REPRESENT Cuba

We left our beloved Playa for the last time and had a hectic last minute check-in at Cancun airport, and after an hour found ourselves in…Represent REPRESENT, CUBA! (these are lyrics from a famous song by Orishas which we couldn’t get out of our heads for the duration of our time in Cuba…that and ‘Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera’). Driving into Habana Vieja, the first of the Cuban clichés was confirmed – old 1950s Chevrolets in pastel colours cruised alongside us and ‘Viva Fidel/Che’ placards lined the streets. We arrived at our casa particular in a crumbling colonial street and chilled out with the air conditioning for a while before going to explore the area.

Casas particulares are one of the few legitimate manifestations of private enterprise in Cuba – they are similar to B&Bs in that people let out rooms in their house to tourists, but they are under strict regulations in terms of how many people can stay, what they can serve, etc. Our room was more of a penthouse apartment – quite luxurious, with a bathroom, AC and kitchen, but 10 times the price of the rest of the continent. This is to do with the dual currency system, introduced a few years ago, and which takes forever to get your head around…and really don’t think it makes sense at all. Tourists must only use the ‘peso convertible’ (referred to as the CUC), whereas Cubans can only use the peso nacional. The CUC is 25 times the value of the peso nacional, yet some things are given a price eg. a peso for a pizza, and the Cuban pays 1 national peso whilst the tourist pays 1 convertible peso (ie. 25 times more). Only Cubans who work with tourists have access to CUCs, and therefore to privileges such as internet use, modern cars or foreign travel (all priced in CUCs). The pricing of restaurants/hotels/taxis etc in CUCs in resort regions such as Varadero effectively excludes Cubans from beaches they’ve visited for years, and creates a weird climate of favourable treatment towards tourists (no queuing if you’re paying with CUCs for example). There are some occasions however when tourists get their hands on national money, as change when buying street food for instance, but outside of Cuba this is useless.

Our first steps in our barrio revealed that it was a bit of a ghetto…a couple of doors down was a shooting range shop with rifle-toting teens taking shots at tin cans. We wandered the area, amazed to find the cigar smoking grandmas from the postcards sitting in doorways, groups of men playing chess on the pavement, little impromptu dances and concerts in front rooms…before hunger overcame us and we stopped for a pizza. Rookie mistake…we were in one of the state-run restaurants (as opposed to a paladar – a home restaurant), and the food was appalling – greasy pizza and soggy pasta with raw uncooked pork, ketchup and fake cheese. Never again! To make up for this we went for mojitos on the roof terrace of Ambos Mundos, the hotel where Ernest Hemingway lived for a while, and saw a live band whose dancing rivalled Michael Jackson’s.

The next morning we visited the Capitolio, a huge governmental building resembling the White House, displaying various artworks in opulent halls. Bizarrely, it is one of the very few places in Havana where you can get on the internet. Everywhere signs advertised FREE informative tours on offer – ‘just ask the guides!’ No need – we were literally grabbed by a guide (‘¡ven! ¡ven!’) and pushed speedily into room after room with hardly any explanations (‘What does this fresco show?’ ‘It’s marble’), before being forced to cough up a couple of dollars for the service. Hmm. And all the guides (as would be the case in most museums we visited) were dressed up in über-tight miniskirts, fishnets and skimpy translucent white shirts, seductively made up…why??

We continued on to the Callejón de Hamel, a muralled street devoted to Santería (the worship of African deities through Catholic saints – devised by black slaves so as to continue practising their beliefs unbeknownst to their masters) and Afro Cuban culture. There should have been a rumba band playing but they didn’t show…it was rumoured one of the players had just died. We did however bump into Molly, an old friend from school (¡qué casualidad!) who we met up with later for dinner. Pon leaving the Callejón we had another surreal Cuban incident – a guy asks Rebecca repeatedly whether she likes ‘the Cuban rapper’…she asks him which one, and in reply another 2 guys jump in front of us, blocking our path and launching into an impromptu personal rap concert. 5 mins later this ended as quickly as it had begun and we continued on our way without buying the CD (there seemed to be a significant proportion of the population involved in selling CDs on the street, everywhere).

