Cuba day 3, part 1 - Heading for the Caribbean, a million miles on the clock and thumbs up for the environmentalists.

The Autopista Nacional, or A1, is the main highway that cuts diagonally across the country from Havana in the north east down to Cienfuegos province and beyond.   Our destination today is ultimately the Hotel Villa Guajimico but before then we will stop for a swim in the warm waters of the Caribbean at Playa Larga and take a stop at French-influenced Cienfuegos.        

 The city is at full pace at this time of day, the roads are busy with in all directions and the old cars which are so iconic of Cuba pant and rumble waiting for the lights to change.   There are about 60,000 of these pre-1959 American cars left in Cuba, down from the 150,000 or so that existed pre the revolution but when the relationship between the US and Cuba began to deteriorate the megaliths of American car manufacturers had to halt the sale and trade of any further vehicles, parts of service.  Some of these cars have exceeded their design life by five, six or seven times and it’s not unusual for them to have clocked a million miles or more.  But the most impressive thing is the way they keep these cars on the road in the most ingenious manner whether that’s making brake fluid from tree sap or adapting a 24V Russian tank battery for a ’58 Chevy.  I salute the sheer resourcefulness and determination to not have their spirit quelled.    

Outside of Havana the countryside is vibrant and lush, down to the good rainy season they have had this year.  We pass one banana plantation after another and whilst the quality of the roads begin to deteriorate after about 20 miles from the capital the traffic is light and so we make good progress.  In the fields and on the edges of the roads large flocks of Turkey Vultures settle and take off and settle again.  They are ugly and ungainly birds and we see many hundreds of them over the course of the week. 

Cuba is a large island, the largest in the Caribbean at 1250km from east to west. At its narrowest point there is just 31km between the choppy Atlantic Ocean to the north and the more tranquil turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea to the south.  It is in fact a sprawling archipelago containing thousands of mainly uninhabited islands and keys.  It is shaped like an alligator and sits just below the Tropic of Cancer.  By the end of the week’s itinerary we will have just about managed to cover the central block of the country and will have travelled a lot of miles.  Like I said, it’s a big place and I am beginning to understand why Exodus Travel calls this week a ‘Taste’ of Cuba.

Our guide is pointing out various points of interest as we pass them and informs us about Cuba’s economic and trading history, about the buoyant and lucrative slave trade of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and then more about the countries fraught relationship with the USA.    This may be one of the major roads in the country but it doesn’t stop cattle from wandering nonchalantly across it and though the driver slows down and toots his horn it’s unfazed and just continues its steady progress across the lanes.   Water towers dot the landscape at regular intervals and gradually the flatness gives way to strange flat-topped hills which I learn are called mogotes.  I check my compass and note that we are heading SE.  As I sit looking out of the window at the landscape going by I think it reminds me a lot of Argentina.       

Someone observes that there are different coloured vehicle registration plates on the cars.  Sometimes they are black, sometimes blue, and sometimes white.  Infect, in Cuba the registration plate identifies the driver, not the vehicle and the range of colours and code might identify anything from your status in the ‘party’ to your nationality to what you do for a living.  Government vehicles have dark grey number plates with white lettering and determine where and when the vehicle can be driven and whether it can be used for personal as well as official duties.  The bosses of government owned companies get blue plates and they can only use their cars for getting to work and back.  Allegedly government inspectors wait along the highway out of town and in other high-traffic areas and flag down cars with blue plates to make sure the occupants aren’t using them for a trip to the beach. Army vehicles have red number plate and the pale-green plates are for vehicles used by the Economic Ministry. Black plates are for diplomats who don’t have to adhere to traffic laws and white plates are for Cuban government ministers of heads of state who apparently often drive like they have diplomatic immunity but technically don’t.  Most of the half-century old American roadsters that create the moving museum that is Cuba have yellow licence plates meaning they are owned and used by ordinary Cubans.  It’s an interesting system adopted from the USSR for which I see some minor merit, but to me, it just screams CONTROL and I am not sure where it fits in with the  Cuban socialist framework but to your Cuban in the street, it all just normal.

Small clusters of low-rise houses make up small villages from time to time and most the houses have small vegetable patches and are keeping chickens or goats or pigs.  There is the odd neighbourhood restaurant or pizzeria.  But I see very little wildlife though I scan the fields and skies and just once I spot a vulture sitting quietly in a dead tree.  The sugarcane industry is a significant part of the economy in Cuba along with citrus and mango plantations.  At the time of Columbus’ arrival in 1492 95% of Cuba was covered in forest by 1959 due to unregulated land-clearing that area had been reduced to 16%.  Large-scale tree-planting and protected parks have seen this figure creep back up to about 24% which perhaps doesn’t seem a wholesale reversal but actually puts them at the forefront of Latin Americans for this kind environmental planning.  The government is keen to confront the mistakes of the past and there have been massive clean-up projects in harbours and rivers around the coast.  Cuba might not strike you as being at the forefront of environmental innovation with its emission-belching cars and decaying infrastructure but in 2006 the World Wildlife Foundation named Castro’s struggling island nation as the only country in the world with sustainable development.  Perhaps the Americans should put that in their pipe and smoke it.

Cuba day 2, part 4 - Making Mojito’s, Surviving the Salsa and Propping up a Bar with Hemingway.

