One of the reasons for visiting this area was to visit La Playa De Coco, Coco Beach, not only for the ‘beautiful’ beach and the snorkelling but for the orange flamingos which inhabit the area. The guide book says that there is a tourist bus that would take us the 8 km’s to the beach but our hotel didn’t know anything about it. She, the receptionist, offered to call a taxi for us and suggested that the fare would be about 8 cuc one way but we decided that we should find out if we could book seats on the next tourist bus (not ‘guagua’ or local bus) back to Camaguey before requesting she order the car. As we were walking down the street we were offered a horse drawn carriage, he wanted $20 cuc to take us there, wait a couple of hours and then bring us back but as we chatted to the assistant in the Cubatur office we found out that there is a bus but it calls in at the 4 and 5 star hotels just up from our crappy pile of s…. The fare back to Camaguey was $20 cuc each and the bus for the beach turned up just as we were concluding; so we hopped aboard and paid a mere 2 cuc for a return journey each, not realising that that only left us $6 cuc for the rest of the day!
Sadly the weather was not the best we have had since being in Cuba, in fact it rained quiet hard for a while. We took cover in one of the two restaurant/bars but as we had not taken enough money with us and the only food available were ‘full cooked meals’, the only refreshment available to us was a beer! Thankfully, the bus returned to pick us all up half an hour early; a blessing but lucky we chose the right bar to shelter in on the beach because if we had gone to the one at the other end of the beach we would have missed this return. His first stop was at the 5 star next to our -3 star. As we disembarked one other person disembarked as well who we started to talk to. He, like us, had taken his snorkelling gear but the weather and the water just weren’t good enough which is how the conversation got started.
As we got chatting Paul asked me if I would like to go in this 5 star and have a look around. ‘Yes come on in’ our new friend invited, ‘I’ll buy you a drink’. The package offered by this hotel was ‘all in’ food and drink. So in we went and had a few bevies with Gary. Gary is from Canada and a widower aged 55. After we had been talking for some time I happen to mention a place that Paul and I might go for dinner that night; it was then that Gary bet if we walked into the dining room after 7 looking like we belonged there we could get dinner free. We probably wouldn’t have done it if we were sober, but we weren’t, so we did. We went back to our hotel next door to shower and change (whoopee – we had water to shower with) and back we went. A very acceptable three course buffet, plus two glasses of wine each.Gary turned up just as we were finishing eating but he came and joined us and so we waited for him. After the meal was over we went back out into the bar and continued drinking. Once the entertainment in this hotel finished, traditional Cuban music, the three of us moved on to another hotel further along as Gary had told us about this place on the end that had to be seen to be believed. At eleven o’clock we paid our 1 cuc each and went into this ‘outdoor nightclub’. The salsa music was loud and clear and there was even a ‘show’ of song and dance. After Paul had visited the loo he was aghast at overhearing a Canadian woman from the attached ‘ladies’ say ‘she
loved to have sex with these young Cuban boys!’ and he was positively appalled when he realised that this came from a ‘grey haired’ woman. Never before have I experienced a ‘cattle market’ like this; the young and beautiful Cubans searched out the old European and Canadian men and women who were looking to pay for sex or maybe even take the Cuban back home and away from Cuba. There were girls queuing up for Gary, he had been in there before! The time came when I just knew I had really had enough and desperately wanted my bed; when Paul and I said goodbye to Gary he suggested that we should turn up for breakfast before we caught our coach back at 10am to Camaguey the next morning.
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