The new day started at 08:00 with a delicious breakfast consisting of two courses. 1st course was a collection of freshly chopped pieces of banana, guava, watermelon, pineapple and papaya. 2nd course involved fresh bread, cheese, slices of tomatoes and cucumber, some sort of unknown potato type root and a really tasty omelette. A feast for kings it was indeed.
After breakfast we went to the Hotel Plaza at Parque Central to meet Robert and Almut at 10:00. We took a 1 1/2 hour, open top tour bus around Havana together to find our bearings and get an overview of the area. About 30 mins into our tour the clouds decided to move in very quickly and to our luck a light rain hit us :(
Post rainy but cloudy bus tour we decided to have a look around Havana Vieja to find some food. We entered a local food market where we ate Cuban style… Pork chop, rice and salad for €1.80. No stomach problems after either. After that we wanted to see Havana central so we headed off in search of adventure. On the way however we were greeted by a Cuban man who seemed nice at first, but was of course a jinetero (tout) which we found out after he was feeding us complete bullshit. He claimed to be in a band that was playing at the buena vista social club and that he could get us in for free! Yeah right! But we went along with it for a while. We ended up in a bar that he invited us to and we all had a Mojito together. Turned out that one round for 5 people was about €35! We complained and said that it was a rip off (for Cuban standards). Victoria acted and decided to ask the neighboring table how much they paid for theirs. Turned out, they couldn’t/didn’t want to say of course. The bar man even had a special “tourist” price list printed off with extortionary prices! In the end we paid 4 CUC each which came up to a rough total of about €15. That’s more like it :)
We carried on our adventure after nearly being completely ripped off with disappointment as it seems that in Havana central, it’s hard to know if you can trust someone. 90% of the time they cant be trusted. It really all bubbles down to one thing, money. Even if they seem nice at first, it commonly ends with something like… “I need to feed my children” or “I need to buy milk for my child”. Inequality is the cause for this behavior as if they had the same access to money and inherently resources as I, they wouldn’t bother me. What would be the point of asking some someone else for milk when u know u can get it from the store yourself?
Anyway after that we walked around central Havana and through part of china town until we got back to the local bar near the Casa. Here we had a nice cool beer while enjoying the rain which came out of nowhere. Again, cats and dogs. Very heavy rain. But it didn’t last long. We then went back to the Casa for a shower and nap. In the evening we went out on the street and got some cheap pizzas from a local house window and lemonade for about 0.90 euro / pizza and 0.07 euro / lemonade! A cheap dinner :)