Hotel Florida on Calle Obispo is the location of our early evening entertainment.  It is an architectural extravaganza built in the purest colonial style with pillars and arches forming the framework for an elegant central courtyard. The building has been restored in the recent past but has retained its original high ceilings and luxurious finishes.   Like many of the architectural features of Havana the Florida draws on European styling for its ambience and design and as we walk through the door we could be stepping into a grand hotel in a city like Madrid or Seville. We are guided past the reception to a set of wooden double doors and into a room with a bar to the left and an empty floor to the right, separated off by a row of red velvet chairs with ornate gold legs.  There is an elaborate chandelier hanging from the ceiling.  On the right hand side of the room sit a small group of young men and women who are chatting and laughing and who look up expectantly as we come in. We learn that these are to be our dance partners for the evening.  Before we begin our class the barman will be teaching us how to make Mojitos, the signature cocktail of Cuba.  The Mojito with its sparkling-water base and minty freshness seems light and unthreatening; even at a push one might say healthy, but after two or three it can leave you feeling like you’ve been kicked in the head by a Cuban mule.  I was very interested to find out what goes into it.  Watching the barman pour a generous shot of rum into a glass and following it with a couple of heaped teaspoons of sugar and then taking a good bunch of fresh mint which he twists before mashing it into the rum/sugar mix, my earlier anxiety about doing the Salsa class begins to kick in again.  As he is topping up the glasses with spring-water and finishing the drink with a dash of Angostura Bitters (there, now you have the recipe) I realise I really don’t want to be in this room with all these people.  Memories of Argentina and Tango are coming back to me and I don't want to be reminded so I put down my drink, pick up my clutchbag and head for the door.  I will explain to the guide later why I left.  But before I manage to disappear I am intercepted.

I have studiously avoided catching the eye of the young man with the long braids and white wool cap who has been watching me from the other side of the room.  I am still looking at the floor as he puts his hand on my arm and notice that he has white plaited leather shoes and that his white trousers are too long and bag up around his ankles.   I just want to make a quiet exit and find some local bar to hole up in for a while until the class is finished  but he is blocking my way and I feel myself being gently but firmly led onto the dance floor.  He is smaller than me, his long black braids are secured with beads and his eyes, underneath the cap look at me curiously. He has a very big smile and his name, I learn, is Joel.  His breath has a hint of tobacco smoke on it.  He crooks his head to one side and smiles again and tells me to relax and I realise it must be very obvious that I am far from that.  Taking my right hand, he places his own in the small of my back and tries to draw me a little closer to him.  It is clear, to both of us, that there is resistance.  But he steps back and lets me have the space I want and he smiles at me again.  His teeth are very white and even.  Over the course of the next ninety minutes I come to realise that apart from the instructor I am lucky enough to have the best dance partner in the room.  Joel is easy and natural to dance with, patient and keen to make it fun, for me AND him.  And I surprise myself by how quickly I find the rhythm and remember the steps we are being taught and it is much, much easier and more fun than Tango.  I master the routine and we get faster and better with each runthrough and I find myself beginning to settle and to allow the beat and pulse of the music to guide me and then I find that I am letting him lead me without resisting.  Joel smiles and nods and I know we are doing well and then he starts dancing closer and closer and makes the steps smaller and smaller and we are much more in tune with each other and then I am moving in the routine without even having to think about it and I find myself laughing but it is almost too much to contend with.  It has been so wonderful to dance but as the music stops and the lesson ends I move away quickly, keen to break the bond.  For a moment I see the hint of a question and a sparkle of invitation as he holds my gaze and I wonder if he might have been hoping I would ask him to join me for the rest of the evening.  

Later on in a roof-top paladar restaurant entered through a street level door which you would miss if it were not pointed out to you I sit listening to the strains of music coming up from a bar below.   The restaurant has stunning views over the old town and across the harbour to the house that Che lived in after he and Fidel took Havana during the revolution.  An imposing marble statue of Christ dominates the top of the ridge on which the house is built.  After our Salsa we are exhausted but there is still enough light to take photographs and admire the view so no one says much for a bit.  We rally ourselves though as tomorrow we head out of Havana and we want to make the most of the evening.   From our vantage point on the terrace we can just see the rooftop bar of the Hotel Ambos Mundos,  another old Hemingway haunt where he kept a room for a few years and which is just down the street.  The food arrives and the sun slowly fades, leaving the sky the palest hint of chiffon pink and golden apricot tinge the edge of the clouds out over the harbour. For a moment Che’s house lights up as it catches the last rays of the sun.  The statue of Christ is covered in scaffolding and is being renovated like several important heritage and cultural sites in the city. Our guide has told us that since Raul Castro took over as President there have been some positive changes, slower than ideal perhaps, and there is still a fierce struggle between those who want progressive change and those who want to maintain the status quo. But all the same she is optimistic and hopeful for the future.   As we talk about Cuba past, present and future, the street lights below us switch on and their sodium glow draws a rich greenness from the palm trees in the plaza below us. The atmosphere is slow and relaxed and a welcome breeze picks up and cools us as the restaurant begins to fill.

By a quarter to ten we are all yawning and slowly people drop out of the plan to go on and we debate whether we will get a ‘second wind’.  When the bill is paid we carefully pick our way down three floors of narrow staircase and half of the group head for a taxi and the rest of us turn towards Vieja Havana and the hotel bar we spotted.  But when we get there the hotel is open but the bar is closed for “fumigation”.   I remember the name of another bar where I have read Hemingway was a regular, but when I consult the map I see it is right at the other end of town.  We hesitate for a moment, undecided about whether we want a 10 or 15 walk or whether we will catch up with the others and take a taxi back. But I don’t want to go back to my brown room and my brown bed and lie staring up at the ceiling again so I rally our sense of adventure and we head for El Floridita.   

