cuba

Hola! this is my journal from cuba! pictures coming soon!

Thursday, March 6th

Woke up at 11. Got ready, throwing a few small things i almost forgot into my suitcase. by suitcase i mean wheel along cart. i then emptied out my backpack of school supplies, picked out some cool cds and i was ready to go. until i found out that we weren't leaving until 2. so i went back to sleep! what else was i supposed to do?
i took a cab in the rain to the train station, then met up with my friends Matt and Tina at the train station. after purchasing a dunkin donuts croissant sandwhich and a cup of coffee and a donut, i boarded the train. As we were on the train, i had to keep making phone calls to the charter company due to their ineptitude at completing credit card transactions.
finally, after two hours and fifteen minutes, we arrived at penn station in NYC. we stopped and got some food (i purchased a personal pan pizza from pizza hut for $5) and then we took a cab in SLEET and RAIN to LaGuardia Airport. As we were in the cab, Matt starts speaking fluent russian to the cabbie! I knew matt took yearly trips to russia and mongolia, but who expected him to whoop it out in a cab in NYC? whoa!
when we got to Laguardia, it had already started to snow. we found out when we got there that all flights were delayed by two hours at least! so we calmly got tea and coffee and used the internet and chilled out for a few hours. then, I checked our flight schedule again (it was originally supposed to leave at 7:30) and found that it was further delayed! we finally ended up taking off somewhere around 12:30 am. whew!

Friday, March 7th
the plane ride to fla was very uncomfortable. we chose to fly on a budget airline, and as such, not only was there a very hard wooden plank digging into my back, but there was a seven year old kid sitting behind me who kept kicking me in the behind!
at 3 am we arrived at Ft Lauderdale airport. HOW WONDERFUL, i immediately discarded my sweatshirt, and enjoyed the outside air. then, we were going to try to walk to the train station to get a ride to Miami international airport, but a nice cabbie stopped by and offered to give us a ride.
turned out the cabbie wasn't so nice. he took us one FULL train stop away from where we would have been had we walked and charged us $15. what a jerk! so we called up the cab company and complained. they didn't seem like they were going to do anything. oh well. we had to sit there for a while and wait for the train, which didn't come until 5:30 am.
an hour later, we arrived at Miami international airport. I still have not slept at this point. It's been 18 straight hours, and my cd batteries are out.
 

well, its about 10 am now, and its been 23 hours straight. I'm still going strong. we met everyone at the airport, and waited. It then cost me $50 to get out of this darn country! at this point people are already speaking fast spanish with thick accents. oh no! after checking our luggage in, we all went through the most extensive search procedure ever! x-raying everything, shoes included. sitting us down. full pat down, searching of carry-on luggage.
at 10:15 we got in line for the plane, wow its sunny outside! we stood in the bus line w other people, after we rode to the plane, they wouldn't let us get off the hot little shuttle bus because they were still loading our luggage. finally we got on our plane, a dual prop!
the plane ride to cuba only took us one hour. the airport was a small industrial looking building. it almost seemed like we came off the plane and stepped into a hangar. there were six stalls to go through where they stamped our passport and there were military guards all around us. after answering that I was with the student group, i went through quite easily, then i picked up my bag and proceeded to the bus which would take us to the hotel.
OH YEAH AIRCONDITIONING! woooo!
on the way to the hotel, the guide explains that there are three kinds of cuban money. 1. US dollars, 2. Cuban dollars, 3. cuban pesos. US dollars are taken by everyone, cuban dollars (actually cents) are given as change, and cuban pesos are used by cubans to get food. or at fruit markets and the like. needless to say, I, unlike everyone else, did not feel the need to change any of my money. and i didn't need to !

as we arrived at the hotel, we were presented with free rum and cokes! and i was paired up to room with this kid named Joe Wheatley, he's a whitebred guy, pretty normal, pretty cool. after we checked in, I took a quick shower and then got ready to hit HAVANA!
we met downstairs, and found this little restaurant down the street that serves cajitas, or literally, little boxes. what the food was was rice and beans, topped with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, fried plaintains, and your choice of chopped pork or a little pork steak. SO GOOD!
after lunch, we headed to the waterfront, called the Malecon. the Malecon is a few miles long, and basically consists of a wall right overlooking the carribbean. so beautiful.
along the way we talk to some locals, there's a little wet dog running around, and we observe kids jumping into the sea. (it was neat, and i got some cool pictures of them which i will post soon.)
we got to the end of the malecon, and then we walked down this street called the Prada and stopped to drink some mojitos, (Basic Mojito
Ingredients:
3 fresh Mint sprigs
2 tsp Sugar
3 tblsp Lemon juice (or lime), fresh
1 1/2 oz Light rum
Club soda, Chilled

