This afternoon I returned to the bar we went to last night because a band was supposed to be playing, but again the rain put a stop to that. At the bar I was instantly adopted by a group of Cubans who were drinking under an alcove to shelter from the rain.
They were all heavily tattooed as it turned out one of them was a tattoo artist. A couple of them only spoke minimal English, and my Spanish is still very basic which made things tricky but fun to communicate. The tattoo artists wanted to give me a tattoo but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time before getting my bus. I was wearing one of my many awesome shirts today which is an illustration by Dead Zebra of a packman ghost holding some bloodied cherries with a dead packman by his side. Everyone was obsessed with it and thought it was the best thing they had ever seen. They even shaped a few photos of it so one of them could get it tattooed on their leg.
At this point a huge dude stumbled into the bar, stomped over to me, and shook my hand with one hand and thumped his chest with the other introducing himself as “the Animal”. He handed me a plastic bottle full of rum and grinned his almost toothless gums. An hour or so later I left half drunk, with a bracelet, a shell in my dreads and a promise to return in a few weeks to drink some rum, get a tattoo, and collect a CD from one of the guys who plays cuban heavy metal.. whatever that sounds like. haha.
Not long after I was dropped at the bus station to catch a bus to Santiago De Cuba at the very bottom of the Island. The process of getting my ticket was one of the most confusing and unorganised processes I have ever ben through, but after being lead around the station for 20 minutes and waiting for a sandwich for another 30 minutes I was on the bus and on my way to Santiago De Cuba.
