Tanya walked out of the casa and straight into a woman passing by. The streets are hard to walk along due to the cobble stones and the footpaths when not covered in hurl, lung butter and dog shit are narrow…….so this is a common thing. Woman was pretty friendly and we all had a good laugh, until she started asking for Tanya’s top, as she liked it. I tell you my heart does not go out to the Cuban people. I would LOVE to round a few of them up and take them to Manila and some of the shittier parts of Bangkok…..then they will know what REAL poverty is. All of the freaking whinging “do you have a car in Australia, oh you are so rich, I am poor I have no car” says one guy in a Nike cap, gold jewelery and sunnys, or the kids riding around on decent looking bikes with their hand out. Don’t get me wrong these people are not in the majority, but there are enough of them that both of us have become jaded and annoyed at any such approaches.Had our first good experience with Cuban officialdom. After getting dropped off out of site of the cops in our un-authorised, crap-ola, falling apart Lada taxi, that required 2 stops so the driver could get out and perform a bit of percussive maintenance on the engine, with a sledge hammer and re-fit the distributor.
We arrived at immigration where “yes!” we could get a visa extention, but we had to sit through the excrutiating 30 minute process. Excrutiating becuase no sharp implements such as staples are allowed in Cuban immigration, obviously because of workplace accidents and the stupidity of some of the people that work there. Instead of staples we got to watch a grown man first slowly……very slowly peel off the sticker for the visa extention, this is stuck on the back of our Cuba Tourist Card. Next this guy was onto our stamps that took seven hours to get, I swear it took him 7 minutes to fart around peeling off the backs and then using glue to stick the stamps onto the receipts we got when they were purchased. Lastly the cou-de-gras, we had to re-fill in a Cuban immigration form, or at least the guy filled it in whilst asking us a series of questions. Once all this was done the receipts and stamps were also glued to the forms, which were filed in a draw……never to be seen nor heard from again. All of this was performed for each of us.
The trip to immigraiton had an added bonus, saw a new must have piece of coture for the keen fashionista, black lace trumpet leg pants…….with tight fitting opaque nylon legs and solid material around the groin and cuffs…….keep your eyes on the Paris runways.
As we were near the cops we could not get a cab………walked back into town and visited the bank…….also usually an excrutatingly painful and frustrating experience. However there were no other customers and my cash advance was attended to promptly and efficiently, even Tanya was shooed away from the window……….she is after all an obvious security risk.
Having had such a smashing success with Cuban officialdom, being that all of our business was concluded prior to 11:30am, a drink was in order……..we stumbled across a flash new hotel run by some Spanish outfit called Ibithostar….anyway they had Bucanero on tap, and the best toilets in all of Cuba so far. Not only were these toliets spotless clean, with seats, paper, running water (with pressure) and hot and cold infra-red operated taps i.e. the taps you put your hands under and the aqua automagically comes on. The icing on the cake was that they were FREE to use.
We then used the Internet for around an hour and went for a bit of a wander round The Dad (Trinidad). Stopped off at 2 music joints recommended by Lonely Planet. What can I say the Buena Vista Social club whilst saving the careers of some now dead Cuban guys has probably done more to hinder the advancement of new Cuban music, than a rag tag bunch of bearded commies and the US embargo combined. Busloads of touristas would be disgorged into these places where the bands would start up……..same old songs. They’d do better putting in a CD juke box. Tipped the band, after 2 songs……..they stopped playing…….oh well – beer in peace and no one tonne rodeos in sight or within earshot. One tonne rodeos you ask? After hearing Guantanamera at least 5 times per day, we decided to give it a bit of life and Australian flavour.
Had lobster for dinner back at the casa, 2 huge lobster tails each……more freaking fruit………..I hate fruit. Lobster was great though.
