Cuba, Sunday Part 2 - feeling like a voyeur, in the steps of Count Troubadour and finding peace in a sunset.

The small beautiful city of Trinidad is a photographers dream.   And all roads lead to the Plaza Mayor around which a well-preserved collection of historic buildings reflect the grandeur built on huge sugar fortunes amassed during the early 19^th century.   The roads increasingly narrow as we slowly make our way into the centre and after a while become rambling narrow streets with uneven cobbles and tall narrow kerbs.  The mini-bus stops and ejects me out into a street busy with people.  Plaza Major, a short walk away is by contrast, quiet.   A very elderly jinetero (tourist hustler) with skin dark and leathery from the years of sun stands leaning on his donkey which sports a large sunhat topped with plastic flowers.  You can take their picture, for a price.

I am not so interested in the town square which is too picture perfect for my taste but rather am drawn to the streets through which we passed on our way into the centre and in which I think the true story of everyday life for Cuban people lies.  These streets, with houses almost close enough to touch from the windows of the bus are full of families and groups, sitting on the door steps, perched on the low window ledges or seated in chairs on the occasional small veranda which juts out into the pavement.  Doors and windows are open and as I walk by I glance in, curious as to what it might be like inside.   The houses are very small, the amenities basic, the frills few, but the rooms are often full of people, young and old together sometimes watching a football game on a black and white TV, sometimes just sitting and chatting.  If they look up and see me I smile and they respond, often with a wave.  The Cubans are a nice people.

There is a clear strength of community and I stop for a while in the shade away from the glare of the sun and just watch. Then I feel guilty about watching.  I put down my camera and just absorb the sensation of being in a place so different to home.  The quality of the light is different, the clouds of dust kicked up by a passing car or cart make you sneeze and there is a constant dryness in the throat from a heat that seems to envelope you.  It’s like walking wrapped in an electric blanket. I feel wrong about taking so many photographs, as if I am being intrusive.  It’s a world that in one way feels so open and yet in another so private.

It’s a long road I have chosen to wander down with nearly every house attached to the one next to it and only the odd passageway through which I glimpse a small yard and a flash of greenery.  In amongst the houses are shops which are really just windows in which chunks of meat might be hanging from a hook or small baskets of fruit and vegetables displayed on a countertop.  In a doorway a tiny woman, with rheumy eyes and skin lined with age sells baby clothes.  A line of people queue for milk which is one of the basic foodstuffs which are still largely rationed in Cuba, along with eggs.  A young man selling freshly squeezed orange juice wears a white t-shirt which looks remarkably crisp given the heat which has turned my outfit into a crumpled mess.  He smiles and I smile back and see myself reflected in his mirrored aviator sunglasses.  He is keen to have me take his photo so I oblige and order some juice which I stand and sip, glad of the shade.  Across the narrow street a bored and lethargic boy is selling pork and large chunks of it sit on the counter, unrefrigerated and uncovered.  I wonder how long it will stay out in the heat.  At the end of the street I see something that makes me smile.  A small truck, the sunlight reflecting from its aluminium paint job is selling beer in much the same way as the milk was being sold.  The queue is much longer though and through each of two tiny squares cut into the back doors an arm extends, takes the vessel offered up from the front of the queue and then returns it filled with beer.  It reminds us that we are due to meet for lunch back in the plaza and so we decline the mimed invitation to come over to speak to the guy doing the selling and head back to the centre of town.    

At Casa de la Trova we sit out on the terrace which is covered with a rampant vine heavy with small bunches of grapes.  It’s busy, vibrant and loud and most of the tables are full. A band is in full swing and we have to shout to make ourselves heard but mostly we are happy to just sit, absorb the atmosphere and watch the musicians, average age probably about 65. This is Trinidad’s version of the Buena Vista Social Club and they look like they are having as good a time as we are. Some famous people have played right in this spot - Santa Palabra, Israel Moleno, Count Troubadour.  We have ordered the house cocktail which is a combination of honey, mint and white rum called the Canchachara which sounds to me more like a dance, not a drink and after a couple I’m rocking along with the vibe quite nicely.  I am looking forward to spending a couple of nights in this lovely little town whose people seem so relaxed and at one with their place in the world.  I hope some of it might rub off on me. 

