The wrong combination, part two.

In this part I will explain the title of my two stories. Two complete different stories which take place during the same time, but looking at things from a different perspective.

It all started already during the preparations of my tour. Trying to contact the Cuban embassy in Ecuador to try to arrange my visa, turned out to be more difficult than expected, because they just wouldn´t answer their phones and I didn’t want to travel all the way to Quito without knowing if I could just pass by their embassy. Luckily a friend of Frank, who is a lawyer, could help me out in this.

 The next inconvenient thing was that my agency, as in a habit, had send me the money for my budget to my account, not knowing that my Visa Card had just expired and no other cards would work on Cuba to take money out. I would only be able to get a cash advance on my Master Card, but did will cost 11% and wasn´t always easy. For these reasons I decided to already get the money of my account in Ecuador and in dollars. On exchanging the dollar lays a fine of 10% in Cuba, because of the USA blockade, but because of the differences in exchange rate with The Euro, the Dollar and the Cuban Tourist Peso (CUC), I could keep the final looses at 8.5%.

Arriving at the airport in Habana, there was no sign of my big backpack and together with about 15 other people we went standing in a row to file our missing luggage at just one general office. It took ages and the pile of baggage next to this office wasn’t very hopeful eighter. Our missing baggage got noted and we got told to come back next day to look through a new pile of baggage.

Next morning, after a lot of time on the phone from the helpful owner of the family I stayed with and two expensive taxi rides, I got my backpack back. Time to try to meet up with the local guide I would have to work together with in the next 3 weeks.

 It turned out that he wasn’t only a local guide, but usually worked as a guide and tour leader, guiding groups on his own. Basically there wasn’t any need more for me to go with this tour, except that my agency is obligated to send a Dutch tour leader with its groups. Because of my presence during this tour it would also automatically make me the direct contact and responsible person towards the group. This mend that our local guide would have to do a few steps back from what he is used to do normally on his own. Trying to make this clear and finding a way of working together while we are both used to work on our own wasn’t easy. What made it more difficult was that we had a different way of working and in some ways also a different way of looking at things. On top of this it was his country of course, I had only been here ones for 10 days and never guided a tour in Cuba, while he spend most of his live here and had been guiding tours for almost three years now.

 On paper I would have by far the worst hand of cards in what had to become an equal working relationship. However, I had two advances, one that I speak the language (Dutch) of the group and second I´m more used to flexible tours and groups. Now I ‘only’ needed to try to find a way so both of us could use the best of our capabilities and keep a healthy working relationship.

Ideally for me and according to my official responsibilities I would be in charge of all the logistics of the tour and direct communication with the group. Our guide officially, according to the guidelines of my agency regarding working with local guides, would only have to explain about his country, its people, cities and other interesting locations. Next to that he and the driver could inform and advise me about possible excursions and other recommendations. Unfortunately my experiences in Cuba and the information I got from my agency wasn´t sufficient enough to completely fore fill my responsibilities in this. Now I needed to relay too much on our guide and driver, which made it more difficult to respond quick enough to the needs of the group and which made me less flexible than usual. The driver and guide were kind and experienced and if it was any other group, it probably would have worked out, but in combination with this group and a few miscommunications... Let’s start from the beginning.

Because the guide and I both had to get used to work with someone else, he took too many responsibilities and I didn´t have enough background information myself it was the first few day a bit difficult for the group to know who of us was responsible for what. I did try to explain this at the beginning of the tour, but I guess I wasn´t clear enough. The next combination of events brought me close to losing the confidence of a big part of the group. It started with the location of our hotel in Cienfuegos. This hotel was further away from the city centre than most group members expected, which limited their possibilities of exploring the city on their own.

 During the city-tour next day it turned also out that some people hadn’t read their information well about the difficulties of using bank and credit cards in Cuba. Because of this the city-tour took a bit longer.

In Trinidad we had some other inconveniences. Because I had no addresses of ‘Casas  Particulares’, we had to use the help of a friend of our guide in Trinidad to find enough rooms for 18 people. That Trinidad is a popular place to hang around for Christmas wasn’t helping either. In the end we had to spread the group over 11 unknown families. It took me more than an hour and a half to visit everyone and make sure that they would all be able to find our meeting point for tonight’s Christmas dinner. Visiting all group members I noticed a big difference in the quality of some houses and rooms. Some rooms were nice, clean, had good beds, hot water, airco and even a fridge, while others were very basic, bad beds, no hot water, or even almost no water at all. The families were all friendly, but some group members couldn’t handle the basics and for sure not the differences in accommodation. Unfortunately it was very difficult to replace the basic accommodations for more luxury ones, especially just before Christmas Eve, it already took some effort to keep the rooms we got when some families found out that also the next two nights not all group members wanted to have dinner at their place. Around this time it would probably not be to difficult for them to find new guests who don want to eat dinner and therefore bring in more money. On top of all this, two women who shared a room got into an argument after Christmas dinner and one of them didn’t want to sleep in the same room with the other anymore, preferable fro the whore rest of the tour. It took our guide and his contact quite some effort to still find a new room for her that night and me the next morning to convince the first family to allow the other woman to stay. Still don’t really know why the family wanted her to leave? Anyway, all these family bushiness were not really helping in the important communication between the guide and myself, which resulted in an impossible appointment for two tours with one group.

