On the Fidel

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We found the easiest way to get to the sights of Vedado and Revolution Square was to catch one of those to be avoided at all costs tourist double decker buses that operates out of Parque Central. The 5 CUC hop on hop off ticket lasts all day and it seemed a whole lot simpler than crushing on a service bus or “negotiating” with a taxi about the prospect of a fair fare. The bus runs a circuit of about 15 stops encompassing anything of note in Vedado and Revolution Square and sometimes stops, if you press the bell often enough. Revolution Square is a huge open area of concrete, at which most major public addresses by anybody from the Pope to Fidel have taken place since the revolution. The near side of the square to the city is dominated by two Government buildings, one with an image of Che and the other with the image of Fidel. The central focus is the Jose Marti Memorial and Statue …….yes another one…….. The Memorial includes a museum and has an elevator to gain a panorama from the highest point in the city. The building behind is effectively the nerve centre of the Government, but there didn’t seem to be much activity. While the Memorial is your high point for a view, it doubles up as a home for a colony of vultures who cruise the thermals looking for a tasty snack to clean up.

Museums are big business in Havana …………. whether it be another twist on the Revolution, chocolate, rum or fine arts …………. you name it and there’ll be some form of exhibit to go. The Jose Marti Memorial and the Museum of the Revolution are probably the two you wouldn’t want to miss, the latter having more exhibits that you can actually relate to rather than tributes in Spanish. The Museum is in Centro in what was Batista’s old mansion and his garden is now full of various pieces of machinery and weapons used during the revolutionary times or around the Bay of Pigs. Do not stand on the grass or the watching security will give you a sharp blast on his whistle to advise you of your misdemeanour.

The next stop back towards the city on your hop on hop off tour is the University and the area around the Havana Libre Hotel. The hotel was formerly the Hilton and now runs under the Tryp logo, but is in the history books as the place where Fidel and some of his leaders took up residence on assumption to power and his arrival in Havana in 1959. At the rear of the lobby, there are a series of black and white photos from 1959 of various revolutionary fighters relaxing with their weapons in the foyer. They aren’t home anymore and the higher floors of the building seem another home for vultures. It could be their slogan - you only get swallows at the Parque Central, we give you vultures.

The other hotel with the history is just down the road at the Nacional. It was built in 1930, when the Vedado area was a playground for the rich Americans and has played host to many famous names ranging from statesman such as Winston Churchill to musical greats aka Frank Sinatra. Whether by bad luck or bad judgement, the most prominent piece of musical memorabilia on display in the bar today is a signed guitar donated by Peter Frampton! The lobby is well …………… historical………..nice tiles and the grounds have a great view down the Malecon.

The Malecon is the long sea front road that links Vedado and Centro. The properties overlooking were once grand and are now the lucky recipients of those bags of cement for renovation. It’s hard to say who is funding it, but there is some serious cash being splashed there at the moment. The stretch is largely deserted by day, but as the sun goes down Havana comes out to promenade or to fish. Fishing is really popular, either by choice or possibly by necessity. Lines ……… no pun intended …….of young men stand a top of the sea wall casting furiously in search of that big catch ……………. others throw out a succession of hand lines. The catch didn’t exactly seem to be prolific, but then the water while not suffering a near brush with a certain oil exploration company, didn’t exactly look like a Blue Flag award was likely to be secured in the near future either. The quality worsened as you moved into the harbour, but those spots seemed more popular than the exposed stretches. Indeed the largest catch was spotted here, which we were duly offered for 10 CUCs ………….the English sense of humour was lost on it at this point, when we queried why 1 cook would not be sufficient! On a serious food note though, the average Cuban clearly has to have a tremendous amount of patience to acquire what we would perceive as the basics. A queue is common place, whether outside the phone headquarters or just any shop that has received goods - they apparently try to acquire CUCs or convert Pesos Nacional into CUCs in pursuit of these items, so a distant relation in Miami comes in extremely useful. A job as a hotel chambermaid where tipping in CUCs is common place is therefore clearly a sought after position for those without connections. The price of some of these consumer goods is pretty steep - an LG larder fridge for example was spotted as 700 CUCs! The real excitable queues are down the backstreets where the morning queues form for scraps of meat the average European dog might discard or for cooking oil or for rice!

