goodbyes. He seemed to understand, but we didn’t know, and at this point it was 1am (although with the time difference effectively 2am to us) so we just wanted to get to bed.

A car just for Diana!

Sure enough, 10am the next morning he met us to show us around. He showed us where we could buy our state-operated WiFi cards at a state-operated corner shop, where the state-operated WiFi point was, and where we could buy the only brand of state-approved bottle water in Cuba (which interestingly boasted it was ‘No.1 in Cuba’, like there was any other option). He then walked us to the Hotel Nacional, where we waited with us to meet our friends. Again, we reiterated to him we hadn’t seen them in months, so we’d probably want to chat. He didn’t fully take the hint, and carried on hanging around, offering to take us all on a tour of the city. We didn’t see the harm, so we figured we’d check if (I’m going to abbreviate from now on because their names are bloody inconveniently long to type) M+C were up for it.

After a while they came down from their luxurious hotel, their pasty white British skin unmistakable in the distance, Courtney head to toe in his usual black regalia and yet complaining about the heat. Beautiful to finally meet up with some good ol’ whining poms again! We said our hellos, Courtney commenting on my now exceptionally brown hue (jokes on you guys, this is simply from all the utterly filthy showers along the way).

We agreed with Daniel to go for a tour of the old city, which involved hopping in an old taxi. An old pre 1950s vehicle, where all the suspension was in the seat rather than the wheels. We made it though, and fortunately these were so big that all 5 of us along with the driver can get in. Seatbelts were disregarded of course, but we hadn’t really seen many seatbelts in the last half a year anyway.

Jose Marti, liberator of Cuba from the Spanish Rule

We were shown around some of the local sights, which was fine except Daniels English occasionally had to be supplemented by my Spanish, and nobody really knows if we were all really on the same page. Either way, we saw old vehicles, old buildings, statues, plenty of stuff but lacking any real explanation. I fell on my arse at one point after losing a fight with a slightly slanted pavement. It was magical.

Old Drogeria Johnson, Johnsons drug store

Quite the look! 

Old cannons as bollards

And don't think those cannonballs are going to waste either

Motorcycle with sidecar with photobomb-bird

Famous restaurant/bar in Cuba. Had them all over the place, but out of our price range..!

Old meets new

The Capitolo building, built to look like the one in Washington DC (But bigger...)

Eventually the conversation of lunch came up, with Daniel letting us know he knew of a good place to go. We had no particular issue with that, so after following him a little while, found ourselves in a place with the most glorious air conditioning, along with some scantily clad piratey waitresses. We had to wait to get a table, so whilst waiting I asked Daniel if he could grab us a menu, as we weren’t quite sure on the pricing of this place. He told me he would when we had a table and then disappeared for a while. Hmmmm…

We were ushered through, where we were finally given a menu. About $15 a meal. Considerably more than Diana and I would usually spend, but not the $100s we were worried it would be, so we went ahead with it. It was pretty good, once we were served that is, and various plates of veg, crisps and rice were brought through. Fair enough. Until the bill came that was, when we came to divide it up and Daniel didn’t seem too interested in it. Not only did we find out the plates of veg and so on were extras, but he also had no intention to pay his share. He did throw a $5 in, saying it was to help if needed, and then thanked us for inviting him after, but I wasn’t entirely sure we HAD invited him. Either way, we ended up paying the most for a meal in the entire trip. I’d have kicked up a lot more of a fuss, but we were staying in his house, which makes things a bit difficult.

He took us back to the street we were staying, pointing out all the places nearby where we could eat for, no joke, less than $0.50 each. Couldn’t have brought us to one of these huh? We then parted ways and walked back with M+C to the hotel. That evening we had a cabaret to go to, but before that, Diana was shattered, so we headed back to the room for a bit to relax. Daniel turned up again a few hours in, to pick up some shoes. When he left he told us he’d see us tomorrow. I gave a quick ‘Mmm.. Maybe’ in Spanish and off he popped. We didn’t see him tomorrow.

Another one in luminous green

That evening we headed to the cabaret (after I put on the ‘smartest’ things I owned, shorts weren’t allowed and I didn’t really own anything too fancy. Even at home, I definitely wouldn’t have much in my backpack). After some bartering with taxi drivers, watching us come away from one of the fanciest hotels in Cuba, asking to go to one of the fanciest clubs in Cuba, dollar signs lit up in their eyes. Managing to halve the initial price, we headed off, already a couple of cocktails sunk in the hotel. We arrived, sure enough, the place was exceptionally fancy. We were ushered to the bar, where more state-approved cocktails were consumed, although with an odd table structure were people were eating and we were watching. It felt like we’d either crashed a wedding or turned up at some sort of human zoo.

