Camagüey 3

D, the English tourist, was not feeling so well at breakfast so I gave him a couple of my Imodium tablets. They were heading out to Cayo Sabinal after lunch. The Dutchman had said that he might pop by to say hello in the morning, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps he was on his way to Bayamo already.


I had to relinquish my room of course but I left my backpack in the house. Needing to kill some time I decided to visit a Cuban cinema for 15 pesos. They were showing a B grade Chilean comedy called Sexo Con Amor, which was about couples having flings. There was a bit of nudity and lots of rough jokes. The audience roared at those. There were many rowdy kids in the cinema. Cubans are more relaxed about sex than Anglos, and indeed most Europeans. Perhaps it's the only pleasure left to them that the government hasn't regulated. The ventilation consisted of a couple of large extractor fans in the ceiling, and the film was projected from a video so the picture was poor and I couldn't make out a lot of the dialog. I was more worried about my daypack, containing my documents, which I had to leave in the guardabolsa (bag room). But I got it back safely.


I didn't like the menu at the Gran Hotel so I went to the Hotel Colón for lunch. There I bumped into D and C again, and had a ham and cheese sandwich, like them. On the way out I poked my head into the Internet room and saw that there was a free spot so I bought an hour for $3. I had to show my passport for this. As expected, response was slow. I could access my Yahoo mail, but my other webmail accounts were blocked. I spent the rest of the time checking the news on the ABC and BBC websites. Not much had changed in the world. It seemed like forever, but it had been just over 3 weeks since I set out on my odyssey. Travel time is compressed time.

It had started to drizzle so I went back to the casa to rest in an armchair. There was an Italian-Dutch couple in my former room now. They were also trying to get to Playa Santa Lucia. Camagüey was a disappointment in some ways. I had hoped to reach the coast but could not afford to. The choice of restaurants in reality was not as good as the guide suggested. On the other hand, Camagüey seemed more prosperous than Havana. Perhaps the distance from the capital meant that people were freer to do their own thing on the sly.


The abuela's dinner cooking was great again. The architect was very proud of his historic house. He showed me an album of photos that he had taken of casas particulares in the region. When I visit another city for work reasons, I also visit casas I know. I go click, and add another photo to my collection, he declared. I gathered that he was trying to set up some kind of network of casa operators. So the entrepreneurial spirit wasn't dead in Cuba yet. He gave me some tips for Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa.


The architect's nephew took me to the station in a battered old car. After he had left, I realised that perhaps I was meant to give him a dollar or two for his fuel and trouble. I wasn't sure if his service was included in the casa's rate and he would be offended by the money. Probably not. Oh well, too late now. At the station, the cafeteria's prices were obviously in dollars, because the beer was listed as 0,90. Cuba should just price everything in dollars and be done with it, I thought in annoyance.