Advertisement
Published: February 4th 2010
You might be suprised to know ( ;-) ) that what I have mostly been doing in Havana is partying. However, it really is the thing to do in Havana as it seems that what the place is all about. It is afterall the home of Salsa and Reggaeton. There is live music everywhere, cheap rum, and the clubs and bars have a terrific atmosphere.
I have been taking salsa lessons most days that I have stayed in Havana, and that´s one of the reasons for staying so long. I really got the bug for it and wanted to crack the basics until I could free dance fairly fluidly. After 11 two hour lessons, I´ve pretty much got the basics but still need a lot of practice with keeping time when the music is fast and linking more complex turns together. Attached to this entry is a video taken of me free dancing with my teacher after about a week of lessons, before I took a break to go to Pinar Del Rio (see separate post). OK so the music is pretty slow and I´m a little stiff but I´m pretty pleased with the progress.
Of course, purely in
Casa De La Musica Miramar
Friends I met in salsa clubthe interests of practising my dancing skills I felt compelled to spend the evenings attending parties at locals´ houses and going to nightclubs. I´m grateful that I´ve managed to hook up with lots of local people who´ve shown be a side of Havana that it would be difficult to see as a tourist. This is all thanks to Couch Surfing. I arranged to meet up with some great couch surfers - Ebert, Beatriz, David, and Ayleen - who introduced me to all their friends and took me to parties and clubs. I also met plenty of foreign couch surfers from a variety of countries, and had a lot of fun with them too.
I went to most of the main salsa venues including seeing probably the most famous salsa band in Cuba, Los Van Van at the Casa De La Musica Habana. I went to parties and danced to Reggaeton at people´s houses and one in an underground carpark. I drank rum on the Malecon, which is the seafront. Many Cubans can´t afford to go to clubs and bars so they tend to congregate on the seafront to drink rum.
The people here seem to be very artistic.
Casa De La Musica Miramar
Friends I met in salsa club I think that´s partly because it´s encouraged by the regime, it´s a way out of Cuba and way of earning tourist currency. Since the popularity of Buena Vista Social Club, Cubans have realised that their music is a way for them to get out of Cuba.
Tourists pay in a currency (Convertible Peso "CUC") which is incredibly more valuable than the local currency with an exchange rate of 26x. However, most things that are worth having are only sold in CUC. Most of the Cubans that can afford to buy things and go to bars and restaurants etc are those that have access to CUC, mainly obtained by interacting with tourists. To give you an idea - one average meal and a couple of drinks in a restaurant costs the same as the average monthly wages for a Cuban! This means that artists, dancers, and musicians, which are all providing things that tourists like, have the opportunity to earn more than doctors and lawyers.
I think also that the particular circles of people I met while in Havana were also particularly artistic. Many were involved with improvisational theatre called "playback theatre". I´ve never heard of it before but
Couch surfer Ayleen
she invited me to go out with her friends at Casa De la Musica Miramar while I was in Havana two American ladies from New York University were teaching a week long workshop on it. That meant that there were more permformances and more social occasions than usual - lucky me! I went to them firstly out of interest to explore something new, but then because the people I met there were so warm and friendly and I loved the atmosphere.
The idea is that members of the audience share feelings, events, or stories that affected them and then the actors perform it spontaneously. It´s fascinating, if a little surreal, to watch. I suppose it´s art combined with group therapy, which works really well in Cuba as the people are so open and friendly. Other foreigners who´ve seen playback in Europe say that people there don´t usually share such deep and personal stuff.
The main reason I´ve loved my stay in Havana so much is the people I´ve met. I´ve got heaps of photos eof the people and the parties, but I´ll just post a few to give you the idea as I´m not sure how interesting they are to people who don´t know them. I´ll probably but the rest on facebook at
some point. For me, photos of people are far more interesting then shots of the city etc. I could write much more about my stay here but I´ll keep the posts short (ish).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0659s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
murray
non-member comment
are you missing the 9-5
mate it looks amazing! how's your spanish coming along. I'm impressed and amazed that you've managed to meet so many people and hang out with so many locals. Is that the couch surfer site or the salsa classes?