In 15 or 20 minutes we see the welcoming neon sign of El Floridita blazing away at the end of the long cobbled street that is Calle Obispo. There is security on the door and I am a little anxious we may have made this walk only to be turned away from a second bar but they look us up and down and nod and pull the door open for us.   El Floridita was opened in 1817 with the original name La Pina de Plata (The Silver Pineapple) but the large number of American tourists that frequented the place in the early 1900s persuaded the owner to change its name.  One of the owners of the bar – Constante – is credited as having created the frozen daiquiri in the early 1930s.  It is one of these that we were here to sample.  Hemingway was a staunch fan of the frozen Daiquiri along with the Mojito.  One of his famous Havana quotes is about his drinking habits “My Mojito in La Bodeguita, my Daiquiri in El Floridita”    La Bodeguita you may recollect, is where we had previously had lunch and scrawled our names and messages on the wall.   El Floridita has quite a lot of Hemingway memorabilia including photographs and a bust and in 2003 a life-sized statues was sculpted by José Villa Soberón and now stands propping up the end of the bar.  Another author, Graham Greene who wrote Our Man in Havana, was also a regular visitor here I understand.  The place preserves much of the atmosphere of its 1940s and 1950s heyday with the barmen wearing red waistcoats to match the regency red style of the bar and furnishings.  When we arrive a band is playing just inside the door and it is loud and atmospheric.  El Floridita is very much on the tourist trail in Havana and can be very busy at times and there are mixed reviews about the food in the restaurant.  But it’s just busy enough when we arrive, we manage to gather enough stools for the  four of us to sit at the bar and the frozen Daiquiri’s really are the best we have in Cuba, despite the slightly hefty price tag of 6CUC.  And there is not just the choice of one Daiquiri but about 20 different versions and I try a Classic first and then a lemon flavour and then a Classic again.  It’s a bit like drinking a very alcoholic Slush Puppy.  

See the Cuba photographs on the gallery.    

Cuba Day 2, Part 3 - Free Rum Shots, Sharing Space with Castro and Finding God

The Havana Club Museum of Rum is located in Vieja Havana in a converted 18^th century townhouse only a stone’s through from the harbour.  Having paid our entrance fee we pose for photographs by the Havana Club sign which takes a bit of time. It’s a well known image and everyone wants a shot of themselves in front of it (me included) and there is lots of swopping of cameras and checking of results before we move on into the museums small shady patio.  Here there are broad stone columns surrounded by ferns, yuccas and palms and a small bar offers its own special cocktail made with freshly wrung sugar cane.  Havana Club is now the only international rum label produced on the island.  Back in the day Mr Bacardi had a bit of a thing going in Cuba too but after the revolution he split and headed for Costa Rica.  It seems there is still bad blood between the Bacardi family and the Cuban government who accuse the family of funding organisations which help maintain the current US blockade.   I know my own position on the blockade – I believe it is wholly wrong and creates severe shortages of basic commodities and causes significant suffering for the Cuban people.  But, I also see it from the perspective of the Americans who had nearly all of its private assets nationalised when the new Cuban revolutionary government took power over1959/1960.  The US-Cuba relationship seems a complex thing, fuelled on the surface by diametrically opposed ideology but underneath perhaps as much by individual’s desire for power and control.  President George W.  Bush’s decision to impose even greater restrictions on trading with Cuba in 2004 may have brought him new voters but it caused even more humanitarian problems for Cubans.  But, Fidel Castro dug in his own position and seems to refuse to recognise the march of progress and the basic human rights of freedom of speech and movement for his people.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the two positions , there is no doubt that it is the Cuban man or woman on the street who bear the brunt of the problem.

But, the rum museum is worth the fiver we paid, the free (though very small) samples at the end make me realise that 15 year old Havana Club is every bit as good as Cognac and I also got to experience probably the best model railway I have ever seen.  This fantastic little setup, which must have been made by a master craftsman, is situated halfway around the tour.  It is a masterpiece of a model railway designed to capture the essence of the great sugar refineries and rum distilleries whose immense chimneys rose as landmarks all over Cuba during the pinnacle of its years as a regional economic powerhouse.  It takes in the sugar cane fields, the steam railway which on Cuba was the first to be used in Latin America for the transport of sugar cane, it shows the huge factories with their blazing furnaces and the towns and buildings that rose out of the wealth that was generated.  The guide turns on the railway as we gather around its 15 foot square span and everything comes to life in a moment, the train begins its route around the fields, in fabulously scaled down factories and private properties, tiny lights blaze and models of tiny people work in the fields chopping cane.  I am mesmerised and stay watching it for a few more minutes after the group has moved on.  God, Hornby, you have got serious competition.

