Pamela Smith
Sunday, January 20th was our first free day to explore Havana. It turned out to be quite the adventure with heavy rain, double-decker tour buses, big waves on the Malecon and a chilly coco taxi ride home. The morning started with a brisk walk to our now favorite coffee shop and internet park. It was humid, and within moments, it started raining or rather pouring. The rain was cold and heavy. I heard stories that the locals do not dare leave their houses when it rains in Havana. I meet my fellow MAOL friend Stacy at the coffee shop, and we devised a plan for the day. After the rain stopped around noon, we hopped on the cities’ bright red and blue double-decker bus for a 2-hour tour of Havana and several outlying suburbs.
From the upper deck, we were able to see the city from a new perspective. Because of the rains that morning, the waves on the Malecon (city’s sea wall) were unexpectedly high. We cowered under rain jackets and squealed like children riding the Valley Fair log flume as waves as high as the bus crashed on us. After the wet ride down the two-mile Malecon, the bus takes a turn on a charming tree-lined street to head to the suburbs passing by the Havana aquarium, circus and the beach along Miramar. It was a cloudy day, so we did not have to worry about sunburn, but the low hanging branches and powerlines proved more dangerous on the top deck. Stacy barely missed a branch that grazed the top of the bus.
We rode the bus back to old Havana and got off at the capital to stretch our legs and stroll down some of Havana’s most prestigious streets. The number of people lining the streets on a Sunday afternoon amazed me. I could not help but wonder where everyone was going. There were artists selling art along the boulevard which provided a delightful and art-filled walk. Stacey was successful in bartering with a local artist for some lovely pencil drawings. As we strolled, we found a cute restaurant tucked in an alley and had the best Cuban dinner of ropa vieja, rice and beans, and a refreshing rum cocktail as the sunset for the day. At the end of a great adventure around Cuba, we took a coco taxi home. I felt the cool breeze of the day blow through my hair as we sped through the streets of Havanna back to our casa particular (Cuban homestay).