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 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.