Havana’s numerous bars are in many ways all rather similar. All of the places listed here serve Havana Club as the house rum. Few have a decent rum selection besides the basic Havana Club range (i.e. the blanco through to the 7 Años). Those that do offer alternatives tend to do so only at the higher end. Popular top shelf rums include Santiago and Vigia 11 Años, and Havana Club Barrel Proof and 15 Años.

Bar Monserrate (Old Town – Oprapia St. near Central Park)

Popular bar with both tourists and locals. Fairly run of the mill place offering reasonable mixed drinks at reasonable prices. This place probably gets some overflow of tourists tired with the high prices at El Floridita, just a block or so away. Live music in the evenings. A good stop before or after El Floridita, for either a Mojito or a beer.

Cafe Paris (Old Town – Obispo St.)

Typical little local bar. Nice drinks and horrible food. Worth checking out provided you are not hungry.

Casa del Escabeche (Old Town – Obispo St.)

Another typical little local joint with live music at lunchtime. Unfortunately my visit was marred by an aggressive tout trying to sell me drugs. The guy was a tetrapack drunk (I was Havana Club 7 Años) and continued pestering me even after I shifted seats to put some distance between myself and his group. He eventually became quite threatening and I elected to make an exit. The staff did nothing to help diffuse the situation. The place seems nice enough, but (despite the delicious rum) I left with a bad taste in my mouth.

El Bodeguita Del Medio (Old Town – Empedrado St.)

Even more touristy than El Floridita, with trays of very average Mojitos sitting partially mixed and waiting for the crowds to arrive. The sad thing is that the crowds pulled in by the Bodeguita Del Medio publicity machine are flocking to a place that Hemmingway probably never patronized to drink a cocktail he never much cared for. Still, like it or not this bar has wrestled for itself the title of spiritual home of the Mojito. On the positive side, like El Floridita they partially justify their high prices by using Havana Club 3 Años rather than Havana Club Añejo Blanco as the house rum. Worth a visit just to say you did.

El Floridita (Old Town – Obispo St. near Central Park)

As per my previous notes from an earlier post. Worth a visit, but treat as a tourist attraction more than anything else.

Havana Club Rum Museum (Old Town – San Pedro St.)

I didn’t actually have a drink here. The bar looks nice enough though, albeit more like a tourist pit-stop than a genuine bar. I think I checked and was told they do not serve Havana Club Barrel Proof or 15 Años by the glass. That’s a shame given that it’s the flagship location for the Havana Club brand. Incidentally, this is where this rather cool video was filmed.

Hotel Ambos Mundos (Old Town – Calle Obispo)

Hemmingway wrote a chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls while staying in this hotel, and naturally made extensive use of its bar. The lobby has been renovated, but the bar remains a nice low-key spot for a drink. There is also a rooftop bar. The clientele are mostly tourists, but there is none of the try-hard hype of El Floridita and El Bodeguita Del Media. The vibe is relaxed, the bartenders are good, and the result is one of the better spots for Hemingway fans to sit and meditate over a drink or twelve. On my first visit I shared the place with a pair of very drunk Russians who started thumping the bar and singing along to a somber Russian tune the pianist was belting out. Staff from around the lobby dropped their work to come and listen. All this at 10.30 am; Hemmingway would have felt at home that morning.

Hotel Florida (Old Town – Obispo St.)

One of the smaller of the old Havana hotels, this place has a quiet but nicely appointed bar. The friendly staff mix a good Daiquiri, and it makes for a nice retreat from the crowds on Obispo. Possibly a good choice if you are looking for a bar in the area without live music. Sometimes the Buena Vista Social Club clones can become a bit much.

Hotel Inglaterra (Old Town – Central Park)

The oldest hotel in Havana, located right on the central park, this place has nice terrace bar on the sidewalk. Touristy, but low key and well priced. The Mojitos are good, and they stock a couple of older rums from brands other than Havana Club. A nice spot settle down for some early evening people watching with a glass of rum and a cigar.

Hotel Nacional (Vedado – 21st St.)

A beautiful old Art Deco hotel with at least three bars. The outside bar near the lobby has the best selection of traditional Cuban cocktails I saw in Havana, including the famous Hotel Nacional Daiquiri. The west wing of the hotel has a large and well-stocked bar overlooking the swimming pool. This is one of the few places in Havana you are likely to find local exotica like aguardiente. I spotted a pink Piña Colada in this bar though, so maintain some caution. Finally, set apart from the hotel itself is a little cliff-top bar overlooking the Malecón. This last spot has great views, but a poor drinks selection. I ended up trying a Nacional Daiquiri in the outside lobby bar, and a Presidente in the bar near the swimming pool. Both were well made. Interestingly, the Presidente was made with sweet vermouth. I always thought it was supposed to made with dry, though I know lots of people use sweet. Anyway, my only complaint about this place is that the ice could be colder. Overall, a must visit.

Hotel Presidente (Vedado – Calzada St.)

A history-drenched Havana institution offering a small lobby bar and a larger but neglected-looking poolside bar. Unfortunately my experience was not great. The barman on duty seemed to have an attitude and I left without having a drink. I forget exactly what the issue was, but I think it involved me wanting an El Presidente cocktail (it was the Presidente hotel) and him being less than accommodating.

Jazz Café (Vedado – Paseo Ave. near Riviera Hotel)

Swanky late night club geared to well-heeled locals as much as to tourists. There are nightly performances of live jazz, but nothing much happens before 11pm or so. Good Mojitos and average food. I noticed locals (or at least Spanish speakers) drinking Havana Club Añejo Reserva with coke – nice choice. Incidentally, the Cuba Libre seems to be one of those drinks where a higher grade of rum is occasionally called for. I never noticed Cubans specify what rum they wanted in their Daiquiris or Mojitos, but they seemed fussier when it came to their Cuba Libres.

Lluvia de Oro (Old Town – Obispo St.)

Pleasant and recently renovated bar with a mixed tourist and local clientele. The Mojitos are tasty (that magic touch of Angostura), and the food is well above average for Cuba. They often have live music happening and the prices are reasonable. Havana Club 3 Años is the mixing rum here, suggesting they make an effort to offer quality. This was one of my favorite places in Havana.

Los Nardos (Old Town – El Prado, opposite the Capitolio)

Not a bar, just a restaurant with good Cuban food. The grilled chicken is excellent, and of course you can have a glass of rum with your meal. I made my a Havana Club 7 Años.

Prado y Neptuno (El Prado, on corner with Neptuno St.)

Italian restaurant with good food and a surprisingly large range of rums and other spirits – including lots of imports. One of the few places you can taste Havana Club Barrel Proof or 15 Años by the glass. They were out of the 15 Años when I visited, but it is listed on the menu and I heard from others that they usually stock it.

The Havana Club (Miramar)

This complex in the far western suburbs of Havana (not far from the Hemmingway Marina) is the famous Havana Club from Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. I made a point of dropping past here to try the Daiquiri, described so famously by Graham Green: “They had another free daiquiri each, frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain.”

These days the Havana Club is a members club, and supposedly one of the most exclusive places in town. I got in by showing up on a mid-week afternoon, mentioning Graham Greene, and asking nicely for a Daiquiri. The guard at the gate ran a liberal entry policy, but made me promise to leave before it got late and the real members showed up. I entered and found the place deserted. Casual visitors might not get in easily on evenings or weekends when the place presumably gets busy.

The complex offers club facilities, a private beach, and a couple of bars. The main bar is downstairs, with the upstairs bar apparently open only during functions. The drinks were good quality. Naturally I started with a Daiquiri. In one of those rare occasions where life proceeds almost exactly like fiction, the drink really did arrive “frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain”. It was the stiffest Daiquiri I found in Havana, and perhaps also the tastiest. Unfortunately, unlike in the novel, my Daiquiri was not free. However, it was surprisingly cheap, perhaps cheaper than anywhere else I visited. Membership clearly has its privileges.

Taberna de la Muralle (Old Town – Ignace St. in the Plaza Vieja)

Mircrobrewery with draft beer and passable hamburgers. This place gets good reviews but I found the food merely edible. Worth a visit for the tasty beer – makes for a break from rum. Predictably, they also have live music.

Art Deco meets Neoclassical in the lobby of Havana’s Hotel Nacional

Freely as the rum flows in Havana, the selection is limited. Most rum countries are like this, but Cuba may be unique in the total lack of imports. Even Bacardi is conspicuous only in its absence. No Bacardi is remarkable enough, but even more peculiar is that many Cubans name Bacardi as their favorite rum. More on that curious situation later. . .

The visitor is thus limited to Cuban rums, a bibulous restriction I can happily report is no great hardship. Still, the adventurous voluptuary seeking a trial separation from the ubiquitous Havana Club can face a hard slog. Havana’s more touristy bars exclusively pour the brand that bears the city’s name. While the top shelf occasionally offers alternatives, even there the pickings are slim. The house pour in local bars may be something cheaper, perhaps Mulata, but Havana Club is never far away.

Inside La Bodeguita del Medio. . .

For those on a real budget, supermarkets and bottle stores sell rum in cardboard tetrapacks. Havana’s legions of underemployed and under-resourced can often be spotted lounging in the sun and sipping from these tetrapacks. Rum tetrapacks even pop up in lower end bars, either sold across the bar or casually smuggled in. I never tasted these tetrapacks. They may contain what Cubans would consider ‘aguardiente’ (see below) rather than true ‘rum’.

A bartender pours Mojitos in Lluvia de Oro, one of Havana’s most pleasant bars

Cubans pour rum with tropical liberality. The Cuban pour is languidly generous, as though, having set to work, the pourer discovers that returning the bottle to the vertical will involve unanticipated effort. The sensible course is naturally to lighten the load some more before attempting this taxing maneuver. A drinker can feel that the only thing being rationed is the ice. And that brings me to another thing, perhaps even a ‘complaint’. Havana bars score low in the ice department – disappointing for an Ice-Nazi like myself. Ice is always wet, stored in ice bins rather than a chiller, and you don’t get very much of it. Leaves more space in the glass for rum mind you.

El Morro, Havana’s harbor fortress

The tale about Cuban bartenders pouring a little rum on the ground for luck when opening a fresh bottle is true. I saw lots of bartenders do this. It isn’t done with any ceremony. Flicking some rum into the air is simply part of the routine of opening a fresh bottle – twist, toss, flick, pour. The ‘toss’ comes from the habit of tossing the cap away, at least in the case of mixing rum. With rum the national drink, this makes perfect sense since a bottle is rarely sitting around half-empty for long.

Inspiring revolutionary mural art

Drinkers and bartenders use a curious ‘secret language’ to discuss rum brands. In speech, certain brands are not referred to using their current names. Havana Club is straightforward, but Caney is spoken of as ‘Bacardi’, while Santiago becomes ‘Matusalem’. Cubans told me that these were the original names before the relevant factories were nationalized following the Revolution. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that version of history, but I do know talking rum with Cubans becomes a most confusing business.

Interestingly, Cubans do not seem to rate Havana Club especially highly. I made a point of asking bartenders their favorite rum, and none of them named Havana Club. The clear favorite was Santiago (‘Matusalem’ in Cuban rummy lingo), with Caney (‘Bacardi’) ranking second.

Morning drinks at the Hotel Ambos Mundos

Cuban bartenders deserve a favorable mention in any discussion of the country’s rum culture. Tending bar seems to be a vocation in Cuba, and many bartenders are middle-aged to elderly guys with decades of experience. Ordering a mixed drink is mercifully free of drama, suspense or surprise, and reliably yields a quencher that performs exactly as intended. Interestingly, despite living in a country with few imported products, bartenders are quite knowledgeable about foreign rums. Names like Barbancourt and Appleton’s Estate are well known and well regarded. Importantly, Cuban bartenders are a friendly and down-to-earth lot, and happy to chat about things drinks related.

The Hotel Havana Libre, appropriated by Castro as his temporary headquarters after the Revolution

Cuba has numerous rum producers and the largest liquor stores and supermarkets stock a comprehensive range. Every producer offers a similar lineup, running from a white mixing rum through to a seven year old sipping rum, with two or three stops in between. Everything is bottled at around 40% alcohol by volume, and rums aged longer than seven years are rare. For rum shoppers, the ground floor of the Hotel Havana Libre has a liquor store with a comprehensive selection of local brands. The souvenir shop at the Havana Club Rum Museum also sells the full range of Havana Club products, including the hard to find Barrel Proof and 15 year old versions.

