Cuba Day 6: Oh the places you'll go!

Breakfast was good, though by the time we got our check it was already time for lunch. Whether this was them trying to trap us in an endless meal loop (breakfast turns to lunch turns to dinner turns to breakfast..) or it was just slow service, it's hard to say.

Unlike American restaurants, the Cubans are in absolutely no hurry to turn tables over. Servers would drop our food off then disappear for good, leaving us waiting for the check for a good while (...we're doing more waiting than them. Who are the real waiters here?...) Dickie pointed out that perhaps there was some sort of Cuban custom to signal you were done with your food that we might have been missing. We tried everything -- stacking menus didn't work, piling cutlery on our plates didn't work, putting our napkins in a pile didn't work. Our most effective method, which was still not very effective, was to finish our meal in a standing position:

Today was beach day, and after standing all morning we were looking forward to lounging in the sand under the hot Cuban sun. Not many taxis were around, however, and the ones that were didn't want to make the 30+ minute trek to the beach. That's when Mike devised a genius plan: Where are the most cars per minutes? The highway! Claro!

We walked over to the highway to try to get a taxi to pull over. Any taxi that pulled over for us on the highway, we reasoned, would be nutty enough to take us to the beach. Genius.

The plan worked! After 15 minutes of hailing we hooked a taxi. What we hadn't accounted for in our plan, however, was that obviously the nutty taxi driver would be driving a Slinker (see: Day 5). Beggars can't be choosers, though, and neither could we.

The driver's sheen was an early sign that the highway taxi was a mistake. As the driver put the car into gear, light glistened off of his sweaty skin as if he were a disco ball that knew how to drive stick shift. The windows didn't work, the A/C was broken, and the day was hot. Dickie and I sat in the back of the hotbox, while Mike passed himself out. He later explained that falling asleep was a survival tactic his body employed automatically in order to endure the extreme conditions. We got out of the car dripping in sweat:

Finally at the beach, we grabbed some beers and some rum coconuts, took out our books, and got to sunbathing. Dickie had become acclimated to the heat in the hotbox ride, however, and so he did the type of sunbathing where you fall asleep with all of your clothes and your socks and your shoes on, and use only half of the chair and none of the towel:

After a relaxing day at the beach, we carefully vetted a ride proper ride home:

On tap for the night was Fábrica de Arte Cubano, a must-see according to our many friends who gave us recommendations (thanks, many friends!) The place is a giant warehouse with windy corridors and ladders and stairwells that lead from one room to the next. Some rooms are dancey bars playing American rap, others are art galleries, and others still are open-air lounges -- awesome vibes all around. We chose to spend most of our night in the cafeteria room, where there was a huge line to get food. By the time we reached the front, we wanted to make the wait worthwhile and so we ordered three entrees a piece, nine total. It was one very round night!

Pictured above is Mike with our many many entrees. We would finish them all! Wow!

Also, despite our many objections Dickie still pronounces the currency here, the CUC, with two soft C's ("soose") instead of hard ones ("kook"). Smh.

Cuba Day 7: Dickie Day

After some mishaps yesterday, we agreed that today, our last full day in Cuba, would be Dickie Day. I had been planning the itinerary and our daily activities, but today I would hand the reins over to Dick. At 9:00, Dickie Day was off to a good start:

At 10:00 Mike and Dickie rolled over at the same exact time:

By 11:30, they needed just 10 more minutes:

Dickie Day rules!

The first thing we did for Dickie Day was go to the wrong restaurant -- we noticed we weren't at the restaurant we thought we were about half way through lunch. But the food was still unbelievable which is why in Dickie we trust. Of course, we finished all of our several appetizers and four entrees between the three of us. The Round Trio grows rounder.

Next, Dickie, who we now referred to strictly as El Jefe, asked a shiny convertible to take us to one of the big cigar factories. The taximan countered with what seemed to me like a scam -- he said knows the people who work in the factories and smuggled cigars out at the end of their shifts. They live just down the block and would sell us nice cigars for half the price we could get at the factory. "Sure," Dickie said, and since he was El Jefe, to the scammer's house we went!

