Just say no to tourists...

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I'm not sure I'll ever get my head round why some people will say no even when saying yes will only involve 2 minutes of work. It was like this when I went to ex-Soviet states shortly after the USSR split, when things were still all state-owned. You walk into, say, a hotel and ask for a room. They say no, it's full, there are no rooms left. You persist and get them to show you the reservations book because you have a later reservation you want to check. Suddenly there are rooms available.

This random example was yesterday, after I finally gave up on renting a car for two days (it seems that in that case no really meant no) and resigned myself to tooling around Havana for an extra two days. And persistence was worth it - I'm staying in the Casa del Cientifico, a grand old mansion turned into a hotel, right in the middle of the most interesting areas of Havana. I have a brass chandelier and a huge roof terrace overlooking a leafy boulevard, and an en-suite bathroom with *shock* toilet paper and *complete disbelief* soap.

So persistence paid off with the hotel, which is just as well because I was desperate to lie down and get the weight off my ankle, which I twisted very badly in a pothole during my futile trek round all the car rental offices. I was carrying my rucksack at the time, so that was an extra 9kg (I pack fairly light, luckily) to add to the twist. I could barely walk by the evening; today it's OK if I walk very slowly. Which is OK, because I have an extra two days to see everything.

Apart from the hotel being great and that cheering me up, I managed inadvertently to pull. I knew something was up when he offered to buy me a beer instead of trying to sell me cigars or drugs. So I went along for the beer and explained that I wasn't available, and we chatted anyway for a while. We might go for dinner - it's the first time I've managed to talk to anyone here without it leading to a commercial transaction, so it makes a refreshing change. And he seems to respect that I'm not going to jump into bed with him.

This installment is sent to you from the most lavish cybercafe I've yet seen - the floor is Italian marble and it's a room in the Capitolio Nacional, the old seat of government.

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Comments

[El]

Hope that your ankle is better now and that you have rested it sufficiently. Your hotel sounds fabulous; admittedly so does the internet cafe. I'm going to guess that soap and toilet paper have been in short supply then. Feel free to not go into details about how you have survived without them. How was dinner? I look forward to reading the next instalment...