Saturday, 29 October 2022: Hanging Out in Sancti Spíritus while Nursing My Stomach

 

Not a very exciting day here in Sancti Spíritus.  I do three days of laundry and then Héctor fixes me another big breakfast.  Instead of eggs, I have him heat up my leftover spaghetti from Thursday night.  Nice to have a fridge so I don’t have to waste any food that I don’t finish at dinner.  The food stays relatively cool in the fridge because the power usually isn’t off for more than a few hours at a time.  It goes out again at 9:30 this morning.

Although the lights are out, the natural history museum just a block from my B&B is open.  The nice 60ish woman who collects my tiny entrance fee tells me lots about the local flora and fauna.  As I am finishing up my tour of the museum, my stomach starts bothering me and I have to hurry back to my bathroom.  I decide to see if I can get some Cipro which kills all the bad stuff in the tummy (Damnit, I should have brought some).  Héctor tells me the location of the closest pharmacy (just north of the Parque Sarafín Sánchez where I got the moto-taxi yesterday – hurry, because it closes at 12:00 on Saturday and it’s now 11:50.  I rush over there but can’t find it.  I ask several people on the street and in shops but no one knows where the farmacia is.  Finally, a guy who seems intelligent sends me south two blocks to the Plaza Honorato.  After asking four people, a guy gives me the exact location west of the plaza.  When I get there, it’s not open and a sign says that it’s closed weekends.  SHIT! – literally.  So, I go back to my room and chew two Pepto Bismol tablets and hope I can make it until Monday morning when I’ll be in Trinidad.  My stomach starts to feel better after an hour so I walk a block to the provincial museum.  It’s not terribly interesting but I take some photos.   

I ask Héctor if he has wifi.  No, but I can use the internet at the ETESCA (the government telecomm company) office around the corner.  Of course, I’ll need to wait until the power comes back on.   By about 2:00, it’s back on so I head over to the office.  They show me a computer I can use.  My highest priority is to back up the photos from my memory card on to my flash drive but I find out that the government computers aren’t set up for that.  Well then, I’ll check emails.  After some hassles, I buy a card (125 pesos for 5 hours) which will get me on to the government internet.  But I don’t have my Gmail password with me and my guesses all fail.  I give up and search a few Spanish vocabulary words.  But, I didn’t come to Cuba to sit in a windowless, air conditioned computer room all day, so I take a walk back down to el Río Yayabo for more photos.

In late afternoon, I head back to Al Medio Restaurante where I ate last night and have a limonada as my stomach feels almost normal.  I sit in the bar writing up these notes about today but there isn’t much of interest to write about.  What do I want for excitement anyway?  A coup in Havana? A shooting out in the street?  It would be a dozen times more likely for me to witness the latter back in Denver.  I’m sure people here have interesting stories to tell but I’m not all that motivated to get to know them even were I fluent in Cuban Spanish.  This is one of those days when I don’t feel stimulated by life, period.  What am I doing with my life anyway?  Not very many years left.

I walk over to the Avenida de Independencia sur to have dinner at a Chinese place but it’s closed (and if it’s not open on a Saturday night, it’s probably closed for good).  Then I walk around looking at menus in other restaurants but there is nothing of interest on the menus for a vegetarian.  So it’s back to Al Medio.  This time I have one guacamole appetizer and a pizza with olives (half of which will be tomorrow’s breakfast).  When I get back to Hostal Paraiso there’s no electricity again.  I read on the patio for a while using my flashlight but give up around 9:15 and head for bed.  Yeah, I’m not much fun.  And about 12:30 AM, the lights come back on.         

© Will Mahoney 2022

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