Our lunchtime venue we are told is somewhere very special.  It is not smart particularly, nor is it expensive, and it isn’t exclusive either.  In fact it is a bar/restaurant like many other hundreds of bars in Havana.  This one, though, happens to be one of Hemingway’s documented haunts and is called La Bodequita de Medio.  We are crammed onto a tiny table in a corner which isn’t really large enough for seven but we squeeze onto it anyway.  In what is one of Havana’s most celebrated venues you tend not to complain about the table you’ve been given, you are just grateful you’ve got one.   A visit has become de rigueur for tourists and visitors from home and abroad and having in the past included Fidel Castro himself (though I’m not sure that will have been very recently ), Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole, all of whom have left their autographs on La Boedquita’s walls.  Now everybody does it and we do too, but before you start thinking this is a moment where carefully considered and profound musings get left for posterity it turns out that with the exception of the comments made by very big names the walls are painted over every few months.  So, my small written application of sentiment which included several expletives expressing my view of recent events is probably already painted over.  Maybe that not a bad thing.   A painting over of the wall is perhaps as good a metaphorical assuaging of emotion as anything.  In the tiny bar at the front a four piece band continue to perform with verve and panache as we exit into the afternoon sunshine.  A few CUCs lighter but with a sense of having shared a moment in space if not in time with a couple of history’s more memorable figures.   I feel slightly dozy and full of food and drink and meander, a little more slowly and carefully than usual across the uneven cobbles of the lane and up to the Plaza de la Catedral.

Most of Havana’s tourist attractions of which the cathedral is one are filled with a cohort of entrepreneurial locals trying to earn their bit of hard currency.  There are the flower girls, who are found in nearly every plaza and who are attired in flamboyant and colourful dresses topped with a brightly colour turban. Often they have small baskets of fake flowers, sometimes they have fake Cuban cigars of an improbable size, but whatever they have as props but they are impossible to miss. This isn’t because they are necessarily attractive or young but because they seem to have an almost unbelievable and instinctive understanding of trigonometry. They can pick up your movement coming into the square, assess your trajectory and incept you no matter your speed or direction.  They often hunt in packs.  And particularly for the men in your party, they can be very insistent that you have your photograph taken with them.  All for a price of course. The Plaza de la Catedral is a delight of baroque architecture and eighteenth century flamboyance but the cathedral itself due to weather and environmental damage looks a little like the stone is dissolving.  The remains of Columbus were interred here from 1795 to 1898 when they were moved to Seville.  Inside the cathedral it is quiet and the air hangs hot and heavy.  Two large old-fashioned copper fans with leads that snake across the floor move the air just enough to give a moment of coolness as you walk across its path.  I like visiting religious buildings, I like the smell and the sense of permanence and the remainder that we are all where we are according to God’s will.  Though to be honest, He’s not exactly in my good books at the moment.  I break away from the group and guide and wander around alone.  The main seating which runs down the centre of the church is cordoned off which disappoints me because even though I’m not entirely at one with the Big Cheese I would still to have a chat with Him as I’m in the neighbourhood.   I notice at the front of the church and to the side of the ornate and heavily gilded altar there is an open door which leads to a small private chapel.  Inside a few rows of wooden pews face an almost life-size replica of Christ on the cross.  It looks so real I feel that if I reach out and touch it the flesh will yield. I sit and gaze at Him and the manner in which it the cross is hung and the effect of the painted image behind it makes it feel like He is almost floating in front of me.   I sit there for a long time in quiet and sad contemplation until someone from the group comes to find me.

 Outside an old, thin woman in a faded blue cotton wrap and a ragged turban wound around her head is leaning against one of the stone columns close to my group and catches my eye.  She gestures for me to come closer but I shake my head, she then makes a demonstration as if she is writing with an imaginary pen and I shake my head again.  Next she pretends she is rubbing something into the skin of her hand and lower arm and I shake my head once more.  She puts her hands together like she is praying. The hands are dark and gnarled and the nails are long and dirty.  Her eyes plead with me but I look away.  I feel I want to help her, to contribute something which might ease her life just a little bit, just for a moment, but we have been given express direction that we must not give anyone money or even little gifts such as biros or hand-cream because begging in Cuba is becoming more common and with tourism on the rise and the currency it supplies so valuable to the country the government doesn’t want it’s people to become a nuisance to its visitors.  We have been told even if we give over something like a pen or hand-cream then it is just taken around the corner and sold for cash and the cash used to buy drink.  My rationale self understands this stance but my emotional irrational self feels guilt for all I have and for all that they do not.  I go and sit back with the group and listen to our guide who is filling us in on the kinds of things you don’t read about in the guidebooks.  She is extremely knowledgeable and interesting and we learn much about everyday Cuban society and the realities of living in the country, good and bad. We learn about the health system (all free), about education, about the local Santaria religion. It adds useful substance and texture to the ‘lite’ version of a city you usually see as a temporary visitor.   

Back at the hotel we do not have long to spare but I have time for a quick dip in the pool.  The single row of sun-beds which surround the pool are mostly full now but the water is empty.  I spot the two young men from yesterday, one of whom is having an argument with a girl, his girlfriend I assume. She turns away from him and pouts and then holds out her hand to admire the paintwork on her fingernails.  It makes me smile that she has not taken the little exchange to heart.  Thirty minutes later I am back in reception, changed and ready to meet the others for our Mojito-making class and Salsa lesson.

See the Cuba photos on the Gallery.

Cuba Day 2, Part 2 - Viva La Revolution and Assessing the size of a Cigar

I have a very strange dream.  I am sitting in the living room of a house which is a large, stunning open-plan property in the country and I am minding my own business, reading the paper and facing the view.  I hear the sound of a hunt bugle and then, looking up I see what (in my dream) I know is the Pytchley and they are almost upon me, horses, hooves, whips, hounds, noise, confusion and I cover my face to protect myself. Then they are gone, having left me intact but a sea of debris and devastation around me.  I wake up, not sure, for a moment, where I am.