We spent the next 4 days in Havana, visiting many museums, usually laid out in completely illogical order eg. chronicling the Revolution from 1875 to 1959 via 1930 and back to 1918, with a bizarre array of irrelevant artefacts in reverent glass cases (Che Guevara’s pen, Fidel Castro’s toothpick etc.) and art galleries, the Malecón (sea-front, not to be confused with ‘maricon’=homosexual), the rather dull Plaza de la Revolución, a cigar factory (accompanied by an embarrassing bearded Italian donning a Che hat and a Che tattoo on one arm, a Fidel one on the other), a massive graveyard, the Hotel Inglaterra y más. One night we saw a contemporary dance show by the Cuban national ballet involving screeching violins, nudity, men in skirts and impressive gymnastics. Buying tickets for this was also a pretty odd sequence of events, involving our ticket seller hastily rushing us to our seats without taking any money, then beckoning to us in the interval and leading me to a shady corridor to pay him. One afternoon I was particularly pleased to find a whole delegation of N. Korean diplomats and their wives at the Casa de Asia museum for a cultural event, dressed up in military finery and handing out propaganda pamphlets, the first North Koreans I’d ever seen…exciting!

One fine evening we decided, spur of the moment, to check out Havana’s famous cabaret show at a place misleadingly called Club Tropicana (drinks WERE free…after you’ve spent US$77 on the ticket to get in!) It being a spontaneous venture, we were still in day clothes – cheap T shirts, ripped jeans/short shorts and flip flops – and the only places left 5 mins before the show were right at the front. We were served champagne and a bottle of Havana Club, little snacks, and had an excellent view of the performance – an overtly lavish affair, the girls semi-clad with vast quantities of peacock feathers crowning their sequinny brows, the ‘boys’ in skin-tight brightly coloured lycra to show off their aerobicised midriffs etc. Naturally the experience was worth every cent as at the end of the show (which also featured jaw-dropping acrobatics performed by midgets) I was literally dragged up onstage by one of the showmen (whose eyelashes were twice the length and width of mine) to dance, while Laura filmed, in front of all the well-to-do spectators who were dressed in ballgowns and tuxedoes. All I can say is these flips are made for floppin’…

Another particular highlight of our time in Havana was a paladar called El Gringo Viejo where we ate not once, not twice, but three times. Oh my. Seafood starters, delicious lobster (again forgetting our backpacker status), the best ropa vieja (‘old clothes’ – a sort of shredded beef stew), the tastiest mojitos of the whole trip, and an insanely delicious desert of cooked guavas in syrup with cheese. El Gringo Viejo was to Havana what 100% Natural was to Playa and El Cafetal was to Coroico (back in the day). We spent our last night in Havana at a different casa – ours had been reserved ahead, but our hosts had a friend nearby who turned out to be a super friendly mother and daughter, a refreshing change from the daughters in the first house – all our age and stunning who just blanked us or even walked out slamming the door whenever we attempted to engage them in conversation. Nice. The new lady was safety obsessed (fake keyholes on the door, strict instructions to bring no Cubans back to the room etc.) and really sweet and motherly!

After 1 night here we took the bus to Trinidad, Cuba’s favourite picture postcard colonial town, 6h away from Havana on the coast. A change of scene we hoped would refresh our attitude to Cuba – we weren’t sure if it was just Havana but the constant male attention was really starting to get to us. Seriously, it made men in Lima look retiring and respectful. I don’t think we walked down a single street without having men whistle/block our path/try to touch our breasts or asses/shouting filthy things in English at us/hissing or waggling their tongues. As ever, it was uniformed men that were the worst culprits, though taxi drivers were notable offenders…why do they think we’re going to let them stroke our thighs?? As well as this, there was the highest level of hassle we’d experienced throughout the trip so far. This is called ‘jineterismo,’ with jineteros being anything from touts for paladars/accommodation to people seeking marriage and a passport. Unfortunately, awareness of this slightly marred our appreciation of natural Cuban friendliness – everyone wants to chat to you, but you find yourself constantly having to refuse offers to paladars/concerts and requests for soap/water/clothes/milk and other items in shortage. A particularly memorable time was one night when we’d had an unusual amount of unwanted attention, even for Havana, and I just lost it and yelled in the middle of the street in our gun-toting ghetto of a neighbourhood, ‘I HATE CUBANS!!’ Laura, mid-laughter, shushed me and gently reminded me that it was possibly not the best thing to say given that we were surrounded by them. It was definitely time to leave.

