Playa Larga II

Classic Cuba. At breakfast today we were presented with the bill which confused us as we thought we'd booked for 4 days. But we were told that no, just one night and they were now fully booked. This came on top of a much disturbed night's sleep with a slightly drunk man stumbling into the room at 1am as I'd forgotten to lock the door - one of those push buttons on the door knob. The local cockerel then kicked off about an hour later outside the window, which I don't get, as dawn isn't until about 7am. Then it got really cold, well relatively. . .

It was a cock-up but this is Cuba and there's no point in getting excited about it, especially if you don't speak Spanish. Fortunately Daisy, a local English teacher, had come to teach some of the Casa owners and their children English so with her help we wandered down the dirt road enquiring if anyone had a spare room. Daisy would ask a Casa owner, she would shake head and then shout out to the person across the road and they would shake their head and then point to a place down the road or call to another person next door. It was all looking a bit uncertain until we got to Dalia and Hostal Enrique, a beautiful place with a room on the first floor - the best room we've stayed in - and a fish and lobster supper tonight. Luxury!

We'd walked past it last night and thought it looked nice as being up high in the breeze would keep the mozzies away. Unfortunately we have only one night here so we also booked ahead for two nights at Playa Giron an interesting looking diving resort 30km further out at the mouth of the bay.

Yesterday evening I got the collapsable fishing rod out to try some fishing in the bay. It was still a bit early so we called in to one of the casa bars for drink. 

A salsa band was setting up to play and I got 'chatting' to the guitarist. Salsa bands seem to have two guitars as standard in the line up. One is a nylon stringed Spanish guitar and the other looks similar but is very different. It has three pairs of steel strings tuned to F, C and G (I think) and with a base and octave string on the F. I've never seen anything like this before but it sounds great in the right hands. 

He showed how to play the Buena Vista Club tune which wasn't too complicated but was difficult to coordinate the right and left hand. I was then handed the other guitar and asked to play. This is the second time this has happened and I've never encountered it before. Most British musicians are much more reserved, but here you strike up a rhythm and the other guitar will join in and someone will start singing and you're off . . . fabulous! I just wish I played as well as I used to to do them justice.