The sun is filtering through the curtains which just about cover the patio doors to the balcony.  Through the gap I catch a glimpse of the clothes I wore yesterday which I have washed and laid out over the balcony chair to dry.  I look at my phone, it is just before 6am.  I drag myself out of bed and slightly part the curtain to survey the day.  Nothing is happening.  It is too early to get up but even though I go back and lay on the bed I cannot drift back into sleep.  I doze for a bit and then get up again, restless.  A swim before breakfast beckons.  The hotel does not have a ‘proper’ pool in that it is a strange shape which means you cannot swim lengths.  It is what I call a ‘dipping’ pool - for people that don’t really swim but just want to get wet.  But it’s water and I am drawn to it and so I take off my wrap and sit on the edge and ease myself in.  I allow myself to sink to the bottom which is not very deep, only about 4 feet.  I have my eyes closed, and just feel the comfort of the warmth of the water around me and I wish I could hold my breath longer but in the end I have to surface.  I swim a few widths which is not very far, then hoist myself up on to the side and look out, beyond the low wall to the sea which is grey and choppy.  I think about the day ahead, then put on my wrap and go up to my room to change.  We are here for two nights to I don’t have to concern myself with packing but I find places to hide my valuables and get changed and go down to breakfast. 

The breakfast buffet is diverse and notionally in three parts – coffee and bread, open range cooking for omelettes and other such things, and then pastries at the end.  There is fresh fruit and berries part way down which I head for first.  The size of the papayas and mango astounds me, the specimens we get at home are poor cousins by comparison.  Being the first of our group down I select a table near the window and sit down, unfolding my tissue-thin serviette and flicking the flies away from my plate.  There are a few people here already and after a few minutes one of my own group arrives and then another.  We chat about the day, still finding our way with each other, exploring backgrounds and experiences, I am always astounded how well travelled people are.  I hide away in what I hope is a nonchalant fashion some cheese and ham for the cat.  Probably not the ideal diet but I figure she won’t be that discerning. 

Our briefing for the day and the remainder of the week takes place at a table in the reception and our group is now complete, there are seven of us in total.  Just right for doing stuff together but large enough a group to split into two or three where the mood takes us.  The itinerary is laid out – two days to get to know Havana old and new, then heading SE to Cienfuegos and the Bay of Pigs, then up to Trinidad, Santa Clara and back to Havana.  With lots of music, Mojitos and fun in between.    We leave at about 10am boarding the mini bus, finding the seats that, more or less, we will occupy for the whole of the week.  We humans are creatures of habit.  Ernesto our mini bus driver is introduced  but we are told he is not the REAL Ernesto.  He is not Che we are told.  A polite ripple of laughter goes around the bus.

We are heading into central Havana for the day and this takes only about 15 or 20 minutes though after about five minutes I have already lost my bearing.  There is so much to photograph that I almost can’t put the camera down.  Being in Havana is almost like a real-time movie set.  Miramar, the district where our hotel is based was as I said earlier a very fashionable area in the 1900s to the 1950s and many of the houses are large and have sizeable gardens around them which I expected at one point would have needed full-time help. But now most have been reclaimed by nature at least to some point but even this wildness has its own charm and beauty.  One of the houses, on the corner and painted a pale coral pink has been converted into a school and as we pause at the lights  we see through open glass doors into a a class of young girls, maybe 7 or 8 years old, beautifully turned out in their maroon and pale blue uniforms.  They are sitting cross-legged on the floor listening intently to their teacher.  I wonder if British school children of that age are quite so rapt.  We are running parallel to the coast but getting closer to town and we begin to see restaurants and kiosks and other private enterprises which are now legal in Cuba.  We pass a small marina with work-a-day boats and I make a note to come back to photograph it.  In common with what I saw on the way from the airport, there are groups of old and young men sitting under trees, chatting, smoking and generally just passing time.  I think about the fact that the US is only 90 miles away with all the delights and dangers that capitalism and consumerism can offer and marvel at the fact that two such different cultures exist only a stone’s-throw-away in modern transport terms.  It can’t be said that they exist in any form of harmony though.  That said, we learn that the US now gives 20,000 visas a year to Cubans to visit their relations in the US and that there are several flights a day into and out of Miami from Havana. But Cubans cannot I believe travel with their families and if that isn’t as type of hostage taking then I don’t know what is.  I wonder about a regime that so restricts the freedoms of its people.  And then I contemplate what freedom brings and think about the global economic crisis which has come about as a consequence of greed and avarice and so don’t allow myself to judge, not until I know more. 

There are many, many motorbikes and sidecars in Cuba.  Fifteen years ago (I seem to recollect) fuel was still rationed but now it isn’t but personal transport is still beyond the means of most Cubans in terms of having cars and travelling distances.  Hitch-hiking is a way of life that we see often particularly later in the week when we head out of town.  But today we are still in Havana and heading down town via Passeo Avenue passing what are now semi-derelict or neglected properties but which must have been at one time impressive and beautiful houses owned by wealthy and powerful individuals.   We are told that they are still inhabited despite how rundown they look but in most of them there are now multiple families.  Almost all have areas held up with builder’s props or wooden trusses and elaborate braces.  I feel myself shiver as I contemplate what it must be like to live there and go to bed not entirely confident that the walls or the floors will hold up.  Laying down and closing your eyes every night must become an act of faith.  Or maybe you just get used to it.  Coming into Vedado district the houses are much smarter and better looked after and it is clear that there is still some money here.  These wide streets were orientated towards the ocean breezes for the individuals who once had them lavishly designed and built mostly on the back of money coming in from rocketing sugar prices.   We pass the British Ambassador’s House which our guide tells us has many bedrooms, maybe ten or fifteen.   In the past, back in the 30s and 40s poor people were actually banned from coming to this district.  You can begin to understand how the early seeds of revolutionary thought may have begun to fester. 

