Santa Clara to Havana - Waiting & Waiting... & Waiting

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Hurricane Paloma hit central and western Cuba overnight although not with the force that was expected. We woke to almost clear skies and a hot morning. Anneris prepared another top notch breakfast and we packed our bags before walking back to Parque Vidal to try and find internet access. Both of us were feeling a little under the weather as a result of our big night so a quiet morning was in order.

We spent an hour answering emails - one from mum enquiring as to our mortality on the assumption that the hurricane had caught us. We also caught up on the result of the New Zealand election and were pleased to see that sanity had been restored after so long under a Labour government. One of the things I was really struggling with in Cuba was the lack of news and information. The international news portion of the Cuban broadcast usually contained five or six five-second segments of either bad things happening in the USA or good things happening in Bolivia, Venezuela or other left wing Latin American nations.

We made our way back to our casa and waited an hour or so for our taxi to show up. Greg and Dani were already on board and advised that our driver had not been told where we were staying and had to make several phone calls to find us. It took just over an hour to get back to Cienfuegos and we had to spend three hours at the bus stop waiting to board our 4 1/2 hour bus to Havana (CUC20 each). I got a little bit of sleep but the bus seemed to stop every 20 minutes for one reason or other so I was pretty tired by the time we reached Havana. We jumped in a Lada taxi with no seatbelts and a lunatic driver arriving at Gaspar’s about 2130. We went up the road to El Rapido for a quick dinner of pizza and were asleep by 2230. We had plenty to do on our final day in Cuba and the following day was going to be a long one.

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