Sadly not a real rum bottle! The Havana Club Rum Museum

The Havana Club Rum Museum offers a useful introduction to the manufacture of Cuban rum, with the focus naturally enough on Havana Club. I found the tour rushed and formulaic but still worthwhile. According to the guide, Havana Club is made from a mix of two molasses-based rums, distilled to around 76% and 96%, respectively. The first provides the ‘body’, while the second provides the ‘soul’ – and presumably most of the alcohol. Both rums are double distilled in column stills. The rum is all aged for a minimum two years in bourbon barrels previously used for Wild Turkey. The exception to this two year minimum aging rule is the white, which is a blend of aged and unaged rums.

Antique still at the Havana Club Rum Museum

Cubans distinguish two variants of rum, namely ‘rum’ (in Spanish ‘ron’) and ‘aguardiente’ (which in English translates to something like ‘firewater’, or ‘spirit’). The more prestigious and dominant category is rum/ron. Aguardiente is the poor relation, and its definition varies depending on who you ask. Perhaps the situation is like that of rum and clairin in Haiti, with aguardiente being the rural and homemade product and rum the refined and industrialized version. The difference between rum and aguardiente (at least in Cuban terminology) may lie in distillation method. Most bartenders told me aguardiente is distilled just once, and to relatively low proof, while rum is distilled twice, and to high proof. However, others told me that aguardiente is distilled from fresh sugar cane juice while rum is distilled from molasses. Perhaps the aguardiente category contains multiple product types.

A bottle of the elusive aguardiente

Some Cuban rum producers offer aguardiente alongside their rums. For example Mulata offers both clear and aged versions of aguardiente. Aguardiente only rarely appears behind bars though, and unable to try the stuff by the glass I ended up having to buy a bottle (pictured above).

I found the Mulata aguardiente totally different to the same company’s rum, with a rough edge, robust flavor and almost chewy graininess. Cuba will probably never be famous for its aguardiente, but the stuff made for an interesting change from the highly refined and polished rums.

I only got the one taste of my Mulata aguardiente. On my last night in Havana a guy stopped me outside my hotel, asking for money to buy a can of coke. I told him to wait a second, grabbed the aguardiente from my room, gave him his coke money, and suggested he try an aguardiente and coke. He seemed pleased, and I freed up space in my luggage for a bottle of Caney seven year old – or should I say ‘Bacardi’?

Revolutionary decor in Havana’s Coppelia ice-cream parlor

Well over a year after I left the place, I’m finally writing about Cuba. I didn’t stay as long in Cuba as I would have liked. The lack of Internet in Cuba made work, and hence a lengthy stay, difficult. My stay lasted only five or so days, but during that time I devoted myself fully to drinking in the sights – and the rum.

I left Guatemala on a dawn flight, transited in Panama, and was in Havana by early afternoon. From arrival Cuba had its own unique feel. Havana airport was slightly worn, but red painted girders and splashes of yellow made it seem bright and cheerful.

Expecting military uniforms, I was surprised to see the immigration and customs officials dressed in casual jackets and colorful t-shirts. While superficially reassuring, the mufti disconcertingly blurred the identity of officialdom, and made it harder to sense if you were being singled out for special attention.

Immigration was a breeze though. Cuba’s issues with the U.S. mean immigration officers don’t routinely stamp passports. If you want a memento of your trip you have to ask for an entry stamp. I asked, and got the stamp plus a smile. Viva la Revolución!

I had organized accommodation in a Casa Particular (basically a home stay type arrangement, and better value than most hotels), and so hopped in a taxi and showed him the address.

Rain was pouring down. The country smelled fresh, and the scenes we passed on our way into town were under-industrialized and attractively shabby. The driver didn’t speak any English but we managed to have a bit of a chat. For part of the journey he complained in the way taxi drivers everywhere are wont to. For the rest of the journey we chatted about rum. He liked Arecha and thought Havana Club was expensive.

Afternoon on El Prado. . .

My accommodation was on a quiet side street (Trocadero) just west of El Prado, the grand central promenade running between El Malecón, as the seawall is called, and the central square of the old town. My hosts were a kindly elderly couple, and in keeping with their personalities the process of settling in unfolded pleasantly, but ever so slowly. Keys were fetched, forms signed, coffee poured, water heaters demonstrated, restaurants recommended, rum mentioned, money exchanged, and eventually I ended up with a key in my hands and the freedom to head out for a wander. Lovely as my hosts were, the whole process had taken a couple of hours, and I was anxious to just get out, explore, and just possibly drink some rum.

It was late afternoon by the time I was wandering in Havana. The air had a cool post-rain feel, the streets were generously sprinkled with people, grand old buildings decayed attractively, children played football, and the vibe was welcoming. People appeared remarkably fit and healthy, with the women being slim and toned and the men looking like they worked out. Possibly the food rationing effectively put everybody on a healthy diet, perhaps the relative absence of cars meant people walked enough to stay in shape, or maybe a lack of alternative entertainment options made exercise popular. Whatever the reason, Cubans were physically impressive and I couldn’t help taking it as a subtle advertisement for the revolution. Racially the population was a mix of Latin and African, but mostly the former. Many people had a very Italian look to them.

Although I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, the absence of commerce was surprising. My immediate neighborhood seemed to have a bakery selling a single style of loaf, a couple of hole-in-the-wall groceries with little on offer, a dark cafeteria, a produce market that seemed to have closed for the day, and little else. There were more shops on El Prado and around the central square. Few had much to sell though, and in many cases what they had was displayed behind glass and could only be got by asking for a cashier for help. Havana was no shoppers’ paradise.

The vintage automobiles Cuba is famous for stood out immediately. While they don’t exactly dominate the traffic these days, they still comprise a fair bit of it. Walking around I occasionally felt I had stumbled into a vintage film. Mostly the visual clues of the 21st Century were there, but occasionally they disappeared momentarily and you were left with nothing but the 1950s – maybe a quiet back street with a single gleaming vintage car, and a guy with barber’s shop hair strolling past in pants, braces and a singlet, swinging an ancient leather baseball glove. The people had a slightly Old World air about them, a combination of their choice in music (tending to the Buena Vista Social Club variety), their clothes (the local stores were some years from the cutting edge), and their rather polite and subdued manner.

On hitting El Prado I turned left towards El Malecón. Havana’s Malecón is a beautiful sea wall, and the perfect front door for a grand old Caribbean capital. I ended up down there every morning and soaking up the atmosphere through a leisurely run. Besides looking impressive, the giant waves that sometimes explode across the top of the thing added an interesting dimension to my morning exercise. Dodging the waves meant constantly alternating between sprinting and jogging on the spot – kind of interval training I guess. The highlight of my route each day was the Hotel Nacional, which occupies a commanding vantage point on a low cliff.

The Hotel Nacional

After checking out the water it was time to head back up El Prado and towards the central square. I was starving by this stage and decided to hold off trying any rum until after dinner. I headed for a place called Murral, a brew pub with a reputation for decent burgers. The burger was nothing special (though good by the dire standards of Cuban food), but the beer punched above its weight, and carried a refreshing sour edge.

El Floridita, a lighthouse beckoning Daiquiri-seekers

With dinner out of the way I headed to El Floridita for a real drink. The legendary Floridita was a disappointment, but first I’ll concentrate on the good. The décor is impressive, and on the surface appears little touched since Hemingway was a regular. The place still looks rather 1950s, and much like in the photographs of its heyday. Quality could be better overall, but they don’t overtly pinch pennies – using Havana Club 3 años their basic mixing rum. So I guess you do get a little extra for the high prices, though there are plenty of cheaper bars in Havana offering the same for less. Their blender drinks also have a nice quaffable consistency, perhaps the result of either blending for a decent length of time, or not overdoing the ice. Blender drinks have a habit of separating into ice and liquor, but those in El Floridita don’t.

El Floridita’s impressively decorated bar, surely still instantly recognizable to Hemingway himself

OK, time for the bad. These days the bar staff at El Floridita do not measure anything, do not squeeze fresh limes, and use an overly sweetened sour mix rather than lime juice and sugar. Big Constante, the legendary barman from the days when Hemingway was a regular, would not be amused. The famous ‘Papa Hemingway’ is an abomination. Supposedly it contains maraschino and grapefruit juice, but the grapefruit juice is from a packet and lacks any edge, and on the day I visited they were out of maraschino and substituted triple sec. Overall the place does not offer much, having degenerated into a nightly tourist performance rather than a genuine bar with regular customers. You pay high prices for it too, with a daiquiri being over US$6, compared to $3 or less in most other places.

So in summary El Floridita should be mostly, though not entirely, avoided.

Churning out the Daiquiris in El Floridita

I left El Floridita to explore some cheaper and more authentic bars. There were several to choose from just off the main square, but I settled on the atmospheric Bar Monserrate. It was a little touristy, but compared to El Floridita felt like an authentic local bar. The décor was simple and the atmosphere relaxed, with quietly casual but efficient staff and live music – Buena Vista Social Club again.

The lively Bar Monseratte

There I bumped into a German guy who had been made redundant by the financial crisis. He had been to Cuba a few times before and had some suggestions for me. While we chatted I tried a Mojito, and both Cristal and Bucanero beers – all good. The Bucanero seemed to be the strongest local beer, but was only a percentage point or so stronger than the Cristal. The Cristal tasted a little crisper, while the Bucanero was sweetish.

On the recommendation of the German I finished the evening by taking a taxi to a place called Jazz Café, which was supposed to have good live jazz. In the stairwell of the shopping center where the venue was located I got waylaid by a hooker. My attempts to get past her prompted aggressive questioning as to whether there was some problem with her looks. I had to apologize and say she was possibly the most beautiful woman in the world but it was really too dark to be sure. She laughed. So I guess my bad Spanish joke went over OK.

Cuban liqueurs. . .

I thus safely arrived at the venue only to find I was too early, with the music not starting until 11pm.   Instead of waiting around in the Jazz Cafe I went for a walk, and eventually found myself hunkering down for a couple of Mojitos in a deserted little neighborhood bar. The Mojitos were well mixed, better than at Bar Monserrate, and the friendly bartender gave me a lesson in how Cubans make the drink.

One of the nice things about Cuba is the friendly and down-to-earth bartenders. They are all competent enough (at least in matters concerning common Cuban drinks), don’t exhibit the prima donna tendencies of some Anglo-nation bartenders, and happily dispense advise to strangers.

A late night Mojito in a quiet cafe. . .

The hooker in the stairwell was gone by the time I returned to the Jazz Cafe.

Unfortunately I didn’t much care for the the music and so did not stay long. They were playing that post-60s style Cuban jazz – loud and unrelaxing. I think I was hoping for more of the Buena Vista Social Club that was being played everywhere else.

The Jazz Café was one of those places where you pay a cover charge that you then consume against. Either the cover charge was very high, the prices were very low, or I was very drunk, since I seemed unable to consume all I had paid for. I had a Mojito or two (decent), a plate of spaghetti (horrible) to ward off a hangover, then took the rest of my cover in half a dozen bottles of water to go.

As I left I saw the hooker from the stairwell sitting at a table with another girl and two guys. They were sharing a bottle of wine and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Period decor at El Floridita

Leaving the bar I realized I was exhausted, plastered, spoke hardly any Spanish, and had left the card with the address of my hotel in my room. I jumped in a taxi, successfully negotiated a cheap fare home (failing to notice that the cheap fare resulted not from my sharp bargaining skills, but from the vehicle being a little three-wheeled motocab rather than a taxi as conventionally defined), somehow guessed the correct turnoff from the Malecon, and ended up directly outside my hotel door.

All in all, not a bad first day in Havana.

The Merced in Antigua. . .

Far too late, I am finally throwing together a mini-account of my Guatemala trip. The last year has been somewhat messy, hence the lack of blogging. For some reason Guatemala was hard to write about (perhaps because I did amazingly little while there) leading to my blog getting stuck in Haiti. Anyway, I need to write something about Guatemala before I can move on to the more interesting subject of Havana.

Mostly I spent my time in Guatemala simply hanging around Antigua, working on my laptop, enjoying the excellent cafes and restaurants (a contrast to the Dominican Republic and Haiti), breathing in the charming atmosphere of controlled colonial decay, tasting the local food, occasionally browsing the cigar merchants and attempting to cultivate an appreciation of their wares, and vaguely plotting my next move. Excitement was mostly of the minor variety. I was hugely entertained in a café by a churchy looking man, attached to some charity group building houses for Guatemalans, caught searching for porn on his laptop. His discrete corner seat failed to provide the anticipated protection when a member of his group seated at another table returned from the toilet by an unexpectedly circuitous route. The poor man’s loud protestations that his computer must have contracted some mysterious virus only drew attention to his distressing condition. That incident probably made my week. So as you can see my time in Guatemala was underutilized.

The Plaza in Antigua. . .

