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Published: December 18th 2015
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Arrived back in Havana & settled in a comfortable 2 bedroom apartment in central Havana rather than a preferred Old Town base where the same facilities are more expensive & difficult to find. We made a late change of plans to skip Varadero as we suspected it would be too touristy & better off slowing down the constant moving with all its problems & staying based in Havana.
Next day mainly doing essential chores, supermarket, change money, find Wifi hotspot to catch-up on mail & lunchtime cleansing ale. Also went to a colourful local Mercado to buy F&V to cook an in-house meal by my vegetable starved friends. The days go without getting much done.
We have had a couple of experiences with Jinetero's (male hustlers) who home in on unsuspecting tourists offering to help find cigars, taxi's, accommodation or girls in some cases & take a cut for the service. The first was a likeable enough chap who saw we were looking for accommodation in the old town & quickly said the place we were about to check was full but knew another place. With constant chatter, Lynn & Martin spotted it straight away but it suited our
purpose until after about 10 failed attempts we parted ways, no deal done.
The 2nd experience was a little bit more scary. During the day we come across a little arty alleyway with a few bars which we went to visit again that night. The 1st bar wanted us to try this special Cuban drink. Who knows what price it would be & more importantly what might be in it. As it didn't sell beer we had an exit strategy. As we walked to the next bar this guy latched onto us trying to encourage us to try the same concoction except the previous place didn't have the right mix. We tried to ignore him but he plonks down on the next seat with elbows on our table trying to butt into our conversation in an in your face way. Mentions his sick kid, tries to sell his music CD (everyone seems to have one) & made it very unpleasant & we left as soon as we could. The barman must be part of the scam as the whole atmosphere would ensure no repeat business.
Next days just settling into semi normal life with "The Times" polygon word
quiz over breakfast , different walks locally or catching a collectivo (ie old American car operating as a taxi) into the old city, reading books, playing cards or finding a bar with music at night.
One interesting part of Cuban life is the operation of ration books & stores for key foodstuffs in every town. Not sure who qualifies but a lot of people are likely to be further left behind in the two currency system where those able to trade in the tourist peso system are doing very well at 25 times the local currency. Another aspect difficult to reconcile is that it is still quite a Catholic country yet seems to easily co-exist with a Communist government.
We planned to catch the Hershey train on Friday. The train travels between Havana & Matanzas & is a relic from the time the Hershey chocolate company owned vast sugar cane properties in Cuba & the train was used to take the workers to & from the fields. Arriving at the station we were told there was a problem & cancelled after an hour's wait. Mannana!
Streets are normally pretty busy but Saturday is crazy especially at night
with long queues for everything, movie theatres, food & bar outlets.
We were all looking forward to going home as we had over estimated the time required to tour the country but with limited options to bring forward a return.
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