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Published: June 23rd 2006
Now back in Mexico and as Cuba had no internet connection (the Cubans are not permitted to use the internet unless they are performing some specific governmental task or studying and always need a license to use it) I wrote a diary to type up now and looking at what I´ve written this may end up as a bit of an epic but please feel free to skip the words and just look at the pictures!
17th June Our journey to Cuba started at 3.45am after an extremely wet evening during which I shivered my way through a piano concert after a 45 minute walk in torrential rain followed by an hour and a half in a 20minute taxi journey. After an unanounced aircraft change in Veracruz Anne and I made it to Cancun airport where it was the humity which first struck us. We successfully purchased our Cuba Visas and queued up behind the entire pushy population of South Korea to re-check our baggage. We then spent 3 hours in the airport during which we spent the first hour thinking we had ages to wait and trying to dodge the huge number of Americans who appeared to
have invaded Cancun in their uniforms of board shorts and baseball caps, made louder by the fact that the USA were playing their 2nd World Cup Match on the TVs. The second hour we panicked as our heads invented a time difference which would have resulted in a need for immediate boarding. Then the third hour we spent waiting wishing we´d eaten slower and being josteled by the Koreans who still hadn´t realised that since this was Mexico it was totally normal for our flight number to not actually be listed under the correct time and destination, the available information bearing no relevence to what our tickets said. Admittedly it was confusing, according to the board not only should we have already left, but actually arrived before we left - crazy huh?
Anyway, eventually we arrived in Cuba and after a grilling from the immigation official in an accent I could barely make out (she had to ask 4 times for me to remove my glasses), we were admitted through the buzz-through door and into Cuba beyond.
The man of the Casa Particular (government registered home-stay) in which we were staying, gave us a run-down on the city
Capitolio
The old government building - a replica of the Washington DC Capitol buildingof Havana, including the complicated money situation in which tourists use a different type of peso to the locals. The Convertible (tourist) Peso, is officially pegged to the dollar, but dollars are unacceptable everywhere and in order to ensure the government a nice 15% cut of everything you spent the 1:1 rate in the exchange booths is actaully 1:0.85. He also reassured us that security was not an issue "Cuba is very safe; no guns; no knives; no one attacks you; everyone helpful; but look out for the black people - they will steal your bags if you´re not careful" - so much for all men being equal! Needless to say we had no problems from anyone, whatever their skin colour.
We walked into town to find some food and a "short 25 minute walk" soon became over an hour! Then we found ourselves in the centre of Old Havana, which is really beautiful, if slightly undermaintained. Here we had some sustinance and then finally headed to bed, drifting off to sleep to the sound of extremely loud, live salsa music from the home next door and the humming of the 40 year old air conditioning unit stamped with
Classic Cars
European cars are too expensive to import and the USA hasn´t exported since the mid sixties so most cars here are old US models with home-bodge spares. the words "Made in the USSR".
18th June We spent today exploring Habana Vieja - Old Havana, and started by getting a ride into town in a bici-taxi. This experience would have been a lot more enjoyable if our driver had not crossed himself before not slowing down at every crossroads. Luckily, and as he demonstrated on several occations, he had very good brakes. We walked around the old streets packed with a mixture of Cubans and tourists, admiring the variety of Che merchandice - I wonder if he would have been as popular a national matyre had he not have been so good looking?
The Revolutionary Museum contained a facinating collection of photos, artifacts, and articals from Cuba through from when the Spanish were ejected with the help of the USA in the late 1890s, to the 1980s, and included a map-model of an important guerrilla battle explaining where the rebels kept their coconunts (yes!?), a knife and fork used by an emprisonned rebel, and Fidel Castro´s trousers - what more could you ask for? The museum was, as you would expect, slightly one-sided, with the pre-Fidel government refered to as The Tyrants, the Americans
as The Yanks, and the communist rebels as The Victors - in fact it was almost as one-sided as the George Bush Senior Gulf War museum in Texas.
We spent the remainder of the evening buying National soft drinks so we could stay in the restaurant and watch Cuba happen around us, so it was on a rather sugary high that we returned to the casa for a well-deserved shower, before watching the 4 day old England-Trinidad match on one of Cuba´s four, fuzzy government-run channels.
19th June While waiting for the lady of our house to cook our eggs I realised where I had seen the living room before. It was almost an exact replica of the house in west-London where we used to go and visit Nana (my great grandma). The orniments, the wicker-back rocking chair, the repeated geometric pattern armchairs, the family photos, it was scarey!
After breakfast we headed to the Plaza de la Revolución, where the entire Cuban army seemed to collecting for some sort of inspection below the giant face of Che and the José Martí monument. After a look around the Martí museum - Anne has studied his
José Martí Monumento
Monument in the Plaza de la Revolución to the founder of the socialist movement in Cuba, poet José Martí poetry and is a lot more knowledgeable than me! We took the lift to the top of the monument for a view over Havan to teh sea and over the countryside to the mountains beyonnd. Then it was the short but extremely sticky walk through the backstreets of Havana to the Necropolis of Colón. This quiet cemetary is home to thousands of Havana´s past-residents, more recent family members joining thier ancestors in the family tomb. The after a while of standing around on a street corner (a pass-time which in contrast to Mexico didn´t get us any offers at all) we managed to hail a moto-taxi, a kind of moped with back seats, and we chugged across town to the new side of Havana and the suburb of Miramar ("seaview"). We walked back east across town looing at the blue Carribbean and trying to guess the country´s embassies from their flags (we got stuck on Hungary).
