Cuba 08

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Salsa, cigars and mojitos & anti-salsa too, or how I learned to hate salsa

Yes, I can confirm the kitchy cliche and post card image of cuba. time stood still, oldtimers everwhere, people sitting outside drinking rum and playing guitar, extremely friendly atmosphere, only drawback is the food, or actually variety of it. as I love good food and have already been prewarned, I was prepared and took some extra spicy sauce with me (blair's after death sauce to be more precise). actually I expected worse, food was bearable, just not much variety and not many herbs, you could be lucky if you got salt and pepper. furthermore you could chose between pork or chicken which were served with beans, rice and potatos and baked bananas occasionally. The cheap great havana club & mojitos however compensated a lot for the lack of variety in food. We furthermore especially appreciated staying at the so called casas particulares, private home stays. a few people are allowed to rent out 1-3 rooms to tourists. rooms are clean, you don't need to stay with many other tourists together, atmosphere is very cosy and you need to practice your spanish as hardly anyone speaks english.
havana yes very touristy but still nice though, walking aorund town, take a coco taxi ride to the minsitry of interior with che's famous silhouette, one of the highlights and great tip for anyone going to havana, go to the NH hotel Parque Central, if you cannot afford or do not want to stay there, just go inside, take the elevator to the top floor and have a cocktail and dinner at the roof terrace, where they also have a pool. The highlight is going into to the whirlpool on the terrace with one of the best views Havana has to offer, sitting in the w-pool you have a direct view at the capitol, in the middle of the city. very spectacular!
vinales a short bus ride from havana, very beautiful landscape, tobacco farms, caves, riding horses, small town, little salsa parties at night and mucho mojitos again.
trinidadgreat colonial town, case de la musica at night with the usual salsa and mojitos,...I did actually never have something against salsa, but after having heard salsa & reggae-ton tunes for over a week, or better 7x24hrs, I really can't stand it anymore, still like the bvs-club music, but not the touristic salsa and reggea-ton, and there is no chance to hear any other music than that, until...finally I see a guy wearing an anthrax shirt and coincidentally I m waering a shirt of the same band that night, I talk to him and even better: he turns out to be cuban. I ask him if he likes salsa and he tells me he hates it and that he cannot even dance. I am happy to hear not all people are living up to the expected cliche. That would be the same like everyone from austria is waering lederhosen and good at jodeling. It gets even better when he tells me that he plays in a cuban hard core band and that they even have been on TV. we meet him again at the 1st of may, the big day of celebration, or better of drinking rum and insanly dancing, he brings us to his rehearsel room which is at his work and we jam a bit. I like the fact that he has a bottle of rum in the drawer of his desk, probably helps to relax when work causes too much stress. I m really happy I found some 'normal' people as well, we talk about playing guitar and bands and I get to know how difficult the situation in cuba is for rock musicians, not even being able to buy an electric guitar or strings for it. I give him my spare set, he is very happy and so am I.
we check out the beach close to town as well, its nothing special, but very quite and therefore very relaxed.
varadero despite of all warnings, we check out this all over all in clusive beach location, we manage to find a non all inclusive hotel and a part of the beach that is more frequented with locals than fat all inclusive toursits wearing wrist bands. the beach & sea is awesome, we drink mojiotos till sunset.
80%!o(MISSING)f the main beach however is owned by the all inclusive crowds, it's really many of them and it's hard to spot tourists without a wrist band. we walk 1/2 hour on the beach, get thirsty and want to drink something, which is not possible without a wrist band, as almost the whole beach including places to drink and eat belongs to the huge all inclusive hotels, we have to go all the way back to the part where the locals stay and manage to get some more mojiots and food. going out at night is only fun if you wanna observe the behaviour of the wrist band people, all in all we stay 3 days, which is more than enough. we go back to havana to enjoy the last days.
back to havana loads of bars & tourist restauants with the typical salsa bands playing while you eat are crowded as usual, we check out a local bar, no foreigners there, they also serve different, the real local, beer and we are a bit of an attraction, although we are in this touristic city. I jam a bit with a cuban lady on the street and she teaches me to play Quantaramera, we both enjoy this special encounter, I return to the same spot the next day to jam once more. Last day, almost all money gone, still the touristic bands approach me playing some of their cuban best-offs & hope to get some dineros, I defend myself with my guitar and give them the 'No dinero' song (to the tunes of quantaramera) as counter attack, an old cuban watching the scene likes the song and he joins in. As we tell him we ran out of money, he promise us to bring us food for 2 euros, as he can buy it where the locals buy it (which is nearly impossible for tourists), he leaves with our money, we sit in the park and wait, it takes a while, but after half an hour he really returns and brings us plenty of food, same quality as you would get in a restaurant where you have to pay 10 times the price. We leave cuba with many nice experiences and loads of happy feelings. A tip for everyone visiting the country: bring plenty of t-shirts you want to get rid of, locals can hardly buy (fashionable) clothes, and therefore really really appreciate it.

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Photos

havana jam
performing the no dinero song

vinales cowboys like rum
best coctail ever