Never, ever trust a Cuban taxi-driver

Getting internet is very difficult and we still haven’t seen the use of a credit card !

Never, ever trust a Cuban taxi-driver

Before we came I knew that Cuba was a big place but hadn’t realised how big.  England is about 50,000 square miles with about 55 million population and Cuba, longer and narrower is 44,000 square miles with about 11 million people.  We needed accommodation and transport to get us from Havana on the north coast to Cienfuegos on the south as we expect to head eastwards along the major part of the island.

We called into an official tourist office as, of course, they all are here.  A very helpful man called Abel recommended and booked accommodation with a sea view for us and would book transport in a taxi and leave a message that afternoon, at our current place, to confirm the booking.  We’re due to leave in two days.   Of course no call came, so we called back into the office the next day to find that it’s Abel’s day off.  From the office we phone the number we have for the accommodation to be told that we hadn’t confirmed so it was no longer available “but another place, just as good is available”.  Bye, Bye.  So, back to plan B which we don’t have but develop quickly.  We call in at one of the big hotels and book two places in a minibus for the following afternoon.  Then hotfoot it back to our Casa to see if the cousin of the owners wife’s accommodation in Cienfuegos is available.  It is and we book it.  

The following morning just post-breakfast, a taxi arrives for us with two people already in it c/o Abel.  He is phoned by the driver and I take the call.  Abel says we have a booking for accommodation and this is our taxi.  Words are exchanged.  Abel is unhappy and the taxi leaves with two people in it.  What do you mean holidays are supposed to be relaxing.  This entire episode has all been conducted in a mixture of Spanglish and mime.

So at lunchtime we turn up for our minibus which turns out to be a taxi with two passengers in it, Serbians as it turned out.  After 15 minutes going in the wrong direction the taxi breaks down and the driver (as all Cuban drivers have to) undertakes repairs which consist of taking the air filter off and hitting something.  We then go the correct way back the way we’ve already been and only break down once more on the journey.  We did stop at one point where another taxi was by the roadside in the country with what looked like half the engine strewn on the verge.  We get dropped just outside our accommodation and are then shunted by the owners to another Casa just round the corner.  Fantastic, isn’t it.

We now know that Casa owners have a network of other Casa owners who may or may not be relatives and they arrange accommodation for us, sometimes when we haven’t even asked for it.   It reminded me of the WW11 stories of escaping Allied troops being shunted across Europe from safe house to safe house along what I think was called the Underground Railway.  Of course once the war had ended it was discovered that every single Frenchman had been in the Resistance.

Cienfuegos is a pleasant enough town but with not a lot to see.  It does have the Theatre Tomas Terry.  I half expected to see the old roué with his gap-toothed grimace and cigarette holder in the foyer but this Tomas Terry was a local businessman from the 19C. (for those of you who know him not, Terry Thomas was an English actor from the end of Music hall probably into the 1960s who always seemed to play the same part, a sort of seedy middle class gent with little money.)   One evening we went to a show!  (Heathers idea)  It was modern dance heavily influenced by Flamenco to a Cuban rhythm, plus a good dose of Stomp but without the dustbins.  It was excellent.  There were about a dozen women plus two male dancers and a band consisting of keyboard, bass guitar, singer, flute and three drummers who were so good they didn’t drown out the flautist.  The theatre itself was a real gem, three rows of balconies around a smallish auditorium obviously built to be used without amplification.  Seats were wooden tip-ups with wrought iron frames and the boxes had six movable chairs to each.  It cost us 10CUC (£6) each but a local paid 10 Pesos (40p).  It wasn’t even full up.

We have begun to learn more about the local economy.  A country doctor gets paid about 1000 pesos a month.  That’s 40CUC and is why a number of Casas we’ve seen are run by doctors because they make 35CUC letting one room with breakfast for one night.  Somewhere we’ve read that Cuba has 70,000 doctors and the whole of Africa has 50,000.

Taxi driver story.  We arranged a trip from Cienfuegos through the tourist office to a local wildlife area and the Botanic Gardens.  Taxi 30CUC.  Stupidly we didn’t check before we got in what the fare was because at the end it had become 35CUC.  It is only 5CUC difference but I don’t like getting rooked and 5CUC is a lot here.

As we’ve moved away from Havana the number of cars on the roads has decreased and the number of horse drawn carts and taxis has increased dramatically.  Old American cars are still to be seen regularly.  We bus it to Trinidad, an old picturesque colonial style town with a cobbled centre.  Much of the town outside the centre is single storey and many people have just built piecemeal over the whole area of their land in what could be described as random.  We meet up again with John who was staying at the same place as us in Cienfuegos.  Travelling by himself, he’s a County Court Judge from Manchester and as a Man. United supporter and a pillar of the legal establishment he was able to confirm that it isn’t actually illegal to live in Manchester and support Manchester United. 

Main meals here are fine for me with good shrimp and lobster to be found easily and cheaply.  Being vegetariana though, H has it a bit more difficult.  Vegetable Omelette, Vegetable Paella or Vegetables is about it.   Decent snacks are awkward, bread is not nice and cheese doesn’t seem to be in the shops although we have had it.  We brought good quantities of packeted nuts and cereal bars for emergencies and they have been dipped into.  For the bus ride mentioned above we’d taken the cheese sandwich provided as part of breakfast to eat on the bus.  I ate half of mine and it didn’t make it onto my top100 cheese sandwich list (not even top 200).

In the centre of town is a formal square with a church on one side and grand buildings on the other three.  A man sits in a doorway wearing a hat with a real live chicken sitting on top of it.  We presume this is a photo-opportunity with a 1CUC pricetag.  Another apparently mummified old man clenching a cigar between his teeth sits on a donkey with a sign saying photo 1CUC.  No thanks.  Trinidad is a very appealing place and we spend three days here including one on the beach, a 16km, 2CUC return bus ride away.  The bus service is advertised as hop on, hop off but at only one every two or three hours, once you’re off, your’re off for a long time.  It is one of the oddities about such services and it isn’t just here, that there is no recognition of customer requirements.  The first bus leaves at 9.00 and is overfull at the first stop.  People are waiting at other stops and eventually the driver just ignores them.  The next bus is at 11.00, then 3.00.  Do they perhaps put on extra buses for all the extra people.  What do you think ?   It is a glorious beach and not crowded.  Well it wouldn’t be when only three busloads of people a day can get there.     

Taxi driver story.  We plan our exit from Trinidad (plan may be overstating a bit here).  It’s a bus to Sancti Spiritus (6CUC each) but the ticket office at the bus station is shut with no indication of when if ever, it’s going to open again.  Outside “taxi, taxi, you want taxi”.  So I ask how much a las manana “20”, a figure which is very acceptable and checked several times in Spanish and English.  Where is this taxi.  “At home. It’s new”.  Now wouldn’t you have thought that seasoned travellers as we are, we might have detected a whiff of Rattus rattus here.  We arrange 9.30 at our Casa. 

At 9.35 ‘taxi driver’ Manuel is there with his bicycle rickshaw, another local and an old taxi driven by someone else with two passengers already on board.  A discussion ensues.  Sancti Spiritus, si.  20, no 30, reduced immediately to 25. 20, no 25.  A lively discussion ensues.  I quote the Who, circa mid 1960s and tell them to fffffff fade away.  Our Casa owner has his phone out and is dialling a friend.  OK 20.   We load up and are back on the Underground Railway to a Casa in Sancti Spiritus arranged by our current Casa owner.  At arrival I hand over my 20.  The two other passengers, a French girl and her Cuban boyfriend have paid 25.