The road system suddenly opens out at Revolution Square and the scale catches me by surprise. I dip into the guidebook and find it is 12km² and can hold more than half a million people, which it did quite regularly when Castro when still in speech-making shape.  He was not renowned for his brevity and in 1986 he gave a speech which lasted eight hours.  I muse on the fact that he probably has a bit of an ego.  The square is dominated by the José Marti Memorial which stands 109m high and behind it are, we are told, are the closely guarded offices of former President Castro.  I don’t expect they like you just wandering around over there so I stick to the Plaza and take photos with a zoom lens instead.  Behind us is the iconic Che Guevara image set into the stone face of a multi-story building below which is his famous slogan “Hasta la Victoria Siempre” – Until the Everlasting Victory, Always.  Wherever you go in Cuba you see this image and for a moment I think about him and wonder what it would take for me to fight for and give us my life for the freedom of others.  I also wonder what would have happened if, like Castro, he had survived and if Cuba would have been different.  Around the top of the memorial several dozen Turkey Vultures are circling and it brings to mind the Adams Family House from the 1960s cartoon.   I decide not to mention that to the guide as it is a bit early in the holiday to get deported.

Our next stop is a tobacco store - cigars along with Rum being Cuba’s most famous exports. The shop is quite small and the counter is packed three or four deep with customers (tourists that is) straining to see what is on offer.  There are single cigars, packs of cigars, mixed packs of cigars.  They cost more than I imagined given they are made just down the road.  Cigar humidors sit proudly to one side and their cedarwood cases have an expensive sheen.  I avoid the throng and head over to the humidors to get an idea of price, they too are expensive. Beautiful but expensive.  I am not sure I am bothered enough by cigars to take the chance of having my toes stood on or an elbow in my ribs so I wander over to the small stand-up coffee counter and chat, in pigeon-Spanish, with the two guys serving coffee.  At first they think they have a customer but I have to disappoint them, all I want is a ‘still life’ photo which gives an essence of the place and between us know enough English/Spanish words for me to get across that I would like an empty coffee cup, a Mojito type glass and a couple of packs of Cuban cigarettes which I arrange in which I hope is a fairly artistic manner.  The shots actually look quite good when I check them on the back of the camera.  I get the guys in a shot too so they don’t feel left out but like most Cubans they seem easy going and smile a lot.  The sea of people at the cigar counter briefly parts as one coach leaves and just before another arrives I deftly slip into the gap and make my purchase.  Then seeing that one of our party is in protracted negotiations over some multi-pack or other I decide to wait outside instead and watch the world go by. The old black guy standing on the door has a large cigar in his mouth.  The door creaks as he opens it and before I pass through he gives me a revolutionary salute.  I smile and he winks at me.  He is so old he could even have been there in ’59 but I know my Spanish doesn’t stretch far enough to ask him.  Outside in the bright sunshine I catch sight of a couple of interesting characters having their hair cut in a barber shop so with camera in hand I go over the road and say ‘hola’.   

See the Cuba photographs on the gallery.

Cuba day 1 - Where's Fidel?

It was blue skies all the way.  Until we got to Cuba.  Then we descended through thick grey cloud and landed smoothly on the patchwork tarmac of the runway.  I looked around for any sign of Castro’s private plane but nothing.  Perhaps he was out for a jaunt.

The queue snaked slowly through immigration and a repeat through higher security with every passenger searched.  I guess that is something to expect when you have a Commandante with more attempts on his life than the Pope. I suppose the exploding cigar being the most creative, if unlikely idea.  We queued again for currency, the CUC (or Cuban Convertible Peso) being the only cash tourists are allowed to use and then we headed for our minibus which apparently we would get to know quite well over the course of the week.

Concrete roads passed tumbledown houses with ornate grills and folk just hanging around. Groups of men and boys sat or stood around under the cover of palm trees, stripped to the waist, smoking.  We passed fields full of hungry looking hourses, then more fields of hungry looking cattle and thin goats.  The people looked hungry too.  The houses, flat roofed, one, two or three stories high are painted in bright colours pockmarked with brickwork where the plaster has fallen away. Floors look like they have been added at random and many of the properties have ornate grills rusting through which are wrapped around the terraces.  The people sitting at tables are reading or just looking blankly into space and look like they are in cages.  Others lean out on balconies and one guy, dark and mean-looking sees me looking at him and blows me a kiss.  I feel happier when the lights change and the bus starts to move again. 

Our first night is in a beachfront hotel in Miramar, an area of town where many of the Cuban American elite built their villas and mansions in the Batista era.  We are told there are many beautiful properties.  but I fail to see any and even the Russian Embassy looks derelict, at least from the outside.  My impression of the place is like it has been through a war.  Which I suppose it has.  Its been throught two wars in a way, once for the revolution in 1959 and then again in the early 90s when after the collapse of the Soviet Union a million dollars of aid a day stopped almost overnight.  The air is very warm and humid and it starts to rain.  Nobody who is outside on the street seems to notice but then again it is the rainy season so I suppose they must be used to it.  The adults just look lethargic and as if they have given up. The youth, like young people anywhere in the world, still have some life about them.