In the land of the vintage car, the one place there are no queues are outside the dealerships - most don’t have the money and there are no cars to buy. We saw a Citroen dealership …. and not one car in the showroom. The make do and mend attitude can be seen in all the 1950s Fords, Chevrolets, Plymouths and the like cruising the streets. The guts of most are possibly not the genuine article and there is probably a high possibility that the sleek Ford Thunderbird you have just seen is powered by a 1.2 litre Lada engine and operates with a Polski Fiat chasis! However that aside the spectacle is one to behold and not seen by us since Uruguay a long time ago - the junction just by the Capitalio is the place to get that American car in front of the “American” Capitol Building. The big question is at 1 CUC a litre, how do they afford the petrol?

The answer outside of Havana was a very definite .......... they don't afford it. The only foray we made outside the city confines was a "tour" to Pinar Del Rio and Vinales. After leaving the once rich and prosperous suburb of Miramar - big villas, the Hollywood Hills of Havana, once home to the rich and famous under Batista who all took a one way ticket to Miami and the embassy zone - the traffic pretty much evaporates. A 6 lane motorway is basically empty, save for the odd tour bus and an awful lot of hitch hiking locals. The general plan is lurk away from the sun under the flyover bridges and then walk into the carriageway in a bid to slow traffic and thus get a lift.……….the success rate didn’t appear good. After Miramar and the big convention centre, Havana’s suburbs fade into a few socialist low rise tower blocks that the friends from the east had a hand in the architectural design and then…………..sugar cane ….. and then a few cattle ………. some ride paddy fields ………and the remnants of the tobacco harvest.

Pinar del Rio - the river of pines - was in the centre of the tobacco zone. The landscape here is dotted with lots of barns, which is where the finest tobacco in Cuba is dried. The city itself was no more than a large provincial town, although as our guide was keen to point out there is now a university, a hospital and of course everywhere has a reasonable standard baseball stadium. Pinar del Rio along with Havana had more than it’s fair share of kid kicking a football about, but there is always a baseball stadium and lots of little kids retrieving stray pitches. We visited the local liquor factory, which was a lot more interesting for the big display posters of revolutionary greats like Che that were painted on the walls to encourage the workers.

The countryside around Vinales was a lot more interesting with a landscape apparently only replicated in one other place on the planet……………it could be southern Thailand, but don’t quote me on this . The valley has basically been eroded to leave large rock formations …….. possibly limestone …….. full of caves. The first settlers from the Canary Islands gave the place the wrong name in honour of the vines, which didn't thrive in the Cuban soil and tobacco took it's place.

The journey back was uneventful until Gatwick, where one of the cases looked like it had done a couple of rounds with a cutting device. The hard-shell samsonite had lost it’s combination lock portions to what we presume was Cuban security ….. the presumption being based on a very skilful attempt to keep the case together with various straps, which your average suitcase raider wouldn’t have bothered with. Anything missing enquired the baggage handling gent at Gatwick? We scanned and thought nothing, only to find that anything vaguely resembling foreign cosmetics stashed in the inner side pockets were missing and two pairs of knickers had disappeared. If you see a Cuban security person wearing the wrong Nivea formula on their face, you know where the gear came from?

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Photos

Vintage Car No 1
The yellow plates signify "a private ownership"

Revolution Square
Che image

Vintage Car No 3
Check out the fins

Revolution Square
Memorial Jose Marti

Vedado
Art Deco Havana building with air con

Revolution Square
Government Offices behind the Jose Marti Memorial