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Published: November 13th 2013
The final stop on the Latin American leg of my travels was Cuba, and to help me finish this chapter and start the next my sister was able to fly out and meet me for a 2 and a half week holiday! How fantastic!
A personal recommendation had allowed me to book a “Casa Particular” in advance. This huge network of Cuban families who rent out extra rooms in their houses is certainly the cheapest and most atmospheric way to travel through the country, and looking back on the trip I can certainly say that the casas were fantastic – each one being of a very high standard and always having their own quirks – both positive and negative!!
Our introduction to Cuba was the capital Havana, resplendent in a kind of faded glory, where some areas were fully maintained or restored, some were in the process of restoration and some had just been abandoned and left to fight their own battle against father time. This was perhaps best illustrated after visited the Museum of the Revolution – an enormous tribute to the efforts that brought Castro to power and housed in the fully restored former presidential palace. Just
one block away runs the prado, a fantastic boulevard in the style of Las Ramblas in Barcelona where people wander, artists sell their wares and hustlers ply their trade. But the block in between these two landmarks – a combination of decaying buildings, rubbish and rubble!
Given Havana's great qualities as a wandering city Sara and I spent a lot of time on foot meandering the streets, with favourite areas definitely being the narrow streets of Habana Vieja (old town) and the amazingly atmospheric Malecon – the 8 km promenade and road that sweeps along Havana's shorefront.
But transport on two legs wasn't going to be enough for us in a city like Havana where classic cars from yesteryear abound on every corner (both those from the USA for which Cuba is famous, and the veritable Lada Riva – the not so appreciated Soviet classic!). We hired a mint condition scarlet red 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible for an hour, and set off on one of the most atmospheric city tours I've ever done. From the tiny cobbled streets of the old town, down the main boulevards approaching revolution square, out of town to a forest that we would
Che Guevara - his image is on the side of the Ministry of the Interior
Its the same square where Castro gave his rousing/sleep inducing speeches lasting up to 7 hours!never have imagined existed and back via the Malecon with the wind blowing in our hair and the Caribbean waves crashing over the sea wall. It was certainly a taxi ride with a difference!!
Havana also introduced us to what seemed to be a speciality in the cuban casas – food portions so large that there wasn't even a hope of getting close to finishing them! This was perhaps best illustrated when Sara and I ordered lobster, but I had indicated that Sara wasn't sure as she wasn't a big fan of seafood. To help us out they brought 3 huge lobster tails for us to share, and half a chicken for Sara “just in case” she didn't like it! I managed to battle my way through two of the lobster tails, and in true rapper style I had to leave the final one as I was “bored of lobster”!! Obviously that evening our bellies were so full that we didn't head out and I collapsed into what can only be described as a “lobster coma”!!!
Moving on from Havana we arrived at Playa Larga, located in the famous Bay of Pigs and one of two locations where
A Coco Taxi
This unique form of transport came at an over inflated price - but did include a photoshoot from the driver!! CIA backed Cuban exiles landed to attempt to overthrow Castro's revolution, but failed in a spectacular way! It was far more serene trip to the beach for us, as we got lucky with a fantastic casa that had private access directly to the beach, so we were able to enjoy the obligatory enormous breakfast while the Caribbean lapped gently a few feet away!
Our main reason for being in the Bay of Bogs was also slightly more tranquil – Sara and I wanted to scuba dive and it was known as the most accessible and cheapest diving in Cuba. The waters were certainly the clearest I had ever dived in, but in the four dives we did (both here and further down the coast) we didn't really see that much apart from reef fish – there didn't seem to be any “big stuff” like turtles, sharks etc! But this was more than compensated for by the number of sunken ships that were liberally scattered around the coastline. They also included my first actual “shipwreck” whose twisted pieces of metal and crazy deformed angles were really interesting to swim around. Perhaps the last dive is the one I'll remember best,
as Sara and I swam around a huge sunken boat and through the pilot-house, before heading back to a seamount and enjoying amazing swim throughs of the underwater passages there.