Of course I also sampled the local rum. A little more on that latter, but for now I’ll antagonize many of my rum-loving readers by mentioning that I did not especially care for Ron Zacapa. When I first tried Zacapa, in Santo Domingo, I found it incredible stuff. Somehow though it became less interesting each time I drank it. Zacapa is a unique rum, but for me perhaps it ultimately lacks the requisite edge. So while Antigua does cafés far better than Port-au-Prince, it was disappointing that none of them served Barbancourt. As seems to be the case in most rum-producing countries, the range of imported rums available in Guatemala is limited. Bacardi is all over the place, and you often see Flor de Caña (from neighboring Nicaragua), but beyond that the selection is poor. The one joint in Antigua that described itself as a ‘rum bar’ sold exactly the same selection of local rums as every other bar or café in town. Maybe they earned the title ‘rum bar’ by selling the stuff in larger quantities than their competitors, but since they seemed to have no customers besides myself I have my doubts.

Given the lackluster rum options, it was no surprise that my future travel plans eventually crystallized over steak, chips and a Pisco Sour in a French bistro with a tempting cocktail menu. The Ramos Gin Fizz that preceded the meal was a disaster (I knew when ordering it was likely to be a mistake), but the Pisco Sour was delicious, and a welcome change from rum. As I sipped its thick bodied grapeyness, it suddenly became clear to me that after seeking the ultimate Daiquiri and Mojito in Havana, I should head to Lima and forage for the perfect Pisco Sour. While rum was all very well and good, it alone could not sustain a man – and certainly not a man  as spiritously ambitious as myself. To guard against rashness, I finished the meal by meditating with a Zacapa and a cigar, but by the time I swapped the warmth of the restaurant for the cool mountain air my mind was made up.

Antigua was charming. Many travelers criticize the town for being overpriced and overly touristified. No doubt it is touristy, but tourists descend on Antigua for good reason, and in any case are joined by plenty of well-heeled refugees from Guatemala City. The place has beautiful architecture, the strict regulations on advertising signage preserve the pleasant historical ambiance, the climate is pleasantly cool (particularly for an arrival from the sticky Caribbean), and there is some excellent food to be had.

I particularly liked an officially nameless hole-in-the-wall French place that everyone seemed to call Hector’s. After discovering it I ended up there at least a couple of times a week. It seemed to pitch itself to the solo diner who doesn’t mind being a little flexible, offering a choice of several delicious meals each night, and a wine list of the ‘whatever happens to be open when you wander in’ variety. You practically eat in the kitchen, with the restaurant having maybe a half dozen bar seats overlooking the stove, plus three or four little tables. The very personable Hector Castro (a hyperactive Guatemalan-British guy) made the place: introducing guests to each other, pouring wine or hammering out a rough-and-ready cocktail, then rushing back to the stove just in time to prevent disaster engulfing everyone’s dinner. It was always entertaining and the food was great. The roast duck with roasted grapes was particularly good, as was the Beef Bourguignon with fried potatoes. Another good French place was Bistro Cinq, though the execution of their impressive cocktail list was rather hit-and-miss.

I forget the name of the best place I found for Guatemalan food, but it was located about three blocks north of the Merced. Rather than having a printed menu it was the type of place that simply prepared a variety of food and sold it in vaguely buffet style.

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I made a few forays out of Antigua: climbing Pacaya Volcano, taking a day trip on Lake Atitlan, spending a couple of days in Flores seeing the Mayan ruins at Tikal, and exploring Guatemala City. Really though I did not do much. I should probably have gone across to Mexico, but somehow the weeks quickly flew past and it was time to head to Cuba. Safety concerns also put a slight damper on activity. While the hills around the town looked inviting territory for hiking, locals told me tourists who hiked through the countryside alone ran a real risk of getting robbed. The Coca-Cola delivery vans carried shotgun wielding guards, so possibly the advice was sound. Or possibly Antigua was just full of paranoid refugees from Guatemala City. Who was really to know?

Pacaya Volcano was an experience. An easy day trip from Antigua, it is well worth doing if you ever pass that way. You take a short hike through some forest, sticking close to a guide who follows an overly complicated trail; fences with hidden gaps, false forks, and other traps are all used to prevent guide fee dodgers from ever making it out of the woods. Above the forest you cross a short band of scrub, and then find yourself scrambling through a Mordor-like landscape of scoria. The guides do not take tourists right up to the summit of the volcano. Instead you go to an area on the slope below the main crater where glowing lava bubbles out of the ground and seeps down the mountain. Vaguely aware of safety, the guides certainly don’t allow themselves to stress about it. They use sticks to scoop up molten lava and light cigarettes, flick chunks of glowing lava around, and invite tourists to crouch right over the bubbling lava spring for photos. A couple of my group held back, but most went up close. Strangely, what seemed from a distance to be a thin and treacherous layer of cooled rock above the molten lava was solid and safe to walk on. Naturally you had to take care not to slip into the cracks – some of them quite large. The fierce red glow made being careful where you put your feet surprisingly easy to get the knack of.

Unfortunately my photos from Pacaya somehow disappeared from my computer when I reorganized things, along with other photos from Guatemala, so you’ll just have to imagine me crouching intrepidly over the lava.

Lake Atitlan was worth a look. The lake is almost impossibly picturesque: a deep volcanic crater lake, surrounded by a ring of high volcanic peaks. It is the type of scenery that you can easily imagine being dreamed up, but picturing it appearing through a fluke of nature is harder. Unfortunately, the worst type of tourist development takes the gloss off the place. The largest lakeside town, Panajachel, is overdeveloped and full of tacky shops and aggressive touts. San Pedro La Laguna, a smaller settlement on the far side of the lake, was more relaxed and laid back, but lacked the charm of Antigua. A different type of place I guess, and probably a good choice if you were after cheap Spanish classes and low living costs. The locals were friendly, and taking the ferry across the lake I got a couple of chances to practice my bad Spanish with elderly Mayan women. Unfortunately my lakeside Mojito was not good, with a spirulina glow reminiscent of something dredged from the lake itself. The boat trip back across the lake was nearly spoiled by a group of Israelis upset at paying the tourist price for their tickets. The Israelis refused to board the boat, meaning we didn’t have the numbers to leave. The standoff dragged on until I was in danger of missing my bus back to Antigua, so I offered to pay the difference for them. They turned down my offer and reluctantly got on the boat anyway. I just made the bus.

Flores was a slightly boring and touristy little town, with dull architecture and disappointing restaurants. Everywhere catered exclusively to tourists, and the arrival of the rainy season meant that many of the better looking places were closed. The town was saved somewhat though by its unique location – on a man made island in the middle of a lake.

Unfortunately, the day I visited Tikal the park was preparing to host the president of Guatemala, who had decided the ruins would provide a dramatic backdrop from which to address the nation. The ruins were open, but things were rushed since tourists had to be out before El Presidente and his entourage arrived. Perhaps I should have gone back for a second look the next day, but I decided to hang around my hotel in Flores and get some work done, then take a wander around the town in the afternoon. Somehow, even though things at Tikal had been slightly rushed, I felt I’d seen everything.

Silly and unnecessary comparison time: personally I think Tikal is not in the same league as Angkor Wat. I am not sure quite why, but Angkor Wat demands that you really take your time. When visiting Cambodia I found a full dawn-to-dusk day at Angkor Wat was barely enough, and a couple of days after my initial visit I went out to explore some of the more distant temples. If I were to visit Cambodia again, I’d definitely take a second look at Angkor Wat too. My rushed tour of Tikal wasn’t quite enough, but it came pretty close. Part of the difference may be the more intricate artwork and decoration at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat also has more lifelike and less stylized depictions of humans and gods, and perhaps that brings the site to life.

All that aside, Tikal is still pretty amazing. The place has an inhuman scale about it, with enormous quantities of material having been moved around to construct the massive courtyards and pyramids. There is something mathematically perfect about the place, like a complex error-free equation; everywhere you look are perfectly proportioned slabs slotted precisely together. Some of the most obvious clues showing how humans interacted with this odd world they constructed for themselves are unsettling, namely the ball courts, where teams competed to avoid (or win?) the dubious honor of being sacrificed. The place feels uninviting. But then you wander into the living quarters of some long-forgotten noble, and you imagine how this stone box set on an elongated pyramid would once have been colorfully painted, with wooden doors, decorated wall panels, woven mats on the floor, and servants who went home told their families what they had seen and heard while working up on the stone mound, and suddenly it becomes almost comfortable. The views across the jungle from the top of the pyramids are amazing. Of course I guess that when the complex was inhabited most of the jungle would not have been there, so getting a sense of the place as it really was is hard. I wasn’t there in the early morning so unfortunately I didn’t see any of the famous wildlife.

Straight after visiting Tikal, and before leaving Guatemala, I spent a couple of days in Guatemala City. My ever-efficient New Zealand bank had decided put a block on my credit card after a purchase in Haiti aroused their suspicion. Helpfully, the only way to resolve the issue was for me to travel back to New Zealand, leaving cash my only option for purchasing tickets to Cuba. This left me having to do a fair bit of running around town, since finding an ATM machine that would accept my card was not easy. Incidentally, my wanderings took me along the perimeter of the airport a couple of times, where it was odd to see an enormous number of Guatemalans out watching planes land and take off. Some of them looked like families there to see off relatives. Others looked like they came to the airport to daydream about life in the United States. A few looked like plane nuts.

After sorting out my ticket I visited the national museum. The museum had a good display of Mayan artifacts, but sadly the famous jade hall was closed for renovations. I seem to have a knack for dropping in on museums in far-flung places only to find their prize exhibits are not on display.

My most memorable moment in Guatemala City came just after I arrived back there from Flores. The flight from Flores disembarked at a small private terminal across the runway from the main international terminal. The terminal was in an industrial area with no real transport links and my hotel (also not far from the airport) had sent a driver to pick me up. A young English backpacker with a prosthetic leg looked to be having trouble finding transport out of the place so I asked if he wanted to be dropped off somewhere. He was headed for the main terminal so hopped in my car and off we went. It was evening rush hour though, and before long we were gridlocked in traffic, our 15 year old driver growing ever more impatient. Frustration was building, and only grew with the wailing of an ambulance siren, annoyingly close, and moving annoyingly slowly. Just as the ambulance weaved alongside, our driver realized we had struck lucky, hit the accelerator, and tucked us into the ambulance’s wake. It was a brilliant maneuver, and saw us speeding (relatively speaking) through the gridlock, the three of us in hysterics, the prosthetic-legged backpacker slapping the roof in celebration.

From my guesthouse on Route Delmas I took a tap-tap down the hill to Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines. A tap-tap is a shared bus built by taking a truck, fitting seats along the side walls, and then brightly painting the thing. Simple religious slogans along the lines of ‘Jesus is my Driver’ are the most common decoration, though some are adorned with detailed scenes from the Bible, or even (and I guess no less strangely) from blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park. The name tap-tap supposedly comes from the fact that you tap the metal side panels of the truck with a coin to let the driver know when you want to get off. At Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines I changed to another tap-tap heading south, getting off at Rue Pavee. The atmosphere on the street was a little different to Cap-Haitien. Nobody was too surprised to see a white foreigner. People left me alone.

Route Delmas, linking downtown Port-au-Prince with the (supposedly) exclusive suburb of Petionville, is a fairly nice road. Although a little potholed, it is nice and wide, and lined by reasonable looking houses, battered but functional commercial complexes, and so on. On Blvd Jean-Jacques Dessalines things deteriorated significantly. The road narrowed, everything became indescribably filthy, the number of people increased enormously, and in places traffic slowed to a crawl as it negotiated the throngs of pedestrians. The scene was one of lively squalor, spiked with a little desperation, and I was happy to be driving through it all rather than walking. The less crowded stretches of road provided no relief, the thinning crowds just making it easier to see how dilapidated the buildings were, and how the refuse in the street included objects like dead dogs, piles of rotting food, shit, and discarded water bags. Haitian street vendors sell water in little plastic bags, and the discarded bags fill the streets, eventually becoming coated with oily black slime and forming a slippery carpet.

At Rue Pavee I began to walk, heading east towards the area containing the central square, Cathedral du Notre Dame, museum, art gallery, and so on. The atmosphere was rough, but most people were occupied going about their business. There seemed to be fewer people loitering aimlessly than in Cap-Haitien. The shops, such as they were, were interesting. Many businesses took the form of simple roadside stalls, selling everything from schoolbooks to wine. It was a little bit like a permanent night-market, though there was not much street food on offer.  Haiti definitely suffers from a lack of places to eat out.

First I dropped by the Cathedral du Notre Dame, which proved to be an odd experience. A small crowd was gathered in the street outside the cathedral. The crowd was worshiping enthusiastically, led by a charismatic preacher. The cathedral was bolted shut, with the gates to the outside courtyard also locked, and so their prayers were directed at the locked gate. Around the perimeter of the cathedral were a sprinkling of people besides this main crowd, kneeling facing the locked cathedral and silently praying. I found an unlocked side entrance and walked in, expecting to be turned back. Strangely, since I was a tourist and there to poke around rather than worship I seemed to be welcome. It was odd. What is the point of a cathedral that locks its doors to the devout? Or perhaps it was precisely their enthusiasm that made the worshipers outside unwelcome? They did seem to be praying like members of some charismatic church rather than Catholics.

