Havana, Cuba - Quick Stop
Trip Start
Dec 14, 2010
1
9
65
Trip End
Ongoing
Havana, Cuba
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Its time to board our plane and instead of walking straight onto it we had to all get on a bus that took us to the dodgy plane parked a few minutes away. It actually didn’t look as bad as we thought it would. The entry door was so low though that all the boys had to duck down to enter through it, I guess this is where being short comes in handy sometimes cause I didn’t have to duck down at all!
We got to our crammed seats and noticed the ashtrays at the end of the arm rests, luckily for us though, they announced that this flight was non smoking.
Its take off time and as the plane starts making its way up into the sky, smoke starts making its way up between Adams legs and all down the aisle way. We think it may have been the aircon, but it was a bit freaky to witness at the time. The rest of the flight was ok and obviously we made it otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog!
As we touch down into (Havana) Cuba we disembark the plane and get onto a bus that while nearly choking us to death with exhaust fumes it also takes us to the airport. Straight up we were interrogated by Cuba’s version of Customs – a lady who was really just a cranky rude cow. After Jono and Brad smooth talked us past her we lined up to go through customs. Another unfriendly face and a few questions asked and we got through. We waited about 30 mins for our bags to arrive before making our way out the door, no bag scans and no pull ups. We had made it to Cuba!
Next step was to get in a cab and make our way to where we were staying (Martha’s Guest House in Havana). With Brad’s failed attempt to haggle the price down on our cab and instead making our cab lady extremely cranky we all jumped in and took a 20 minute drive to where we were staying, there wasn’t much to see as it was quite dark by then. We arrived out the front of this dingy run down block of apartments and we were all wondering if maybe the cab driver had taken us to the wrong location. With a bit of running around, Brad was able to suss out that we were actually staying in these dodgy apartments.. Lucky us!
The entrance was through the undercover car park, where we were greeted by a 90 year old man puffing away on a cigar. It stunk! We got into the rickety old lift and made our way up to the 14th floor. We were greeted by Martha (Marta) this was her apartment and we were staying in 2 of her rooms. Her place was beautiful, so clean and everything was coloured co-ordinated in the Bathrooms. Pink and Green, the toilet paper was even pink! It was very cute. Every bit of wall had paintings hanging on it and although there was ashtrays everywhere you laid your eyes, there was no smell of cigarette. Marta turned out to be a cranky old duck and we spoke to her as little as possible as everything seemed like a big inconvenience for her.
We were hungry and needed money to pay for our rooms and eat dinner. As we didn’t have much cash on us at all we thought we better go and find an ATM or bank that we could get some cash and with Marta’s directions we were on our way. One word = FAIL!!! The two ATM’s that Marta had given us directions to would only accept Visa cards, We all only had MasterCard’s. Eventually we gave up trying to find ATM’s and with the small amount of money that we had we decided to go and find some where really cheap to eat. Whilst we were walking the streets we met a Cuban man called Tartar, which later we realised was a hustler. He walked us round and round in circles taking us to different places to eat. They were either to expensive or the wait was to long. I think we walked around with him for a good 40 mins. Lucky for us though because when we stopped to check the map and get our bearings right (as we didn’t believe that Tartar was taking us to the right places to eat), two police officers rocked up in their car and called Tartar over. No amount of sweet talking from Tartar was going to get him away from them. We happily walked away, glad to be getting rid of him. Poor Tartar got absolutely nothing out of us. We finally found somewhere cheap to eat and it was tasty too. It cost us $5 for a dinner sized meal of chicken or beef which was marinated with rice and salad. The beers where only $1 so we had to have a couple of those each too!
With our tummies full, we made our way back to Marta’s luxurious guest house for a good nights sleep.
Comments
Hi Steph and Adam, just catching up on your travels, ashtrays in the armrests does make you wonder how old the plane is - ours from Brisbane to KL was the same and I thought smoking on planes was banned years ago.