Back to Santiago de Cuba

Got back from Baracoa in the afternoon, then headed to the castle again to see the canon firing ceremony, however when we got there they were not working again! So we spent time having a look around and having forgotten my camera used everyone else´s to take plenty of snaps of the castle and it´s inhabitants (geckos seem to love castles).

Had our final tour group dinner at the hotel´s italian restaurant and almost everyone ordered the calzone which overwhelmed the kitchen and we waited a looooong time to get dinner. Afterwards a local we´d met took us to a club which was part of a hotel and we seemed to have to go in the back entrance. The place was pretty seedy with a lot of young women with old men and old women with young men. All I can say is get a room! Most of us headed back earlyish leaving the keen aussies to keep partying the night away.

The next morning on a wonder round I found out that the loud wildlife noises we´d been hearing at night were the local lions which were sleeping about 200M away from our rooms, not sure if it was a zoo or not. Also bumped into the girls who had had a very interesting night after we´d left. Long story short they ended up on a local bus with the tour leader and the guy who´d taken us to the club and a fight broke out on the bus with other people on there, knife was pulled and they had to jump off the bus, eventually getting to an open restaurant where the police and taxi were called and they eventually got back to the hotel safe and sound. They were very shaken up on the whole experience and pissed off they´d gotten into the situation in the first place.

So we all got packed up and headed off to the airport, saying our last goodbyes to our fantastic bus driver and jumped on a plane back to Havana.

My first experience with Cubana Airlines and what an experience. I was sitting in the second to last row with my knees touching the seat infront (the guy next to me had to sit in my aisle seat with his knees poking out as he wouldn´t fit any other way). The seats directly infront of mine were noticibly more spacious, so it looked like over time they´ve shoved more seats in to get economy. It´ll make the standard seats in AirNZ look pretty good on the flight home.

All of this on top of the warning from the tour leader about the airline and it´s planes being less than stellar. Needless to say I was the most relieved I´ve ever been to touchdown in Havana in one piece.