Our last day in Cuba, but what a pain, no money… We woke up with this feeling. First of all we needed some money to see us through the day, so we decided to ask our host to lend us some 5 CUC.
Our first stop was the bank, where we wanted to try and figure out what is going on with my Commerzbank card. Unfortunately they couldn’t help us there at all… So that was the wasted half an hour walk. In the meantime we were speaking to Anna via SMS trying to figure out what else we can do. Anna came up with the idea of western union, so we went there in the hope to get money sent to us. Would you believe it, western union in Cuba does not accept money from Europe, only from the United States… How stupid is that! Cubans won’t accept any American credit cards, but you can only sent money to Cuba from US!!! Anyway, this failed.
Next stop was the place where they deal with all credit card problems. Unfortunately by the time we got there, local time in Germany was coming up to 6 pm. People in the office were extremely helpful and let us use their phone for international calls to our banks. There I managed to find out that my Commerzbank card was blocked due to an attempt of fraud… how lucky!!! DKB people were not helpful either.
Our next chance to come up with cash was to try and ask the British embassy for a loan. The embassy was miles away and we started walking under the burning hot sun. After some 20 minutes of walking we stopped to get some shade on one of the streets. There was a car parked right next to the spot where we stopped, a Russian old Moskvich, but very well done up. The guy got out of the car and asked us in English if we have a problem. This was strange in itself as not many people actually speak English. We said that we do indeed have a problem and told him the whole story. The guy, his name was Rigo, kindly offered to give us a ride to the embassy. As we were arriving he said that in case the embassy fails to help us he will try to help. We were really surprised by this offer as the guy literally just met us!!! Anyway we got his phone number and got out of the car.
So, here we were at the embassy, last hope. We went in, spoke for ages to a guy there, explaining the whole situation. The verdict was, they can help us, but they can only give us money next day, which didn’t work for us as we were to leave Havana at 6 am next day.
The only thing left was to call Rigo and see if he can magically lend us money. And so we called him and he said that he can be next to the embassy in 2 hours. We waited for just over two hours and there was no sign of Rigo. We sent him another text and he responded that he is still busy and doesn’t know when he is going to be able to pick us up. As we didn’t have many other options left, we said we would wait. And we waited for 7 hours. I have never played so much of “I spy with my little eye” and also we found that the ratio of Moskvitch to Lada in Havana is approximately 1:6 :))) Things you do when you are bored :)
It was starting to get dark and we could feel the wind picking up, as the Sandy was getting closer. It started to rain and the lightning stroke just a few meters from us. Scary business, I covered my head when it happened and Alex had a good laugh at me for doing so :)
Rigo arrived just as we were about to leave… Amazing!!! He drove us to a part of Havana where we have never been before, run into a house and returned with a giant stack of money. Counted 130 CUC for us and even gave us some change for the taxi to get back to the hotel. He didn’t know anything about us and gave us money just like that!!! The only thing he gave us was his business card with e-mail address on it and asked us to send him an e-mail so he can respond with his bank details. We were over the moon!!!
We got to the centre and decided to treat ourselves to a last night in Cuba meal at our favourite Castropol. It was amazing, one minute we didn’t have any money and the next we were eating in a lovely restaurant!
We got back to the hotel, packed and had the best 5 hour sleep ever! ;)
