An Olympic Return Trip…
HAVANA TIMES – Now back in my Havana, and recovered from an exhausting trip, I can detail how difficult it was to return from Bayamo, Granma. Considering that interprovincial transportation gets worse during vacations, I can still say that the mafia that exists to obtain a ticket is immense.
First attempt at a ticket: Failed. We dismissed the normal route because there is no point in trying to get a ticket through the app created for it. The first mafia begins there when you see that there is space on a bus, and in less than a minute, there are no more seats. Why does this happen?
It’s because there are people buying up the tickets at the established price (a little over 200 pesos) to then resell them for over 3,000 pesos.
Attempt number 2: Outside the Bayamo bus terminal (like in all provinces), there are “bukenkes” (those are the people who shout out the destinations of the buses and cars outside the establishment). The price of these tickets ranges between 4,500, 5,000, and 6,000 pesos, depending on the size, type of bus, distance, and comfort.
The bukenkes have some sort of arrangements with the bus drivers, so each one of them, with every ticket, gets a good slice of that money. In summary, it took me two days to leave Bayamo and return to Havana on a bus with decent conditions. I left on a Sunday at five in the afternoon and arrived in Havana the next day, twelve hours later, which is how long it takes for a bus to cover 840 km.
I was left wanting to return to Bayamo, but it won’t be for a long time because, honestly, a lot, a lot of money is needed just for transportation, plus the stress caused by the uncertainty of whether you will be able to travel or not.