No Hielo – A Cuba Travel Tale

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I blame Hemingway. And my love for sweet, fruity cocktails. Picture it: Cuba, 2018, a bar that shall remain nameless (but touts a connection to Ernest himself), and daiquiris. I love me some daiquiris!

What’s the first rule of international travel? Don’t drink the water. This is a story of how ice is (shockingly) made from, you guessed it, water. Ice is not your friend in Cuba.

Cocktails in Cuba

Three friends walk into a Havana bar, where they’re promptly and blatantly ignored by the bartender for a solid 20 minutes. Unbeknownst to each other, each of the friends is thinking how ridiculous the wait is and that maybe they should get the hell out of there. But the friends were trying to go with the flow and not be “that person”.

Big mistake.

When finally they were served, two of the friends chose to order the bar’s famous Hemingway daiquiri. The other, smarter friend, ordered something on the rocks.

To be fair, my smart friend was really no smarter than the rest of us, they were just in the mood for something on the rocks.

Learn about traveling to Cuba in 2024

Now daiquiris are frozen blended drinks. Made with ice. Which is made with water. In Cuba. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Within 24 hours of consuming said daiquiris, the two “not smart” friends were in hell. The type of hell best not described in polite company.

Fortunately, when the hell hit me I was already back in Orlando. However, my friends were en route back to NJ from Cuba, and let’s just say it wasn’t a pleasant flight.

After several days of misery, we both went to our respective doctors. We were badly dehydrated and, according to my doctor, probably should be hospitalized for fluids. Subsequent tests (let’s not talk about how they were accomplished, because ew) showed that we both had E.coli.

With medication, we both recovered somewhat quickly, but as they said in The Devil Wears Prada, “I’m just one bout of E.coli away from my goal weight”. Not what they said? Hrmph.

Now it took us a while to figure out how only two of the three of us had gotten sick. We’d eaten all our meals together and we ran through the list looking for overlapping dishes and came up blank. I can’t remember who it dawned on or when, but we finally came around to the fact that we’d both had the daiquiris at the Hemingway bar while our other friend, well, hadn’t.

I was sharing this story with a fellow traveling friend (you know you’re travel BFFs when you share shots like the one above and gastrointestinal distress stories) and he lovingly called me an idiot and reminded me of the first rule of international travel: “no hielo”.

It’s a lesson I won’t forget.

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