Camaguey - Part 2

Camaguey was a great place for a one day stopover. A labyrinth of beautiful Spanish colonial architecture with a slightly more lived in feel than many other places I'd been here. Rumour has it, the confusing layout was an intentional ploy to slow down invading armies. I was particularly happy with the lack of tourists here. Which meant being hassled on the street was not regular occurrence.

One pleasant surprise was noticing that I had royally cocked up my exchange rates and the cash machines were quoting me a USD rate, not GBP as I'd assumed. So now the holiday has become 20% cheaper, which gave me a little spring in my step.

Back at the casa I chatted with Onix over fresh papya juice (the fruit not the other thing). He seemed much more willing to talk about politics than just about any Cuban I'd met. We both agreed that Cuba's time to shine was long overdue. Former enemies of America like Veitnam, Germany and Japan were not subjected to the same level of restrictions and monst Cubans were fed up of being stuck in the doghouse.

It was probably only a matter of time until this place will be more open to the world, but perhaps that isn't necessarily a good thing. Who knows.

That evening, I met up with my friend Jorge's brother Alejandro. He had been working for the government for some years, and had an arsenal of degrees in linguistics. His English was better than most native English speaking people. Like many other overeducated, underpaid Cubans he was now focused on private tourism for income.

His current gig was shepherding a gang of geriatric Americans around on a ten day bird watching tour. He seemed a little exasperated.

'All they care about is fucking birds man! It's crazy.' I could only agree. A $5000, ten day birding holiday sounds about as fun to me as slamming my balls in a car door. But then again, I'm not 80.

We talked at length about his divorce, his daughter and his new girlfriend in Jacksonville. He was someone who wore his emotions on his sleeve and truly loved Cuba. Which is why he had decided to stay instead of taking his talents elsewhere.

'Do you see a future in Cuba?' He asked, with a little tremble in his voice.

I said that they had managed to do pretty well with comparatively little, and that I hoped it was only a matter of time until the country would have greater access to the wider world. Like Onix, he shared my view that the government of the US and Cuba had to both shoulder the blame for the sixty odd year impasse.

One of the trickier political sticking points was that there are many pre-revolutiouary Cubans living in America who are a pretty powerful voting bloc. Any sign of friendliness to the Castro regime is met with furious rebuttal at the ballot. And no politician likes that.

I left and made my way to the station for the overnight bus. I could only find a bike taxi which tried a cheap scam by saying his friend would buy the bus ticket for me and get a better price. His friend came back saying that the bus was full but he could only get me a ticket for 30 CUC/$. Thankfully I had done a little research and knew it was half that. I told them both to politely go fuck themselves and made my way to the station for my bus.