We reach the beach and head east towards our hotel.  This is the municipal beach we are told and is very popular with the local people but from the vantage point of the minibus all I see is rows of concrete groins looking like the jaws of long dead whales sticking up through the sand. The sand itself looks brown and hard.  It will be interesting to see how many people are using the beach in the morning.

The hotel is one of the best we will stay in on the trip so I am interested to arrive and just get a sense of what the quality of accommodation is like. The smell of mustiness hits me strongly as we walk through the door. The porter though is smartly turned out and polite. He is very keen to take our luggage.  Normally I would do this myself – my bag is not overly heavy – but somehow I feel compelled to let them earn their tip as the CUC is valuable currency if you are a local. 

My room is brown.  The walls are painted mid-brown and give off a slight shine.  The bedspread is brown. The tiles in the bathroom are brown.  Most of the lights don’t work.  I am feeling very depressed for reasons I will tell you about later and I sit down on the bed and have a good cry.  I have an overwhelming desire to run back to the airport and get the first plane home.  But, of course, I don’t.  It is good that I am 6000 miles away from from where I think I want to be.  After my cry I don’t feel particularly better but decide it is a sounder move not to wallow and so take a shower.  I change out of my travel clothes which are now crumpled and sweaty.  I take my hair down and hesitate as I see my reflection in the mirror. For a moment I hardly recognise the person staring back at me.

I decide to take my mind off things and the best way to do that is not to sit in my brown room and stare at my phone but grab my camera and head out to look around.  I organise the room so that I will be able to tell if anyone comes in and double-locking the door I head over to the lift which is no more than 20 feet away from my room.  I press the button and notice that the corridor smells.  I notice it is also painted brown. After a couple of minutes and no sign that the lift is on its way I search out instead the stairwell which is narrow and dirty, several of the ceramic tiles which make up the stair treads are missing and so I have to carefully watch my step.  The occasional windows have obscured glass. But I make it down three levels and emerge in an ancillary part of the lobby where someone is sitting behind a melamine topped desk with the aim of selling tours and excursions. There is a small, desk top advertisement for the Buena Vista Social Club. When I look more closely I see it is 18 months out of date.  I recollect that I saw the Buena Vista Social Club at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester about 18 months ago and wonder if it is the same line-up. The average age then was about 80 so I figure several of them might have crooked it.  But then, music can keep you going, look at the Rolling Stones, so they may well still be living it up at some jazz venue around the world.  I hope so.  The floor of the lobby is tiled and there are various small, glass fronted offices with floor to ceiling net curtains.  Further along towards the reception desk is a small shop selling beachwear and other miscellaneous and in my mind, unnecessary items.  The lobby opens out and is filled with 1980s-style boxy rattan furniture with sky blue cotton covers organised around various sizes of low occasional tables.

The receptionist smiles and greets me and as I pass the reception desk I glance up at the wall behind her where four clocks demonstrate various time zones around the world.  The clock for London has the hour arm missing, the minute arm stutters but continues its solitary journey around the face.   The solitary tick, tick, tick, of the single arm in its slightly agonised and impeded journey around the clock face disturbs me.  I feel an idiot for feeling sorry for an inanimate object.  But that is how it is.  Outside it is raining lightly but as it is the rainy season that seems fair. The cloud cover is low and the humidity is high.  I feel prickles of heat on my back and neck and my clothes already feel damp as I stand looking at the outside pool in which two young men are larking about.  They notice me and smile and try to get my attention with their antics but I don’t smile back and so they go back to their game which really is for the benefit of two girls lounging on the sun beds and who give them the attention they are looking for.  As I stand there in the shelter of the porch I remember how much I love to swim in the rain and make a mental note to take a plunge in the morning before breakfast.  Being near water always calms me. 

With still over half an hour before the group is due to meet for dinner, I settle into one of the chairs in the lobby and order a beer.  I’ve brought my English-Spanish phrase book of many years standing but still my Spanish is poor in the extreme. I do know the word for beer though – Cerveza.  I know the words for one to ten too so know, if necessary, the night will be OK.  Inside the front page of the phrase book I have listed some of the places I have been that use the Spanish language and add to it Cuba, September 2012. One to cross off my top ten list assuming I come back safely.   I tip the bottle of Cerveza Nationale up to my mouth and feel the fizzy coldness cascade down my throat and I feel myself relax and settle into the holiday.  I look forward to losing the stresses of the last four weeks.