Mixing instructions:
In a tall thin glass, crush part of the mint with a fork to coat the inside. Add the sugar and lemon juice and stir thoroughly. Top with ice. Add rum and mix. Top off with the club soda (or seltzer). Add a lemon slice and the remaining mint. Serves one.

ok so we get some, then decide to keep walking.
we stopped at la casa de matrimonio (the house of marriage) and got a full tour! there were original paintings by GOYA on the wall, and just some very beautiful art all over the place. it was wonderful. we walked back through some poorer parts of town, felt safe the whole time, sampled some great food, and finally made it back to the hotel
I went swimming in the pool, talked to a military cop/sentry guarding the pool, turns out he's a military lawyer. was pretty interesting. I then assembled a group to go out and we decided to check out a jazz club
unbeknownst to anyone, we actually went to the wrong place. we ended up at the cafe de amor (cafe of love) and listened to some cuban lounge singers. it was interesting. at this point i am well approaching 40 straight hours of being awake. what fun.
so the deal was, that we paid $5 a piece to get in, and that $3 for drinks was supposed to come straight out of that. however, when we first recieved the bill, they wanted $45! we figured out that they were trying to screw us, and I think that when we left, we ended up leaving them with $16 although the tab was supposed to be $12. yeah! thats us lawyers being conscious of our surroundings.
we get back to the hotel, and I crashed! yeah! i made it to 40 hours!

Saturday, March 8th.
whew! today we are going to the beach! I woke up at 9am feeling very refreshed, and took advantage of the free breakfast! I had eggs and ham, toast, orange juice, and coffee! it was great!
after a slight ordeal, we all meet and get ready to go to the beach. we hired illegal cabs to get there, but there was a problem. 8 of the group ended up at the public beach, 6 of us thought that we were going there but really ended up at a much nicer, private beach! i felt like i was in a corona commercial!
it took about 30 mins and $12 to get there, to la playa tarara. after lounging for a few, and swimming, Farrah and I decided to go kayaking in the sea!
it was AWESOME! $1.50 for a half an hour. so much fun. and we got Matt P. and Vanessa to go with us, they took a double kayak, and Farrah and I took singles.
after kayaking, i was pretty tired, but i decided to be adventurous anyway. so I climbed a palm tree and got a coconut. I returned to my comrades with the coconut, cracked a hole in it, then we got the bright idea to pour some rum in it! YUM....
we took a picture with some local musicians, and they informed us that the concoction that we had made was called SAOCO by cubans, who knew?!

after going back to the hotel, we decided to meet up in china town and eat dinner. so, to get there, a few of us took these little three wheel taxis called COCO TAXI's. they rule, and I developed an addiction to them which still is in its waning forms.
we arrived at el barrio chino (chinatown, how the hell is there china town in HAVANA????) and we ate at a restaurant called los tres chinitos (the three little chinese dudes) It was good, i had pork chops, and rice and beans, and mariposas (little butterfly shaped things that were fried egg noodles with meat in them)
then we met this old little chinese guy, el primer hombre mas sufrir, i guess he had a pretty crappy life. but he was nice, and one of the girls in our group, judy chuen spoke chinese, and talked to him for a while. his cuban wife swore that I was cuban. they had a little fat granddaughter who was really cute and insisted on showing all her birthday pictures to the girls in our group. they thought she was SO adorable.
so getting back, we took a bicitaxi - bike taxi, to another cocotaxi spot and then took a cocotaxi back to the hotel. we took 10 minutes to change and then we were off to see a live cuban band

we all got in coco-taxi's and had a coco-race! to la casa de la musica (the house of the music). my group won. we were handicapped and had three people in our coco!
the band was ok, but the singer definitely didn't look the part. i mean, who sings in a cuban band and wears leather pants/jacket, and a tie-die shirt!?! anyway, after that, we took a ride in a '57 chevy back to the hotel
at approx three AM, we went for a little swim! how refreshing! before going to sleep.