By the time I had sweated out all of the water I had drunk the evening before, it was 3am and I found Matt still not back from his escapades in Holguin. At this point of the holiday I was still painfully aware as to how nervous I was at being in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and didn't rightly know exactly where I was; scenarios of having to phone the British Embassy (carefully noted down before coming to Cuba) and explain that my friend had disappeared flashed through my mind until I heard the comforting sound of the casa owner let him in. Satisfied I was not going to have to phone the embassy or expatriate Matt's body to the UK, I went back to sleep.
Arising at a respectable 7am, I showered in the surprisingly accomplished bathroom (both cold and hot water with a decent pressure) and was then fed breakfast which consisted of excellent coffee, fruit, ham and cheese toasties and some kind of delicious jam or preserve which neither of use could work out its source. The quiet, middle-aged woman who had dealt with us the night before was now joined by a rotund bespectacled man who insisted on wearing a dirty-white vest top around the house. What was said to us before was reiterated in that we couldn't stay another night; after some impenetrable phone-calls however we were taken next door to meet a lady who offered us a room which we immediately agreed to take. By now the next occupants of our current room were hanging around the patio area so both Matt and I packed up and moved our belongings next door.
We had decided the night prior to head up the Loma de la Cruz, Hill of the Cross which was a tall hill with supposedly good views across the entirety of Holguin. The pop-up guide didn't explain a lot about Holguin; while I had assumed it was a city due to its proximity to the airport (and the deceptive photographs), it was not a city in the traditional Western sense. It held more people than a village but there are very few buildings above two stories anywhere in Cuba except Havana so every place had a village feel despite the population density. Holguin only magnified this feeling by being based around two main squares with a park in the centre of each of them; traffic was minimal and restricted mainly to bicycles and the hairdryer revs of scooters. Every building in Cuba needs painting again, everything seems to be in a permanent state of decay and entropy with paint peeling, missing parts of masonry, tortured metal-work and a general unkempt feel. When we wandered through Holguin to pick up some bottled water I initially attributed this deterioration to perhaps a stagnant government or laziness, I came to realise much later in the holiday however that it's probably a lack of pride of excess or apathy towards what is essentially a meaningless aesthetic detail.
We could both see the hill from our casa so reaching the foot of the steps meant a straight line through the town in the already baking sun. Water in hand we began to ascend the 458 steps towards the top of the hill which involved a 50 step spree then five minutes to pant and rehydrate. The weather was unfortunately muggy meaning the promised panorama was clipped short with mist.
After a brief respite where we saw a local with heatstroke and a man practising his push-ups we headed back down and wandered the town for a spell, grabbing a luminous pink yoghurt and 5L bottle of water in the process.
Matt and his foray into the Holguin night-life had met up with a girl (Matthew's Girl Tally: 1) while power-napping in one of the parks and also spoken with some locals who had mentioned being able to take him (us) to the nearby beach the next day. I was dubious as to how this excursion would pan out but I packed some items for the beach just as the heavens opened and it began to rain. I busied myself with trying to lose some of the heat in the room with the noisy but efficient air-conditioner, while Matt entered into a long conversation with the friendly casa owner about what we were planning to do on our trip to Cuba. Little did we know the ramifications of what Matt had unleashed by speaking of our less than concrete itinerary...
With little time left to go to the beach by the time the rain had stopped, we headed back into the centre of town where we wandered a small natural history museum whose only exhibit I unfortunately remember being human foetuses. After Matt began to fall asleep in the park (but not before purchasing some salted nuts in a paper cone from a street vendor) we decided it was time for a siesta at the casa. Sleeping was a careful balance of having the air-conditioner on long enough to cool the room but switching it off before constant whirring of the fan woke you up fully.
Now evening, we headed into town for some food; the adult-guide had recommended a sea-food restaurant which was closed, although we found a respectable looking Jazz club to field our needs. Comfortably cooled by a behemoth of an air-conditioner we took best-guesses as to what the food was on the menu hoping that when the plates arrived it would be easier to distinguish. Both dishes looked the same on arrival which was unidentifiable meat with rice and beans. As incomprehensible as the food was we were certainly gouged on pricing, paying a total in the region of 45CUCs for the privilege of not knowing what we had just ingested.
Wandering the evening square, a Fast-and-the-Furious style pink Cadillac had turned up which Matt wanted to photograph. Busying myself elsewhere I noticed a couple of girls and a man speaking to him; assuming they were friends from his shenanigans last night, I thought nothing of it when the group assimilated me and tried to herd us into the restaurant we had eaten in the night before. In retrospect it was suspicious when the girls conspicuously diverted us from the police patrolling the square but at the time, I figured this was a common activity for Cubans (which is not too far from the truth).
My hustler senses screamed at me when Matt's assigned girl decided to deposit all of her lipstick on his face while trying to devour his lips (with little protest from him I would add) and the man crassly suggested I kiss the girl who had clung to me. I frowned at Matt although he seemed all too aware of what was going on, in between having a girl attached to his face. The drinks kept arriving and thought of implementing my sure-fire way to escape this situation: stand up and walk away; while not the most tactful or strategic of decisions it would have made clear my intentions (or lack thereof). Thankfully Matt and I could discuss in English without any of the other group members aware of what we were saying, and after a statement of purpose (we had to meet someone else) and some haggling over the bill we excused ourselves and hastily escaped.
Circling the square once, we ducked out and headed back to the casa and ran into the owner on our way in. My nascent assumption of the owner was that she was a widow and happy for some company, it turns out however she has a husband and descendants. She also had a full itinerary planned out for us and where we were going to stay while we were in Cuba. She handed Matt a neatly handwritten piece of card with addresses and telephone numbers and had paper-clipped a selection of business cards, both her own and of the casas; it transpired she had also phoned up most of the places and booked us in for how long our nebulous itinerary had said we were going to spend there.
We had gone from having no set plan to a full and in-depth strategy in the space of one short day. There were some questions in both of our heads as to this turn events such as when we said we would be staying in Bayamo (we hadn't) and that Matt had stated we would be staying with a friend while in Trinidad. We were both slightly confused as to this turn of events so we thanked her and I headed to the room while Matt decided to brave the night life once again in the hope of finding the girl he had kissed when out the night before. After listening to my iPod Shuffle (yes you read that right) I tentatively turned the air-conditioner on and slipped off to sleep.