This morning I woke at 4am and just dozed before getting up at 6.30am. Decided I needed to get the body used to a 6.30am start (10.30pm the next day of the week in NZ) before we get near tournament time. Weigh in is on Wednesday under very strict rules. (Jan, Jem is now only 100 grams over so is happy about that)
After a hearty breakfast the Juniors planned to do patterns training in the park at about 10.00am while a small groups of 8 of us went off in search of the advertised city bus tour which departed at 10.30am every day. This was hilarious as we found the spot with all the bus tour kiosks down by the Casino on the water front but there was not a soul to be seen. At about 10.30 an old bus turned up and the driver opened up his kiosk.
Master McPhail has a flash interpretor program on his iphone that he bought of the itunes store at great expense (comparatively) and tried to use it to see if we could go on the 10.30am 2 hour tour with him. You can type into the program or speak into it in English and it will translate into Spanish showing you the words and speaking them in a very nice female voice. Well, it was so funny getting the bus driver to speak into it in spanish and hear what it thought hed said translated in English. Speak in Spanish and it speaks back in English - you get the idea.
The long and short of it was that there is no 10.30am bus tour but "come back at 3.30pm for the tour". James and Paul worked on the bus driver with "how much to take 8 of us on a tour now" but he couldn't care less.... "come back at 3.30pm or get a taxi".
We bailed on this idea, hunted down the closest Havanna store for a coffee (never more than a couple of blocks away) and settled into a good long coffee.
We reckoned the experience and entertainment from it was better than the tour anyway.
Here's a few photos, the first from last night and the rest from today (27)...