After a while we were shown to our seats. We were each given a gift, which much to Courtney and my bemusement, consisted of a large Cuban cigar for us, and a single rose for the ladies. Sexism is alive and well in the fatherland. Anyway, we were practically at the front of the stage which was good. More drinks, beer and wine this time. And then after a while, they brought out the inclusive drink, which consisted of two bottles of rum between the 4 of us and 4 cans of (state-approved) cola. Let the drinking commence…!

The show was interesting, various different dances, almost a cirque du soleil feel at points with people climbing each other and hanging off things upside down. Arses. Many arses. All the arses you can imagine, all in one place. That was the main take-away there. As we approached the end, the rest of the people on our table left. I don’t know if that was because of us, I don’t think so, but either way they left a couple of cans of coke which was handy, along with an unfinished cocktail. I only know this because I turned around and noticed Diana siphoning it into her own glass. She was a little tipsy.

Health and safety! Come on!

Twirly!

Bums

What's the job description for this?

Them's not hats.

Hello to you too?

Can't bloody take her anywhere!

Eventually they came down off the state-approved stage and started dragging people up to dance with them. Courtney and I sat this one out, as our talents were more suited to the consumption of rum, but Diana and Monica had a shot at it. Their co-ordination was impeccable. Considerably better than the guy who, at the time I didn’t realise, but upon reviewing the photos noticed had a go at my trick earlier in the day, plodding down arse first on the stage.

Now you see me...

.... Now you don't!

We headed back. Initially the plan was to go back to the Hotel Nacional, hit the bar and have a couple more. Diana got back and decided it was more important we saw their room. We headed up to the room, which was definitely fancier than we were used to. That was unimportant though, as it appears Diana’s intention from here was to evaluate the comfort of the beds, and their ability to lose consciousness. Courtney and I did our best to try and get some of our take-away rum flowing, even lining up some glasses for the occasion, but no luck. Monica had gone too. We accepted our fate and I collected my wife to try and get her back home. I’ll admit, I actually don’t recall walking home very clearly myself now, so I can only assume we had a great night.

NO ALCOHOL WAS CONSUMED.

What we didn’t have was a great morning. Initial plans were to head over to the Hotel Nacional for a 10am tour of the building, which had great historical meaning, and hosted various mafia characters over the years. We didn’t make these plans. We later found out M+C didn’t either, as they supposedly managed a few minutes and decided bed would be a better choice. No matter, we had plans to do a vintage car tour of the city at 2pm, I’m sure we’d all be fine by then. Diana and I ended up just about leaving the room at 1pm, grabbing something to eat from one of the cheap places around the corner (deep fried chicken, swimming in hot oil. Nothing else. Yum...) and just about making it to the hotel before the car did. Result.

The car tour was really good. An old classic Buick, with our guide Tony, a retiree who couldn’t face being retired and spoke great English. We were taken around a number of the sights of the city, seeing both the oldest and newest parts in the same vista at one point. We were then taken to a luscious green area with a river, which was absolutely beautiful apart from all the blood and feathers on the ground. He explained that where there were still some ancient Caribbean religions in the area, they would bring a live bird with them, cave its head in on the rocks and chuck it in the river. Delightful!

View of the harbour

Big ol' Jesus - Our guide said that it's believed the only thing missing is the mojito and cigar in each hand

Old meets new, again 

A rainbow of classic cars

Huge statue of Jose Marti

And a huge statue of a man who needs little introduction

What a beautiful river!

Oh...

We ended the tour and went out to find something to eat and actually have a proper catch up. By this time, most of the group were sobered up enough to fancy drinking again – Diana not so much (and I think she wanted to exercise in the morning or something equally silly). A few drinks in the restaurant, a stop at another place for cocktails, and then back to our room to polish off the rest of that rum later, we realised that M+C were a bit of a bad influence on us, we’d barely touched a proper drink since New Years..!