Having been in Cuba approaching a week we now had more of a feel for how things were working and the seemingly massive inequalities that had appeared. In my opinion, the most glaring aspect of this was the two tier currency system that had been introduced which created a culture of “haves” and “have nots” starker than almost anywhere I had been. My understanding is that given the huge economic problems brought in by the fall of the Berlin wall and the loss of so much preferential business, the Cuban peso was devaluing badly and the rot was stopped by introducing a second currency the CUC (a “convertible” peso) which would be guaranteed as convertible against international currencies (currently its worth near as dammit 1USD). The original moneda nacional, wouldn't be guaranteed and has now stabilised at around 1/25th the value of the CUC. As all state employees are paid in moneda nacional, and non-basic items are priced in CUC, their purchasing power is virtually non-existent. The Cuba I
witnessed was one were every was using all their reserves of charm, craft, guile and cunning to get hold of these CUC. And where do so many of these CUC come from??? The export markets and tourist's pockets of the western (capitalist!!) economies!!
To me there was a unfortunate irony in the fact that for the average person to get by or obtain a few luxuries, they were scrambling to work in any area that had access to the money generated by people from countries with governments at the other end of the ideological spectrum to that which ushered in the revolution and I'm sure would have been branded “imperial powers” many times in the past!
Like the currency, the economy seemed absolutely two tier, with the “haves” being those who worked directly with tourists, or in areas like cigar factories or rum distilleries where the goods produced had a real tangible value so could be “acquired” from the factory and sold on the black market. The “have nots” were those such as engineers, nurses and teachers - doing the work so vital for the country, but not in any way connected with a means to obtain CUC.
This predicament was best illustrated with a taxi driver who told us that he had a masters in electrical engineering, but for the last 15 years he had been driving a taxi as it was the only way to properly support his family. The town of Cienfuegos seemed to be the town were people spoke with us most openly about their gripes – telling us that workers such as teachers and engineers could hope to earn in moneda nacional the equivalent of CUC15 – CUC 30 per month. In contrast, a bicycle taxi driver with no education would be waiting around all day at likely tourist spots to try and get a couple of fares and in two days could earn as much as a teacher in a month!!
Additionally, something we take for granted in the west like communication was incredibly hard. It seemed that each town had one state run location where internet was available, and it tended to take an age to locate it, get the necessary access card and get onto the internet. Making international phone calls was even harder, with phone cards costing CUC 2 per minute again seemingly being sold in only
one location per town. Given other interruptions through technology failures, short opening hours or lack of access cards being delivered, and it made me appreciate the almost constant free wi-fi I had enjoyed in the rest of my trip!!
One aspect we never quite got to the bottom of was the availability of food. Before arriving I expected the food to be terrible, with bland offerings and frequent unavailability of ingredients. But nothing could be further from the truth! As we were paying in CUC, restaurants always seemed to have a wide variety of dishes available, fresh vegetables and hardly any items on the menu unavailable (our favourites were certainly the incredible doña eutimia in havana (
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g147271-d2182294-Reviews-Dona_Eutimia-Havana_Cuba.html ), and the wonderful cafe cienfuegos in the city of the same name (
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba/cienfuegos/restaurants/seafood/club-cienfuegos ). But at the same time the shops were pretty spartan, with only generic items in packets such as biscuits, there were virtually no bakeries, a few people selling ropey looking fruit on the street but no greengrocers and we didn't find the main markets like you stumble across in every other Latin American country almost by accident! Yet the food must be there somewhere, as was evidenced
by the casa owners and their endless supplies and ability to whistle up lobster seemingly at the drop of a hat!! (the size of the portions led us to get frustrated as there was so much waste in a country where it was obvious there were many people who had no access to this type of food, and even when we asked for smaller portions the food just kept on coming!)
Back onto the more “holiday-like” aspects and we visited one of Cuba's dolphinariums which absolutely blew us away! First we got to watch the professional show being put on, and then we were able to get in the water with them! We were able to fully interact with the dolphins – kissing, dancing, hugging and stroking them!! We finished up with the main event – an incredible ride in which we lay down on our bellies with our legs stretched out behind us and the two dolphins put one nose on each foot and propelled us through the water until we were standing up straight and proud on top of the two dolphins noses!! I've travelled a lot and am always looking for new and unique experiences, and
Club Cienfuegos
We ate twice at Cafe Cienfuegos located in the first floor balcony overlooking the harbour! I can honestly say that something as special and incredible as that is unlikely to be repeated for a long time!