Nearby the Cathedral were some dilapidated buildings that looked like they would have once been very luxurious but were now home to squatters.

From the Cathedral I headed to the central square. There I checked out the statue of a slave blowing a conch to launch the rebellion against the French, the Presidential Palace, and the National Museum. The statue was probably the best of the three, being nicely designed and appropriately symbolic.

The Presidential Palace was the usual thing, a sort of White House clone. Of course you could not go inside or get anywhere near. The National Museum contained very little, and since the display was in French I could not really read it. The museum comprised a single semi-circular hall, and I guess at least the building was architecturally interesting. There was a small display on slavery, with some manacles and other implements, then a display on the war of liberation from France, with a couple of items such as swords of famous commanders and so on, and finally chronologies of Haitian presidents and of the changes in the Haitian flag. I like museums but this one was rather missable. Being able to read French would help, but even then it would be a half-hour-and-you’re-done type of museum. The most interesting thing about the place was running into another tourist, a Belgian guy with an overseas-Haitian girlfriend. We had a little chat about tourist stuff and it turned out that their car had been jacked the previous week while they were out driving at night. Meet fellow tourists who have become crime statistics in a dull museum – hardly an advertisement for Haiti is it?

I wandered across to the other side of the square to see the art gallery. On my way across the square some guys got in my face and hassled me for cash. I pretended not to speak English, ignored them, and reached the art gallery without incident. The Lonely Planet guidebook (I downloaded the Haiti chapter of their Caribbean guide) gave the gallery a glowing review but I found it disappointing. I think I was expecting colorful naive art of the sort that decorates the Barbancourt 15 year old rum box. Alas there was nothing of that sort to be found. The gallery was very small, little more than a room, and mostly contained odd pictures of people and funerals incorporating the occasional voodoo motif. With no background knowledge it was difficult to appreciate, and the sparse French explanations were of no use to me. If you knew the artists and understood the voodoo symbolism perhaps it would be more interesting, but I found no reason to linger.

Leaving the gallery, I went into a little supermarket to browse the shelves. The supermarket was better stocked than anything in Cap-Haitien. The selection of spirits was interesting in that they had a couple of Lebanese arracks, presumably to cater to Haiti’s (supposedly) significant Syrian community. Coming out of the supermarket I ran into more hassles from young local guys. This group decided I wanted to part with some of my possessions and half a dozen of them aggressively pressed around me making demands. “Do you want to give us something? Your shoes! Give us your shoes man!” I once again pretended not to speak English and walked away without incident. The scene was made all the more pathetic by the miserable state of my shoes. I had deliberately gone out wearing a very scruffy old pair of running shoes from an unknown Chinese manufacturer, shoes I had got for free after participating in a half-marathon in Shanghai.

Endless demands for your possessions can be one of the most tiresome aspects of Haiti.  Two particularly bad examples follow:

Early one evening I was taking photos from the rooftop terrace of my guesthouse in Port-au-Prince when a group of young guys from the house across the road waved at me to come down. I had no idea what they wanted but they seemed friendly enough, and if they turned out to be unfriendly I figured I had the pair of shotgun wielding guards from my guesthouse providing cover.  I climbed down from the terrace and popped across the road to say hello.  The greeted me cheerfully, ignored me for a moment as they consulted amongst themselves, then demanded my camera.  Efforts to be friendly to the locals suddenly seemed scarcely worth the bother.  Unlike the guys outside the supermarket this group were not threatening, it was simply that their interest in me did not extend beyond attempting to acquire my possessions. These were guys living in a nice house in a reasonable area too.  I made an excuse and went back to the guesthouse.

The most irritating example of this behavior occurred at the airport when I was trying to leave.  As I arrived at the terminal one of the security guys wrestled my bag from me as I was lifting it out of the back of the truck, scrapping my hand against the truck edge.  The cut was only superficial, but somehow it began dripping blood all over the airport floor.  The guy who had cut my hand open with his unrequested help then asked for a tip, calling his friends over for support when I told him to get lost.  After getting rid of the security guys and finding my check-in queue I laid my luggage on the floor and opened it up, digging around for a plaster and some rum to stop the bleeding and clean the wound.  As I did this a miniature mob of airport porters and other assorted vagrants clustered round hopefully inquiring about which of my possessions I had decided to part with.  Hassling tourists for their gear as they clean up their  bleeding hand on an airport floor is not a good look.

But returning to downtown Port-au-Prince, while the place had a unique atmosphere and was interesting to stroll around, the sights had essentially been crap.  It was time to head to the Hotel Oloffson. From the square I walked south along Rue Capois, into the area where Port-au-Prince’s famous ‘gingerbread’ style houses can be found. One or two reasonable specimens of ‘gingerbread houses’ were on my route, and if you know exactly where to go there are no doubt a few better ones around. The houses were worth a look I guess, but only for a minute or two.

I got to the Hotel Oloffson around lunchtime. There was a light sprinkling of people on the verandah, most of them looking like NGO workers. I took a seat at the bar, which I had entirely to myself.

The evening might have been a more atmospheric time to visit, but daylight was better for appreciating the architecture of the building and surrounding gardens. Port-au-Prince is also sketchy enough that you should really avoid being out at night, and if you do go out you need to hire a car and driver to get around. There seem to be no regular taxis in the city and the tap-taps stop running after dark. The gardens of the hotel were filled with voodoo statues, some reminiscent of the Barbancourt logo.

I asked for a Ti-punch and got a rum sour. It was nicely made though, and Barbancourt 5 Star was the house mixing rum. I asked the barman if there was any difference between the drink he had just made and the rum sour listed in the menu. He said there was, so next I tried the Hotel Oloffson rum sour which turned out to be excellent. The standard way of making rum sours in Haiti seems to be to shake Barbancourt, freshly squeezed lime juice and sugar over ice, then serve, either strained or on ice, in a rocks glass with a sugared rim. The Hotel Oloffson rum sour differed in that a capfull or so of sweet vermouth went into the shaker. This may be a standard rum sour variation, but I don’t recall coming across it before. I guess the Floridita Daiquiri (with its sweet vermouth and créme de cacao) is a similar idea. In any case, the sweet vermouth really worked. The herbal flavors added complexity to the standard rum sour recipe, and the wineyness complemented the Barbancourt nicely. Barbancourt is a tricky rum to mix with but it suited this drink.

The bar served some nice food too. I had some kind of French style fish and tomato dish with beans and rice. The portion was smallish but the quality was great.

The lunch crowd disappeared and the bar staff began preparing for the evening. I was surprised to see them squeezing their own passion fruit juice, as well as making fruit purees from Spanish lime (kenep) and something the barmaid called ‘Haitian cherry’ (to me it looked and tasted like a haw). With jugs of freshly squeezed passion fruit juice right in front of me I had to try a Barbancourt 5 Star with passion fruit juice. It was pretty good, although the intensely flavored juice overpowered the rum a little.

After finishing in the bar I took a leisurely wander around the hotel, swimming pool, and garden. The door of each room had a sign on it, indicating the names of famous persons who had, presumably, stayed in that room at some time. Given that every single room had signs listing precisely two famous persons I had to wonder a little about the accuracy. No doubt these people all stayed at the hotel, but perhaps not in the rooms to which their names are attached. I never saw inside any of the rooms.

The hotel itself was falling apart a little. From a distance it remained an impressive ‘gingerbread’ style house, but up close you could find plenty of missing railings, window panes, and so on. There had also been recent renovations on certain guestrooms using cheap joinery that did not match the original. The windows were no doubt better sealed than before, but aesthetically it was disappointing. However, overall the hotel remains hugely atmospheric, and happily also has a great bar.

I headed back to my guesthouse before it got too late, wandering back across the square and towards Blvd Jean-Jacques Dessalines. On my way back up Blvd Jean-Jacques Dessalines I dropped by the Marche de Fer, Port-au-Prince’s traditional old market. There was more merchandise on offer than I had seen up in Cap-Haitien. The vibe was less friendly though. A group of young guys wanted to know what I was doing in the market if I was not buying anything. Was I just here to look? They felt looking around was offensive and I should probably leave. Various Haitians had previously told me that they disliked foreigners coming to Haiti ‘just to look’. For as long as that attitude lasts I guess Haiti will see few tourists.

I got slightly annoyed with this particular bunch of guys and showed them a bottle of Barbancourt 15 year old rum that I had bought earlier in the day, telling them I had just bought it (i.e. in the market). Their tone became more friendly, and we ended up having a bit of a laugh. But really, it doesn’t need to be this way. Why do many Haitians walk around being unpleasant to visitors for no good reason?

After saying good bye to the welcoming market guys I made it back to my hotel without incident, thus ending my visit to downtown Port-au-Prince.  Unique as the place was I did not really think it merited a second look.

Chilean UN soldiers attend mass

Visiting the Citadelle and Sans Souci

On my first full day in Cap-Haitien I took a bus to the town of Milo, located a little over an hour away, to see the famous Citadel and the palace of San Souci. The walk to the bus station took me through the center of Cap-Haitien. There were very few cars on the streets and almost no commercial activity. I was not sure how much the absence of cars was due to the fuel crisis and how much was the normal state of affairs. Although Cap-Haitien is Haiti’s second largest city it seemed a very sleepy little place – its commercial center remarkable for the absence of commerce. One of the main avenues was virtually blocked by a huge mound of smelly rubbish. Presumably this got cleared away on a semi-regular basis, but it seemed an odd way to use a main street, and was obviously unfortunate for those living nearby.

The bus station was near a large market, located across a small river just beyond the south end of the town center. Calling the place a bus station is generous, since it was really just a muddy, rubbish-strewn field that waiting busses shared with vendors of clothes, bags, and so on. I asked for the bus to Milo and was soon on the right bus and heading out of town. An old Haitian man sat beside me and we chatted a little in Spanish. Many people in Cap-Haitian speak some Spanish, far more so than in Port-au-Prince. The man beside me said he had learned it when he was a farmer working land near the border with the Dominican Republic. He had several relatives working in the Dominican republic.

The road to Milo was muddy and full of pot holes, but the fine and dry weather meant there were no dramas in getting there. Once again the bus was continuously passing people. Haiti is far more densely populated than the neighboring Dominican Republic. At Milo the bus stopped right outside the entrance to Sans Souci.

I bought a ticket, hired a guide, and started walking up the mountain. The guide tried to pull the typical stunt of English speaking mountain guides, negotiating a price for his services, then telling me that somebody else (unable to speak English) would be doing the actual guiding. I made him do the hike himself (I had only hired him because he was easy to communicate with) and to his credit he never complained about the long uphill slog.

San Souci was located immediately inside the main gate. To be honest there was not too much to see. Supposedly the complex once looked like Versailles, but an earthquake in the 19th Century left it in ruins. One or two classical statues sat among the ruined walls and lent the place a bit of atmosphere.

From Sans Souci we headed up a mountain path. It turned out to be a very long, hot and tiring hike. No tourists were around, and the only people we met were locals who lived on the mountain. You cannot actually see the Citadel from Sans Souci since a mountain ridge blocks the way.  The hike takes you across that ridge and then up to the Citadel itself. The distance is something like 7 km, almost all of it uphill.

It took a long time to get there, but the Citadel was rewarding. The Citadel is a simply huge castle with a dramatic mountain-top location, surrounded by tropical forest, mountains, and commanding views over the whole of northern Haiti. The walls are massively thick, and still bristling with dozens of cannons – many of them captured from the French. There is no wonder the place was never attacked, though I wondered about the logic of situating such a massive fortress in such an impregnable location. In fact the dozens of canons hauled up here had only ever been able to fire into the jungle. The coast, from which any threat would presumably have come, was surely well out of range. The major roads also seemed to be kilometers away and were probably difficult to fire on. Even San Souci itself, which the fortress was supposedly built to protect, was out of line of sight of the fortress’s batteries. Impressive as the place was, it had the air of a massive folly.

There was a museum inside the fortress containing a few personal items of King Christophe, the fort’s builder. The museum was locked though, with its staff gathered outside playing cards. Apparently the door could be unlocked for US$10, though my guide was evasive about whether this was because a ticket cost US$10 or because the staff were supplementing their salaries by extorting money from visitors. I decided not to bother with it.

We headed back down the hill, the walk down being far easier than the walk up had been. On the way down the guide talked incessantly about how the fee I had paid him earlier in fact went entirely to the park, and therefore a tip would be his only chance of making money on the day’s activities. He also said my decision to walk up rather than hire horses for the pair of us meant I would have missed the last bus back to Cap-Haitien, making it necessary to organize a motorcycle taxi.