 We were greeted at the door by a man who was sick as a dog. Between sniffles, he invited us to have a seat in his lair. He coughed powerfully into his handkerchief. His single long pinky nail scraped across the table as he opened a box of questionably fake Cohibas and an accompanying box of Montecristos. His hazy eyes locked with mine as he tried to convince us that the cigars were authentic. One way he did so was to take a cigar out of the box up for sale and wrap his lips around it and taste it, inviting us to do the same. No. Way. This sick-as-a-dog lairman and his taximan partner had probably tasted every single one of these cigars they were trying to sell.

After we had our fill of shenanigans we caught a cab to the real cigar factory. Along the way we got "pooled", which is something that can happen in Cuban taxis. It's when you're going to your destination then the driver stops and without a word, three more people get into the taxi, and then you continue on your way. No matter. We made it to the cigar shop where, for a change, the salesmen were all in normal health.



Upon returning to our apartment later on, we discovered horrifically that there was no toilet paper left. A whole apartment for four days, and they gave us only one roll? Mike couldn't believe it. There had to be more somewhere in the apartment. But search as he may, he found nothing:



We frittered about, killing time and practicing martial arts before dinner. The dockside restaurant in the Miramar neighborhood served us thousands of camarones and enough pulpo to make our bellies explode. Then we went to a cabaret with an empty audience, as I suspect most cabaret audiences are on Monday nights, before turning in. Dickie Day was one fun, adventurous, very strange day!

Cuba Day 8: Homeward

Well, folks, that's about it. Today we did a little shopping at an craft market in the harbor before returning to our neighborhood for a Cuban last meal and then heading back homeward.

Another page added to The Round Trio's book of adventure. And as Dickie says, what a very strange book it's become. Thanks for following along, Dear Reader. We'll try to do better next time!

P.S. We bought six Cuban hats this trip as souvenirs. Only one remains. We left three at a restaurant, Dick left one on the plane, and Mike somehow broke one in half. A hat. Broken in half. Plus Mike lost his spectacles. Just call us the Three Dumb Guys!

lol Mike referring to himself as "big dumb guy"

Day 1: Theme for the Trip

Dear Reader,

Mike, Dickie, and I have been planning a 10-day trip to Uruguay and Argentina for some time. We left from New York today and will be venturing til December 13. 

In the weeks leading up to the trip, we spent a lot of time thinking about how we could make the trip as sweet as possible. Dickie insisted that the best way to maximize adventure is to ditch luxury for filth. He told me Mike's ideas (staying at nice hotels like airbnb) were fine for vacations, but not for adventures. 

Further, because adventures are born from an open mind, we need to cast aside inhibition and rationality, and instead embrace a nutty mentality in order to maximize adventure. 

"Nuts to the bones" (read: nutty to the core) and filth will be our two themes for this trip. Instead of planning exactly where/what we'll be doing, we will go with the flow so long as that flow is chock full of filth and nuts. 

Any doubt I had about whether Dickie was actually serious about these themes disappeared when he started the trip by doing basically the nuttiest thing you could do as we were boarding our flight:

So Dickie, well he ain't coming anymore.

Stay tuned, dear reader, to see what kind of nutty, filthy adventures Mike and I get into, as Dickie tries to hitch another ride to South America after missing his flight. We hope to go surfing, ride a horse, eat good steak, and go on our first non-SDT wine tour (more Tapfar, more fun), though who knows where the filth will take us! First stop -- Montevideo. 

------------------

Biggest Nut Award: Dickie. Not even close. 

Day 2: How is this possible

What the Dickie.

Dickie boarded our 11:55p connecting flight (Miami > Montevideo) at 11:56p. Here's how it went down: After realizing he was in the wrong airport he jumped in an Audi with a guy named Reggie, zoomed to LaGuardia, and got a seat on the last flight to Miami (our connecting city). The flight was delayed so our young hero landed in MIA just 20 minutes before our international flight was to take off. He deplaned and broke a land speed record sprinting to gate D46. Thing is, Mike and I were at gate D24 and, importantly, the airplane was too. After realizing this, Dickie rebroke the niacent land speed record sprinting to the correct gate, D24, and boarded the plane one minute after the flight had technically departed. 

When we arrived in Montevideo at noon on Saturday almost everything was closed. We walked around for a couple of hours and checked out a local street fair. 

The Gang's all here

After, we checked into the Caballo Loco hostel and got prepared for the adventure ahead. We had no idea how nuts and filthy we would get. And Dickie still thinks Montevideo is pronounced "MonteDeVito"

Dumbest Guy Award: Dickie -- the outlets here are different from US outlets and require an adapter. Dickie brought this piece of work:

A US to US converter. Dumbest guy. Where did he even find this?

