Last South American entry

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Cuba. Cuba! Coo. bah!

There is nowhere else like Cuba, I am confident of that. Where to start? I’ll go with my fallback starting point: “where am I this moment?” As I start writing this, I am on the rooftop of my latest casa particular, in this case in Trinidad, which is on the southern coast. I am smoking my 15th—that’s right, 15th—cigar since my arrival eight days ago. They say that the day before JFK signed the embargo, he had his aides gather as many Cuban cigars as they could find for him to keep in his private stock. If the man who initiated the embargo himself couldn’t resist, can you blame me? The cigars here really are better, and I bought a batch of a dozen really good ones in the countryside, directly from the farm where the tobacco was grown.

But I digress. What, you ask, is a “casa particular”? A casa particular, or casa for short, is one of the very minor concessions to capitalism that Fidel made after the Soviet Union collapsed and brought Cuba’s economy down with it. In 1990, the year before, 87%!o(MISSING)f Cuba’s exports went to the U.S.S.R. 87%!a(MISSING) practically unbelievable statistic. Depending upon your point of view, that figure goes to show either 1) that a state-run economy is not going to work, or 2) that if a country that is 90 miles away from you has an economy as large as every other country in your hemisphere combined five times over, and that country refuses to trade with you, you’re pretty screwed. I would say both. In any case, a casa particular is simply a private home that rents out one or two of its bedrooms to tourists. They are taxed heavily and are very closely regulated, but it really makes a financial difference to the families that do it. If you go to Cuba and you want to experience the country as opposed to experiencing resorts, staying in casa particulares is the way to go. There are no hostels in Cuba. The only other sleeping options are government-owned hotels, and those fall into one of two categories: luxurious or on the verge of collapse. I had to spend my first night in a hotel in order to get a visa, and I stayed in casas the rest of the way through. They are great. The rooms are comfortable and secure and the people are friendly. They are helpful with advice, too, when the language gap isn’t too broad. For the most part, meals in the casas are very good, and massive. You feel a little like you are intruding (in one house, the son had to sleep in his mother’s bedroom whenever they had a guest), but it is their choice and they are used to it, I suppose.

My visit to Cuba started incongruously. You need a tourist visa to enter Cuba. Certain airlines will provide these to their customers for a $25 fee. The people who had given me advice about Cuba apparently went on these airlines; I did not. So, it was to my great surprise when my travel agent in Ecuador told me about this visa requirement moments after I had paid for my airline ticket. I was leaving in two days. The only way I could get a visa that quickly was as part of a package with a hotel. It was in the Playa (beach) district, on the outskirts of Havana. The hotel was 22 stories high. It was crumbling, but the view was spectacular. The other hotels in the area, however, were far from crumbling. There were four and five star resorts lining the beach. So my first night in Cuba was spent with rich, fashionable Europeans in the huge, fabulous lobby of a gorgeous hotel. I watched a fashion show and the USF game on a flat screen. Other than the rum and cigars, it couldn’t have felt less like Cuba.

The next morning, I took a taxi into Havana, known in Cuba as La Habana, or just Habana. I spent two days wandering the city at the beginning of the trip and another two days at the end. There are three barrios that make up the heart of Havana and I spent a day wandering each. I stayed in the barrio of Centro Habana, which has the old Capital, Central Park, a famous cigar factory, and Chinatown (not a whole lot of Chinese people in China town. I counted zero.). Havana Vieja is the most popular tourist district and it has a wide variety of classic architecture. Vedado’s most famous tourist spots are Havana University, a huge cemetery, and dueling Lenin/Lennon statues (Vladimir and John). These days are well documented on the Picasa page, but the Lennon statue was pretty far out of the way so I didn’t get to it. One highlight of Havana was a periscope on top of one of the taller buildings in Havana Vieja. Using a design by Leonardo DaVinci, the periscope casts a live image from the direction at which it is pointed down to a white bowl that is 8 to 10 feet across. At first, it appears to be a photograph, but if you look closely you can see flags waving and people putting laundry up on their roofs. The periscope can rotate and zoom and, in this manner, you are given a tour of the city. It is pretty amazing in its simplicity and effectiveness. Another Havana highlight is the old cars. The revolution was in 1959 and the U.S. stopped trading with Cuba shortly thereafter. Cubans have managed to maintain thousands and thousands of behemoth American classics. Buicks, Fords, Chevys, even Edsels and Studebakers. Some putter around leaving a cloud of smoke and others seem to be in mint condition. I imagine that when the embargo ends, nearly all of these cars will be sold to American collectors. It will be a shame to see the living museum that bestows so much character to Cuba’s streets transferred into nerds’ garages. But what are you gonna do?

Cuba is a strange country in many ways. It is very poor, but unlike other poor countries I have visited, it once had wealth, so there is an entire infrastructure that is basically crumbling. The people can see this happening, but largely they seem to still believe in the merit of their revolution. Pictures of Fidel are prevalent; pictures of Che are everywhere. One of the government’s first actions in 1959 was to illegalize racial discrimination. I’m sure I’m being naïve but damn if it doesn’t seem like it worked! I’ve never been to a place where race seemed to matter less. They don’t have real freedom of movement. I couldn’t quite figure out if it was due to formal restrictions or just economic reality. Just about every person I met was living in the town where they were born (the only exception was a college student who expected that he would move back after college). The government owns all the restaurants and the food they serve does not compare to the Cuban food we get in Florida, to say the least. As Lonely Planet puts it, “no one travels to Cuba for the food”. Another concession the government made during the “special period” after the Soviets fell was paladares. This is a similar concept to the casa particular except it is a restaurant. People’s homes have a room converted into a restaurant dining room. It’s pretty wild. They don’t advertise so you find out about them from someone else, often a person on the street who gets a commission for bringing in customers. Technically, it is not legal for Cuban citizens to have conversations with foreigners other than in the course of business, but they all do. The law is still out there, though. Two Danish guys I met in Ecuador told me about going to an outdoor music festival. Because there were so many police around, no one would get near them. Everywhere they went, people kept a few yards away from them like there was an invisible force field. They moved closer to the stage into the packed crowd and the people continued to give them space. They felt like they could have walked all the way to the front. Things are changing some, though., Raul, Fidel’s brother, took over as President three years ago and relaxed some of the oppressive laws. First, he legalized cell phones and now he has legalized personal computers. That’s right, private ownership of PCs only became legal in Cuba last year. Internet access is still a huge pain - expensive and long lines. And Lord knows not many people can afford PCs. Supposedly, the average salary is $20/month.