Back in Milo he started talking with moto-taxi drivers, named an outrageous sum, and asked me to give the money to him rather than the driver. I thanked him and wandered off through the little town to look for a bus. He followed me, still negotiating with various moto-taxi drivers. Of course there were buses back to Cap-Haitien, though they waited at the other end of town rather than immediately outside San Souci. The guide ran ahead of me to the bus, talked with the driver, then came back saying this was the last bus to Cap-Haitien for the day, but it was full up and I could sit with the driver in the cab for roughly 20 times the fare I had paid to get from Cap-Haitien to Milo – the money to be paid to him rather than the driver. I went to talk with the driver myself.  Surprisingly the driver spoke fluent English, having worked in the United States for years, and I got a ride back for the standard fare.  It was the usual story of the people you hire to make your life easier doing their best to scam you.

Haiti has very cool painted wall advertisements

Some Racist Unpleasantness

Driving back into Cap-Haitien the bus was stopped by Haitian police wanting to know what I was doing on board. They thought the driver must have made an unscheduled run to the Dominican border to pick me up. I do not think it was an attempt to shake the driver down or anything since they seemed very jovial and waved him on his way as soon as he explained. I guess not many tourists ride the local buses.

When was the last time you felt tout tan?

From the bus station I took a different route back to the hotel, this time wandering past the busy market. I did not go into the market itself but even the street outside was crowded with thongs of people. I walked through the crowds, assuming there would be a second bridge somewhere north of the one I had used earlier. After a few blocks the crowds began to thin, and as I walked through an intersection I could see that on both sides the water was getting closer and I was on a tapering peninsula. I had not yet passed a bridge and I started thinking about retracing my steps. I stopped for a moment, wondering if I should change direction and walk a block to the edge of the water to check for a bridge.

Right around that time a young Haitian guy walked up behind me and expelled a large glob of snot onto my little backpack. Everybody in the street laughed, many of them pointing, and some of the children curled up into little balls of mirth. The Haitian guy raised a fist in a sort of celebratory gesture and turned back towards the crowd. Obviously what had just happened was unpleasant, but somehow it did not bother me too much. Getting angry was not going to be productive. The crowd seemed to be against me, and my primitive attempts at communication were not going to change that. Anyway, I was looking for a bridge.

I don’t think I showed any reaction to what had just happened. I just started walking again, this time towards the water. The water was only a few steps away, and once at the water’s edge I could see that there was no bridge other than the one I had used earlier in the day. I was going to have to walk back the way I had come. Given the unfriendly nature of the crowd that was not such an attractive proposition, but I doubted much would happen beyond more abuse and sniggers, and possibly not even that. Then I noticed a boatman waving to me down below. He said he could take me across for some nominal sum. The water was dismal, stinking of sewerage and covered in floating rubbish. The boatman’s craft was equally miserable, flooded with water and apparently barely managing to stay afloat. I clambered down into the rickety boat, and with a few strokes of the oars I was on the other side of the water.

Though brief, crossing the dirty little river was oddly cleansing. Whatever anger I had felt at what had just happened was replaced by indifference. Haiti was not my country, I had no particular desire to fit in or be accepted there. If Haitians wanted to treat white tourists with racist contempt they were welcome to do so. Obviously on one level they found it amusing to behave like this, but ultimately it seemed another way of making their home miserable, and surely the place had enough misery already without creating more. In any case, they were stuck here whereas I would be gone in a few days, so what did I care about how they treated foreigners? It was reminiscent of the pile of rubbish blocking the main road I had seen earlier, undesirable and surely unnecessary, but not my problem. That sounds mildly spiteful, but also seemed to be the truth of the matter.

I wandered back to the hotel.

Realistic toilet art, so much better than silhouettes, top hats, etc.

Kicking around Cap Haitien

Much of the rest of the week was spent lounging around the hotel waiting for the power to come on, but I also found plenty of time for wandering around the town.

I had wanted to find the house where Antoine Peychaud lived before emigrating to New Orleans and inventing his famous bitters. However, since nobody knew anything about the Peychauds I had no luck with this. Who knows? Maybe one of the attractive old houses I photographed is the house?

One of the most interesting places in Cap-Haitien is the central market. The market is housed in a large building made of decorated iron. Walking into the attractive iron building, there is an odd contrast between the bustling thongs of people and the scarcity of merchandise. Many vendors sell literally a single product, perhaps spaghetti, of a single brand, and in a single packet size. Moreover, they often appear to have only a dozen or so packets on offer. Probably half or more of the meat vendors did not even sell meat as such, instead being specialized vendors of goat hooves or goat skins (given that the skins were roughly chopped rather than whole I assume they were being sold as food). There was none of the opulence of Asian markets, where you wander past huge mounds of sharks fin, ginseng, and other luxuries. Some of the best stocked stalls were those selling lurid colored bottles of clairins, medicines, and other potions, all surely of dubious quality. The squalor was incredible. The meat was literally black with flies, and as they periodically swarmed up and buzzed around it was natural to worry that you would swallow one if you opened your mouth. The seafood was surely a massive health hazard, being heaped into little piles (each one a unit of measurement), then placed on dusty ground mats where it attracted the attention of far more flies than people. There was none of the rudimentary refrigeration you see in markets in tropical parts of Asia, where seafood is often displayed on beds of ice, and automatic fly whisks twirl over the meat.

Another spot worth visiting is the northernmost of the string of forts guarding the harbor. The fort is only accessible at low tide, and it took me two attempts to reach it. It was the largest of the forts, and one of the ruined buildings (possibly the chapel) appeared to still be being used for religious purposes. There were burn marks on the floor from bonfires, designs had been painted on the walls, and a sort of makeshift alter had been set up. I guessed it was used for voodoo ceremonies of some sort. The place was empty except for goats and a fisherman or two.

Originally I had planned to try and visit the famous Island of Tortuga. It is a fair distance from Cap Haitien though, and so far as I know there is really nothing to see there. Given all the problems Haiti was having I ditched the idea. Going by road would have taken at least a couple of days and been a little dangerous, and going by air was going to be very expensive – if possible given the shortage of fuel.

I didn’t make it to Tortuga, but surrender that booty anyhow!

General observations about Haiti

One annoying thing about Haiti is people’s sensitivity to photography. Taking my camera out was sometimes enough to practically cause the street to freeze. People would stop in their tracks to avoid being in shot, and maybe shout out to people in shot to get out of the way. Young guys would come up and tell me to put my camera away, asking me what I was doing in Haiti anyway. On the way back from the beach with the missionary film crew an incident occurred when one of their party took an impromptu snap of a guy on a motorbike with Cap-Haitien in the background. The guy and his several friends jumped off their bikes and went ballistic. The Haitian interpreter/guide who was accompanying the film crew may have done well to avert violence. Because of this I ended up being very restrained with the camera, and avoided taking photos in which people were anywhere near the foreground.

If you are white then having people shout ‘blanc’ at you all the time will quickly get old. Obviously I was reminded of the cries of ‘laowai’ that westerners in China have to deal with. I asked Haitians whether the constant use of ‘blanc’ was considered rude, and they said it basically depends. Obviously you cannot judge these things well without speaking the language and understanding the culture. However, if you ever feel offended by the way somebody addresses you using this dubious tag there is a fair chance your feelings are not unreasonable.

Unemployment in Haiti is massive, but Haitians with jobs really try hard. The staff in the hotels and guesthouses I visited were all exceptionally pleasant and helpful. I felt there was a noticeable contrast with the Dominican Republic, where attitudes can often be indifferent or lethargic. Speaking with staff it was alarming how many claimed to hate their job yet be very lucky to have it. Changing jobs seemed a remote possibility for most people I spoke to.

Haitians also tend to be very polite and a little formal. Even beggars and vendors of tourist souvenirs queue up and patiently wait their turn to harass you, saying something like “Hello, my name is Ghislaine. I sell boxes. After Mr. Agwe has finished talking with you, you speak to me, OK?” In China they just go ahead and push their box in your face, shouting something like “Good box!” Mind you, in China the tourist’s ordeal, while less pleasant, is over relatively quickly. In Haiti you can end up getting detained for ages if you are not careful. I felt sorry for the souvenir vendors though. During my stay in Haiti I met only one other tourist, so the life of a souvenir vendor was surely not easy.

Money in Haiti is peculiar. The stuff is so filthy that it really gives you a fright. Occasionally you get a crisp, new note, but mostly you fumble around with damp wads of blackened bills, often worn so thin it takes the hand of a surgeon to keep them in one piece during handling. The really odd thing though is how people talk about sums of money. The official currency is called the Gourde, and so far as I know it has always been called this. However, Haitians typically talk in ‘Haitian Dollars’, where a Haitian dollar is equivalent to five Gourde. I was told this practice dates back to a time when five Gourde was roughly equivalent to one US Dollar. It becomes very confusing since you negotiate a price verbally, then hand over bills totaling a completely different sum. Asking Haitians to simplify things by just telling you the price in gourde tends to be counterproductive. They are liable to angrily demand that you pay Haitian dollars, saying they do not want to be paid in gourde, only to happily smile as you hand over a wad of gourde.

Security and Cap Haitien at Night

There is no street lighting in Cap Haitien, so if you venture out at night you have to take real care not to fall into one of the many holes in the road. Of course there is nowhere much to go at night. The main options are hotel bars and restaurants. The Hotel Roi Christophe has a nice little bar that sometimes gets quite busy, and they have plans to set up a larger garden bar beside the hotel. Hotel Mt. Joli has a terrace bar and restaurant with great views. There are also a couple of local restaurants set beside the harbor. One of these restaurants seems to be dying a quiet death, and I walked in to find no customers and only one dish available. The other one (called something like Kaya) has a nice outdoors seating area, and serves good Haitian food to a mix of Haitians and foreigners. Despite the lack of entertainment options the streets have a fair number of people in them. The UN step up their patrols at night time and also put checkpoints on some of the larger intersections.

I went out walking at night three times during my stay. The first time I went out with my laptop looking for somewhere to send an urgent e-mail. I did not run into any problems, but the fact I was given a lift home by the manageress of the hotel wound up in I visited suggested my adventure had not been a good idea. Another time I went out for dinner alone because I was bored with the hotel food. The cries of ‘blanc’ that accompanied me wherever I went took on a slightly astonished edge at nighttime, with people not realizing I was white until I passed them. Another night I went out for dinner with the missionary film crew, and walking around in a group we seemed perfectly safe.

The night I went out with the film crew there was a little drama as we got back to the hotel and realized two of our group had somehow not made it. We did not know they had stopped to check out the voodoo drummers in one of the alleyways. Everybody decided to mount a search. On account of it being late it was decided that we should dispose of valuables like wallets and cameras before going back into the streets, and so a large pile of booty was entrusted to one of our party, who was to wait back at the hotel. For some odd reason, this individual decided to wait on the street outside the hotel rather than in the hotel. Therefore, after a successful search and rescue operation, we returned to find a lone white guy standing nervously in the dark street, amazingly still in possession of our valuables, and very relieved to see us. Why he did not wait for us inside the hotel I have no idea.

In any case, the main danger in wandering around Cap-Haitien at night is undoubtedly falling down a hole and breaking a leg. I imagine getting mugged or even kidnapped is also a possibility, but I was told Cap Haitien was much safer in this respect than Port-au-Prince.

Security can’t be too bad if a child can sit on the street with a laptop to sneakily use the hotel wireless Internet

Jacques, the triads, and failed voodoo

I made some efforts to see a voodoo ceremony. Basically I did not manage it, though I did briefly drop past a voodoo drum circle happening in an alleyway close to the hotel. There was not much to see there beyond a bunch of guys sitting around and beating out rhythms. Maybe it livened up later on.

My efforts to see a full-scale voodoo ceremony got derailed partly by an elderly Quebecan called Jacques. A time leach who demanded perpetual babysitting, and with an appearance unfortunately close to a bagman, Jacques was nevertheless quite interesting. He arrived at the Hotel Roi Christophe the day after I did, having traveled to Cap-Haitien through Gonaive, taking three days to make a trip that was previously a half day drive. In talking about his trip he confirmed what everyone else was saying, namely that the situation in Gonaives was far worse than reported in the media.

Jacques had previously lived in Haiti for many years, and had just returned with a plan to establish an orphanage. He wanted to live out his last years ‘surrounded by children’. Since he had no money to fund this he planned to import and sell simple solar-powered cookers (low-tech models that heat food simply by reflecting and concentrating the rays of the sun). The plan sounded like it had a hole or two, and even if it worked I wondered what would happen to his orphans after he died. Haiti is full of elderly men running private orphanages. I met two more such guys in Port-au-Prince, both of whom complained that the recent food price inflation had left them barely able to keep feeding their charges.