In late afternoon we drive up to our night’s accommodation at Hotel Resort Las Cuevas http://www.captivatingcuba.com/cuba/las_cuevas/index.html.  It is high on a hill and before dinner we meet up and enjoy a cocktail looking out over the panoramic view of the Caribbean and the town below us.   It is a beautiful sunset, there is a cool breeze which flutters over my shoulders and the first lights begin to appear in the houses far below us.  Like everywhere we have stayed in Cuba the facilities are idiosyncratic, the aircon in my room is feeble and I have had to mend another toilet.  I am beginning to feel I should ask for a discount on the basis of my plumbing prowess.   But sitting on the terrace, for the first time being a long way from home feels OK.  And I begin to feel a little bit of peace returning.

Find the Cuba photographs on the gallery.

Cuba, Sunday Part 1 - missing my swimwear, getting a sense of Cuba and heading for Trinidad

I must have missed the bit where they told me to bring swimwear on the walk.  I am in a dilemma, having stomped around for two hours in the fairly boring surrounds of the countryside around Hotel Guajimico Villas, and because I am faced with the enticing prospect of a swim in the cool and shimmering waters of a secret cove.  But.  I. Have. No.  Swimwear.  Sadly, I have not even put on my best underwear.  Today it is not even Marks and Spencer girl, it is much, much worse. What to do?  The sweat is steadily streaming down my back, my clothes are sticking to me, I can feel the grit between my toes and I oh so want to swim.  I umm and ahh, yes I will, no I won’t.  Everybody else is down to their swimwear and navigating the steps and I decide I cannot possibly sit on the rocks here and watch them.  I would be summarily thrown out of the British Open Water Swimming Society.  So as nonchalantly as I can I strip down to my smalls, eschew the steps and as I take a running dive from the rocks I feel the water snatch away my knickers.  I catch them just in time.  Holding on to them I drift slowly to the surface and before I get there I open my eyes and catch the fractal spin of sunlight cast into all the colours of the rainbow and I taste the salt in my mouth. I surrender to the lap of the water and the warmth of sun on my face.   

Earlier, at breakfast, sitting with my luke-warm coffee, self-service from a military-green painted metal canteen that was so battered it must have seen active service, and munching on my dry crisp-bread, my mind dwelled for just a moment on the five-star Thailand Spa holiday I had considered as an option for this break.  Now, as I swam lazily across the cove towards the small beach at its end I was glad I was here, in this funny little country, that has such character and presence.  There was much I did not feel comfortable about in Cuba: at times it was dirty; disorganised; unkempt.  And despite the embargo there was no excuse for the litter and overflowing dustbins you saw about the place.  But at the same time there was a resilience I liked, a sense of unity, a sense of David and Goliath in its political stance and a desire to stand up for what it believed.  Somehow that made the basic amenities and idiosyncratic plumbing more acceptable. Even if I had to keep mending the toilets.

I talk to our trail guide after the swim as we amble our way back to the hotel and he tells me his grandparents remember the revolution.  But he himself can’t really relate to the embargo and the political isolation of Cuba and the practical difficulties that means for him and his family.   The revolution was in somebody else’s lifetime he says and he wants Cuba to move on and join the rest of the world.  It is an interesting and slightly sad conversation.  For me because I have seen and can predict the demons that capitalism and consumerism will bring when they come and have experienced how a lack of ethical constraint can lead to the worst of behaviours.  But for him the extreme socialism had only brought political and economic isolation and he feels he has no prospects and no future.  How long will it be though, before this little microcosm of socialism collides with the rest of the world.  What will happen in a country that has no income tax (though wages are very low by our standards), where there is no welfare system, where people even in the professions have two jobs to make ends meet.  Where else in the world would you get a taxi driver on a night shift who is also a professor at the university or a doctor at the hospital?  It’s almost too hard to comprehend.

On the bus to Trinidad, the perfectly preserved Spanish colonial settlement about an hour away from the hotel, I look out of the window at the soft hills, at the settlements of tiny houses with their kitchen gardens surrounded by home-made fencing and ruminate on Cuba’s history.  It’s a complicated tapestry of wealth, position and corruption in the post-colonial pre-revolution era and the barer threads of socialist zeal, theoretical equality and increasing political isolation in the post-revolution era. And, some would say there is still corruption, just a different type.

Cuba day 3, final part – Crab Kicking, Fit Guys and Troubled Dreams

I’ve never kicked a crab before and in my defence, it was in the dark and it was an accident.  And there were so many of the critters.

It is late, dinner is over and we have just stood out on the grassy bank beside the open-sided terracotta-tiled bar looking at the Milky Way.  It is a vivid strip of speckled beauty pinned onto the velvet darkness of the night sky.  Everywhere you look you see stars.   

