The Havana Chronicles, el Pasajero

Monumento

Day 4:

As usual, I made my way around the fruit table and sat in the dining lounge with my fantastic spa breakfast. For the second day in a row I observed a strange little man go through some kind of obsessive compulsive ritual of gobbling up a bunch of food from one of his many plates and the resetting a timer before moving on to the next plate. Every once in a while he would return to the buffet, bring back more plates of food and then begin his routine again. There was also a series of bags involved in his program - plastic bags that he would remove from one of several rucksacks and rearrange and sometimes look around before stuffing as many rolls of bread and half rotten bananas as he could into them. He would then pick up and lick his plates and start over. This must have gone on for hours because he was always there before I arrived and was still there when I left, which is a long time because I am a slow eater. I kind of felt sorry for him as he's obviously troubled but then I felt more sorry for the poor staff who had to clean up his mess and for the whole nation of Cuba because this man is stealing their limited food resources. And you know he probably lives in Germany or Canada or someplace where he can certainly afford bread rolls and rotten bananas. Strange little man.

This is the day I would make my way to Habana Vieja, no distractions, off I go. I decided I would take a cab and make my way back on foot so that if I was lead astray by another chatty Habanero it would happen after my day of taking in the sights.

As soon as I was dropped off at edge of old-town I was approached by no fewer than five people within ten minutes. But I'd paid a dollar and change for my map of Havana and wanted to be left alone. I enjoyed the park and monuments in the Plaza de Armas and the more colonial, slightly less decrepit feel in this part of town. It's certainly more tourist heavy, but much more charming than the neighborhood I was lodged at. I mean, there just wasn't any of this near my hotel:

Cha-cha-cha!

I strolled across the open air book & poster fair, sat at a park bench, politely declined to buy an old man's cigars, and delighted in the prospect of eating a sandwich. Which I did, well half, along with an alcohol free mojito while sitting on an outdoor patio watching the excellent band that played inside the Cafe Paris. Which reminds me to share with you that there is music pouring out of every hole in Havana. Even my jank hotel has amazing musical acts performing every single night of the week for free. Free amazing music!

As I continued on my way I began to feel fatigued. It had been nearly two weeks since I'd had any caffeine so I decided that it would be perfectly fine to locate a cubito, a strong shot of Cuban coffee with a dot of sugar, to get me through the afternoon. Fine. By about 4p I started to feel really warn down and came to the conclusion that I likely pushed myself with two days of activity and probably just needed a nap. As I made my way back to the hotel I thought about how I would spend my remaining three days. There's a beach town nearby that I want to get to and more stuff in Havana Vieja I'd still like to see. By 5p I was passed out. By 8p I was vomiting up the contents of my small lunch. By midnight I was back in full intestinal upheaval mode. Fuck.

Day 5:

Probably I should have called for a doctor immediately, but for dumb, sick person reasons I did not. I wanted to see if it would pass. It did not. I was up every hour, all night running to the bathroom. At 7a I squeezed my ass cheeks together and made my way to the lobby to call Marcolfa - no outside calls from the phone in my room wouldntcha know. Poor Marcolfa was beside herself because she could probably hear my tears dripping into the phone. Really there was nothing she could do but I was over edge. I just needed to tell someone who cared because I was exhausted and scared and understanding Cuban over a phone is harder than in person so I asked her to help me find a doctor. I handed the phone over to the desk clerk who yammered away with Marcolfa and then handed it back and I followed Marcolfa's orders to go to my room and wait. Ok.

At around 9a a tall and handsome swishy man showed up at my door with a leather medic bag. He introduced himself but I couldn't tell you what he said. He asked me loads of questions, and in that moment was I kind of glad that I'd been through this with three previous physicians because I had all the right words at my disposal. Handsome poked at me and asked more questions and called the lobby and then told me he was going to get a doctor. I guess he was a murse. Fine.

He came back an hour later not with a doctor but with a syringe.

Some of you who know me well, know that I have a very serious syringe phobia. In fact, my palms get sweaty just typing about it. There's sweat on my keyboard now, it's really bad. I have to be drugged just to get routine blood draws, which are not actually part of any routine because I totally avoid them, and even with the drugs I cry like a baby and my wife has to drive me home where I spend the rest of the day in fetal position.

Just to give you some idea of how awful I felt, I didn't hardly fight with the murse, I only asked him twice if I really needed whatever it was he was giving me then pulled down my pants, rolled over and cried while he stuck me with what I can only pray was a clean needle. "This will calm your stomach and knock you out. Don't drink anything for the next two hours because your intestines are in an uproar. The doctor will be here shortly, you just sleep. You'll be fine, I promise." Booo hoo hoooo, sniffle-sniffle. Those are the noises I was making as I drifted off to sleep.

It couldn't have been long before la doctora showed up with the murse. Not unlike Marcolfa she was curt and sort of pushy but in a loving, mama-bird way. I liked that she had a warm face and was wearing fabulous heels. She asked me the same series of questions and then some, looked at the all the medication I'd taken and went back and forth with the murse about whether or not I'd gotten a new illness or this was the parasite from Mexico playing passenger for a free trip to the Caribbean. She told me the Cipro I'd been prescribed was likely too weak to kill whatever it is I had and would be prescribing me something even stronger called Claritromisomething. I don't know, I was worried about all the antibiotics but what choice did I have? Was I going to die of liver failure in five years at home, or now, alone in a moldy soviet era tenement that smelled like a dirty ashtray? Up to me.

At least I had an Arctic Blaster