In the morning we finally left Vinales for Havana en route to the beaches at Playas del Este. Briefly considered abandoning plans to head out there when we reached Havana in the pouring rain but suddenly got a call on my mobile from our Kiwi friend Jodi who was at the beach with her two mates! Had a right result with our next taxi, when a beautiful purple Chevy rocked up for the price of a regular cab!

After a bit of a hassle trying to find a casa in Guanabo, the Cuban holidaymakers part of town, we finally scored big time and ended up in a swanky apartment for a night for the price of a regular room. Result!

The town was a bit shady, Cuban's chavy answer to Clacton-On-Sea, so we spent the rest of the night boozing with Jodi and her friends Kelly and Belinda at their somewhat illegal house!

Woke up to torrential rain that did not stop all day and we ended up having to move out of our lovely apartment into an illegal empty house. Glee over. Met up with the others and tried to find somewhere to celebrate Jodi's birthday. Caught a taxi to the supposedly posher part of the beach but were refused entry into the all-inclusive resorts, even though they all looked pretty sad and soulless, so ended up in this random restaurant, half closed for renovation on an island in the middle of a lagoon eating chips and drinking cocktails in the pouring rain.

It was all pretty funny really....and the highly amused staff were super friendly and sheltered us under giant patio umbrellas while it blew a gale outside. Bizarrely we met a German couple in there as well, so we all, staff included, ended up hiding from the storm behind the bar downing shots of dark rum and singing Happy Birthday!

Spent the rest of the evening in a local bar eating and drinking by candlelight after the electricity kept popping out before retiring to Jodi's gaff for more drinks and a few rounds of 'Who Am I?'. Birthdays don't come much better than that!

In the morning, in was sunny again, yay, so Tim and I walked along the beach. Unfortunately it is the nastiest beach ever....ew ew ew. Really dirty and loads of rubbish everywhere including bags of unidentified substance attracting a lot of attention from the fly population, dead chickens, parts of chickens and something that hopefully was a squashed pumpkin but could easily have been an exploded human head. That's nasty! Plus there were loads and loads of blue bottle jelly fish in the water and washed up on the shore which look just like blown up blue condoms.

Quick discussion and it was decided to cut our losses and leg it back to the relative civilisation of Havana!