In any case, with an interest in religion and many years spent living in Haiti, Jacques seemed to know a lot about voodoo. Moreover, after spending years away he said he was also interested in seeing a ceremony. He told me he would make inquiries about where a voodoo ceremony might be held. Progress was slow though, and it gradually became apparent that his real interest in me stemmed from his belief that I could help him find a factory in China to produce his solar cookers cheaply. Maybe I was also an excuse for him to hang around the hotel without embarrassment. He left the hotel for cheaper lodgings after a day or two, but kept coming back to hang around and chat, politely refusing any service besides endless free glasses of water, and constantly reminding the hotel staff that he would repay their kindness by including them in his will.

Jacque’s stories about himself became increasingly bizarre. As he started spinning tales of fleeing Quebec because some unspecified triad realized he ‘knew too much’ (he said he had previously been a journalist and still wrote the occasional story), I began to suspect his professed knowledge of voodoo was also imaginary. When I questioned him about the details of his triad story he was unsure what country the triad came from, much less which triad it was. Far from knowing too much, Jacque seemed rather clueless. The ‘attempt on his life’ happened while disembarking from a bus. He was shoved to the kerb by a young Asian guy he thought he recognized as a member of a triad he had unearthed in his neighborhood. It sounded like he had encountered a normal young Chinese guy in a hurry; triads are far more polite.

Jacques twice made appointments to meet up so that we could head out to Milo to make inquiries regarding voodoo. The first appointment was canceled when he made other plans. He turned up for the second appointment but seemed in no hurry to actually leave the hotel, and after dawdling until it was getting too late he announced that he had organized a ‘business meeting’ with somebody who knew about the solar cookers. The business meeting was to be held in the hotel at some unspecified time that afternoon – this lack of any organization apparently being the ‘Haitian way’. Since the time was unspecified I politely suggested that maybe I would quickly head up to the last fort on the headland north of town (the tide being out I would be able to get there), and with luck be back in time for his meeting. Jacques threw a fit when I apologized and took my leave. He swore that my refusal to respect the ‘Haitian way’ would prevent me from ‘succeeding in Haiti’, and then he stormed out of the hotel. Given that Jacques found somewhere else to be even faster than I did, the business meeting was presumably an imaginary one.

So that was the end of Jacques. Somebody else, not realizing we were already acquainted, happened to introduce Jacques to me a couple of days later. Jacques was still too angry to speak with me, demanding I apologize for insulting him, and reminding me that I was missing out on millions of dollars now he had decided to exclude me from his solar cookers scheme.

The Village People and Gonaive

I spent some time hanging around with a missionary film crew, in Haiti to film a documentary on a foreign funded school. I dubbed them the Village People, as mentioned earlier. They were an odd group, and very nearly set off to Gonaive to film the situation there for inclusion in their documentary. Their enthusiasm was admirable, but watching them plan their expedition over dinner was excruciating.

The plan was to hire a tap-tap, pack “a couple of bags of rice” to divvy up among the thousands of starving and homeless people they hoped to encounter, then head into the disaster area to gather footage. It was to be a simple day trip, with their long-suffering Haitian translator providing security, and hopefully negotiating some sort of ‘food for footage’ arrangement with the disaster victims. There were creative jokes about flood victims. Finishing their food, one of the Village People thoughtfully offered what was left on their plate to the translator. He politely declined. I cringed. Mostly the translator sat and listened, quietly agreeing to everything that was proposed, and occasionally interrupting to clarify minor operational details – such as the location of Gonaive. I had a feeling that if they did not figure out for themselves that the plan was madness he was simply not going to show up for work in the morning.

In the end I interrupted to say that going to Gonaive purely to film, carrying next to nothing in the way of relief supplies, and expecting a single unarmed Haitian to protect them, was pure craziness and very unfair to the translator. The only way to go to Gonaive safely would be to ask the UN for permission to piggy-back on an existing convoy, and even if that could be arranged it would not be a day trip. Perhaps they already realized their plan was silly and were waiting for somebody to tell them so, for after I spoke and the translator enthusiastically agreed, the whole Gonaive plan was almost instantaneously forgotten.

New Zealand in Cap-Haitien

The day before I left Cap-Haitien the Alabaman sexologist told me she had met a New Zealander in the street, a long term resident of Cap-Haitien who had previously been a nurse and was now working with one of the churches as a sort of missionary. The Alabaman sexologist had mentioned to her that another New Zealander was staying in her hotel, and so I was invited to visit the New Zealand missionary before leaving town. Perhaps it was more of an instruction than an invitation.  Supposedly I was the first New Zealander to visit Cap-Haitien in 30 years, and therefore my presence was requested rather urgently. The first New Zealander to visit Cap-Haitien in 30 years part does not sound quite plausible, but when I like the sound of something I see no reason not to repeat it.

Just before leaving for the airport, I tracked the New Zealand missionary down at her church. It turned out she was not just from New Zealand, but from Omaru, my father’s home town. Although things were a little rushed, the missionary and I had an interesting conversation. She had originally come to Haiti to work as a nurse, and had stayed on as a missionary. Before coming to Haiti she had worked in Vietnam, and was among the last to leave Saigon as it fell to the communists. After 30 years in Haiti, she obviously knew more about the place than most foreigners. She spoke fluent Creole, still with a strong New Zealand accent.

I asked her a bit about voodoo, which she very much equated with evil. One of the special things about Haiti is that you can have conversations containing sentences like “The forces of Satanism are very strong in this country” and take it all very seriously. I don’t know why, but that is just the way it is.

She saw most voodoo as being focused on the negative. I was interested in what voodoo was really about. Obviously the black magic receives all of the attention, but I thought maybe there was a larger but overlooked positive aspect to the whole thing. An analogous example could be something like Fengshui, which is mostly invoked to improve people’s lives, and almost universally perceived as positive, yet still occasionally employed for malicious purposes. Incidentally, every Haitian who I questioned about voodoo maintained that it was devil worship and they did not believe in it. Regardless of what exactly is going on (e.g. Haitians who claim not to practice voodoo could be lying), there seems to be an amazing consistency in voiced opinions of voodoo. The New Zealand missionary saw the influential voodoo priests as obstructing efforts by churches to improve conditions in Haiti, mostly because they saw the churches as threatening their own influence. She also said there was no organized charity or development work being done by voodoo practitioners, perhaps partly because the religion is not very organized.  I found that interesting, because most religions seem to get involved in charity on some level, and if voodoo leaders have no involvement in charity it seems peculiar.

There was less time to talk than I would have liked. As I left for the airport, she warned me not to walk around Port-au-Prince by myself, but instead to hire a reliable car and driver for the day and see the sights that way. She said that even after living in Haiti for 30 years she would never wander around Port-au-Prince without organized transportation and a local guide for protection. In the end I walked around by myself without incident, but her advice was probably sound.

An ominous darkness descends on Port-au-Prince

Deciding to visit Haiti

When I picked the Dominican Republic for a holiday I figured one of the benefits would be hopping across the border to Haiti, making it a sort of two-for-one Caribbean travel destination.  Haiti has always interested me.  Haiti was the setting for “The Comedians”, one of my favorite novels by Graham Greene, one of my favorite writers.  Haiti is the only nation to have been formed through a slave rebellion.  The slaves quite reasonably turned the call of liberté, equalité, fraternité against their French masters.  In a typical example of hypocrisy it was years before the United States, itself founded on an anti-colonial rebellion, extended diplomatic recognition to Haiti.  Haiti is also home to the Isla de Tortuga, once the most notorious pirate nest in the Caribbean.  Then you have the imposing Citadelle, quite possibly the ultimate Caribbean fortress.  Add a sprinkling of voodoo and the mix is becoming most impressive.  To that impressive mix you can start adding drinks-related attractions, such as Haiti being the home of Barbancourt rum, the bitter oranges used to produce Grand Marnier, and the famous bar at the Hotel Oloffson – once known as the Greenwich Village of the Caribbean.  New Orleans’ Peychaud’s Bitters also traces its roots to Haiti, with Antoine Peychaud having been born in Cap-Haitien. There are even vague rumors of an ancestor of mine having been born in Haiti.  In other words, plenty of reasons to visit.

The Citadelle near Cap-Haitien

The longer I stayed in the Dominican Republic though, the more apprehensive I became about visiting Haiti.  Online information on travel to Haiti is scarce, but I had assumed I would learn everything I needed to know from making inquiries in the Dominican Republic.  What I had not banked on was that, once you exclude illegal Haitian immigrants, nobody in the Dominican Republic has actually been to Haiti.  Other than a truck driver whose family was originally Haitian, I never met a Dominican who had been further than the Haitian border.  No foreign residents of the Dominican Republic had been to Haiti either, the only exception being an ancient American with vague recollections of visiting in 1958, “back when it was still safe”.  Most people were adamant that it was too dangerous to travel to Haiti, talking about violence, kidnapping of tourists and so on.  A guesthouse owner in Sosua hinted darkly at a guest having gone to Haiti and never been seen again.  I had to wonder if it was not normal for a guest to leave a hotel and never be seen again.  The story was told so as to suggest the involvement of highly malevolent forces though, so I settled for gripping the arm rest of my chair, donning an expression of horror, and listening wordlessly.  The Haitian illegals residing in the Dominican Republic were no more reassuring.  A teenage prostitute who had shooed away the shoeshine boy in a Sosua bar so she could shine my shoes herself hissed in bad Spanish that I would die if I went to Haiti.  She talked of having seen her neighbors shot during the violence a few years before.  There was not much arguing with that.  Nobody had anything comforting or useful to say.

The first reassuring voice came from the owner of Hospederia 24, the Italian restaurant I regularly ate at in Sosua.  He had visited several times and said Haiti was perfectly safe provided you were sensible.  He warned me that there were no ATM machines so you needed to take money for your trip with you, that there were no taxis at night and it was not safe to walk the streets after dark.  Basically he said it was OK provided you were careful.

The second reassuring voice came during a power cut an Santo Domingo.  A typhoon took out the power in my hotel.  Without light, Internet, or power I went to sit on the hotel balcony with a glass of rum and coke (Barbancourt 1 star).   The hotel had put candles out on the balcony, and in the candlelight I got chatting with a Danish woman and a Haitian sanky-panky.

A sanky-panky is a Dominican Republic term for a sort of gigolo.  Sanky-pankies take great pains with their appearance, dressing flamboyantly and perhaps even taking steroids to put on muscle.  They pick up female or homosexual male tourists.  Rather than charging directly for their company they try to establish longer term relationships, perhaps requesting remittances after the tourist goes home, or even emigrating to the tourist’s home country on a spouse visa.  The Haitian sanky-panky sported impressive dreadlocks decorated with dozens of colorful shells and silver ornaments.  He looked like a cuddly version of a pirate.

In any case, the Danish woman and the sanky-panky had just returned from two weeks in Haiti and assured me it was perfectly safe.  The Danish woman did not seem the especially adventurous type, and unlike the owner of Hospederia 24 she did not speak French, or even much Spanish.  She could be wrong about Haiti being perfectly safe, but there was no way Haiti was the war zone most people were making it out to be.  Getting money in Haiti seemed to be an issue though.  She had been forced to come back to the Dominican Republic when her money ran out and she was unable to get any more through the Haitian banks.

We drank rum and chatted about Haiti.  They had rented a car and driven around the country.  They had not been up to Cap-Haitien because the recent storms has washed out the roads.  The Danish woman seemed to think the UN presence there was completely unnecessary given how friendly everyone was.  The sanky-panky talked of how before the UN arrival some neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince had seen continuous gun battles between gangs of youth who were better armed than the police.  It sounded like things had been very bad but were now much improved.  The Danish woman mentioned how educated and polite the average Haitian was compared to their Dominican Republic counterparts.  She seemed sold on the place.  The sanky-panky said that few Haitians had jobs and most families relied on remittances from relatives in the United States. That led the Danish woman to bring up the delicate topic of getting him some kind of job.  Before long he was flouncing back to their room, slamming the door behind him.  The Danish woman waited for a moment or two before saying goodnight and disappearing into the darkness.

Our interesting conversation now over, I sat alone in the dark with a half finished glass of Barbancourt rum, on my way to Haiti.

On a Caribe Tours Bus

A couple of days after my conversation with the sanky-panky I arrived at the Caribe Tours bus station to catch the early morning bus to Cap-Haitien.  There was no need to ask which bus was going to Haiti.  The presence of two shotgun wielding guards made it obvious.  Besides myself, the only other passengers were a pair of teenage Haitians, the girl wearing an extravagantly long white glove despite the heat.  I wondered if she was hiding a burn or something, but probably it was just fashion.  Both her and her companion were decked out in U.S. style rapper gear so perhaps the glove was part of that look.

