Salsa Dancing the Nights away in Havana

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Cuba is the land of music, hand rolled cigars, fabulous antique cars and old spanish colonial architecture.

Havana was like time travel back to the 50's. The whole trip started with an exciting plane ride from Nassau, Bahamas to Havana. The old Russian Antonov aircraft was rickety and was filled with white smoke for airconditioning before take off. It felt more like smoke at a disco, but with no disco fever music. As soon as the plane took off, the overhead bins started popping open and the toilet door started shaking. The whole plane ride of 1.5 hours felt like ages and there was clapping all over the aircraft when we safely landed in Havana.

Through out the trip, I stayed with cuban host families and was a great way to get to experience the cuban culture and learn spanish. I spend a week in Havana and my typical day would be a big breakfast of tropical fruits like guava, mango, oranges and watermelon, pan con tortilla de heuvos(bread & omellete) and cubanito (strong cuban black coffee). My salsa instructor would come home and he would teach for 2 hours daily from 10:30 - 12:30. After a sumptous meal of rice and beans, chicken or fish, salad and papaya juice, I would head out to discover the delights of Havana.

Havana is the largest city in the caribbean with wonderful colonial churches, palaces and museums. It has couple of formidable spanish castles where today, cannons are still being fired as part of ceromonies. Havana Vieja (Old Havana) is filled with cafes with live salsa bands all day and all night long. The streets are filled with delightful, old 1940s and 50s original ford and chevrolet cars, in perfect condition. Most of them are still operate as taxis. Although, nowadays you see lot more more french citreon and italian fiats around. The capitol building is enormous is a close replica of the one in Washington DC and is used as a museum today. The Gran teatro is the oldest operation theatre in the western hemisphere and you can catch cuban ballets and operas here for 2$. In the evenings, walking along the malecon (a la marine drive of bombay) was a good way to relax. At night, I would have a chance to practice salsa i learnt in the morning at any of the many good live salsa bands playing at the umpteen number of clubs, many of them 50s style, in the city.

The host family in Havana was extremely friendly and considered me part of their family (I was their indian son who liked a lot of pepper). I spend the new years eve dinner with them and their extended family of thirty and had a huge roasted pig for dinner. There was lot of famous cuban rum flowing, cigars being lit and salsa music in the air. The entire family was dancing after dinner and was a joyful moment to cherish. Afterwards, went to La bodeguita del medio, a bar that was a favorite haunt of Ernest hemingway. Like any other bar, there was salsa music in the air and people drinking mojitos and dancing away...

Trinidad is the best preserved spanish colonial town 300 kms away from Havana near the carribean sea coast. It is a very relaxed town with cobblestone streets, colorful houses, cowboys on horses and with the beach and the mountains close by. I went horse back riding into the mountains through the jungle and visited waterfalls and caves with the couple of tourits and a guide. We swam in the waterfalls, chilled out in the sun and had a picnic there. It was a great way to check out the outdoors. Another day, I went on a boat ride to Cayo Blanco, a small island 25 kms from the Playa Ancon. This area is awesome for snorkelling and diving. We saw lot of tropical fishes, beautiful corals, barracudas etc. The waters near the island were very calm and was ideal for kayaking around the cayo. The emerald water and fine white sand beaches are perfect for a relaxing stroll and then sleep or read a book under the coconut trees on the beach.

People seem to want to dance everywhere and at any time. I was in a CD store in Trinidad and was looking for CDs that are good for salsa dancing. The sales women picked a couple of CDs and started dancing with me to see if I liked the music. This was at 10 am in the morning !!

Next I went to Vinales, a small town 170 Kms south west of Havana is in a picturesque region filled with caves and cliffs. The landscape is a fertile plain with several valleys separted by pincushion hills called mogotes. Looks like some movie setting from vietnam or china.... The place is filled with tobacco and coffee plantations. I rented a moped and crisscrossed the valleys checking out the fantastic Santo Thomas caves (curtain, cone, horizontal, crystal, dam shaped stalagmites and stalactites), tobacco fields and cigar factories(land of Cohiba and Montecristo cigars). Toward the end of the trip, I went to another island, Cayo Jutia, along the gulf of mexico coast and spend the day on this small island enjoying the warm weather and beautiful beaches before I headed back to cold, wintry New York.

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