At this point, we said our goodbyes to M+C, until a few days later when we’d planned to meet up in Varadero where their all-inclusive resort was. Before that, we planned to fit in Vinales, a town to the west where tobacco is grown and is a lot more countryside than other locations. Of course, this was our first attempt to travel anywhere in Cuba, so we weren’t actually entirely sure how best to go about it. We’d been told by everyone that in most places, their host where they were staying would help with such arrangements. Daniel did not. We asked if we could go by bus. He told us he didn’t think there would be one at this time. He did however, arrange us an expensive, non-state-approved taxi to the bus station. We realised this when the guy asked us to pay him just before we got to the bus station in case there were police. Tremendous.

Transport in Cuba is a bit different to everywhere else we’ve been. Of course, you can travel by bus, which means going to Viazul, a state-owned bus company, and finding out when they run, buying the tickets at times they seemed to make up (sometimes we could buy the day before, sometimes the morning before, sometimes days in advance). Helpfully, they close after about 3pm, so after that you’re coming back the next day to buy a ticket. There are trains too, but we never even tried these, apparently they’re highly unreliable, more expensive, and seem to run on odd days. The third option were taxi collectivos. These are effectively normal taxis, but shared with other people to make the per-person cost lower. Typically faster, about the same price, this was often a good option.

We checked out the bus situation (which was perfectly available regardless of Daniels opinion on it), but after seeing the time it left and the time it would take, opted for the collectivo option outside for slightly more money. Unsure what to actually expect, we took a seat in a restaurant whilst the taxi driver wandered around looking for more people. A good 30 minutes later and we were loaded into an old minibus like vehicle, however we ended up sitting in there another 20-30 minutes whilst waiting for more people. In the end, we left only about an hour before when the bus would have, but still arrived a lot sooner than we otherwise would have.

Another system that’s quite unusual compared to other travelling we’ve done is the accommodation aspect. State-approved hotels would be off the menu for us, as these all seemed to start at a minimum of something like $80 USD a night. No, we’d be staying in ‘casas particulares’, effectively peoples houses or purpose built houses, with a spare room with en-suite bathroom state-approved for renting out. Apparently the owners pay a tax per month, and then typically charge $10-$30 per night for the rooms. They then would charge $3-5 per person for breakfast, and arrange taxi collectivos, your next accommodation, excursions, hiring out bicycles etc on your behalf, because everyone in Cuba literally knows bloody everyone else in Cuba. We had no idea how easy this was though, other than the AirBnb one we’d had in Havana, we didn’t really know much else about it other than to look for the little blue signs and enquire with the owner if they have a room available.

The taxi pulled up in a street fairly central in Vinales, so we asked if we could get out (they kept asking for an address to go to as the taxi’s usually drop you off as your casa particular, but we didn’t have one, others in the taxi did). Not knowing where best to go, we saw a guy sat on the porch outside a house and figured we might as well ask. Sure enough, he had a room available. Two beds, AC, recently built it looked like with a very fancy bathroom, $20. Win. He then sent his wife through to try and upsell to us. We ended up going for the breakfast and bicycles package deal. Well, not really, but we wanted breakfast and decided we’d do the town at our own pace on bicycles the next day. Sorted. Breakfast, it would appear -everywhere- in Cuba, consisted of bread, butter (they all made a big deal about mentioning butter as if it was a food in its own right), fruit, fruit juice, very strong coffee, hot milk (sometimes 50/50 milk and sugar… Presumably from powder judging by the consistency at times), cheese and ham. Scrummy, and won’t become at all repetitive I’m sure.

We decided to spend the rest of the day taking a walk to a big painting on a state-approved cliff, which would take us a fair while as we were told it would be 3km one way and it was actually 5. Either way, we got there, saw some very skinny horses along the way (it had been very dry for a long while, the roads were all dust) and eventually saw the painting. We figured we’d take a closer look as the guy on the entrance said we could go in for a mere $1 each instead of the usual $3, and you could climb the cliff for a good view.

How'd you get so muddy, pup!?

Ah. Okay then.

Big painting

It was safe to say the climb up wasn’t easy, with most of the path not actual path. The only way to know where the hell we were going was to look for the debris left by other people, or the slightly eroded rock where people had climbed. Eventually we got to the top, but could see shit all as the foliage had grown so much it was completely shrouded. Oh well. We risked our lives climbing back down and walked back the state-approved road home.

The following day we were given our rental bicycles. They were ideal, except my wheels were poorly aligned so it kept wanting to steer left. Diana’s brakes didn’t work, but they’re only needed for stopping so that wasn’t important. Oh and my shoes wouldn’t grip the pedals as they were designed for clip-ins. Fortunately that only resulted in me slamming the pedals into the back of my ankle no fewer than three times, meaning I spent a couple of days doing a state-approved limp. At least they were cheap, at a mere $the-most-we’ve-ever-paid-for-hired-transport-ever.