The ride to the Haitian border was uneventful, feeling like the build up some later drama.  I had heard about how the landscape changed dramatically as you crossed the border.  Supposedly the two halves of the island of Hispanola are a study in contrasts, with the Dominican Republic being fertile, forested and prosperous, while poor environmental management has left the Haitian side barren, denuded of all vegetation, and desperately poor.  The border itself is supposedly a mass of refugees.  One Dominican resident had told me he found the border so intimidating and desperate that he turned back.

Considering all the hype the border crossing was anti-climactic.  The final stretch of travel on the Dominican Republic side, through Monte Cristi in the north-west of the country, was through the most arid and poor country I had seen in the Dominican Republic.  We passed through one dusty little town after another, each apparently devoid of life.  Arrival at the border was a relief.  Finally there was a little activity.  The guards dismounted; the conductor came down the bus collecting passports; soldiers lounged sleepily around; a man sold ices that he scrapped from a large block and doused in brightly colored syrup.  After a few minutes wait the bus began creeping through the archway that marked the end of the Dominican republic.

We passed a final Brugal rum sponsored rubbish bin, and Haiti instantly became recognizable.  Beyond the rubbish bin was a bridge, and as the bus crossed the river below was revealed to be crowded with Haitian women busily washing colorful piles of clothes.  The road ended and the bus lurched into a dusty field, zigzagging slowly around rocks and tree roots.  There were no crowds of refugees.  Instead there were people busy loading carts of firewood and pushing them by hand across the field and further into Haiti.  A few people lounged asleep on the seats of motorcycles.  Food was being prepared in a makeshift open air kitchen.  Suddenly there were no  white people.  There were not even any light colored black people.

Crossing the Haitian border. . .

The dramatic disappearance of the road turned out to be short lived.  The road reappeared on the other side of the field, this time beside a Haitian immigration post.  An immigration officer boarded the bus and returned my passport, now containing a Haitian entry stamp.  A beggar saw me and began standing below my seat and banging on the window.  Another beggar saw him and started to come over.  Before the second beggar could reach the bus we were once again on our way.  It had all been slightly anti-climactic.  My only anxiety involved what had happened to the guards.  They were nowhere to be seen.  Putting armed guards on a Haiti bus service, only to have them abandon the bus at the Haitian border, is the opposite of reassuring.

As we drove into Haiti I found it not to be the contrast to the Dominican Republic I had been expected.  I did not see the deforested hillsides I had heard so much about.  There appeared to be plenty of vegetation, or at least no less than in Monte Cristi.  The road was no worse than in the Dominican Republic, and perhaps a little better than that in Monte Cristi.  The biggest contrast with the Dominican Republic was probably the sheer number of people.  Where the roads in Monte Cristi had appeared deserted, in Haiti they were lined with people.  Women walked beside the road carrying plastic containers of water.  Open-air roadside shops appeared at regular intervals, all selling an identical range of merchandise (biscuits, drinking water, rum – Barbancourt and Barcelo – and little else).  Every stream or river was full of people washing clothes or bathing.  The quality of housing was worse than the Dominican Republic.  Few houses were painted, and none of the buildings looked finished.  People looked poor but well fed.  Children occasionally ran out of houses to wave at the bus.  We passed a couple of UN camps and the soldiers standing guard on the sentry towers also waved.  The daily passage of the Caribbe Tours bus was an event.

Arrival in Cap-Haitien

The drive from the border to Cap-Haitien did not take long, perhaps only an hour or so.  When it finally arrived, Cap-Haitien was small and dilapidated, but also quite pretty and dramatic.  The center of the town comprised faded but still colorful French colonial houses set beside a large bay and against a backdrop of green hills.  The buildings themselves were in the same style as the French Quarter of New Orleans. With a little smartening up the town could have looked very attractive.

The usual throng of hopeful taxi drivers, hotel touts and so on failed to descend on the bus when it finally stopped and disgorged its passengers.  We were simply dumped on an empty street.  I was carrying a couple of hotel names and addresses on a scrap of paper and had planned to take a taxi to whichever was closest.  With not a taxi in sight my plan was dead in the water.  The absence of street signs or numbers did nothing to help matters.

A guy came up to me: “Hey, blanc!  Give me my money!”  And so it came to pass that my first interaction with a Haitian was to be told I was white and thus existed to give him his money.  Apparently what was mine was in fact his, or was soon to be.  I spied a hotel, the Hotel Roi Christophe.  I had seen the name before and it sounded expensive.  On the other hand it was supposedly the only hotel in town with Internet.  Dropping in there for a look was going to be better than standing on the street getting hassled for money.

The hotel turned out to be empty, and the manageress, Madame Joelle, was soon offering me a discounted rate.  I did pop down the road after dropping off my luggage to check out the Hotel Freeman, recommended by a few travelers.  There was no comparison.  While a little more expensive, Hotel Roi Christophe was a beautiful old building set in an attractive garden, and had Internet, a bar, restaurant and so on.  Hotel Freeman was a dirty little place with no amenities besides a downstairs shop, and many of the residents seemed to be renting rooms by the hour.

After checking in to Hotel Roi Christophe I went for a walk along the sea wall.  I wanted to check out the area north of the old town, where supposedly a string of three French fortresses were located.

People mostly left me alone as I walked.  The bum at the bus station had not been typical.   Some parts of the harbor were full of smelly rubbish, but overall it was an attractive harbor, and got more attractive the further north I walked.

Walking out of town and along the coast I wandered through an area of newly built but slightly ramshackle concrete brick houses.  Goats wandered between the houses.  Everyone ignored me other than a few children who asked for change.

It did not take too long to reach the first fortress, and then the second one.  The tide was too high to reach the last one though.  After getting my shoes filled with water I ended up turning back.

By the time I returned to the hotel it was starting to get dark.  The hotel sat empty and without power.  In fact, though I did not quite realize it at the time, Port-au-Prince was in the midst of a crisis.  A recent hurricane had destroyed the city of Gonaive and cut the road to Port-au-Prince.  Cap-Haitien relies on Port-au-Prince for its fuel supply, and a shortage of fuel meant there was no electricity.  It would be like this all week.

With no power I sat on the veranda,  drank a Haitian brewed Guinness, and smoked a cigar.  I tried getting into cigars while in the Dominican Republic.  The Dominican Republic vies with Cuba as the world’s leading cigar producer, so it seemed a shame to ignore cigars while there.  Some are clearly better than others, but on the whole the attraction eludes me.  They all taste like tobacco and make you feel sick.  This cigar was evocatively named Orient Express and had a slightly peppery taste – though of course it still tasted mostly like tobacco.  The barmaid picked up the attractively decorated cigar tube at the end of the night and put it in her handbag, assuming it was something important.  It was returned to me the next day, in a memorable, very sweet, but somewhat useless, gesture.  Incidentally the Haitian Guinness was around 7% and tasted much like the Malaysian version.

Eventually the hotel’s generator started up and the bar and restaurant became fully operational.  The bar was not stocked with anything very exciting (Barbancourt 3 and 5 star were the only rums), but it made up for it in atmosphere.  I tried a rum punch, which turned out to be an over-sweet mixture of Barbancourt rum, fruit juices, syrup and grenadine.  After that I stuck to straight rum or beer.  The other customers in the bar were a mixture of UN soldiers and local residents.  There were not a lot of places to go out in Cap-Haitien.  Beyond the bar lay little but darkness.

The presidential palace looks rather like the White House.

An interesting building. . .

The Dominican Republic flag flies over a traffic intersection.

Santo Domingo traffic.

Cigar advertisement.

Interesting interior of a building just off the plaza by the cathedral.

And again. . .

The former house of Hernando Cortez, now the French embassy.

Calle de las Damas, the oldest street in the Americas.

Gateway to Santo Domingo Fortress.

The fortress itself.  Unsurprisingly the external stairway was added after it stopped being used as a fortress.

The inner gateway used to lead down to the port.  That was the gateway through which Cortez and his men marched as they set off to conquer Mexico.  The outer gateway and wall were added by the dictator Trujillo, to separate the fortress from the port area during a period when the fortress was used to hold political prisoners.

Standing on the fortress, with the Dominican Republic navy in the background.

View across the river to the Columbus Palace on the day after a big typhoon.

Queen Isabella of Spain in the foreground and the Columbus Memorial in the background.

The Columbus memorial. An entire district inhabited by lower income residents of Santo Domingo was supposedly bulldozed to make way for the memorial and surrounding park.  When I visited the grass in the park had apparently been left untended for months, the fountains were full of gravel, and the memorial itself was boarded up. They still light it up for special occasions though.

The typhoon had caused flooding in some streets.

Santo Domingos old heart, a pleasant pedestrian street running west from the Calle de las Damas.  Most of the shops here are fast food outlets so there is not a whole lot to see.  The locals stroll up and down in the evenings though.

Since the Dominican Republic recognizes Taiwan, the Republic of China, rather than China, the People’s Republic of China, Santo Domingo has a Taiwanese embassy.  Yes, that’s right, a real embassy rather than a ‘trade and cultural office’ or something similarly non-official sounding.  I stopped by just to take a picture or two.

The embassy had moved from its old location and a nice local guy who had also gone to the wrong address gave me a lift to the new one.  He was was some kind of professional negotiator and was doing something related to employment issues at the embassy.  He was talkative but spoke no English.  I’m not sure if he understood my Spanish explanation of why I was going to the embassy just to take pictures. Never mind.  He even gave me a lift back to my hotel.

The palace that was the center of government during the period of Haitian rule.

Something rum related to finish, a disused Barcelo rum factory.

Sign leading to Sosua beach.  Many of the road signs in the Dominican Republic are sponsored by Brugal rum.

One of the smaller beaches near Sosua.

The famous Sosua beach.  Bali is better if you ask me.  Still, Sosua seems mercifully free of people hawking crap.  There were plenty of little shacks selling trinkets set back from the beach, but nobody ever came and disturbed me when I was on the beach itself.

My vantage point for drinking rum on the beach.  Actually, the one thing the beach was lacking was a good bar.  There were no interesting drinks on offer, just the standard rum and coke etc. I ordered the one drink with an unfamiliar name, hoping for something exotic.  I got. . . rum and sprite!  The little mountain on the horizon on the far right of the picture marks the location of Puerto Plata and the Brugal rum distillery.

The same day I visited the Brugal rum distillery I also had a look around Puerto Plata itself.  It’s a small town without a whole lot to see, but pleasant nevertheless.

The main attraction was an impressive Spanish fort.

Puerto Plata was for many years the largest city in the Spanish colony, and the fort was situated to protect the busy port.

A watchtower for monitoring shipping.

A traffic circle now sits below the ramparts. . .

The cannons in these old Caribbean forts always seem to be casually propped up against the walls.  Not much chance of hitting anything this way.

Sensing the fort’s vulnerability, a pirate ship closes in?

Monument to one of the heroes of the Dominican Republic’s liberation.

Standing on the mountain above Puerto Plata and looking down the coast towards Sosua.

Clouds rolled in. . .

Jesus appeared in the clouds!  Weirdly he was standing on top of a souvenir shop.

Puerto Plata in all its glory.

Anyway, while in Haiti I did a few interesting drinks related things, including visiting the Barbancourt rum distillery, comparing brands of clairin (a generic Haitian term for rustic, unaged, sugarcane rum), checking out the bitter orange peels used to flavor Grand Marnier and other orange liqueurs, and having a drink in the bar at the famous Hotel Oloffson.  Of course I also engaged in non-booze tourism, visiting the famous Citadel, relaxing at the beach (OK, with a rum filled coconut), and so on. Since Haiti is no tourist mecca I also ended up doing lots of non-tourism stuff.  There were long, dark evenings in a beautiful old hotel in Cap Haitian during a major power shortage, theological discussions with missionaries, rambles through Port-au-Prince’s less dangerous slums, cold showers and impromptu Christian drum circles in a church run guesthouse in Port-au-Prince, voodoo drum circles in dark alleys, encounters with both aspiring and successful orphanage owners, and talks with an elderly Quebecan gentleman who fled to Haiti after narrowly escaping death at the hands of Triads.  Regarding this last, and in a curious piece of irony, the elderly gentleman in question was unable to identify who these Triads were, what gang they represented, or even what country they originated from, yet the Triads still realized he “knew too much” and determined to have him whacked.  Haiti is anything but ordinary.  I will update on all this later.

Anyway, on Saturday, my second attempt to escape saw me successfully leave Haiti behind.  Tuesday had seen me spend half a day at the airport without results as my credit card got declined and the bank refused to change Euros.  Saturday’s break for freedom was not all plain sailing though.  For a moment it looked like I could end up stuck in Haiti again.

