Santiago de Cuba may be Cuba’s second largest city but it has a small town feel. You run into people you know all the time. In the day and a half Lucas and I had been there we had already made friends and had a chance to run into them several times.

Lucas is now pretty much glued to the hip with Mariano, we call him Lucas’s dad. I’ve gotten into the routine of spending my days with Pepe (it went from a one time thing to an everyday thing). We occasionally combine the two groups for meals with Lianne or as we like to call her, Momma Chicken. We always eat at San Fransisco, the food is amazing and it’s pretty cheap. I’ve been eating there at least once a day. I’m also terrified of getting food poisoning again so, I haven’t been that adventurous with my eating.

It was Friday night and I wanted to go out and dance! Pepe wanted to show me several different clubs in a part of Santiago I hadn’t been before.

The first club we went to was full of teenagers covered foam. No. The second club was full of prostitutes and old white men. Absolutely not. We were almost to the third club which is located in Santiago’s “five-star hotel” when it began to rain. We ran to the hotel but were sopping wet by the time we reached the front door.

Apparently, the club is only open on Wednesday which is strange but hey, it’s Cuba. The hotel was the strangest place I have ever been. It was a weird eclectic mix of styles from different time periods. None of it made sense. There were even buckets in the lobby to catch the rain that was dripping down from cracks in the glass ceiling.

It began to downpour so, we would have to wait out the rain in the hotel. We decided to go to the hotel cafe to get food but they weren’t serving food, only alcohol. We tried to use the hotel’s WiFi but it wasn’t working. So we did the only thing we could, we waited, and waited and waited.

After an hour the rain still hasn’t let up so we decided to try and find a taxi. There were none. The hotel was desolate. Pepe even called many of his friends who are taxi drivers but none of them were working. So, we waited.

After two hours the rain was finally light enough to leave. After the whole fiasco we just decided to go to his place. Walking back to his place in the dark, I stepped into a giant puddle. It was seriously the worst Friday night. I was falling out of love with Cuba once again.