Gibara 3

A young Swedish couple in my casa said that a boat left for the other side of the bay at 1000. So after breakfast we caught it. There were two armed guards on the boat. Apparently people have attempted to escape Cuba in such boats. At the other end, a man with a horse cart gave us a lift to the beach. We thanked him and gave him some pesos for the favour.

The beach wasn't that great, it had huge waves. The girl swam and sunbathed. I saw her reading Mutant Message Down Under. I was surprised to hear that she believed it. The boy didn't know what he wanted to do after finishing his national service, maybe a business and computing degree.


On the return trip there was only one guard. He even helped with the mooring rope. I sat in the centre that time so as to not get splashed.


We went to the pizza shop mentioned in the guide but they didn't have any pizzas so I settled for a bocadillo. When the girl paid for her order, I noticed that the waiter had shortchanged her by 5 pesos. I drew this to her attention, saying count your change, but she shrugged. It was a trifling sum, and the Cubans needed the money more than we did, but still I didn't like being cheated on the sly. The two of them seemed a bit naïve. Apparently they had overspent their budget in Havana and were slowing down their travelling to spend less.


Seeing some flowers for sale, I bought a bunch for the dueña to burn up some pesos.

That evening I went to the casa that I had been asked by the Holguin landlady to deliver a note to. The note was partly a ploy to get me to stay at her friend's place. She was a bit irked and asked me why I hadn't gone to her place. I said that I didn't like being constrained to a particular place. Also I wanted to enjoy the comfy casa that I had chosen, to use up a few more dollars, and it wasn't expensive by Cuban standards anyway. I did give her the last of my Aussie postcards though.


That evening we attended a video film in the town hall for 1 peso. It was a Bruce Willis film called Unbreakable. Interesting premise, but tedious. Not the most exciting of evenings but there wasn't much to do in Gibara on a Sunday night.


Earlier the dueña had asked me if I had any medicine, but I had already given away all my stock. What I had left was a home-made power cable with a US plug at one end and crocodile clips at the other, to connect my battery charger to the mains. That cable would make safety experts sharply suck in their breath, but it had served me well. I would not need it in Europe. So my beaten up pair of sneakers was the only thing left to give away in Cuba.