Just about holding it together

Our first stop was a state-approved cave. You started the journey on foot, and then halfway through had to go by boat because it was flooded. This event didn’t take anywhere near as long as we’d hoped, and within 20 minutes we were back on the bikes wondering where the hell to go next. We spotted on the map a place a bit further up called ‘Valle de Ancon’, around 5km more, both with steep up and downhill sections. Fortunately Diana’s bike still had no brakes so this should be a doddle.

Cave *shrug*

Eventually we made it to the end, where we found a small village, the end of which an old guy in a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt was stood with a sign showing some of the views in the area. He offered to take us on a tour for $5 each, and we figured we’d made it this far so may as well. It did involve hopping a state-approved barbed wired fence, so I don’t know for certain how legit it was, but it did involve a view and then swimming in a river. By this time we were literally melting from riding bicycles uphill for several kilometres, and the sun was relentless, so the cool water was refreshing. It didn’t cool us down too long though, by the time we were back to the bicycles we were melting again. We said goodbye and prepared to head back up the hill to where we started. Luckily, my state-approved bike chain came off, so our bicycles were only improving with every kilometre.

Lil pigs

View from the top

Even lil'er pigs! 

Cooling off

Of course, our journey back was only further improved by the tropical monsoon that arrived out of nowhere when we were only about 2km from town, forcing us to take shelter for a good 10 minutes whilst we waited for it to subside. At least the area might be a little less dry now..!

We’d been a while now without any WiFi so thought we’d see how it worked. You head to the ‘Etecsa’ shop, the name of the company that handles all of the WiFi in Cuba. They sell you WiFi cards of various amounts, 30 mins up to 5 hours, for $1 per hour. These give you a username and a scratchoff panel with a password, which lets you connect to any of the ‘Wifi-Etecsa’ wireless points in the country (except a few hotel run ones, which have their own specific usernames and passwords but the same system, I suspect they get to charge more for the priveledge). What this means though is that you will stumble across areas, usually plazas or parks, where suddenly ever single person is sat there on their phone, otherwise you barely see anyone on them. There’s no 3G or 4G here, you want internet, you go to the public place where the WiFi lives. This works well for a few businesses that happen to be on the perimeter of these public places, meaning you can have a coffee or a cocktail whilst online, a rarity in Cuba. As someone who consumes 5 hours of internet in about 30 minutes, this was a huge inconvenience, but one we managed to live with.

We had an afternoon to kill so thought we’d check of the ‘botanical garden’. This was someones house. It was their garden. To be fair, it was a big garden with a lot of different plants, but it wasn’t quite what we were expecting. They also had some sort of huge rat thing in a cage, and a dog that followed us around, both of which the guide grabbed the noses of like he was trying to yank them off their faces. This must be the state-approved method of stroking an animal here.

Natural baby head tree

Leaves with natural holes in them

Huh. Different. (I am Fidel! for the non-Spanish speakers) 

Our plan now was to catch up with M+C again in Varadero. A guy on the street approached us asking if we wanted a taxi collectivo, which seemed a fair price, but we thought we’d try out this ‘system’ of letting the people in our casa work everything out. We asked them, and they said they would. Later, they came back saying that they could get a taxi but it was $5 each more expensive. Well, we had little choice now, so we had to go for it, but it was a little annoying. They also said they’d call a casa paricular in Varadero for us to arrange it and give us the address. That was something at least. We took the details and set off the following morning, after polishing off our state-approved breakfast.

The journey was easy enough. A normal car, which had a ‘taxi’ sticker in the window so I have no doubt was entirely legitimate, took us all the way to Havana, where we swapped to another car which would take us to Varadero. We didn’t want to pay an extra $10 which would have meant we would leave immediately, so instead went back to the bus station so he could try and fill the last two seats. Figuring it would be about 15-20 minutes, we all agreed that was okay. An hour later waiting in a car in 32 degree heat with no air-con on, we regretted not paying the extra 8 quid. Either way, we eventually got going. The guy explained he usually did tours in Varadero but also does transfers, and that if we wanted to go to Trinidad next, we’d need to let him know a day in advance. He helpfully informed us that we wouldn’t find any buses going there, they’re all booked up for the next few days, but if we went with him it’d be a mere $45 each. The bus is usually $20 each, so we figured we’d take his card but check it out ourselves. He dropped us off at the address we were given.

