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Uh-oh, things have taken a turn for the worse for me, I seem to have regressed and become ill again, conversely, Claire is getting better. After a false alarm involving an emergency pit stop at the bus station we write to the camera-repairers in Mexico City and then catch a tourist bus to the main hotel strip. This strip is outside of Cancun city and is situated on a long sand bar with a lagoon on one side and the Carribean sea on the other. Both the city and the sand strip are touristy and both have all manner of touts to avoid. The bus is crowded with american teenagers making their way to the beach for the day, we get off and walk through a parking lot to the brilliant white sand. The sand lives up to its reputation for being "air cooled", despite the temperature being in the high 30's the sand is cool and you can walk barefoot without burning the soles of your feet.
We wander along the beach admiring the Carribean turquoise sea and white sand, maybe wishing we could spend a few days on the beach in Cancun, then the heat starts to get the better of us and we head for a nearby bar to cool off. Here we get chatting to a Mexican who is having lunch with his wife and baby son. He is in high spirits and wants us to stay, drink beer, smoke cigarettes, party and chat for longer than we are able, (un)fortunately we are both on a non-alcoholic diet due to our illness and we have to return to Cancun to eat dinner and get ready for our flight. We get to the airport and board our plane for the one hour flight to Havana, the flight is over quickly and all is going smoothly until we hit the huge queues at Immigration where everyone was being thoroughly checked before being let into the country.
An hour later we emerged, changed US$10 into 200 or so Cuban pesos - only to find that they are next to useless, tourists are expected to pay for goods in US$ only. We caught a taxi into Centro Habana and were surprised by the number of old 50's style US cars still in use today and the old colonial buildings - our taxi driver found our the address we'd given him and after a little confusion - no space, we were accomodated in another "casa particular" across the road.
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