Of­fi­cials of the Kapok Ho­tel are not say­ing much about the fact Cuban Pres­i­dent Ra&ua­cute;l Cas­tro and his of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion are oc­cu­py­ing sev­er­al rooms at the 94-room four-star fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing their brief stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, a Kapok spokesman said the fact that the ho­tel is 100 per cent lo­cal­ly-owned and op­er­at­ed may have been one of the main rea­sons why the ho­tel was the choice of the high-pow­ered Cuban del­e­ga­tion. "We are a ho­tel pro­vid­ing a ser­vice and we are to­tal­ly in­de­pen­dent," the of­fi­cial said. Pres­i­dent Cas­tro and his del­e­ga­tion, who are here for the Cu­ba-Cari­com Sum­mit tak­ing place in Port-of-Spain, checked in around noon yes­ter­day. It was ex­pect­ed that the Cuban's would have stayed at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal venue for the sum­mit.

A well-placed source, how­ev­er, told the T&T Guardian that the plan had al­ways been for Pres­i­dent Cas­tro and his del­e­ga­tion to stay at the Kapok, lo­cat­ed at Cot­ton Hill, St Clair, just a short dri­ve from the Hilton, as well as the new venue for the sum­mit, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA).

For dig­ni­taries like Pres­i­dent Cas­tro, Kapok's high end ac­com­mo­da­tions are lux­u­ry suites with king sized beds and sep­a­rate liv­ing ar­eas with a full kitchen, in­clud­ing a re­frig­er­a­tor, cook­top and a mi­crowave. These go for US$178 a night. This is not the first time that the Kapok has ac­com­mo­dat­ed a high-pro­file head of state. Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez stayed at the ho­tel when he came to T&T for the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in 2009.