This evening I had one of those moments where you just look around and smile at the series of events that lead you to this exact moment. It happend at around 8pm, while sipping on a cupful of our third bottle of Cuban Rum, in a smokey one room apartment, listening to tunes and partying with a mixture of 8 friendly upbeat Cubans, including a lesbian, a gay guy and a transvestite.
Earlier in the day I met KK (KeKey) at the bus station for locals while trying to buy a ticket to Santiago De Cuba. He explained that there was a different bus station for Foreigners and pointed me in the right direction. I jumped in a horse and cart to get there only to be kicked off by the police 2 minutes later because foreigners are only supposed to use the real taxis which are more expensive. About 2 hours later while attempting to buy a SIM card I bumped into KK again, and after failing once again to get said sim card we went out for a coffee.
His english was perfect and he told me all about the alternative scene in Santa Clara which turns out is apparently the best place for live rock/blues/jazz/alternative music in Cuba so we agreed to meet up at bar later in the evening to see a band play. The weather today was pretty horrible so when we met at our designated time and place (how retro, meeting at a designated time and place) but it turned out the band had been delayed by a few hours because the bar has an open roof much like the Ruin bars you find in Budapest. So instead we ended up at this gathering around the corner where we drank the evening away with several bottles of rum.
I cannot recall many of the details of what transpired over the next 6 hours or so, but I do remember eventually getting to the bar, returning to my casa particular to change rooms and grab my 1 litre bottle of duty free whiskey, polishing the bottle off with my new Cuban friends, some crazy conversations and dancing in the packed bar/club, meeting some Germans and a Jamaican dude, and being the last one booted out the door with some crazy Cuban dude with his arm around my shoulder. When I woke up the next morning I had a piece of paper with the phone number, name and email address of a Cuban English teacher and a nugget of copper in my pocket, a cracking headache, and a phone full of names, email addresses, phone numbers and a bunch of photos which I hardly remember taking, and had finally kicked my jet lag. To say it was an awesome night was probably an understatement.
I just looked at my camera and now remember taking a photo of this insanely huge killer moth sometime in the early evening.
