I woke up this morning with more than a bit of a headache with very little enthusiasm for packing but it wasn’t until after I took the paracetamol that I started to feel sick; and it wasn’t until after I had been sick that we discovered that there was no water – again. With no time to even consider attempting to find breakfast, it wasn’t until we tried to make our first cup of coffee for the day that we realised that there was no electricity either! Using what bottled water we had left and the invaluable ‘wet wipes’ we did the best we could to feel and look as clean as we could and then made our way to reception to check out. Paul had a bit of a moan to the receptionist about the lack of basic facilities but there was nothing he could do about it, even if he had wanted to, offering the explanation that they often had problems with their water supply accompanied with the’ Cuban shrug’.
The coach picked us up from the hotel just after 10am, a very welcome change from having to get ourselves to the bus station. We had managed to get two seats on an excursion to Camaguey; all the other occupants were Canadian Tourists except for the staff. The tour guide gave a competent and almost continuous running commentary on the areas we passed through although the way I was feeling I just wanted her to be quiet. It wasn’t until we pulled up at the ruin of a sugar mill, a part of the ride back we had not known about, that we managed to get our first cup of coffee; a very strong Cuban Espresso, mine with plenty of sugar, and started to feel a little more human. 
The next stop was a visit to a ron (Cuban for rum) factory in which we got to view a warehouse filled with barrels of maturing rum and the shop attached to the site selling all the differently aged rums, offering a tasting of the 7 year, together with coffee, both beans and ground, and cigars. Finally, the coach kindly dropped us off at the bus station before being continuing the excursion. On the day we left Camaguey the people who we had lodged with reeled off, during a conversation, all the people we had stayed with so far, which we found a little unsettling. We would expect them to know who the previous hosts had been but not all of them so when we got back to Camaguey we decided that it was definitely time to break the chain and find our own way; there was also the added incentive that we really didn’t want to go and stay in the same place as before. Nice and friendly though the people were, their accommodation was a bit depressing. Instead we decided to try our luck and book one of the Casa’s mentioned in the Rough Guide. After first checking the times of the buses to our next destination and finding that we really needed to find accommodation for one night in Camaguey our next challenge was to work the public phone!
After a little trial and error and with the unsolicited help of a friendly Cuban, we discovered that we needed Cuban National coins rather than tourist cuc coins. I eventually got an answer – unfortunately, I could not translate the automated voice.
Finally we managed to book a room in the next Casa mentioned in the guide book, using the smattering of Spanish that I have learned. The taxi we jumped into took us to a really nice Casa. We realised, when we arrived, that the host was not at home and her daughter didn’t know which room we would be staying in. She gave us both a very welcome glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and invited us to sit in the garden until her mother returned.The only other thing we did that day was to arrange to hire a car for a week. Adrian, the Cubacar representative, informed us that he only had one car available and that it would cost $70 cuc per day, plus $3 cuc per day for extra driver and $55 for the full tank of gas which he would reserve this for us to pick up the next morning at 11am; we would have to pay in cash though because his credit card link did not work!
Then back to the Casa for a long hot shower, a delicious dinner, prepared and served by our host and a very welcome early night.
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