At the conclusion of our dolphin swim the “guile” of the Cubans was again in view as the employee who was selling the photographs offered to give me a substantial discount if I just put the photos directly on my memory card rather than him burning a CD for me. Its obvious that those CUC never made their way into government hands!
Cuba has many icons, but one of the most famous has to be Argentine doctor turned revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevarra, of whom “that” photo has used countless times to inspire revolutionary thought – or just to sell stuff with the aid of a chiselled young man with a wistful gaze!! (As an aside, the photo was taken by “Korda” a Cuban photographer most known for his underwater photography. In 1960 Che attended the funeral of 100 dock workers killed when a French freighter carrying arms exploded in Havana harbour. It was interpreted as a CIA plot, and the mixture of grief and anger displayed by Guevara summed up the mood of the country at that
time. As it happens the photo was rejected for publishing and simply hung on the wall of his studio for 7 years. A ministry of interior official discovered the photo in 1967 and hung it as a backdrop to Guevara's funeral – where it was beamed around the world and started to give the hint of what could be achieved with such a powerful image!)
We visited Santa Clara, location of Che's remains which were interred there after he died in Bolivia. El Che never lived in Santa Clara, but is indelibly linked with the city after leading his troops in battle there on 27
th December 1958.
Dictator Fulgencio Batista had staged a military coup in 1952, and a meeting in Mexico led to a lawyer, Fidel Castro, Guevara and soldier Camilo Cienfuegos becoming the three principle figures in a revolutionary struggle to replace Batista with a socialist government for the people. The revolution started when they sailed to Cuba in December 1956, and two years later their campaign was very much in the ascendancy. Batista sent an armoured train of troops and weapons eastwards to try and repel the rebels, but Guevara and his heavily outnumbered troops
derailed and ambushed the train at Santa Clara and the subsequent victory is seen as the catalyst for Batista fleeing the country and Castro sweeping to power on 1
st January 1959.
More than anywhere else in the country, the city is a homage to all things Che, with a huge plaza bearing his name, and many statues throughout the city. However for all his qualities as a revolutionary, his philosophical talents seemed lacking with some of the quotes ascribed to him seeming very mundane. There was one which really caught me however, something along the lines of “if a revolution is a real one, you either win or die”. Very powerful, and he obviously proved both options to be correct during his lifetime.
When visiting his memorial I was slightly struck by the fact that the only other image there was of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez with the phrase “nuestro mejor amigo” (our best friend). A taxi driver explained that Chavez had been “a good friend” to Cuba – especially with supplies of oil in the difficult period of the 1990s. Perhaps the Cubans see it as fitting that the two foreigners who have most helped their
cause are celebrated together in the same place?
We moved onto Trinidad, a city of cobbled streets, small plazas and a saying that it fell asleep in 1815 and didn't wake up. The guide books lavish praise on Trinidad as being Cuba's most architecturally important city and being stuck in a time-warp – but for me it was the night life that stands out most. Sara and I has perhaps been expecting from Cuba some “New Orleans” style live music where every bar, café and bike shed has the strains of a Cuban rhythm emanating from it. In Havana, we had struggled to find this – I'm sure through the fault of not knowing where to look rather than any lack of nightlife!! But in Trinidad we found our ideal – every bar and restaurant had a live music theme, and in one of the squares was a huge set of cobbled stairs leading up to the “house of music”. Here, all day and all night there were free concerts – but the main one started at 9p.m. And we were there both nights we stayed!! There was a great mixture of rhythms – with salsa obviously dominating –
bringing back great memories of my times in Colombia with Erika.
Sara and I were both caught up in the swing and organised a private lesson in Cuban salsa! Although very different to the salsa caleña that I learned, luckily I was comfortable enough leading that Sara and I progressed quite quickly and had the basics and a couple of turns mastered by the end! Unfortunately we didn't have the confidence to get up on stage and practice our newly learnt (and slightly limited!!) repertoire though!!
