Searching for a Casa - Thursday march 6 2008

We woke up bright and early to make our way to Havana. At Matanzas station we meet Stephan, the owner of a tiny 2 door Lada vehicle, who negotiates to take us to Havana. Barry and I were weary about taking this car, we had originally planned to take a bus. But Vero sat in the car and wouldn't budge. We were worried it was illegal, because we had read in our lonely planet guide book that it was illegal for the locals to give rides to foreigners in their private cars....and i imagine it would be especially illegal to charge for it. Also the car was...tiny! But Jorge (who had dropped us off at the station) and Stephan assured us that it was perfectly fine....so the 3 of us squeezed into the back of this Lada (one of the most common brand of cars found here), with Stephan driving and his poor nephew in the passenger side with one of our heavy suitcases on his lap. (no space in the trunk of the car). After 3o minutes of torture, the nephew opted to drive while Stephan a bigger, stronger guy decided to sit with the luggage. Stephan had apparently been a baseball player in the 80s and 90s and had played in Canada for cuba during the olympics....now he didnt even have money to buy himself a baseball glove.

An hour or so into our journey, we were stopped by 'Transito' - traffic police. It became obvious that it wasn't legal to take us in the private car, when Stephan told Barry that if the cops asked, he should say that he knew Stephan from softball tournaments in Canada and that they were friends since the late 80s - the time he had played in the championships. Fortunately for us the transitos had not noticed the 'gringos' in the car. It was just a random check.

An hour later, we were in Habana Vieja. It took Stephan a while to find the Casa Particular that we had booked. Barry went to check it out and decided not to go with it anymore. He said it was a dump of a place. The owner smoked and the whole place reeked of cigarette smoke.

I could tell that Vero wasn't feeling the place and in all honesty, I wasn't either. My first impressions of Habana Vieja was that it looked like a mix of Old Accra...James Town, Korle woko and a little bit of some old spanish city. The narrow streets, some with coblestones, horse and buggies, even more decrepit looking old building than there were in Matanzas, the stench of garbage from time to time, quite a few people sitting in their doorways and staring at you as you passed, lots of yelling across balconies, whistles, stuff being thrown from balconies....it was all a little ghetto to me...but it was just the first day....it might grow on me.


Eventually we found a place...or rather 2 places. The next place looked nice, owners, whom I'll call Maria and Jose Castillo seemed very friendly. but they were only allowed to rent to 1 or 2 people max even though they had an extra room, so we had to split up into 2 different Casa Particulars which wasn't ideal. The plan is to find a new place for tomorrow.

After spending the rest of the afternoon looking for a casa particular that would accommodate all 3 of us without any luck, we stumbled into the Hotel la Floridita or some name like that....supposedly one of Hemmingway's many hangouts to regroup and have lunch. We were tired and needed to come up with a game plan in case we didn't find a place for tomorrow. We spoke to our hostess Mayi about this and surprisingly she said all 3 of us could stay till Sunday...I don't know how it all of a sudden became legal for us to stay there...but we were extremely grateful and didn't question the change.

We went to the Plaza Cathedral today which was nice. We had dinner there and took a walk to a spot where we thought they'd have some Tango...it was supposed to be surprise for Vero, who liked to dance. But alas, they were closed and apparently just opened on certain days.