not alone

July 30th

After my usual huge breakfast overlooking the streets of Havana, I set out to do some sightseeing. I checked out the revolutionary museum which was ok, but could have used a bit more English labelling. Afterwards, I decided to go down to Vedado which is a part of town that I haven’t explored yet. Trying to save some money, and hoping for an interesting experience, I decided to take the bus. The bus system is pretty damn confusing here. There are no route maps, the bus stops aren’t really labelled, and basically, unless you already know which bus you need, you are pretty screwed. I went to one of the stops mentioned in the book and asked a policeman for help. As always, the policeman was super nice and incredibly helpful. Not only did he tell me when the bus was coming and how much it cost, but when he found out that I didn’t have the correct coin, he just gave me the money for the bus. Wow.

Cubans have a very interesting way of queuing for things. They don’t really get in line or anything, instead everyone just kind of stands around wherever they please. So, how do you know what order they are in? Well, when you get there you yell out “el ultimo”, which means “last”, and someone there will yell out “yo”, which means “me”. Then you know that you’re after that person, and now you are “el ultimo”.

The bus that I needed to take was a camello (camel) which are these HUGE two humped monstrosities that are so huge that they are pulled by a semi. According to my guidebook, they can fit about 300 people, and from what I’ve seen, they probably try to fit even more than that. When the bus arrived and the huge metal door clanged open, it was pure havoc getting on the bus. Everyone stepping on everyone else, and once inside, everyone is completely crushed together and you barely had room to breathe, much less move. Did I mention that it’s a billion degrees outside? Needless to say, it was an interesting ride. I was a bit nervous, since I was supposed to get off at the last stop, but had no idea what this stop would look like. Luckily, eventually almost everyone got off the bus at one point, and so I staggered off as well.

When the mob cleared, I sat down and tried to figure out where the hell I was. By chance, there were some tourists nearby, so I asked them for help. They turned out to be a couple from Ireland who were even more confused by Cuba than I was. They had pretty much done no travelling outside of Europe, so coming to Cuba was pretty intense for them. The lack of food, the 2 currency systems, etc were really throwing them for a loop. We ended up chatting a bunch and then set off to explore together.

Living in a casa particular with a Cuban family has been really cool, but the big drawback of not staying in a hotel is that you don’t really get to run into other travellers. Plus, from what I’ve gathered, most of the people who travel here are Spanish, Italian, or German… so the chances of me finding anyone to hang out with are slim to none. So basically, after a couple days of being all alone, it was pretty cool to have people to hang out with. We checked out the Plaza de Revolucion, the *huge* Jose Marti monument, and also just spent a bunch of time kicking it.

Later we went out to a restaurant that for once turned out to be mad cheap. During dinner, they got to try their first mojitos ever (I guess they don’t really have them in Ireland). So, I asked them if they drink Irish car bombs over in Ireland or if it’s an America thing. Turns out they’ve never even heard of them. Of course, as soon as I asked, I instantly wondered if they might be offended. I’d never thought of it before, but isn’t it kind of messed up to have a drink make light of a terrible struggle that is in Ireland? Irish car bomb is such a fuct name for a drink, it’s like if someone invented a flaming drink and named it the twin towers or something. Well, they didn’t seem offended, or at least didn’t say so…

After dinner, we swung by the hotel they were staying at. Dayum, this place was like a palace!! The building itself was super fancy with an enormous courtyard outside to hang out in and you could look down on all the people partying on the Malecon from there. It really seemed nice, but honestly, I just cant see someone being able to get the full Cuba experience if you stay at a place like that.

After the hotel, I tried to figure out what to do w/ my last night in Cuba. There was this place called the ¨casa de la musica¨. Which was supposed to be really good, but going to some big club by myself seemed kind of weird, yeah? Well, screw it, I may as well go check it out anyways. Waiting in line for the club, I ended up meeting this dude from Paris who was way psyched on SF. He was a photographer who got to travel all over the world for work and said that SF was the best city he’s ever been to and that he totally wants to move there if he can. Man, I’ve been having some pretty damn good luck running into people today.

So, I ended up kicking it at the Casa Musica with him and these two other French people who he had met on the plane. When ordering drinks, our waiter told us that it´d be cheaper to order a bottle of rum, so we did, and within half an hour we had practically polished it off. Unfortunately, I had to get up at 7:30 the next morning to catch the bus, so at 2am I cut out.

It had been a really good day, and though I’m really enjoying trying to scrape together my Spanish skills, it was nice to be able to just chill and talk in English for a while. It’s interesting to me how few budget travellers there are in Cuba. It seems like most of the tourists here are package tourists who stay at fancy resorts and travel in large groups. Even the people I met today, even though they weren’t in a package tour, the Irish people were staying at one of the nicest hotels in Havana and the French people were staying at some chic all-inclusive resort just outside of town. Am I the only backpacker here?