Since the petrol rationing of the 1990's the horse and cart is still a major form of transport in many of the rural towns – trotting virtually everywhere around town with the poor horse having to lug up to 8 people for a couple of pesos each! This makes driving in Cuba especially exciting as perhaps more than anywhere all forms of transport share the roads and the horse and carts are wide enough that overtaking them is a pretty hairy experience! One image that will stand out is when we were driving in a share taxi on the country's main (only) motorway which leaves Havana for 250 or so km in
each direction. We were bombing along a virtually deserted 3 lane motorway at about 80 miles an hour in the fast lane, when a horse and cart came trotting the wrong way TOWARDS us in the slow lane!! You certainly can't relax for a minute when behind the wheel in Cuba!!
Another thing that was emphasized on the long motorway journey was the almost complete lack of affordable long distance public transport in Cuba. I'm not sure why a system hasn't been developed, (with the famed ingenuity of keeping the 50s classic cars on the road, I'm sure a fleet of past their bus buses would be child's play for Cuban mechanics!!) but when driving along the motorway every kilometre or so there were groups of locals with a fistful of monedas nacionales waving them frantically to get anything passing to stop. They were walking out virtually into the middle lane as we bombed past in a shared taxi so they appeared quite desperate for a lift!
Our final stop was the leafy green heart of tobacco growing country in Viñales. Here mother nature has carved out the valleys leaving behind huge rock outcroppings known locally as Mogotes.
We toured the valley on both bike and horseback, visiting caves and tobacco farms along the way. One of the caves had a river running through it so we had the very novel experience of boating through a cave system!!
The horse-ride was a pleasant way to see the area, although a combination of the muddy trails and the stubborn horses meant that there was no way we were getting up to a pace more than a brisk trot!! We arrived at a small tobacco finca where the owner Juan and his super playful cat Titi first served us up a “Coco Loco” cocktail and then explained and demonstrated the process of drying, fermenting and finally rolling the leaves. It was a surprisingly simple process once the leaves were in the right condition, but obviously took a huge amount of skill and preparation to convert the plants into a Cohiba (Fidel's cigar), a Montecristo (Che's cigar) or one of the other brands. The brand is apparently decided by where on the plant the leaves come from – as the higher, sun drenched leaves have a stronger flavour, with the Cohiba's leaves plucked from the crown of the plant being
the strongest of the lot.
Along with cigars, rum is obviously another famous Cuban export and Havana Club is everywhere (Barcardi, although founded in Cuba is now foreign owned and manufactured in Puerto Rico so we didn't see a single bottle of it in Cuba!). The ubiquitous Cuba Libres, Mojitos and Daiquiris all were served with lashings of the stuff and always tasted good. We went to Havana's rum museum to try and find out more about the process but it was a little underwhelming as no rum was actually produced there!! Mental note – next time I go on a brewery tour, I need to make sure there actually is a brewery there!!
It had been an enjoyable and fascinating time in Cuba. Like in Colombia the people are hugely friendly – but whereas in Colombia people approached you just to chat because they were so pleased that people were coming to see their country, in Cuba there was always a undercurrent of need to a lot of the conversations I had – with a tip, donation or attempt to sell cigars invariably being the conclusion.
It was fascinating to learn more about the revolution and to get at least an initial understanding about what it has meant for the people. I guess if you can have job security, healthcare for your loved ones, work for the state and provide for your family you will generally be happy. But if you can work for the state and take a little bit on the side to provide some additional luxuries for your family you will be even happier! But the conundrum comes when everyone is doing that (and its only human nature to want the best for you and your family – I know I do!!!) and the original principles of what was set out to be achieved have been somewhat diluted - like it appears to me in Cuba!!
Like every political system around the world the way things work in Cuba has its good and bad points – but I left with a sense of surprise about just how much the country seemed to be one of haves and have nots, something which the originally manifestos of the 1960's were certainly completely against. To me the dual currency is a big divisive factor and I read in the press that Raul Castro is looking to phase that out within 18 months, and also to allow more forms of private enterprise. The big question will be whether this is able to bring about a more equal society in line with the original dreams of the revolution, or mean that the “haves” are just able to use their positions to keeping “having” more??? Time to read Animal Farm again methinks!!!!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Your 57 Chevy was lovely
Great that your sister could join you. Lobster coma.... I think I had lobster several days in a row while we were there. We were in Havana for New Years so music was everywhere. Trinidad was one of our favorites places and you are right about all of the music.