We said hello to the guy, who was expecting us (it seems the men always seem to be hanging around waiting for people to arrive, but the women deal with all the admin, as he wasn’t interested in taking any details from us until his wife was back). He told us the price was almost double what we wanted to pay, without breakfast, which seemed a little steep but we didn’t know the area, so agreed. We dropped off our bags and went for a wander around. We soon found out that, for the likes of us, there was very little in the area. Varadero mostly accounts for all inclusive resort goers, with over 50 luxurious hotels in the peninsula. We just about managed to find ourselves a local place we could buy a disgusting pizza for $0.50 each, and a place for coffee, but otherwise there was very little around us without paying a huge premium. Someone told us they had a casa available for $10 less each, closer to everything, which is when we realised we probably should have just shopped around. I’d lost some faith in the whole ‘let your casa owners arrange it all for you’ system by this point. Fortunately I did manage to Spanish just enough to negotiate our room rate including breakfast, so it wasn’t a terrible loss.

The exciting variety in supermarkets in Cuba

We’d arranged to meet up with M+C again at their luxurious resort the next day. After polishing off another wonderful breakfast, we first headed to the bus station to find out whether there were in fact any buses available. Huh, what do you know, we managed to reserve seats 2 and 3. Packed…! Around this point we started to wonder how much we could try anything the locals said to us, which was a bit of a shame as everyone seemed pretty friendly.

We hopped on the hop-on-hop-off bus that covered the whole peninsula to find go find this hotel we couldn’t even imagine staying in. A grey cloud loomed ominously in the background, reminding us of home. We arrived at the side of the road and walked up to meet them.

Turns out, they’d had a slightly better time than us. They hadn’t been eating bland, cheap food, chucked into taxis all over the place, been abused by bicycles or climbed up painty cliffs. They’d been sat in pools drinking cocktails. Photographing lizards. Utter bastards.

Anyway, we planned to visit the nearby nature reserve, which after following ‘someones’ instructions that took us a kilometre out of the way to a dead end and getting caught in the inevitable rainstorm that we’d seen on approach, we eventually found a cave. This cave is probably where we should have stopped that particular trip, as it was quite interesting, with evidence of tribal cave paintings, years of development in weather and fighting with nature, and little families of bats huddling up and flying around all blind like. Our guide was lovely, said he didn’t speak much English and then cracked out a mother-in-law joke. Universally recognised, wonderful.

Yay, a single bat!

Cave painting

Another one!

A few bats in flight!

Oh... Okay... Plenty of bats then!

Unfortunately we did carry on, to the rest of the nature reserve. We paid another entrance fee, and found ourselves walking in the sun, through dead plants for a good hour. Our tour guide was non existent, as he had clearly died centuries before.

Go! Get him!

A bit of an obstacle course

RIP mate

The highlight of this area culminated in a lizard on the path, walking up to us, then realising that was a stupid move and wandering off again. Great. How can we top this?

Bring it on!

‘Well, we’re getting the hop-on-hop-off bus anyway, lets take it to the end of the peninsula, we’re nearly there anyway, then it’ll loop back to town’ piped up some idiot called Jonno. Well, that basically meant we got to see every hotel on the peninsula, sometimes up to 4 times as it proceeded to loop around certain bits and revisit old areas. That added a good 30 minutes on to an otherwise dull journey. Eventually we made it into the town area, we stopped off a long way before the area where we were staying as we’d already confirmed there was sod all to do around there.

I won’t pretend there was much interesting going on where we got off either really. We ended up just hunting down more places for drinks, which ended up with us visiting the same cafe twice as the selection wasn’t great. It wasn’t exactly the greatest level of service (I assume it was state-approved), with us sitting drinkless for a good 70% of the time we were there. We made absolutely sure to express our disappointment at the end, where, due to a… uh… miscommunication of “keep the change”, one of our party ended up giving a 50% tip. I absolutely refuse to say who was to blame, but I will say that Courtney was pissed and brought it up just once or twice.

Sea was pretty anyway..!

So that was about it. We said our goodbyes one more time and chucked them in a cab back to their all inclusive luxury, whilst we prepared for our 12 hour bus to Trinidad. Bye guys, see you when we get back!

A slightly shiny goodbye!