Hotel Villa Guajimico is 42 kilometres from Cienfuegos up first into the hills and then back down to the coast. From our vantage point on a bank which sits high above a clef cut deep into a cove, the moon trails a golden path of light across the sea. I smell jasmine on the evening breeze and everywhere the cicadas are playing their love songs, mad for a mate. 

The little villas that make up this place are built on a steep hill which makes me puff as I take the steps to number 46.  The porter who is behind me is doing the same climb but with three bags. I hasten to add, they were not all mine.  The door opens onto single beds and a large mirror mottled with age.  Its second-hand-shop meets the 1980s which is not a good style.  The small wooden table is chipped and the air-conditioning unit held together with tape.  But when I turn it on it creaks into life and exhales a confident stream of coolness.  I have no small change to tip the guy who carried my bags and who is standing expectantly in the doorway.  I convey to him, in faltering Spanish my predicament and ask him his name, telling him I will come and find him at dinner when I’ve changed some notes.  He leaves closing the door behind him and by the time I have opened my suitcase and begun to hang my clothes he is back, with change for various sizes of note.  The tip is clearly important and I double my normal rate because anyone that takes those steps with a large bag in each hand and a heavy case on their shoulder deserves a bit of credit.  He seems to leave happy.   The room depresses me and I sit on the bed for a moment, thinking of home.  I am very tired.  Tiles are missing in the shower and I have to fix the toilet before it will flush (I’ve fixed more toilets on travels than I care to think about, I also fixed one at the Design Centre in Islington at the Christmas Fair in 2008.  The upside is it meant I got to the front of a very long queue) but the water is warm and after I’ve freshened up I feel a bit more cheery.  Picking up my torch and phone I go out to explore. 

The early evening glooming is slowly rolling in from the sea and I make my way with careful steps along the narrow corrugated concrete paths that wind around the little villas and in the twilight strain to see the words on the signs which point you in the direction of various amenities.  The pool is in one direction, the restaurant in another, the bar in a different direction again.  Not wanting to spend too long in my room I am early for dinner by an hour so follow the sign to the swimming pool.  The place is strange with its tiny little dollhouse-type-villas and winding paths and scurrying sounds of the land crabs which overrun the place. But I try not to let the atmosphere perturb me and once I am on the terrace by the pool watching the sun go down I feel a little calmer.  Just me and a black and white cat who comes to join me, and we are there, me standing, the cat sitting on the balustrade, both of us  watching the waning glow of the sun, seemingly lost in our own thoughts.  At the bar a few minutes later I order a cold white wine and the barman laughs.  “Piña Colada” he says. I shrug and nod.  And while the mixer grinds and churns I stand out under the trees where the bats wheel and soar around me in the darkness. 

At dinner I order Cuban wine for the first time and others join me. It’s called Soroa Vino Blance de Mesa and it’s just about fine.  The food is just about fine.  On the way back to my room I have my crab-kicking-incident, not intentional as I said earlier.  I stand for a moment outside the door and take a last look at the night sky.  I lie on the bed a long time before sleep takes me, glad at least that the air-con is working.                        

Cuba day 3, part 3 – An American Invasion, Is this Butlins? And Drifting Away.

The water felt good as the tiny waves broke against my ankles and my toes sunk into the soft white sand.  I put up my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, it was just past midday, and all I could see was the far shore of the crescent that made up this bay, shimmering in the distance.  I’d been in the sun for maybe five minutes, perhaps less, but already I felt the prickle of heat on my skin and the sensation of burning starting to sweep over my back.  Taking my hand down from my brow I rested it on my right shoulder and knew I would suffer later.   

Playa Largos is one of the two beaches that played host to the American 'Bay of Pigs' invasion in 1961.  What started off as a low-key covert action against the Castro regime mushroomed, thanks to the CIA, into a full-scale invasion backed by a 1400-strong force of CIA-trained Cuban exiles and financed with a total military budget of US$13m.  It was an unmitigated disaster, many of the invading force were left stranded on the beach and gave themselves up in a blink of an eye (allegedly) and then were returned to the US a year later in exchange for US$53 million worth of food and medicine.  Needless to say, the Americans didn’t try it again. What it did do was consolidate Castro’s preference for a Soviet economic partner and the rest, as they say, is history.  ‘Socialism or death’ became Castro’s defiant motif.  

