With only two full days left, there are two things that we really want to do: visit Veradero beach, and go to the Tropicana. We get up early to talk to the Havanatur people to see if we can get a trip to the beach today, but they're not in the office at 8am when it's supposed to open. After breakfast a woman shows up and tells us we can leave in 10 minutes. Mary runs downstairs to change and pack the necessary beach items in a frenzy. When I ask what time we return, the woman looks confused and realizes I want a one-day excursion, not a transfer to a hotel at the beach. She can't do that today. So I call Mary in the room and tell her to relax, and I schedule a beach trip for Sunday.
I don't get tickets to the Tropicana right away, and we walk around Havana some more. It's a good thing Mary likes to walk!
Here's the Hotel Inglaterra, and that building again.
Mary crossing the street towards the harbor.
A BSA motorcycle!
Harbor slime and someone fishing.
We catch a cab from right around where I took the above 4 pictures to El Morro across the channel. It's a remarkably short ride through the tunnel which was built in the late 50's by a French company. I wonder if Cuba finished paying them for the work after the Revolution.
On the other side of the channel is a castle on the point with the lighthouse El Morro built on it, and a fortress. Here's the view from the castle.
Guns and El Morro.
a newer gun and the big blue sea. Someone had scratched "Mary" into its base, though it didn't come out in the photo.
The last bit of stairs to the top of the lighthouse. Very narrow!
A panoramic view from the top of El Morro.
An old depiction of the harbor channel. You can see El Morro, the castle and the fortress.
Some swords on display in the castle.
Now we're pretty hot from the sun, it feels like 100 degrees out, so buy some woven hats from a vendor at the castle. A big sombrero and a smaller goucho hat, for $7 total. The sombrero is hard to keep on my head in the wind, but it does a great job of keeping the sun off me.
We walk from the castle to the fortress, and there are a few goats freely grazing in between the two.
Some guns at the fortress.
Trees and a church bell at the fortress.
A road inside the fortress. There are a couple restaurants and stores inside, and a museum with a collection of nice old weapons from Indian knives to Spanish dueling pistols.
We see a soldier lounging in the shade in the fortress, doing something like composing poetry on a notepad. Looked like maybe he was shirking duty, since he was in full uniform. Later when we go up some old stone stairs towards a wooded area, and a soldier with a submachine gun tells us to go back down into the approved tourist area. I wish I'd taken his picture!
We've finally spent enough time in the sun and want to return to the hotel, but there are no cabs to be found anywhere. We stand in front of the castle for what seems like an eternity, but none show up as the local vendor promises they will. There are two English speaking men there, apparently British though they live in Cincinatti right now, also waiting for a cab. They describe their trip to the Tropicana quite enthusiastically as "100 Naomi Cambells on stage at once."
From where we are standing you can see the entrance to the tunnel on this side, and loads of cars and cabs and busses are going through. Mary and I decide to walk down there and see if we can hail one of them for a ride, but when we get to the booth at the entrance to the castle park they offer to call us a cab. We sit down to wait. In addition to the two attendants, there's a policeman looking through binoculars at people on a nearby beach. I never figure out what he was looking for, but it reminds me that Big Brother spends a lot of time watching his citizens.
The two men go by in a cab they've found and offer a ride, but we choose to wait for the one we've called. It finally shows up, and we go back to the hotel to cool off.
At the tour desk downstairs in the hotel we get tickets to the 10pm show at the Tropicana. The cheap seats are $60 each, and you can get a little closer for $10 and a lot closer for another $10. We get the middle tier, plus $5 round trip bus transportation, plus a $5 booking fee for using the expensive hotel service. That makes it $80 each!
The bus leaves at 8:30pm, and winds through the whole city picking up people at a dozen other hotels. We arrive at 9:30pm and wait outside for the tour operator to get us our tickets. We're finally seated five minutes before 10pm, and have great seats. Not right in front of the stage, but back and up a little with an unobstructed view of everything. All the seats are at tables, so we're facing another couple and look to our right towards the main stage. I order some water and 2 mojitos, which turn out to cost $16! That's about 3 times what you would pay anywhere else in the country.
The show starts, and is in fact just like 100 Naomi Cambells on stage at once. They have an incredible number of extremely talented performers, singers, dancers, and a few acrobats. The costumes are outrageous, the women beautiful. I should say more about it, but you really have to see it to believe it.
We get two little bottles of champagne, then two cokes and a pint of Cuba's finest rum. Inevitably, someone shoots one of their champagne corks onto the stage, and it rolls around for a few sets making me wince whenever someone nearly steps on it. We finish the mojitos and the champagne, and make a small dent in the rum, the remainder of which will come home with me. At one point the usher tells everyone to look back away from the stage, and they shoot a picture. They hawk the picture for $5, and I buy one since it's not too horrible and I don't have any other memorabilia yet. Later they do another photo from the side, but I've spent enough cash on overpriced Tropicana goods.
After almost 2 hours of song and dance sensory overload, the show ends. Rather than suffer through the hour long bus ride back, we get a cab. The driver seems to be in a hurry, because he drives faster than any other car I have seen in Cuba before or since, and we're back at the hotel in approximately no time, for $7 plus a big tip.
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