World-class Medical Scare

World-class Medical Scare

And let me remind you happy vacationers...if you think the food is bad in Cuba then stay away from the "medical care." Read this:

Me and my partner booked this holiday purely because of the reviews that it had received in the travel agents magazine and also looking at websites reviews of the hotel itself. A 4 star hotel I thought to myself, well this is going to be a trip to remember if the standard is anything like is back at home. What an incorrect assumption to make.

Arrived in Cuba in the late afternoon, got though the airport ok, onto the coach and away to our hotel. An hour later we arrived, checked in and bags delivered to our room. By this time it was about 8pm and decided to get something to eat from room service, half an hour later a pizza and a Burger and chips arrived. Well to say that the pizza had even seen any heat was an understatement, the cheese was still un-melted on top and the burger was just wrong. We were staving so ate the food and fell asleep.

For the first couple of days the food was ok and you had something different almost every other day, but most of the meals involved rice , which tasted heavily of salt. Some of the different theme nights that they held in the buffet were really quite nice.

We got to the first weekend of our trip, and spent most of it just laying by the pool and chilling out. But on the Sunday my partner fell over and injured herself, just across from the medical office. I screamed for help and as my partner lay unconcious on the floor the nurse just looked at me and shrugged his shoudlers, what a help he was, if it wasn't for a Canadian couple that helped me I dred to think what could of happened. We ended going to a Cuban hospital, that took an hour to get. Got there and I have never seen anything like since or before, blood left on unclean table etc. It should of took us an hour to get back to the hotel, leaving the hospital at 9.30pm we arrived back at the hotel at 4am.

The weather rained for five days straight after that, what shocked me about this is that, if the Canadian couple hadn't of been there the so called Cuban nurse didn't have a clue how to treat her and also when in the medical room and for a couple of days after ,addministered drug through injection and oral form that we wern't told what there were so ended up not taking them. At the happened towards the end of the day, the staff were more interested with going home than staying with us to explain what was happening, this also included medical staff.

Apart from this very serious incident, that put a major blemish on our first holiday together, the rest of the trip was ok. The food grew more and more bland to the end of the trip. If you do go, make sure that you go to Havana its a very good trip, but a bit to much to fit into one day.

My only advice about visiting Cuba is to make sure that you check out the place that you stay, whey before you actually book or go.

Tomas Estrada-Palma