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Adventures in the Caribbean:
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Part 3 - InjuryWe wake up on Sunday and decide to go to the beach after breakfast. Our horseback ride isn't until 3 p.m. or so we have almost an entire day to relax. But first, I have an appointment with the black market. I make my way to the front gate (Nancy decided to stay behind) & the guy is off in the bushes waving furtively to me. I follow him to a secluded area where he has a buddy (again I guess to make sure HE doesn't get ripped off). He produces the box of cigars & I produce the cash. There is no gov't tax label on it, but it is inside the box so all I have to do is glue it on (they check at the airport on the way out of Cuba sometimes). Does he have any glue? Of course not, but assures me that he will come back Manyana with some. Sure. Guess who shows up now, that old guy who wouldn't leave us alone the day before. I guess they were all in cahoots earning some sort of commission for the bootleg cigars, because he was kinda pissed I didn't buy them off him. Too fucking bad pal, the other guy got to me first. He was funny in his pitch though, the older guy I mean....You want smokee smokee, you want drinkee drinkee...I no fuck anybody, Canadians number one....if he wasn't so pathetic it would be laughable. In fact in retrospect it was laughable, you just had to kind of keep it in. Poor old bastard, but you sort of lost a bit of sympathy when he wouldn't leave you alone. It stopped becoming a sales pitch & started to become a major annoyance. I felt like I needed a restraining order. Anyway, deal done, I march back into the hotel & start my search for glue to attach this sticker on. None to be found anywhere (next year I'm taking some with me!). OK, so NOW we go to the beach. On the beach by the beach bar, there was a little souvenir stand that we had noticed the day before. He had this great mask that he wanted $15 for. I figured I could get it for $12 being the cheap bastard that I am & left it alone. We went back Sunday & it was gone. Fuck. The only thing that we saw that was really worth buying almost the entire trip. Next time, act fast I guess. We set ourselves up on some beach chairs & have a bit of a sit down. We decide after a short while to test the waters. I wade in with Nancy & about 12 feet, 4 or 5 strides in (you can't see the bottom in a lot of places because of weeds) I step, with my full weight, on something extremely sharp and painful. YOUCH!! I wonder if I have cut myself. I lift my foot out of the water & sure enough there's skin hanging off it. I hobble out of the water & back to the beach chair. I lift my left foot up & there's blood pouring out of it all over my leg, the ground, everywhere. Of course my foot is covered in sand from the scuttle back to the beach chair from the water. I wrap it in a bandana & gingerly slip it into my sandal. I stagger back to the hotel room & rinse it off in the shower. Fortunately I had brought a first aid kit so had antiseptic creme & plenty of band-aids. It wasn't very long, about an inch, but probably at least that deep. I wasn't sure if it needed stitches & decided just to keep it covered, perhaps have it looked at when I returned to Canada. So I limp back to the beach with a band-aid and a blood stained bandana wrapped around my foot. Sit around for a short while then time for lunch. No grill today, so we hit the buffet. Excellent food again. I tell you, with some of the experiences we've had with Cuban food, this was a very pleasant surprise indeed. After lunch back to the pool. I can't really go swimming as I have a freshly wounded appendage, so spend the early afternoon nursing my wound. In retrospect, I probably stepped on the sharp spine of a Conch shell. I found a perfect one a few days later close to the shore. At 3:00 we change & go to meet the horse guy for our 2-hour horseback ride. The horses were not in bad shape, and definitely in charge! They were OK when walking, but at a canter every piece of our bodies was being flung around. We'd get at a comfortable pace & then the horse guy (?Vaquero??Cowboy) would slap the horses & they would speed up, bouncing us around again. It must have been funny for him to see the tourist gringos who didn't know shit about horses being taken for a ride. Anyway, he was very nice & took us along this trail to his "casa" where he introduced us to his family. Nancy got a nice picture of the wife & daughter. His house was basically a cement slab with scrap pieces of wood & tin for walls. Clean inside, with a curtain for a room divider for the bedroom. The kitchen was covered, but outdoors & consisted of a fire pit and a few kettles & pots. He did have electricity though, a ton of goats about 20 skinny dogs and a TV and a radio. He produced a cup of strong sweet Cuban coffee and we sat there not knowing what to say, as he didn't Hablo Inglese, & we were "No Entiende" as far as Spanish went. He gave us some green coffee beans, which I asked him "how much" for, & he said ?nothing?, ?Nada? (I hope I didn't insult him, but being so used to hustlers it was a natural assumption on my part I thought), they were a gift, nice. We rode back to the hotel & gave him a $5 tip & a gift of a bandana, toothpaste, soap, and some pens and pencils for his daughter. Off to the room to check my foot, which by now is throbbing. Blood all over my sock, so change the bandage. A bit of a lie down then off to the lobby bar for a few cocktails before dinner. The entertainment for the evening consisted of a "Cuban Fantasy" show, which was basically a fashion show. We didn't buy anything & hit the hay after it was over at 11. Filed under Adventures in the Caribbean, Sep 11, 2005
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NEXT ENTRY: Part 4 - On again, off again - Added on Sep 13/2005 |
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