Today, though, all is tranquil, the sea is as warm as bathwater and so clear I can see I am playing host to a school of tiny fish weaving in and out between my feet.  As I turn and look back to the beach I notice the chef from the little pink stuccoed café is sitting at one of his own tables, his head thrown back into a loud laugh and for a moment it looks like his hat will fall off.  It is low-season here and so he sits, with his friends and passes the time.  Beyond him is the low level building where the changing rooms are and a veranda, empty but for our party and a waitress who has tried to sell us some drinks and food.  It’s a small resort, scattered with small brightly coloured cottages all with the same rocking chairs and two-person table on the small patio at their front.  It reminds me of Butlins, England, circa 1970.  A Cuban holiday destination, not really popular with tourists and today, almost empty.  No bodies stretched out on the sand slowly spit-roasting, nobody out on the windsurfers.  Just a small party of Brits enjoying the beach and the sun.

The sand in getting to the sea made us hop and holler and we are pleased to make the water’s edge and plunge in.  The sun has bleached the view into shades of white and palest blue and sets the air over the water dancing.  Some seabirds squark loudly and we all turn around, trying to see what has spooked them. Spread in a line, we slowly walk out from the shore first ten meters and stop, then twenty an stop, then fifty and the sea is still only up to our thighs.  It feels strange to be so far from the shore and yet still not in deep enough water for swimming.  I remember that sharks can swim in only three feet of water and though its an illogical thought it sends a nervous shot of adrenaline up my spine and sparking around my brain.  But I want to swim and so I keep walking until my feet naturally lift from the sand and I strike out, with gentle strokes.  After a while I rotate until I am facing the sky and my arms and legs open out into the shape of a star.  I lay suspended, floating, with my eyes closed, and feel the rise and fall of the water and listen to the breaking of the waves not far away.  My closed eyelids are scarlet red in the harsh sunlight and I taste salt in the corners of my mouth.  I know I am drifting a little but I feel comfortable and safe in the embrace of the water around me. Then I open my eyes and slowly turn over.  The rest of the group seem quite far away so I kick my legs and head back to join them.  Back on the minibus we watch a Channel 4 video documentary film about the life of Fidel Castro.  I try to stay awake but feel myself drawn into sleep, my eyes dry and gritty.    

We stop for a short while at Cienfuegos, which sits in an enviable waterside setting just a little bit further around the natural bay.  The original French colonizers arrived in the early eighteen hundreds and set about making this a little bit of France and this can be seen in its neoclassical styling and colonnaded buildings which seem to sit confidently and serenely around its central plaza.  It was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2005.  We have time for a stroll to admire the statue of José Martí, the Italian-influenced theatre on the north size of the plaza (sadly closed today) and the quality of the handmade ice-cream which we discover at a small ice-cream counter hidden behind a narrow door in an otherwise un-notable expanse of wall.  Inside, seated on plastic chairs pushed against peeling paint and lino floor, locals make satisfied noises as they dip into their treat.  They watch us with interested eyes, but nobody speaks.  The ice-cream is so good, so cold, so welcome in the heat of the day, we don’t talk either as we walk back to the bus. We just enjoy.

The drive to our hotel takes too long.  We are all tired now and the rolling hills and dramatic landscape gets hardly a comment.  As soon as we leave the town we start to climb and there are mountains cutting into the sky line in the distance.  The road winds and there is little other traffic. The view begins to open up and turning around I crane my neck and can just see Cienfuegos behind us, the sun beginning to slowly drop though the light on the sea is still dazzling.  I lean my head against the window despite the vibration but don’t really see the passing fields and small settlements of houses but I do notice a small child and a pig playing together in a garden.  Its six fifteen in the evening, my eyes are sore from swimming and my hair feel hard and tangled from the salt water. The light outside is starting to fade and the clouds behind the mountains in the middle –distance have the grey tint of rain.   I start to feel a little travel sick.

Cuba day 3, part 2 - toilet seat thieves, a Mafia night out and losing three hundred million dollars

We stop for 15 minutes at a small roadside café for coffee and notice now the roads ahead are very wet and the clouds are dark and low on the horizon. We get back into the coach grateful for having had the chance to stretch our legs and visit the loo and for the first time we are driving into rain.

