Cuba - the west and the rest

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After the hustle, bustle and hassle of Santiago, it was going to take some effort to convince Kate that the imminent visit to Havana was going to be enjoyable. Before taking the bus from west from Playa Larga, I reluctantly agreed we would only spend two nights in Cuba’s capital. Enough time for us to enjoy a few museums and take a stroll around the old town, enough time for me to take all the photos I wanted and enough time for Kate to feed some stray cats and dogs. Not wanting to spend an extra £10 a night between us, we chose to stay in grubby Havana Centro (Central Havana) rather than the beautiful Havana Vieja (Old Havana). When our taxi dropped us off in what can only be described as the ghetto, it’s a good job our casa was a world away from what was lurking outside its doors, otherwise we may well have been on the next bus out of there. Casa Colonial was a high ceilinged, breezy colonial bed and breakfast that felt like it could have been anywhere in the city past the front door. After three weeks of eating the same boring casa meals (meat plus rice plus beans plus salad) over and over we decided to eat out while in Havana. As we navigated the ghetto in search of Chinatown, leading Kate with the promise of duck pancakes and the real Havana just around the corner, my efforts almost turned to mush as we stumbled upon a Brad Pitt some wrong’un laid on the pavement rather than down a toilet. The visit was off to a bad start.



Chinese consumed and stray cats fed, we carried on towards Old Havana which turned out to be absolutely stunning. As with a few other stops we had made along the way, Old Havana is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it’s easy to see why. The buildings and monuments have been lovingly restored in the interest of tourism and the reinvested money has paid off royally. The elegant architecture and grandness lining the narrow streets has you spending most of the time looking upwards rather than the direction you are heading. The air is full of the aroma of cuisines from across the globe, the sounds of an upright bass, brass and blissful vocal harmonies. The roads are busy with convertible Cadillacs, Pontiacs, the expected hustlers selling cigars and touts tempting you with the familiar offer of ‘the best Daiquiri in Havana’.



By day two, Kate agreed this city was far more delightful and charming than expected and the low expectations set by Santiago were thankfully forgotten. It’s a good job this was the case as that morning, after a stroll into town via the Malecon, we made a few bad decisions when trying to find the best place to reload our wallet and, as a result, missed the last couple of seats to our next destination the following morning. This left us with the option of a very expensive taxi onto Vinales or another day and night in Havana. Needless to say, being the most cost effective, we went with option two. Still recovering from the museum overdose in Santiago, we chose to visit just two museums in Havana, the Museo de la Ciudad (city museum) and the Museo de Naipes (playing card museum) which was advertised as free. It turned out, once again, that free entry means a guide will follow you around, uninvited, and you must tip them at the end. Rather unimpressed with the museum (John Lennon playing cards, Asterix playing cards, the birds of Costa Rica playing cards, the British royal family playing cards, 1970s porn playing cards etc… although I’m not really sure what we expected), we were relieved our guide was happy with the 1CUC tip we gave her.



We spent the remainder of our time in Havana eating anything other than Cuban food and drinking a lot of cocktails as we hid away from the afternoon downpours. As we were fast approaching our last week in Cuba and still had a sizeable wedge of the local currency, we continued with what had now become our lunchtime tradition of peso pizza, one of the few things you can buy with local currency as a tourist. At a peso pizza counter in Old Havana, we noticed one of the pizza options was ‘perro pizza’… dog pizza. There are a fair few stray dogs knocking about the streets of Havana so we plucked up the courage to ask the guy on the till if perro pizza was as it translated. After he shared the question with everyone back in the kitchen and all LOLed in unison for what seemed like an eternity, he explained that it was not stray dog on a pizza. Perro pizza is just a simple old hot dog… of course. After waiting for our pizzas for what seemed like an eternity, I left the place thinking one thing; there’s a gap in the market.



From Havana we took our penultimate bus trip to the jewel of western Cuba, Vinales. Havana may feel like a city where time has stood still but this tiny, picturesque village takes you back another century or two. Vinales sits in a spectacular valley where the horizon is split by unusually steep-sided limestone outcrops called mogotes. The formations date back to the Jurassic Period and were home to the indigenous tribes for many centuries. This isolated settlement of farmers still use traditional farming techniques, primarily for the production of tobacco. The village was founded in 1875, funded by a booming sugar trade. During the peak season, Vinales is a daytrip tourist hotspot due to its proximity to Havana. As it’s now the low season the local to tourist ratio was decent, however, the 400 registered casa owners would probably disagree with that statement, as was made clear by the desperate mob who greeted our bus upon arrival. Thankfully, we had arranged our casa through a recommendation and our new host, Gloria, met us at the bus stop so we bypassed the sea of women battling frantically, waving photos of their casas as the bus emptied onto the street.



