Havana Transit Day

Today was spent mostly on the viazul bus from Cienfuegos to Havana before our trip tomorrow to Valle de Viñales. When we arrived we had to do a few errands, get money (which really is harder than it should be) and change the date of our flight to Cancun. We decided to return to Mexico earlier so we could have a more relaxing celebration on Joss' birthday in Playa Del Carmen. Relaxing because there is no respite in Havana from car exhaust even if you are staying in a nice hotel... which is also unlikely to have the friendliest staff.

Anyway, as we already mentioned we tried to change the return ticket at the Cubana airlines office last Thursday at 3pm (the office should be open till 4pm), but were met with a sign saying the office was closed because of the air con, and wouldn't you know it, Thursday one week later they had exactly the same problem! Lucky for them they kept the same sign, at least they don't waste paper! What are the odds of them having to close again at 2 - we rocked up at 2:12 at least we weren't the only ones exasperated by this - frustrated by more government ineptitude we decided to instead cut our losses and book with Aero Mexicana.

The offending sign

Afterwards we returned to our Casa, cleaned ourselves up ready for another dinner out. While we were getting ready a thunder storm was brewing and pretty much just as we were ready to leave it hit. The only way to describe it was angry. There was some crazy close lightening and the rain was bearing down in full support. During what was possibly the calm eye of this storm we headed out to find another of the article recommendations, only to find it was closed for what we assume was renos. Disappointed we headed back in the direction of our Casa as the storm was still letty imposing: the lightening was lighting up the whole sky in massive horizontal looking bolts and looked like they were travelling from cloud to cloud if that is even possible.

With some luck we found what we think was a family run bar that served some food with a friendly hostess who spoke great English but was nervous to be serving foreigners. It was close to our Casa in case we had to make a run for it and we had a great view of the storm from the the 1st floor terrace. Not the night we had hoped for but turned out pretty fun.