“My boyfriend and I headed to Varadero for a relaxing resort vacation and we thought we might as well make it more worthwhile and drop off a suitcase. We hadn’t figured out which clinic to drop it off at as it was hard to find where all the clinics were in comparison to our resort. We headed to the resort clinic to see if the doctor had a recommendation. After failing to communicate in English, I busted out my rusty Spanish and she finally gave us a name and directed us to the international clinic. We got on the bus which goes through all the resorts and heads into the city and informed the driver of our destination. He kindly told us exactly where to get off. We find the clinic and just from the outside we knew this was not what we were looking for. This was a clinic mostly geared towards tourists and travellers and not the people of Cuba. We headed in anyway and stated our business. The receptionist brought the forms to a doctor who very kindly told us this was an international clinic and directed us to another clinic. We decided to walk to the new clinic and order to look around the town and see what it was like. We finally arrived at our final destination and approached an orderly outside to see who to give it to. A doctor came out and I again had to pull out my rusty Spanish to try and tell them why we were here and they seemed to be familiar with the concept. They filled out the forms and were kind enough to take a picture with us. One of the doctors even spoke English making communication easier. They thanked us and we were back on our way to the resort!” – Margot Vidal
