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.

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.