Flight to Cuba

Havana

To Pinar del Rio

Playa Giron

Trinidad

Camaguey

Santiago de Cuba

Holguin - Guardalavaca

Sancti Spiritus - Zaza

Corralillo - Elguea

Varadero

Havana Revisited

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Day 7 : Camaguey

Because we knew we wanted to visit Santiago de Cuba, we had to find some places to stay on the way. Camaguey is a natural choice because it's halfway from Trinidad to Santiago. The trip from Trinidad to Camaguey is a very nice one, as you are passing first the "Valle de los Ingenieros", a huge sugar-cane filled valley, and then some more interesting landscapes. We took lots of hitchhikers again.

We stayed in the "Hotel Camaguey" which is about 4 km from the center. After checking in to the Hotel we drove back into town. Boys and young men on bicycles, offering to lead us into town, swooped down on us like birds of prey. They were extremely annoying as they would not take no for an answer, something we haven't seen in the rest of Cuba. I managed to get rid of them by taking left turns whenever they went right (or vice versa) and just generally stepping on it. They managed to make us loose our good humour though.

We walked a bit through the center, and had a drink in a depressing bar (El Cambio, Horribly decorated with dripped-on paint) on one of the main squares. As we were walking down one of the main streets (Agramonte), I noticed we were being surrounded by three guys. Two of them with bikes (again!) sort of blocked me in the front and in the back, while a third person was coming way to close to my bag (and my back). I stopped and pretended to look at stuff in a shop window (just as they do in the movies!) and waited until they had passed. They just did the same thing and surrounded us again. By then we were getting nervous. We knew we should not leave the busy street. I crossed to road, hoping the guys had noticed I was on to them. We turned around, and they kept waiting for us on the corner. It sounds a bit silly now, but at the time it was quite scary. We approached our Car from the other side and drove to the restaurant where we had decided to eat. We were not feeling very comfortable anymore though, as Camaguey's atmosphere had been a bit hostile so far. We had already found that the Paladar "Vicaria Principe–a" no longer exists (we had to walk a long dark street to get there) so we went to "La Campana de Toledo" a state restaurant. The food was very poor, the waitresses were slow and had an attitude.

You'd think we did not have fun in Camaguey. Wrong!
It turned out that in Camaguey, the action is at the Hotel! There's an Open-air disco there and we decided to get a drink to forget our bad experiences. And that was a good choice! The disco was filled up with locals, most of them quite young (between 17-30, so I was one of the dirty old men present on that evening) who were having a really good time. They were dancing like only the Cubans can. Since drinks are quite expensive (for Cubans, that is, beer was 1$) most of them did not even drink. Just dance your troubles away! It was very nice being there in the open air, listen to the mix of international dance hits and Cuban populars. And, I have to admit, it was fun watching the Cuban girls dance. Whew those Cubanas can shake their money maker...! Again we saw some tourists accompanied by some really beautiful Cuban girls, who seemed to be with them in exchange for drinks.