Oh the toilets, you need to know about the toilets in Cuba before you go.  Firstly, there must be a nationwide toilet seat shortage or else there are some kleptomaniacs in the country with very questionable fetishes.  Because, other than at the best restaurants and hotels there is never a seat to be found on the toilet.  There probably used to be one because the fittings are still there. But….   no…. seats.  After a while you get a bit fed up of this particularly because you almost invariably have to navigate past a formidable woman who is installed at a small table with her foot across the door and who asks for your money. Next to her, on the table, is a carefully guarded pile of sheets of loo roll which is heavily rationed.  When you have paid her the entrance fee which usually ends up being one CUC (about 60p) because that is the only change you have, one is presented with four, maybe five sheets of two-ply paper which is so thin as to be transparent.  If she likes the look of you, she might extend it to eight sheets.  But those are very rare occasions.  A CUC every time you go to the loo builds up over the week and, to add insult to injury, the toilets are usually grubby, loo seats almost don't exist and often there is no lock on the door either.  So you are left to assume that most complicated of positions that involves you hovering over the rim of the loo at which you chose not to peer too closely, you have one of your feet hooked under the door to stop it swinging open and leaving you in full view of the restaurant or bar and concurrently balancing your rucksack mid-air because you dare not put it down on the wetness that is the floor.  In fact the toilets are so bad when you find a good one you have to go two or three times during the course of your visit to whichever establishment just to build up some kind of lavatorial credit in your memory in order to block out the visits you need to forget.  By the middle of the week my own revolutionary zeal was on the rise and I presented at the toilet-toll-gate my own roll of loo paper and marched stalwartly passed the sentry ignoring the cries of protest.     

Back on the bus we learn that the population is about 65% white, 30% black or mixed and 30% Chinese, the last fact surprising me because I hardly recollect seeing any Orientals at all.  When I check this figure in one of my own reference books it tells me only 1% of the population are Chinese.  In the noise of the bus and with handwritten notes, I may well have just written the number down wrongly.  We are told that there is no discrimination against anyone, that 51% of Parliament is women and that unlike other nations there is no religious discrimination of any kind.  We go on to hear that there are high levels of literacy, free education for all and that everybody has access to the internet.   It’s at this point I stop writing and look up. There are no homeless people, no starving people, it’s a fair society we are told. I stop write again because I sense just a little bit of propaganda creeping in.  Now, there is a lot about the socialist model that I admire and respect and certainly under the pre-revolution Batista regime there was huge inequality and corruption.  In fact in December 1946 the Mafia convened the biggest-ever get together of North American mobsters in Havana’s Hotel Nacional, under the pretence that they were going to see a Frank Sinatra concert.  Not really the kind of tourist you want to cultivate. And Castro did pass some very good laws in the first few years of his presidency including one which abolished racial discrimination.  But the reality of the human condition is such that discrimination is impossible to eradicate, unfortunately, even in Cuba.

When it comes to the internet my research suggests that though it might be ‘available’ it is still mostly restricted to the privileged few that work in government ministries or business offices.   Cuba has, I understand, a lower internet usage than Haiti and when you can get access it's interminably slow.  I tried a couple of times myself and gave up and trying to write this blog there would have been hopeless.  On the upside the government has recently passed new resolutions establishing a standard rate for internet connections but at 6CUC an hour (about £5) it’s a price that is beyond all but the most well paid Cubans or for those tourists that just can’t do without their email.  From what I can tell, Cuba is generally considered to be internet-gagged, there seems to be censorship police and the authorities are notoriously prickly when it comes to the voice of dissent.  See the Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez,  www.desdecuba.com/generaciony , who is a rare voice of dissent on-line and who once wrote to and got a reply from President Obama.  She has been a fairly vociferous critic of the Cuban government and this has attracted their less than friendly attentions at times, I understand.  There still remains, and this is also repeated by someone else I meet later in the week, a concern about the late-night-knock-on-the-door scenario.  Cuba today is showing tentative signs of change, but some of its population still seem to be struggling to shake off the belief that they have to be careful about what they say and what they do.      

I had the impression that Cuba had been struggling every day since the revolution.  But, the guide tells us, in the 1970s and ‘80s the people were by all accounts quite happy.  The economy was being propped up by the Russians following a ‘beauty parade’ of possible allies post regime change and this continued for thirty years.  There was plenty of food in the shops and enough national income to fund the free education and medical care mentioned earlier.  The US, less than happy with these ideological bed mates used various retaliatory tactics to bring Castro to heel.  All of them failed including the notoriously botched Bay of Pigs invasion and 600-plus assassination attempts.  The bubble burst in 1989-1991 with the fall of the Soviet Bloc when Cuba lost the one million dollars of aid a day that the Russians were supplying.  When you think that means the country lost $365m a year in income and has to contend with the longest economic blockade in modern history you begin to see how things might start looking a bit shabby after a while.  There followed what Castro called the Special Period. But I don’t suppose it felt very special to most of the population as the country became increasingly insolvent and politically isolated.

But that’s enough about politics and history; let’s get back to the holiday.

See the Cuba photographs on the gallery.