On our arrival in Trinidad we were followed all the way from the bus terminal to our pre-booked casa by a hopeful tout, where we met our new Cuban family. We were welcomed in at the door by grandma, who could easily be mistaken for the bearded lady at a circus, and as she warmly ushered us in we walked past her husband who was singing dreamily and stroked us both as we passed…bearded lady explained he was ‘demente’ and we later discovered he actually had Alzheimer’s, which had only developed over the past year, and as a result sadly he could no longer recognise his own family or remember where he was. We were then introduced to Margarita, the lady who ran the place, a total sweetheart, and her artist husband Arocha whose work was displayed around the house…he even did the washing up and cooked us eggs in the morning! 2 other unforgettable family members made their acquaintance with us fairly early on – the terrapin who we came across from time to time floating around in a paint bucket filled with water (Arocha said it was fine to hold the flailing critter, but when asked if it bites he said ‘¡sí claro!’), and last but not least, Laika, the rather high energy sausage dog who showed her affection by rolling over, whining, to reveal her many udders.

We spent a nice relaxed couple of days roaming about the small town, visiting some pointless museums that reminded us of Colonia (Uruguay), such as one that displayed predominantly European furniture. In the evenings we met up with Caroline, an old friend from school, which was lovely, and many long catch-up chats were had (we had just missed another NLCS person…seemed like the whole of N. London was in Cuba at the same time!) while we listened to live music outside Casa de La Musica, a popular venue where couples were dancing on the steps and sipping customary mojitos out of plastic cups…we also frequented what appeared to be someone’s back yard for more musica en vivo. The strangest experience was Rave in a Cave. We pulled up to this infamous place in a taxi that left us stranded in the dark, in the countryside seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but we followed the people in front down some stone steps into the ground and a little way down we could hear the music booming out before entering the club beneath. The music wasn’t the best – an eclectic mix of dance and reggaeton – but the atmosphere was pretty unique, all humid and cavernous, surrounded by stalactites and mites, with the bar built into the cave wall. Our last day in Trini was spent relaxing on the beach…in the pouring rain! Our last playa experience of the trip and no sun, but it was still enjoyable as we walked a bit down the beach to settle in a totally deserted spot with one tree to hang our cositas, plenty of shell collecting opportunites (Laura) and the water was bath temperature.

We found ourselves back in La Habana for one night before our return flight to Cancun, and spent the time wandering as we found all the museums to be closed, it being a Monday. Standard. On our aimless ramblings we just so happened to bump into yet another friend of ours, Sarah, our Canadian companion from Isla Holbox, so we caught up over delicious chocolates fríos in the chocolate museum (THAT, thank God, was abierto). Our last night there was a lacklustre affair – after a daiquiri at another Ernest Hemingway haunt, the swanky El Floridita bar, and dinner at our favourite paladar, we didn’t manage to meet up with Sarah and her friend as planned (we later found out they’d been robbed, but all that was taken was an inhaler, and ended up chasing the thief down the street yelling that she needed her medicine!) By this point all the live music venues were closing, then we were hounded by a persistent Cuban guy who could not or would not take a hint, so, fed up, we decided to go to bed. Havana Nights indeed.

The next morning we turned up at the airport with no idea as to what time our flight was, or the flight number, or any kind of reservation code. We just handed over our passports and luggage and asked to go to Cancun please! And it worked, because we are maestras. From CUN, after hours of fun playing ‘Spot the Great White…Tourist,’ indulging in the glorious vices of capitalism again, and wondering at the proliferation of army men patrolling the airport in their camouflage gear, we flew to Mexico City, or as it is more commonly known, D.F. The night time view from the plane as we landed was spectacular – a vast urban sprawl of twinkling lights spreading out on both sides as far as the eye can see. This was to be our final stop before going home – originally we were planning to spend a few days in Oaxaca but then we realised there was so much to do in DF that we didn’t want to cut it short…especially with Mexican Independence Day celebrations!