As we quickly prepared for the trip, we bought a few pair of reading glasses (among other things) to take with us. By the last day of our stay, we had given everything away except the glasses and we weren't sure what to do with them.
I had been chatting with the Bar Tender quite a bit so I thought I'd ask him if he knew of anyone who may be able to use the glasses.
I strolled down to the bar early in the evening and took up my favorite spot in front of the beer tap. To my left (I found out later) was a hotel worker who began employment at the resort 23 years ago, when it was being built. I asked Leonardo, the tender, if he knew of anyone who needed some eye glassed. He inspected the ones that I brought and compared them to the pair he had in his pocket. He said the ones he had didn't work the best anymore. He got some paperwork from the back of the bar and started comparing the different strengths of lenses.
As the exercise continued, I felt a keen interest from the hotel worker standing beside me. He also wore glasses. Closer inspection revealed, his had no arms. He had rigged the armless glasses up with a piece of elastic and wore them like goggles. He tried on the new spectacles that we had brought and luckily one of the pairs worked for him. It turns out, they were the same strength that I use so I gave him a spare pair.
Leonardo was also successful, in that his eyes were better than ours and he could use a pair of the weaker glasses.
I'm sure we could have left the glasses and they would have found their way throught the Cuban economic system to someone who needed them. However, seeing the hotel worker sporting his new look that evening and the next day was kind of special.
