Hello community! The last two weekends gave me a very rare opportunity since I left my hometown and moved to the capital. The thing is, I have no family here and barely any friends – maybe two or three. But since Havana is quite a big city (see it from my perspective; I've been to Mexico and I know that in comparison, Havana is a little village 😅) and public transport is awful, I never see them.
So you grab every opportunity you can. Heidy was in Havana, and I had to spend time with her. She introduced me to a new friend, a local (she makes friends much faster; I've been here almost a year and know no one 🤣). First, we met at the café-bar in the Hotel Parque Central, where I'd never been before. We had piña coladas even though it wasn't even noon (not that we cared much). Then in the afternoon, we went to the rental where she was staying, improvised a dinner, had some wine, and gossiped. It was a Sunday unlike any I'd had in a long time.
Last Saturday, we met just the two of us for lunch and gossip. We ate in Old Havana at a place called Había una Vez (Once Upon a Time). Then we went to buy a bikini for Heidy since we decided to go to the beach the next day. We ended up at the Hotel Ambos Mundos having a delicious mojito and reading each other's tarot with a deck of cat tarot cards. A very fun day.
On Sunday, we decided to do something extra and went to the beach. I hadn't been to the beach since my grandmother got sick. The new friend told us about some slightly expensive but very comfortable buses leaving from Parque Central, and off we went, straight to the Playas del Este (Eastern Beaches).
The place was interesting – lots of food and drink stalls, the water blue and beautiful, the sand very fine, although the beach itself was quite dirty (way too many cans). But we've been to much worse places.
Mid-swim, a summer storm broke out with lots of lightning, and those of us who know physics got out of the water like Olympic sprinters and sat down calmly to watch the panic of the others when they realized it was dangerous (quite late, by the way). There were no lifeguards or anything like that on that beach. Then the sun came out as if nothing had happened, and we went back in for a swim.
I don't have many photos because Heidy was supposed to take them, and in some ways, we're similar: without our glasses, we wouldn't see a blue whale if it swam right past us 🤣. Plus, she doesn't like selfies.
My friend Heidy is one of my oldest relationships – over ten years of friendship. She's a very intelligent, multilingual, and grounded person who has achieved her lifelong dream: having a job that lets her travel constantly to many places without rest. The girl has been to various countries in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, not to mention all over Cuba. I've barely traveled within Cuba to just two or three places, and I spent a few days in Guadalajara. You can’t begin to imagine how much I envy her 😅 (the good kind of envy). That's why I hadn't seen her in months.
The last time we met was in my hometown, a few days before my grandmother passed away, about 9 months ago. We just grabbed a coffee; there wasn't time for more. Then she went off somewhere, and I – who hadn't moved for years because I had the huge responsibility of caring for my grandmother – ended up leaving everything overnight and moving to another city.
It's one of those rare friendships: she's a nomad, I was tied to the same spot by family pressures. She did what she wanted, I did what I had to do; no one ever asked me if I wanted something else. To this day, she's already living the life she wants, and I'm figuring out what I want to do with mine. But that's okay: everyone has their own dreams and their own timing.