 We sorted this out and after I had a good talk with the group and our guide, to make all our duties and responsibilities clear to everyone again. Luckily it worked as hoped and it turned out to be just on time to restore the confidence between me and the group.

 Unfortunately this confidence was hard needed the next day already. After a long bus ride we arrived at our lodge in Siërra Maestra. I Quickly gave everyone their key so they could take a shower and prepare for dinner and the guide, driver and I could sort out the problem of having one room short. The guide and I had thought that we could just put one bed extra in a double room, so we could share with the driver. However the room wasn’t very big and the driver got upset about having to spend, after a long day of work, the night with three people together in a small room. To make a long story shorter, I ended up sleeping in the clinic, which wasn’t so bad. Worse it was that I had told the group members who had just spend 3 nights in more basic accommodations that at least now they would have a hot shower and a good bed again, something that turned out to be wrong for some of them. After I gave the keys and the group left to their rooms, the manager of the lodge told me that it was in renovation, some rooms were just painted and a few others had no hot water at the moment. It was known already from half November, but no-one had told us. You can imagine what happened when I met the group again. Luckily another group would leave tomorrow, so then some better rooms would come available. Besides that it was a beautiful location and the massages were good, so next day the group was more relaxed.

All right, lets now hope that our hotel in Baracoa does fore fill its expectations. The road to get there was very beautiful and the location, with bay sight was great as well. Unfortunately some people could only see a concrete wall with barb wire, while others had no hot water again and of course the hotel was full. The hotel didn’t change money and we had no time for this in town. On our way to Santiago de Cuba we decided to call our hotel, because it was the 31th of December and banks wouldn’t open until the 2th of January. Their exchange office was closed and our guide didn’t know that the banks today would close at 11am. Luckily the Lonely Planet helped me in finding the phone number of a big hotel with an exchange office inside.

 The hotel was out of the city again, but at least it was a very nice hotel and everyone got hot water, so the group was content and filled with expectations for tonight.

 Unfortunately it wasn’t easy to find out what would be done in the city to celebrate New Years Eve and their 51th year of independence. Our guide said that it wouldn’t be safe for the group to be out on the streets, because too many Cubans would get too drunk. He recommended to go to a Tropicana show or to stay in the hotel, because every luxury hotel would do something special tonight, except that it wasn’t clear what. Some group members still wanted to go into town to celebrate New Years Eve more in Cuban style and asked me for advice. I could understand their wish, but since I’ve never been in Santiago de Cuba and our guide recommended not to go into the city for safety reasons how could I say something different? I told them that they could better speak directly to our guide, ask him for options and tell him that you would go on your own risk. I asked our guide as well to try to find other options.

 Then something went very wrong in the communication. Some people did ask the guide, some people waited for others to ask and our guide waited too long to answers and/or couldn’t give an answer, because he had no phone numbers of the bars and disco’s that people were interested in. In the end it all became a last minute thing, while I had told my group and guide already a week ago to think about New Years Eve. At this last moment we had to speak with people in Santiago to ask if bars and disco’s would be open or not. Some were not sure, but most people told us that places to go out would probably be closed tonight, because most of the celebrations for New Years Eve and Cubans Independents Day would be celebrated with their family and out on the streets. Also because the police expected a lot of people on the streets, there were apparently restrictions to close all entertainment places in the city centre before midnight. Probably there would be some popular places open just outside the city centre. If group members wanted we could pass by one of them and drop them of on the way to Tropicana. There was a no to this offer and with two third of the group we had to leave or we would be late for the show.

 The show wasn’t very professional, especially in comprehension with The Tropicana show in Habana, but it wasn’t terrible and it seemed we didn’t have much of an option to go anyway.

