She sported a rather fetching hairdo, with braids held in place neatly by elastic bands - or so she thought.
The fancy hairstyle had been carefully crafted by a man she had met in Havana. A couple of days later our Cuban tour guide, on closer inspection, asked, "Are these what I think they are?", but had not mentioned exactly what he meant by this throwaway remark.
When she finally undid the braids, the British tourist was horrified to find out that each was secured by the top part of a condom.
"Is that what he thought of me?" she wailed disconcertedly. It emerged, though, that no insult had been intended. The country has no elastic bands, so Cubans use what is available to them, for instance condoms.
Obviously, people and animals on that island use whatever presents itself, for somewhere in the mountains of Cuba a mouse (or maybe a tree rat) could be running around with earplugs in its ears - if it hasn't died from a blocked intestine.
In case you are entertaining visions of a mouse or tree rat nibbling away to remove earplugs firmly ensconced in my earholes, the scene is not quite so dramatic.
On two nights we slept out on the verandah of a hacienda and I had my spare earplugs in an open container beside my makeshift bed. In the morning, when I awoke, they were gone.
Someone said they had seen a very long tail disappear down the verandah in the night. Another of our party joked, "Maybe the tree rat really needed them."
I was more concerned that the silicone gel plugs might not agree with the mouse or rat's constitution.
Other wildlife also kept us on our toes. I was in a swimming pool when, rather appropriately, one of the woman in our group asked me to deal with another swimming problem: a frog in her toilet bowl.
Expecting to find a tiny specimen, I was taken aback at the large, yellow-green amphibian lurking contentedly. "I hope it didn't mind me peeing on it, but I had to go," she remarked.
But every time I plucked the offending frog out of the bowl, using a towel, it managed to evade my trying-to-be-gentle clutches and leapt about, with me pursuing it, while the woman in question told me to stop pussy-footing around and just get rid of the bloody thing.
Eventually, it leapt onto my arm, so I was able to carry it outside, where I had further great difficulty persuading it to let go and take to terra firma.
Not to be outdone, another woman came the next day with cellphone proof of a gigantic crab she had found lurking in her toilet bowl. It looked big enough to pass for a lobster.
Clearly, Cuban critters have an affinity with toilets.
