The food… in Cuba is not what one would call a highlight. Ok, in the Paladares (private restaurants) one can get a good meal for fewer than ten dollars, that’s just something I need once a day. Apart from that, there is only filth to be found, and that all over the place. Sorry, but I have to make that quite clear. There is at least one “Rapido” in each larger town; this is a sort of fast food restaurant. In these places, one can get either, pizza with salami, pizza with ham, or pizza with mortadella. I know all variations. One is also able to get spaghetti. One day I arrived from the beach, was very hungry, and fancied a plate of spaghetti and a pizza. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be possible. One of the Rapido’s has spaghetti, the other pizza…. At first I didn’t even want to go into the one Rapido.

Le Baron was able to convince me though; he told me that the pizzas there weren’t that bad at all. So, I went in, but against my will. The pizza was done in the microwave (at least it had been covered in plastic foil), looked a bit like a plastic pizza baked in the microwave. I plucked up all my courage and took a bite, great!!! I nearly even ordered a second one. Ok, to tell the truth, after a few days one can’t face them anymore, that’s the reason why one should have a proper meal once a day, preferably during the evening in the Paladar.

Photo above: We can be seen here twice in a Rapido, on the beach once. At least one is able to get a good beer from a carafe and a cabbage salad (shiver).

Then one night, I went with Y to a sort of fast food restaurant down the old part of town. There is a special name for such place, has slipped my mind. I had Pollo (chicken) done in the chip pan, and chips to go with it. What I mean is that I tried to eat it – to tell the truth I didn’t really manage. Was very fatty and oily. The chips were swimming in old brown chip pan fat, was simply disgusting. As I said, couldn’t eat the crap. Ate Bokadillo quite often down the Casa Granda, this is a type of sandwich. If one has an empty stomach, then it is just about possible to shove one down ones throat.

Santiago de Cuba lies next to the Caribbean Sea, Baracoa next to the Atlantic. Altogether, the journey takes about four hours. First of all one has to travel towards the east up to Guantanamo (there where the “Guantanamera” come from, those are girls from Guantanamo), then one must turn off towards the north in the direction of Baracoa. Once in Guantanamo (a small dump) one has completed about half of the journey, however, there are a few serpentines to be encountered. All in all a nice drive. Mariachi had done the tour before, this was a good thing because we didn’t have to ask the way all that often. The signposting isn’t all that good at all.

One has to travel along the “motorway” great; hardly any traffic at all, but one does have to keep ones eyes open all the time, cows, horses and goats amongst other things, are seen now and again running around on the carriageway…. There are also a hell of a lot of cyclists and horse and carts, well, in general, everything is possible. We also saw a lot of hitchhikers trying to hitch a lift, but our car was full of luggage, which was a great pity. We could have had a good bit of luck…. Anyway, there was a nice varying view of the landscape.

One nice afternoon I saw a good-looking negra sat in front of the hairdressers. The hairdresser waved me in. My hair needed cutting anyway so I went in and told him what I wanted: Three millimetres were to be left on my nut, ok, they were very people nice there. One of them wanted to swap his old straw hat for my baseball cap, ha-ha; I paid two dollars for the trim. During the cutting, the hairdresser wanted to get me off with the hen, but this wasn’t necessary at all, I was already arranging things myself. We take a few photos (she’s the red one). We then went out for a drink, a Mojito, but she had to go to school and didn’t want her friends to see her with me, Ok, I’m an old bastard. We arrange to meet at the same place at seven in the evening.

So far so good. Outside on the street, I noticed a young chica, quite thin, tarted up, the slag type I would say, bitch type, my type!! She noticed my glance from the other side of the road and came over. I told her that I had a date that day and didn’t have any time, but we could meet the next day, came to an agreement, same place at four.

The hen from the hairdressers arrived on time. We went to my Casa where I called Pedro, he was to register her. BTW, Pedro hat told me to ALWAYS register ALL hens with him, better for me, better for him, Ok; she didn’t have a carnet (ID card) with her. So this was starting to stink already, in Cuba, everyone has their ID with them, unless a tourist or under 18 years of age. The chica wanted to go home and get her carnet, asked me if I could give her a bit of cash for the taxi.

I gave her a dollar, she asked if she could have two because one would not be enough, I only had five in small change – and handed them over to her. Another lesson learned. The five bucks were gone of course. I should have put her in a taxi, and paid when she had returned, I’m a lot wiser now, that won’t happen to me again. Hope it doesn’t happen to you!! What a pity, I was really looking forward to a screw with the chick. Bye bye.

During the evening we were wanting to get down to the carnival, at last!!! In the meantime, La Baron had been celebrating in advance. First of all he showed us where one could get a good bite to eat, afterwards we joined the crowd. To tell the truth, I didn’t think all that much of the event. It’s mainly a huge piss up, sometimes one hears of free-for-all punch ups, but we didn’t get mixed up in one of those. There are wooden shacks every few metres (stupidly enough, I had not taken any photos of these). Stood inside of them is a large barrel full of beer.

The beer is delivered by tanker, everyone brings their own “glass” with them, the glasses are mainly plastic coke bottles with the top half removed. We didn’t try it out, didn’t look very appetizing. We decided to carry on drinking Cristal. We had a bite to eat in some sort of a tent, it was more of a sort of a cordoned off area with sunshades.

The food was very good, we drank Ron and Cristal. Got into a conversation with a few Cubis (of course, once again I was only listening). A few coppers wanted to invite us to a bottle of Ron, we turned the offer down. I took stacks of photos of the carnival; I mainly held the camera above my head and took photos of the crowd.

Although the other two had warned me not to, I tried the pork rolls, they really were very good – and I was very hungry, I stuffed eight of the things down my throat, nothing happened, were all clean. One wouldn’t think so though after watching them make the things. Apart from that, they tried to rip me off as well. The rolls are freshly filled, and when not being watched, the bloke took some of the meat back out by hiding the roll behind the pig. I complained with success, oh yeah, one also has to demand ones change, (25c). Cuba…

Yeah yeah, Y does have a good heart ) let me go without a single complaint. As already mentioned, she spoke next to no English, but she did give me one thing for the journey:

“This is Cuba. Nothing is possible!!!”

This so heart refreshing form of a slightly modified motto of all Cubans, was our slogan for the rest of our holidays.

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