Never has there been such a pink house. Pink on the outside, pink on the inside, furry pink toilet seat, pink switches and sockets, pink bedding, pink towels, pink shed… you get the idea. The only thing that wasn’t pink was the fridge but I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before the paint comes out and it blends into its surroundings like everything else. After breaking up the repetitive casa mealtime offerings nicely in Havana, we decided to go back to home cooking for a few days. Gloria’s meals were tasty but the size, oh dear lord. The first night we had a large bowl of noodle soup, a large whole fish each, rice, black beans, sweet potato fries, banana chips, a plateful of salad and a further two plates of fruit. Luckily she had a hungry cat and dog who helped us make a barely noticeable dent in the mountain of food. We didn’t even make it back to our room for the now standard Cuban post-meal snooze on this occasion, we simply slid from where we were sat on the rooftop terrace to the floor, where we remained for quite some time.



Vinales is all about taking in the scenery and being outdoors. There’s plenty to do; horseback trekking, hiking, rock climbing, cave exploration, cycling adventures through the mogotes and tours through the tobacco fields and sugar plantations. Thanks to the free shows going on in the main square every night we were in town, and the cheap price of a bottle of Havana Club, we didn’t indulge in as many activities as originally planned and subsequently spent a few afternoons nursing hangovers while enjoying the view from La Ermita, a hilltop hotel where non-guests could enjoy the pool and bar then hitch a ride back to town on a passing horse and cart.



We managed to exercise a small amount of will power on at least a couple of nights and, as a result, seized the opportunity to visit the Santo Tomas Caves, the second largest cave system in Latin America at over 46km long. A confusing maze of endless tunnels, huge caverns, stalactites and mites a plenty and a random scattering of little plants that live a short life due to lack of sunlight and begin life as bat shit. Poor little plants. As we ventured through this puzzling cave system under torch light, you couldn’t help but feel like you were in a scene of Indiana Jones, minus the booby traps. Another relatively sober evening allowed us to spend a rainy day on the hop on/hop off bus that gives you access to all the sights in and around Vinales. As no one else was using the bus that day, we treated it like our very own oversized private taxi, as the driver happily waited while we stopped wherever we liked, for as long as was needed. We took advantage of this to check out Cueva Del Indio (Indio Cave), another great cave system with an underground river you explore in a small boat while the driver comically uses a laser pen to point out formations that look like a snake, a bottle of beer and a few other random things only he manages to see.



Still not too keen on the idea of hiking in 40+ heat, and still recovering from the last time we went horse riding, we decided the best way to explore the tobacco fields and trails between the mogotes would be by bicycle. Being endlessly polite Brits, we agreed to borrow bikes off our host’s friend without first checking they were fit for purpose and matched our individual requirements. As a result, we ended up with two rust buckets with plastic seats, barely working brakes and wonky pedals. Just great. The contraptions worked well enough for us to locate the Mural de la Prehostoria (Mural of Prehistory), a 180ft tall monstrosity splattered across an otherwise perfectly good cliff that looks like it was painted by half a dozen preschool children over the course of a week. Well, looks can be deceiving as the mural is in fact the work of Leovigildo Morillo, a supposed master of neo-caveman artistry, and it took five years to complete. Randomly navigating the orange, dusty trails that weave around the hills of the valley, we stumbled across some amazing views of isolated farm houses, lakes and the distant jungle. It turns out that cycling in 40+ heat is just as physically demanding as hiking in 40+ heat, which is probably why we saw no one else cycling or hiking that day.



Our month in Cuba was interesting to say the very least. At times it was tough, what with the lack of internet, crisps, dual currency and ability to speak the local language, but on the whole it was a rewarding experience. The people, the scenery, the wildlife, the cars and the mojitos are going to be remembered fondly but Mexico is calling and we are excited by drooling at the thought of food with flavour, world class scuba diving, a real can of coca cola and some serious beach time…

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