Unfortunately the next evening we found out different. After an interesting and nice city tour, which was to expensive according to the people who didn’t go, but sure worth the money according to the people who did come along, we went after dinner, with the same part of the group to, Casa de la Musica. There and later in Casa de la Trova as well, I heard that they had been open last night… Group members found this out as well and one of them, the one who actually almost never joined any group activities,  went even so far that she tried to find out if our guide didn’t ask too much commission for the Tropicana Show. She was wrong, but these incidents, together with her lack of confidence, poking in the group and even snoring contributed a lot in bringing down the mood in the group.

 Maybe the guide and driver tried to improve this again with passing by La Virgin de Cobre on our way to Camagüay, but because of this little unexpected extra roundtrip we arrived later in this pretty city and had almost no more time to enjoy our special city tour on bicycle taxi.

If you think that things couldn´t go much worse anymore, then you’re wrong. Next day, during our city tour through Sancti Spiritus, a tour that wasn’t even in the tour schedule of our driver and guide, our guide made a small calculation mistake about the length of this tour. The group was already split up in a part that joined the excursions and a part that, for different reasons, hardly joined any excursion anymore. For this part we had agreed a time to meet again after the city tour and lunch.

 Already halfway this tour I had my doubts if we would make it on time to meet the rest. I said this to our guide, but he told me that we would probably make it, or just would be a bit later. That wouldn’t be too bad, no? I warned him that with this group he was possibly wrong. There wasn’t much else I could do and maybe he was right anyway.

 Unfortunately he was wrong, terribly wrong. We had agreed to leave at 14:00h, but it became 14:32 and a few group members were very upset that they had hurried to be on time only to hear that we would leave half an hour later. Back in the bus, when our guide explained about a few excursion options, some group members and especially two women kept on talking in-between. If it would have been just talking I guess it isn’t very polite, but the guide didn’t seem to be bothered and I would be able to just leave it. However it were all childish comments on his explications, like: “I don’t go anyway, I don’t go anyway, too expensive, I don’t go anyway and more like that”. When one of them wanted to start a useless discussion with the guide about some excursion, she wouldn’t join anyway, I went to the front of the bus and took the microphone over from our guide. I told he group in general if they wanted to stop complaining about things in the bus, because this wasn’t good for the atmosphere and wouldn’t solve anything at all. If there were any serious complains they could come to me after our arrive in our next hotel. One women wanted to start a discussion about that, so I told her: “ No, not now. If you want to discus anything, you can come to me in our hotel.” Some people clapped in their hands, but after this it was very silent in the bus. Unfortunately no-one came to me when we arrived at our hotel.

 We had a nice hotel, but of course outside the city again.

The next day, after a delay of an hour because of a flat tire and no proper tools, we arrived at our hotel in Varadero. It was a hotel with a great location, central and direct access to the beach, but now there were new complains. It had rooms without view, no atmosphere and some even called it a circus, because of how big and busy it was.

 During our stay, unfortunately we couldn´t do any tours on sea, because the sea was to rough. At least the second day was a great day to relax on the white beach.

Our last days we spent in Habana. I proposed to do our city-walking-tour on the day of our arrival, which worked our great with a sunny afternoon. Unfortunately it rained most of our second day L And also there were again several complains about the rooms in our hotel. Bad maintenance and noisy, because of airco’s and street noise (that´s what you get if you do sleep in the city centre…), were the biggest complains. I do have to admit that the maintenance in lots of rooms was very bad. I had even water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom, before I turned the shower on.

 Last nights dinner was ok, but not very warm (as usual) and after dinner a part of the group was a bit decision less (also not uncommon during this tour) about what to do and where to go.

I guess it was a last evening in style of the tour, a tour during which a lot of things went wrong, but as you could read in my first story, it was also possible to focus more on the good things. Some group members have really done this and look back on a special tour with great experiences, others look also back on a special tour, but one they probably like to forget soon. Also our local guide was very disappointed about how the tour went and especially about his tip and after my comment that we should have had a better communication during our tour he disagreed. Something that surprises me a bit, but maybe a colleague of me is right. Maybe I should have taken complete control over the tour right from the beginning, something I am used to do and do/like best. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough information to do this and didn’t (don’t) know how close I had to work with our local guide, according to the Cuban rules and my agencies agreements…

Even with all the difficulties and work I had during this tour, I still belong to the first group and I even got paid for it. So I guess in the end I have no reason to complain…

I´m back at Merazonia now, a place where it is also not always easy for me to work with every-one. But it is a good place to be and here I know at least that I´m around friends, do something I like and make myself useful.  I work now on the hydro electric and have to think about my plans for the rest of the year.

 To be continuated ;-)

Saludos,

Martijn

P.S. More pictures will soon be on my Photo album!