Crossing the river we foudn ourselves in the new central Havana district of Vedado. Here we filled up on a late lunch in the coldest airconditioned restaurant on earth before walking down the Malecón - the sea wall along which many Cubans take
their evening stroll. After a yummy, but very soft icecream in the famous Coppelia icecream palour (my 3rd icecream of the day) we sat in a park and watched a Scotish guy hit on a very disinterested-looking Cuban girl, using a Spanish dictionary - very entertaining.
Back at the house, we educated the family on what a pot-noodle is (bought with us for emergency use from Mexico) and struggled for 20 minutes with the 4 taps in the bathroom trying to get a shower that was not too hot, not too cold and atcually stong enough to wash under.
20th June We started this morning with a tour of the oldest Cuban cigar factory, still opperating in its original method - rows and rows of people counting leaves, hand-rolling cigars, sticking labels. sorting by colours and boxing. They work 8 hours a day to a daily quota (about 120 cigars for the rollers, 2000 for the labelers and boxers) while listening to a man read the government published newspaper over a load speaker. The training to work there takes 9 months, during which time the cigars made are sold locally to the Cubans, the professionally-made cigars
are exported to Europe and Canada, and fecth up to well over $100 US a piece. It looks like hard and certainly repetitive work, but they seemed happy and the factory is certainly more efficient than the tequila factory in Mexico!
After lunch we were taken by a friend of the family we were staying with, to the beach at Playas del Este. This was officially done as an act of kindness, and unofficially in exchange for $20, such exchanges are illegal in Cuba, but without which most of the population would not have enough money to care for their families. On the main road out of town we past more propoganda posters saying things like "Fatherland or Death"; "Thousands of Children die in the world each day of curable diseases, not one is in Cuba"; and "Education is creation" as well as the compulsary Bush-bashing slogans you see on every corner. On the way our ´friend´told us of the advantages of living in Cuba including free healthcare, education from nursary to university and low unemployment. However, he also touched, without meaning to I suspect, on some of the difficulties. It is difficult to travel, not just outside the
A busy evening street
Havana has the most amazing comunity atmosphere country but with the country, wages are very low, and it is hard to find the things you want to buy. This final issue I can testify to as most of the shops we say were very sparce and seemed to sell whatever the owner could get his hands on to sell: one shop we went into sold baths, shoes, lamps and shampoo and nothing else.
The beach was perfect. Busy but not crowded with the finest white sand I´ve ever seen and which I know I will be finding in my clothes, bag and ears until the end of time. The shallow, turquoise water was really warm. However, the best thing about the beach, epecially compared to Puerto Vallarta was the complete lack of American tourists and the comerce they bring with them - not only was it the most beautiful beach I´ve ever been to it was also the quietest, it was just so relaxing. So after an afternoon of baking ourselves I had the cheapest rum and coke of my life (at 50p it even beats RAF Cranwell) and with a quick Cuban supper of chickeny-ricy-potatoey-beany dish we were taken back to Havana.
21st Anti Imperialist propoganda
Mister Imperialists: We are absolutely not afraid of you! June
This morning we went on a tour of "Hemingway´s Havana". A guide took us first to his house in the south of the city and then to Cojimar, a fishing village from wear he sailed to fish and from where he drew his inspiration for
The Old Man and the Sea. Finally we went to the Ambos Mundos hotel in the old town where Hemingway lived for 7 years in the 1930s. It was really interesting and it did make me embarassed to have never read any of his work - so there´s a task for when I get back. We enjoyed Mojitas on the rooftop of teh hotel before heading to the hustle and bustle of tourist market. Unfortunately the pleas of "please lady, buy my products, don´t go, buy my things, good price" got just too annoying and we had to retreat into a back street for another icecream.
Havan really does have a community atmosphere. You can see it especially in the evenings when everyone comes out of their houses into the streets to chat with, argue with, play with, or just watch their neighbours. Also when one of the old classic American cars
Flag
The 1850 first Cuban Republic flag breaks down in teh road (a common occurance), a group of people always rush to healp.
With one final walk around town and a last late lunch it was time to pack up our bags. Our time in Cuba was all too short to get anything excpet a taste for the place, but at the same time I couldn´t wait to get back to reality, and find out the football scores! A beautiful place to visit, but I wouldn´t want to live there.
22nd June The return journey to Guadalajara proved much less exciting than our outward-bound, having mastered the visa and time-difference situations. However, I must just be allowed one public moan about Mexican tourist card issues. The literature says 180 days is standard, Anne had 180 days before, I asked for 180 days and got 90. Then as we re-entered the country I asked for 90 and the guy said "Of course you can´t have 90" - no sorry, no explination, no nothing. I thought that was pretty silly, until we found out the guy who stamped in Anne gave her 1 day! Then changed it to 10 when she asked, then to 30 when she begged, but for goodness sake!! What is the rule??? And why do I now have to go and queue for a visa extension when if I hadn´t left the country I would still be allowed to stay without an extension! I guess no country is perfect... bring me back to the UK! (6 weeks to go!)
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J Morley
non-member comment
Facinating
Facinating insight, really good reading. Glad to hear you are back though.