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.

Camagüey 2

I was having weird dreams during this period, but I couldn't remember any details on waking. It seemed as if my dream life and real life would never intersect. Breakfast was unusual in that I got a slice of pork, not seen before in Cuban breakfasts.


I set out to see Camagüey's plazas and churches. Though I admit I was getting a bit tired of those. From the Casino Campestre, a pleasant park, I caught a horse cart to the bus station, but it took me in the opposite direction, to the train station. Oh well, at least I got to see the top end of Av. Republica. I decided to walk back to the centre along the avenue. There were consumer goods in the shops. I saw quite a few shops selling home hardware, hinges, door knobs, that sort of thing. Camagüey seemed better off than Havana. At the tourist information office nobody was at the counter. Maybe they were off working on their own businesses.

There was an Internet room at one of the hotels and it was quite busy. I made a note to come back later. Across the street, a Cubatur employee gave me the times for the Santiago de Cuba bus, and confirmed that I could connect to the Baracoa bus the same morning. I hoped so, I didn't want to stopover in Santiago de Cuba.

The tinajón (clay water jar) is the symbol of Camagüey. It is used to store water for dry times. Yes, they are usually found resting in this attitude.

This is the Plaza del Carmen that I visited the night before. It wasn't half as romantic as the evening before when there had been a dance class in progress and music streaming out of the windows, but I got to take pictures of the iron sculptures, one of a Cuban pushing a cart full of jars.

I went to a recommended restaurant in the Plaza San Juan for lunch. A couple of Italians and their chicas came in and took a nearby table. One Italian was grey haired, the other was younger. The girls were black Cubanas who didn't look a day over 20. One of them was obviously not wearing a bra. I wondered why Italians seemed to like Cuba for their sex holidays. Maybe it was because Italian and Spanish are related languages. The chicas were introducing their clients to Cuban food terms. My fish was undercooked so I sent it back to the kitchen. The service was underwhelming but for $6.50 plus tips, which also covered the beer, I couldn't complain.

This is a beautifully preserved façade.


Finally I reached Casino Campestre again. I made up my mind to go buy the bus ticket for the next evening, I would have seen enough of Camagüey by then. A buggy agreed to take me to the station for 10 pesos. The horse looked tired and I felt sorry for it. The ride was bumpy as the road was poor.

During my afternoon siesta, I heard somebody say Olanda (Holland in Spanish). I emerged from my room to see the Dutchman talking with the abuela, not looking for me, just happenstance. It turned out that he had moved next door because he didn't like the rules at the previous casa. Was he actually also a chica chaser, I wondered.

We went for a city walk together. At the 5th floor of the Gran Hotel which has views over the city, I took some photos. It was very quiet in the streets, even though it was light. Then we had mojitos and conversation at the Hotel Colón.


Over dinner in the casa, I chatted with the British couple from Geneva, D and C. They were jet-lagged and retired early. It had been a long day for me so I retired too. I made a note to tell the architect about my plans the next day, which involved hanging around until late at night to catch the overnight bus to Santiago de Cuba.

Camagüey 1

It seems that in Cuba black cats are lucky when they are in the house, but not on the street. Anyway, in the morning the one at the casa consented to be stroked. I got to the bus station with plenty of time to spare. There was another tourist there, a Dutchman. I saw that he was doing exercises on his Spanish textbook. He was a psychologist, from Den Haag, partly retired and going in the same direction as I was. We chatted in the bus station and on the bus, mostly about the future of Cuba. The time flew.

At Camagüey the bus station was again somewhat away from the city centre so we shared a taxi to the city. Camagüey is an access point to Playa Santa Lucia near the Cayo Sabinal area on the coast said to be unspoilt. I asked at the Gran Hotel about package deals to visit the coast, but they weren't running any because of the lack of transport. The only way to get there would be by a private taxi, costing $40 each way for a total of $80. This was for a distance of only about 40km one way. In another country there would be public transport, or with more money I would rent a car. But this was Cuba. Sigh.

My first choice of casa was full. There was only room for one at the second, which was the Dutchman's choice. However I got directed to Vitrales, run by an architect, his wife and his mother. As usual professionals were finding it more lucrative to earn hard currency from tourists than at their regular jobs. He thought he had reservations from a German couple and a couple of English girls but they didn't show up. He thought they might have been hijacked at the station by touts for other casas. So again, I took a double room, with no reduction for single occupancy.

After dinner I walked to the cobblestoned Plaza del Carmen, which held some sculptures and was said to be pleasant. It was poorly lit but I was planning to come back the next day anyway. A hustler tried to talk me up. I ignored him. There were some kids playing there and they were quite curious about me, a tourist. I took some photos and gave them some sweets.