On reaching immigration I realized that the blue slip that had been put in my passport when I entered the country had somehow disappeared.  I apologized for my carelessness and showed the immigration officer the entry stamp in my passport.  What is the point of these slips anyway?  The immigration officer first looked aggrieved, as though I had lost the blue slip just to spite him, then snarlingly turned me back.

Port-au-Prince airport has one of those old-fashioned designs where immigration happens in a closed glass booth.  Naturally the door to the booth opens inwards.  Like everything else in Haiti the airport is falling apart, and the handle on the inside of the door was gone.  As the immigration officer continued to hurl invective at me in Creole I struggled with the door, trying to find some place where I could get enough traction to pull it open.  Finally an immigration officer standing on the other side helpfully pushed the door inwards.  I asked him what I needed to do about the blue slip and got a shrug in response.  Wandering around the hall asking other immigration officers yielded more shrugs, each more sullen and unhelpful than the last.  Things were looking bleak.

A well dressed Haitian man happened to walk past at that point and asked what was going on. He turned out to be a senior immigration officer and took me through some back corridors to a room were we picked up a blank blue slip.  I assumed I would have to fill it out (it demand information like port of entry and so on) but none of that happened.  We headed straight back to the immigration hall, and then to the booth I had previously been in, where the senior immigration officer threw the blue slip at the immigration officer who had turned me back, and shouted at him in Creole.  The junior officer sullenly stamped my passport, took the blank blue slip, screwed it defiantly into a ball, and tossed it onto the pile of blue slips on his desk.   I thanked the officer who had helped me out and walked towards the security desk, leaving the two men arguing with each other.

There was an hour to wait for my flight so I sat at the bar in the airport cafe and drank a coke.  It only cost US$1!  Port-au-prince airport must have the cheapest airport cafe in the world.  Admittedly the facilities were slightly basic.  There was no extractor fan in the cafe kitchen, so travelers sat inhaling greasy smoke from the fried cheese sandwiches and pizzas being churned out.  The whole airport was slowly becoming infused with the smell.  I sat facing a large wall mirror, doing a little work on my laptop, and occasionally looking up at the room behind me.  The air was thick with pungent tobacco being smoked by a table of elderly card playing Frenchmen.  The souvenir shops were empty of shoppers.  Even the Barbancourt rum shop was doing no business.  Everybody was crowded around the cafe counter drinking beers and coffees and waiting for greasy sandwiches.

A French girl came up to the counter with her boyfriend and ordered coffees.  In between caressing her boyfriend she kept looking sideways at me in the mirror and flirting with her eyes.  When the coffees arrived she paid for them and went to sit at a table.  I had my back to her table but in the mirror it was in front of me and slightly to my right.  The girl had lots of charisma and very beautiful eyes.  Her skin looked as though she had once had bad acne though.  She kept alternately looking at me and fondling her companion.  She distracted him by pointing towards something in one of the shops, winked at me and laughed.  He had his back to the mirror and could not see what was going on.  There seemed to be no point to the game she was playing but it was oddly entertaining.  What, if anything, did she want me to do besides recognize her elaborate efforts with the occasional sly smile?  Her companion was grave looking and seemed much younger than her, though her manner made her seem far more immature than him.

Eventually it came to be time for my flight.  I went to the bathroom, then headed downstairs to the boarding gate.  The French girl and her companion were a couple of places ahead of me in the queue for the same flight, to Panama on COPA.  She did not have an especially good figure, with shorter than average legs and a longer than average torso.  Her eyes were her best feature.  Port-au-Prince airport is one of those airports where you still board your flight from the tarmac, and COPA had set up a security desk on the tarmac to re-checking all of the carry on baggage.  The tarmac was hot and the queue moved slowly.  I bid a final, sweaty goodbye to Haiti.

As the French girl’s bag was being checked her boarding pass fell to the ground.  She didn’t seem to have noticed it fall.  Nobody else seemed to have noticed it either.  Although I was a couple of people back in the queue I started to go forward to pick it up.  As I did so though the security guard checking the bags picked it up instead.  The girl thanked the guard and shot me a reproachful glance.  It seemed that dropping the boarding pass had been deliberate.

It came to be my turn to have my bags checked.  As the guard rummaged briefly through the bags, my boarding pass somehow fell out of my passport without me noticing.  The security guard picked it up for me.  With nobody to shoot a reproachful glance at, I could only thank the security guard and wonder at how life sometimes follows bizarre patterns.

I boarded the flight, getting sat right at the back of the plane beside a gigantic Haitian woman.  Initially there had been a free seat between us, but once it was clear that nobody was going to be sitting in that middle seat she moved away from the window to sit beside me, her huge arms pressing uncomfortably into my stomach.  At first I could not figure out why she didn’t stay in the window seat.  Thinking about it though I realized that in the window seat she had one arm pressed up against the hard wall of the plane, whereas in the middle seat she had one arm in free space (the window seat) and the other pressed up against something soft (my stomach).  Having made me uncomfortable in my own seat she immediately demanded water from the air hostess in halting, graceless Spanish: “Senora, da me agua!”   Luckily Port-au-Prince-Panama is a short flight.

Incidentally, Haitians like to dress their children up when they fly.  On an earlier flight from Cap Haitien to Port-au-Prince there had been a little girl in the most ridiculously ornate dress I have ever seen.  The dress was a cream colored mass of bunches, frills and puffs.  The skirt section of the garment was so long her mother had to hold it off the ground to keep it clean, and was decorated with gauze pouches stuffed with dried leaves and potpouri.  There was nothing quite that elaborate on the flight to Panama, but frilly dresses were still de rigeur for every Haitian female under 11 or so.  The girls seemed to delight in the formality of it all, while the boys looked oppressed in tightly buttoned shirts.

COPA is quite a nice airline.  Maybe I was just hungry.  It was hours since my 7am breakfast at the Christian guesthouse in Port-au-Prince, and the greasy airport sandwiches had not looked appealing.  But the airline food on COPA was surely the best smelling I have ever had.  Rather than a full meal they handed out hot beef and cheese sandwiches on some kind of foccacia herb bread.  The smell of the herbs as they were unwrapped was unbelievably appetizing.  The taste did not quite live up to the heavenly smell but it was still better than most airline food.  To accompany the food there was the COPA ‘rum program’.  As earnestly explained in the airline magazine, the rum program sees business class travelers enjoy a new rum every month while in economy class the rums rotate quarterly.  Who could dislike an airline with a rum program?

The rum on offer was, appropriately enough, a Panamanian rum called Carta Vieja.  They were pouring the extra viejo version.  I had one on ice and found it very enjoyable.  The taste was a little sweet and honeyish, with a distinct smokiness that grew as the ice diluted the rum and reduced the sweetness.  Overall it reminded me of Russian Caravan tea.  While not a particularly complex rum it had a distinct and unique taste.  I would say this rum is worth looking out for.

As I drank the rum the French girl walked past on her way to the toilet, completely ignoring me in a marked contrast to the game she had been playing before.  I sipped my rum some more.  That sip, in which I pondered the smokiness of the rum and the mysteriousness of this French woman, was a particularly meditative one.  Maybe she was annoyed at me failing to pick up her dropped boarding pass?  Maybe she ignored me to stop me getting the wrong idea and following her to the toilet or doing something similarly embarrassing.  Maybe she had left her seat with the intention of a mile-high liaison but realized as she walked down the aisle that the cabin crew were still dealing with rubbish in the galley and it was not going to be possible for an extra person to discretely get into the toilet?  Maybe flirting just tires you out and you need to take a break sometimes?  The thing with her was impossible to figure out.  The rum was easier to understand.

Before long we were flying down into Panama.  From a brief glimpse out the airplane window the city looked almost like a miniature Hong Kong, with skyscrapers clustering right up to the sea.  I looked for the canal but couldn’t see it.

Wandering the airport as I waited for my connecting flight to Guatemala City I was again reminded of Hong Kong.  There were gleaming duty free outlets and the scent of perfume tester-bottles permeated the entire building – a contrast to burned cheese smell of Port-au-Prince.  A diverse mix of travelers were wandering around, many of them apparently just passing through to catch connecting flights.  There were fashionably dressed Panamanians, business people from all over Latin America, and the occasional backpacker.  There was a noticeable Asian minority, and I even overheard Mandarin speaking COPA ground-staff who looked to be local Chinese from Panama.  The place had a very international feel.

I killed the hour or so between my flights by wandering the duty free stores, ending up buying a sample pack of four different rums from Nicaragua’s Flor de Cana.  The small airport bottles would be a good way of comparing the different varieties of Flor de Cana rum.

Before long it was time for my flight.  I took my place in the queue to board the plane.  In a contrast to the previous flight, this time I was queuing in the type of civilized, international, and sterile airport environment that could equally have been on the other side of the world as in Panama.  As I settled into the boredom of queuing, I was startled to feel my bottom pinched and a voice simultaneously murmur “Hello” in my ear.  I turned my head to see the French girl from Port-au-Prince airport melting into the mass of travelers after her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend’s grave looking shoulders disappeared first.  Then, flashing a final smile, the mysterious bottom pinching French woman was also gone.  I turned back to my queue.  As I queued I imagined a grave pair of shoulders marching towards an unknown boarding gate, carrying the weight of a dangerously flirty girlfriend.

Panama had been fun.

The above line would make a nice ending.  However, I said Port-au-Prince to Antigua, so I shall continue.

The flight to Guatemala City was mostly uneventful.  I had another Carta Vieja rum, this time with coke.  The smokiness cut through the sweet coke to make for an interesting drink.  I ate another delicious hot sandwich.  I watched a hyperactive Taiwanese dealing with a group of young people who seemed to be from China.

The Taiwanese and his charges were an odd group.  They were clearly not related, but the Taiwanese was treating them almost like they were his children.  I thought they could be some kind of school group, but the young people seemed too old to be school students, and the Taiwanese man did not look like a teacher.  The Taiwanese was micro managing everything the group did.  He had them take turns to sit with him while he counted how much money each of them was carrying, he stood up and explained how to fill out their immigration forms, and so on.  I only began to figure them out when we were disembarking from the plane.  While shuffling off the plane I turned to chat with one of the girls.  She was Fujianese and apparently in Guatemala for a holiday.  That sounded odd.  What was a Fujianese doing traveling with a Taiwanese?  And did Taiwanese really organize holidays in Guatemala for groups of young Chinese?

I said hello to the Taiwanese guy.  He said he was a restaurateur with a place in Guatemala.  That made some sense.  He was very on edge though, and after a couple of sentences he broke into English.  Without any prompting from me he suddenly said “I like Beijing not Taipei!  Beijing has Great Wall!”  Having clarified that, he sprinted off towards immigration, his charges struggling to keep up.  I called out to ask where his restaurant was, saying I would drop by for a meal, but he either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the question.

I caught up with the Chinese at immigration.  The Taiwanese was nowhere to be seen by this stage, and the Chinese seemed to be getting turned back.  It may have simply have been a matter of them completing their immigration forms incorrectly.  Who knows what was going on though?  There was no way that the group was really in Guatemala for a holiday.  The Taiwanese guy was either bringing in illegal workers for his restaurant or was a snake-head bringing a group into Guatemala for transportation across Mexico to the U.S.  Whatever was happening it seemed a little subterfuge was involved.

I kept looking back as I waited for my luggage to see if the group would make it through immigration.  They never appeared.  Whatever was involved in getting them into the country took more than a minute or two.

Outside the airport I found lots of taxi drivers holding signs with passengers’ names on them, and a small gaggle of taxi touts.  There was less trouble than I had expected in organizing transportation to Antigua.  I could not see any shuttle buses but a taxi driver quickly agreed to take me for $28.

Late at night, Guatemala City looked surprisingly similar to the United States.  It was a clean contrast to the scruffy Caribbean.  The taxis and most of the other cars on the road were reasonably new, we refueled at a gas station set beside a brightly lit convenience store, the streets were lined with Burger Kings and other fast food franchises.  The road to Antigua was surprisingly good.  It was an unusual journey though, including some very steep hills that saw us losing a fair bit of elevation.  After 40 minutes or so we arrived.

Driving into Antigua itself was odd, with the streets being cobblestone rather than tarmac, forcing drivers to go slowly and gingerly.  The city was near deserted, with somebody setting of fireworks in the distance.  I found a hotel, paid the driver, dumped my things in the room, and went out to have a walk around the streets.

The hotel owner warned me to stick to the streets with people on them for safety.  The streets all seemed near empty though.  The air was cool compared to the Caribbean and it was nice to be able to walk around wearing a leather jacket again.  I’d been carrying a jacket without wearing it for so long.  I could not seem to find the center of town where restaurants and bars were still open, though supposedly it was only a couple of streets away.  After buying a bottle of water from a shop where you asked for merchandise and the shopkeeper handed it to you through a grille I headed back to the hotel and slept.