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Published: April 23rd 2008
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pictures coming!
Armed with our information from yesterday, bathing clothes, sun cream,
anti-Bush shirts and a camera we decide to go as near to Guantanamo Bay as
possible. On the train station they show us the place where most of the
trucks stop. On our walking trip to there, we meet Manuel, an old pensioned
man who lived and worked in the eighties in East Germany and still speaks
German wonderfully. He guides us almost to the truck stop. There we discover
that the truck system functions very well, and for us very cheap. Luckily
today we have enough Cuban pesos, to avoid being cheated because of lacking
them. Soon we make our first stop in a village which on the map appears the
nearest village to the bay. When we approach the bay, a soldier waves to us,
pointing at a sign forbidding further entrance. We realise that making
pictures is out of order, which doesn't prevent Friedemann from making one
secretly. Waiting for a new truck or bus we discover that the whole area is
considered as a military protected area, whatever this means. The
information centre had not mentioned one word about this, so we decide to
ignore this. After being picked up we step out a few villages after to try
our luck again. Because Christopher seems to be tired, Friedemann and I
leave him in the village, while we disappear into the bush to try to reach
the bay in this way. Without any water this appears to be too far away, so
we have to return and decide that this part of the journey has failed. Now
it's time to relax in the Caribbean ocean, and luckily in a short while
another truck stops. Just having entered this van, we are rudely pulled out
of it by some soldiers and brought to the nearest control post. Although it
is not too difficult too convince the soldiers of our non-imperialist
motivations, this move seriously bothers our plans, because apparently
no-one dares to stop for us on this place and we don't dare to find another
place out of fear to become suspected again. The situation is quite comical,
us trying to hitchhike in the full sun in front of this military post, all
the time accompanied by the sound of Pink Panther cartoons watched in the
military post. While Friedemann is still heading to the
Caribbean, I try my
luck on the opposite way. When finally after a couple of hours a truck stops
in the direction back to Guantanamo, also he decides on the last moment to
join us. We end up in the vegetarian restaurant again.
The next day we are waked up by Elianne. She brings another friend of her,
Katharini. Pity for Elianne, Christopher doesn't want to come with us to the
beach, but they decide anyway to join with Friedemann and me on our trip to
the Caribbean. We already know our way now, but first we have to hurry to
the bank, because otherwise we'll have a very sober weekend. From there we
soon find a truck which brings us now in a direct way to the beach. This is
really something else than expected. No sand, but rocks all over. Luckily
for us there has been made a kind of swimming pool between the rocks, which
guarantees us an afternoon full of relaxation, floating, swimming,
sunbathing, admiring the shells and sea-animals. In between I go with the
girls for some food and drinks, during which they try to hear me out about
Christopher and his attitude to
Elianne. I try to avoid the topic, point at
the cultural differences in developing relations, but I guess I'm not such a
good lier. On the end of the day it turns out that I'm being burned a bit,
so tomorrow just shadow. It turns out that Elianne is a very good
hitchhiker, because in about 5 minutes she stops a small van which brings us
with loud music home really in front of our house, after having delivered
Elianne and Katharini at their houses. After a while the girls return in
evening dress for a night out. After some real disgusting pizza, for which
we were warned by one of the neighbours of Friedemann and Christopher, well
we didn't wanna believe this guy because he was negative about almost
everything, but at least in this he was right, the girls decided that it was
now really time for a discotheque. Our complaints against this proposal were
simply to weak, due to the fact that this was not a proposal, but merely a
decision. Christopher disgusted the atmosphere so much, that he decided to
leave shortly after arrival. Poor Elianne! I decided to do make the best of
the situation,
and after some clumsy rhythmic moves was invited to join a
group of male dancers, who teached me the hottest moves, which I considered
not appropriate to practice with my female company. Anyway it was sometimes
quite funny and at the end even Friedemann, who until then stubbornly had
refused to move at all from his table, was dancing cheerfully. Because the
discotheque closed quite early, we had to finish our evening in a bar, in
which we found out that Cuban rum can make you really quite drunk.
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