The other members of the small group that is the ‘Taste of Cuba’ nine day tour muster just before seven o’clock in the lobby.  Though there is still a hint of rain and the roads and paths are shining with wetness, we decide to walk to the Paladar Vistamar which is our restaurant for the evening.  Paladars are private restaurant that have become legal over the last few years and are beginning to spring up everywhere around Cuba in contrast to the state-run restaurants that have prevailed.  Sometimes they are quite sophisticated like the one we were about to enjoy for our first night meal and sometimes they are quite basic. But either way they are private enterprises which show the beginnings of a shift in how the Cuban economy is operating.   The rain has stopped as we walk down the hotel steps, avoiding the skinny cat and her kittens (we feed them titbits from breakfast in the morning because they look so undernourished and hungry) and the taxi drivers touting for trade, and we quickly disappear into the darkness once outside of the domain of the hotel lights.  The pavements are badly maintained and so we mostly walk in the road as there is not much traffic. There are houses on either side, some of them very large but now fading in their grandeur and unmaintained.  In the fifties this was a very smart part of town. We pass various small groups of people sitting in the darkness, chatting and smoking. Mostly they greet us with a few words and we wave back and smile, hoping they are friendly and haven’t just said “on the way back we are going to rob and beat you”.  But as I come to find out in Cuba, despite the fact that most of its population are struggling in an economic sense, there is something quite unique about their sense of community, solidarity and friendliness. At least in the older generation. I am not sure that the younger generation really know what they still appear to be fighting for.  As I walk into a pool of mud on the pavement that erupts over the top of my sandals I realise that is probably what they were warning us about.   I really wish I spoke better Spanish.

We come upon the restaurant after about 15 minutes walk during which the houses have got steadily smarter and better maintained. There are flower beds and newer cars in the drives but they are now surrounded by high security fences.  As a group we stand at the end of the drive to what we think is our restaurant and look up to the well-lit modernist exterior of the house and are not sure we have come to the right place but I check the card that our tour guide gave us and we are right and there is also a wooden sign on the wall telling us this is the Paladar Vistamar.  I am slightly disappointed because I expected something much more, well, earthy and run down.  Just more …. Cuban.  We walk up the drive, the door is held open for us and we make our way up the modern wood stairs and are met by a mostly fluent English speaker who shows us to our table. The restaurant is small, only probably eight tables accommodating about 40 people, but it has sparkling silverware and polished glasses and the balcony outside is fully glazed  and looks out over a sub-lit swimming pool and then the open sea.  It is sophisticated, it is full of, for Cuba, smart clientele, and it is quite expensive.  I am a bit disappointed.  But, what the heck, it’s down the road, it’s the first night, the company is good and we all go with the house seafood special which costs £25. I could be in London at that price but the guidebook warned me that Cuba is not as cheap as you might expect. 

Thirty pounds sterling lighter (equivalent.  In Cuba you use the Cuban Convertible Peso), we leave having had our fill of the view and for some (not me) our first taste of a kosher (probably) Mojito.  I stick to wine which I feel my dead Lobster deserved.  I take a last glance around the place and notice that most of the clientele are older men with young women.  It reminds me of the times I have spent in Russia and I don’t begrudge the girls their opportunism.  Things aren’t really that much different at home.  An electrical storm is unfolding on the horizon and slowly working its way in land and so we put on a pace as we head back to the hotel.  I avoid the mud on the path but I have learnt too late, my sandals are already done for.

The road is darker still and as before we saunter down the middle of it, chatting, getting to know each other and generally feeling our way into a group dynamic.  There is no moon because the clouds have obscured it and so we see only the vaguest outlines of the groups we passed earlier who are still sitting out in the evening warmth.  We can just ascertain a raised hand in acknowledgement, which we return.  Back at the hotel there is live music which we come to find is ubiquitous all over Cuba in bars big and small, in hotels, in cafes, even outside in leafy squares.  Music seems to pervade the fabric of the country and culture.   We settle down around a table and watch, none of us confident enough to venture onto the dance-floor.  The band is swinging and looks like it is having a good time despite the small audience.  Our table stands out because we look so…pale.   I try to memorise some of the steps because I know that part of our itinerary involves a salsa lesson but the ‘special’ martini that the barman made me does not help my concentration and the one after that even less.  It doesn't look, or taste, like any martini I have tasted before, and I am a bit of a connoisseur, but it’s strong and I know that it will help me sleep and that’s a good thing. 

Mother cat and her brood invade the hotel lobby and given the way that the staff ignores them, I surmise that this must be normal. She is so thin and her hip bones protrude painfully, her eyes seem too large for her body. She comes close enough to make her presence felt but remains far enough away to escape if the we are not friendly.  She has hidden her kittens behind  the base of a sofa by the entrance and amazingly they sit, patiently, watching her.  We have nothing to offer her, as much as we are drawn to her and so she retreats and goes off to nurse her offspring.  I wonder how she has the resources to produce milk for them.  We feel guilty that we have nothing to give her now, but make a pact to ‘procure’ something at breakfast for her and so ensues a moderately philosophical debate about why some cultures are more sentimental about animals than others. We all agree, though, that she (the cat) would not be worth eating because she has no fat on her. 

Everyone is very tired now, we’ve done what the textbook tells us in coming west and have stayed up until our normal time to retire even though back home it is 3.15am.  A wave of coolness blows over me as I open my bedroom door and I feel relieved the air-con is working, to the point where I actually get a blanket from the wardrobe.  I smile because outside it is still twenty degrees.  I check my belongings, money and documents and all seems well but being slightly concerned about security, even though I have double locked the door, I force a chair under the handle.  This seems a waste of time when I work out that the patio door on to the balcony doesn’t lock. But I am on the first floor and I assess the risk as minimal as there is no one on the street.  A thin cat, not the same one as in the hotel, takes a drink from the overflow pipe on the flat roof of the property next to the hotel.  I get undressed, get into my brown bed in my brown room in my brown hotel on the other side of the world from home.  And don’t sleep.

See the Cuba photographs on the Gallery.