Day 3: Punta del Este

Our four hour trek to the beaches of Punta del Este started at 5am on Sunday. Dick and I packed our backpacks while Mike mashed away at his clothes, trying to jam a month's worth of clothes (three pairs of shoes, five pairs of dress socks, etc) into a giant duffle bag and a backpack.

We checked out of the hostel and made our way to the bus stop. A couple of transfers and a few empanadas later, and and most of us were sitting on a huge thumb at the beach.

-__-

The first hostel we walked into had room for the three of us in a dumpster of a room out back. The smell of tetanus baked under the rusted tin roof -- it was perfect. 

We rented a surfboard from the front desk and the three of us headed back out to the beach. Mike and I spent the morning teaching ourselves to surf, taking turns strapping our bodies to the board and rolling around in the waves until they washed us ashore. Dickie, in the meantime, started on his tan and picked up a Dumbest Guy Award along the way for packing the wrong beach towel:

In the evening we went to a street fair to pick out gourds and special straws for brewing and drinking mate, a popular Uruguian tea. 

We capped the night off with some fine dining -- good fish, steak, and wine at restaurant called Lo de Tere, and then got ready for our next adventure to Cabo Polonio, the filthiest and most nuts place yet. 

Day 4: Cabo Polonio

Cabo Polonio is a remote beach village with no electricity or running water. The first thing we read about it was this person's account of their stay:

After a three-day rainstorm, I emerged from my cabin to find the sky a loopy pink, a whale washed up on the beach and penguins wandering around in the grass. 'It's because of an eclipse,' someone in town said.

Are you kidding me. 

We asked some Urugians about Cabo Polonio who told us it is difficult to get to: "You need to take two buses to get nearby and then a sheep to get into the town." 

Are you kidding me.

Our excitement was momentarily halted when we saw that the only two hostels in Cabo Polonio were completely booked. But remembering the themes of the trip (theme: nuts to the bones) we hopped on the bus anyways, hoping to figure it out without phones or electricity but prepared to sleep on the beach (theme: filth) if we couldn't. 

We were in Cabo Polonio by mid day Monday. Turns out the "sheep" we had heard about riding was actually a double decker "Jeep". Still, it was a sweet ride into town, "sheep or no sheep" (as they say in the old country). 

Mike's friend told us that we might be able to get a place to stay by knocking on locals' doors and asking for their house for a night or two. Seemed like a nuts concept but so was an eclipse making penguins go to the beach so when we got into town we went to the first store we saw:

"Hola, me gusta su tienda. Quiero su casa." 

"Si, $80 por la noche."

"Belisimo!"

Easy. 

The store owner took us through town (the entire town is less than a mile) to the house, a small, candlelit shack with three mattresses. 

From the outside -- there is a small upper level that fit just two twin mattresses and has a window that leads to a raised porch

Basically the entirety of the first level, including the ladder that goes up to the top floor

Our hostess made us feel at home, insisting that we help ourselves to any of the kitchen supplies like salt, pepper, oil, and these sandy lemons that she already used but would probably still be okay if we blew the sand off

As we were settling in, a band of horses came barreling through our yard, chasing after some pooches. Sweet. 

We next headed for the beach, a vast stretch of sand dunes on one side and flat ocean on the other. 

The beach had weird eggs and strange things drifting ashore, which kept us entertained for most of the rest of the day until we stumbled upon a grass basketball court outside a hostel at sunset. Despite having Dickie "Knockdown D" Sutton on offense (and therefore Dickie "Lockdown D" Sutton on defense) Team USA suffered an embarrassing five game clean sweep to the locals in both 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 formats. 

Afterwards we got dinner at a shack nearby although Dickie advised us not to eat because all they had were carne (meat) sandwiches and there ain't any cows around, just horses and beached sea lions. 

As the darkness settled in on the electricity-free village, we made our way to a small moonlit bar, Joselo, that looked like a heap of bushes from the outside. Inside, we saw the walls and ceiling were constructed from flower plants and leaf plants growing through and around each other. Smooth jazz played all night while the large flowers dripped into our whiskey and wine. Bellies full of beached sea lion and wine, it was easy to fall asleep that night.