There is a palpable energy in Cuba, and it draws you in. Walking the streets of La Habana feels a bit like walking around New York City. You would certainly never mistake one for the other, but like New York, Havana’s pace is fast; there is constant action. It just feels like something is happening, like people are really living. There are pedestrians everywhere. You always hear music: walking bands, afro-rhythms from inside homes, reggaeton rocking out the radios*, and live salsa, rumba, or son in bars and restaurants on every other block. A high percentage of these bands are really, really good. Even during a rest break in a bus ride I took there was a phenomenal band fronted by a gorgeous girl with a booming voice. Cubans are proud of their dancing. I’m not a dancer (understatement!) or even a fan of dancing, but even I started getting the itch to learn salsa watching the dancers. There was one guy who was so smooth that we nicknamed him Michael Jackson. The energy is apparent in the day and in the night. Very few streets have streetlights so it is very dark, but people and music abound. Some streets are a bit empty, but one wonderful thing about Cuba is that it is almost completely free of violent crime. In most countries, your hosts and the travel agencies will be overly cautious, making it sound like walking alone or walking at night is a death wish. When I first arrived at my casa in Havana, I received a different sort of advice: “It doesn’t look safe outside, but it is.”

Of course, it is hardly a paradise. The heat is just brutal. Late November felt like mid-August, and air conditioning is uncommon. Three different people had the same reaction when I said I was from Florida: “Oh, it’s cold there.” I don’t know; maybe there was a cold front in Florida that week and they had heard about it from their relatives, but when anyone’s first association with Florida is “cold”, you know that you are in a very hot place. The very worst part about visiting Cuba is undoubtedly the piñateros—hustlers —and the fact that almost everyone is a piñatero. I have been to many poor countries and I have never felt so much like a walking ATM machine. No doubt, the Cubans are poor. Most buildings are crumbling, food is basic and bland at best, and they have to wait in long lines for many basic essentials. I thought the harassment in Cusco was bad, but Cuba was far worse, because it is not confined to the tourist areas. No matter where I was in Havana, I did not go five minutes without someone trying to push something on me (the most popular items are cigars, taxi rides, and girls) or, almost as often, just ask for cash. I’m not proud about it, but I couldn’t help to begin resenting it. I realize that I am so, so rich compared to the Cubans. In much of the country, every conversation, and I mean every conversation, ends in a request for money. I don’t exactly travel in Dolce & Gabbana shades and a Rolex either! The other thing that makes the prevalence of piñateros surprising is that while the people have virtually no luxuries, the communist label is not a hoax. Everyone there is fed, they have quality free medical care, and, in fact, everyone has the opportunity to attend college (adult literacy is 100%!)(MISSING). Anyway, it was just an exhausting experience.

Now, having said all that, does it make sense to now say that Cubans are the friendliest people I’ve met? They were—the ones who weren’t trying to get money really were. Viñales was the best. No piñateros there at all. A fellow traveler and I rented a moped for two days and went through the countryside around Viñales—first to a cave system, second to a beach. Three out of every four people we passed along the way waved to us—everyone from toddlers opening and closing their little palms, to old men enthusiastically waving both of their arms at the same time. The beach day was a real adventure. Two of us on one scooter through big hills for a round trip of about 75 miles. The scooter was questionable, too. It stalled and wouldn’t start for 10 minutes more than once. Some of the hills were so steep that it didn’t have the power to take both of us up. The roads weren’t too bad, but they weren’t great either, and the last hour of the trip was after nightfall. We survived.

The last two cities I visited were Trinidad and Cienfuegos. Trinidad is picturesque - a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architecture. There was beautiful hiking to waterfalls and pools, and a nice beach an hour bike ride away. Cienfuegos had less going on, and it had more piñateros as well.

Well, I guess in closing, visiting Cuba was a mixed experience. I wanted to get there before the travel restrictions were lifted to see what it was like, and I am really glad that I did. It was a fascinating place and it is sure to change dramatically when U.S. tourists start going there en masse. With its mountains, its history, its culture, and its large population, it is much more interesting than anywhere else in the Caribbean. Are they our enemy? The Castro brothers still pop off a lot about the United States, but a hell of a lot of countries do that. I mean, did you realize that we are by far Venezuela’s most important trading partner? This past January marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. The embargo has clearly failed in its goal of regime change. The Cuban people love the people of the United States. I could see people’s eyes light up when I said I was from Los Estados Unidos - even the ones who weren’t trying to get my money. It makes sense. They almost all have relatives who are now U.S. citizens. The Soviet Union is gone; no armies or missiles from Cuba will be coming into the U.S. The embargo is nothing but politics at this point. All it does is hurt the Cuban people; people who should be our friends.

Philosophically yours, ;-),
Greg



*Astute readers may note that I blasted music that I thought to be reggaeton during a Peru blog. Well, I don’t know what that crap was, but it was different than this crap. This crap was less crappy.

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