Cuba on a dollar and a good eye for potholes

So we arrive in Buenos Aires on New Year´s Eve. Don´t know what would constitute a great celebration so opt for cheap Malbec and bad Cuban cigar in our funky San Telmo house (we´ll be here for 4 nights - feels great to hang clothes in wardrobe), where our kind B&B owners cajole us into eating calf-sized BBQed steaks.

Naturally, we end up smoking dope with a Ukrainian in an American poof´s totally cool ex-cookie factory house, complete with movies projected onto wall, ping-pong table, punch bag and grumpy rescue dog from Mexico. But that´s a blog for another day.

Cuba, however? Don´t know what to say. Have been trying to write this blog entry since yesterday - and everything sounds crap and contrived, probably because it´s a country that lures you into definition, only to show you up as ignorant, hypocritical, opinionated and plainly wrong.

Maybe it´s safer just to say what we did, and to mix it up with snippets of impressions:



1. Perspective change
Spend 4 days in Havana, then head out in our family car to Viñales marvelling at the terrible condition of the Autopista - Cubano pronunciation "opitta". (16 days later, moseying back to Havana with Jane "British Citizen" (surname as defined by bank clerk) Harris and Nicki Wakefield, the opitta constitutes pure driving luxury.)

The ox and the horse work very hard for their living.

We knew Cuba wasn´t cheap, but somehow manage to completely miscalculate our monetary needs (ie don´t have enough sterling. We don´t want to be punished with 10% "up yours Bush" commission for changing US dollars so have to rely on Banker Harris.) Amanda starts coughing.

2. We drove a lot and Amanda coughed
From Viñales, we cover the 180km to tourist enclave Maria la Gorda in 3 hours, where it rains non-stop for 24 hours and we snorkel on the Wilma-damaged reef, make our own Cuba Libres (rum and coke) and smoke our first cigar on my birthday. Get an inkling then that life as travellers is going to be sweet.


Meet up with J&N in Havana, visit Che´s memorial in Santa Clara, first night in casa particular (kind of B&B, but somehow more like living in granny´s house) in Sankti Spiritus, then Holguin (scary drive in dark, Jane Harris doesnt break her leg falling into open sewage pipe, car gets scratched, I have first dodgy-bum moment. Amanda coughing non-stop.) Playing cards in casa garden in Gibara, cuba libres and fags, we are mindful of the blissfulness of living.


Two nights in Santiago de Cuba - great music mid-day in Casa de la Trova, play yummy mummies to pretty but expensive hustler boys, and JH suffers guilt on realising that changing 600 sterling into convertibles (tourist money = 1 US dollar) equals about 3 years´salary for a Cubano. Consider staging demonstration outside Guantanamo, but opt for mojitos instead.

Camaguey for a night with bossy casa lady, then decide on expensive "luxury" in Communist holiday camp at Playa Ancon. Amanda and Jane discuss business opportunities in Cuba, concentrating on customer service training. Coups is still coughing.

Then La Boca. Oh La Boca of beautiful sunsets, fantastic fresh fish in casa, Cuba Libres and Canasta. Quiet seaside settlement down the road from Unesco site Trinidad, where on Christmas day we ford gushing street rivers in pissing rain. But it means the hustlers aren´t out in droves and we play ball with local kid. Nicki W hands out pens. Esther rude to Amanda over excessive coughing.

Back to Havana for couple of nights in council block, feeling tearful on saying adios to Jane and Nicki. We love those girls.

Last day we pay 20 centavos (not even a penny) for 40-minute cultural experience in a camello (large truck with humps that doubles as bus/sardine tin) that takes us to the house in San Francisco de Paula, on a hill near Havana, where Hemingway lived from 1939 to 1960, Ava Gardner swam naked in his pool and where his boat Pilar is on display.

3. Fidel Castro does not like George Bush



Amanda tells me off for being too political. But I can´t understand why the mighty US, that great purveyor of liberty and democracy, is so intent on enforcing a 40-year long trade embargo that has very effectively ensured that the 11 million inhabitants of Communist giant Cuba have no access to the benefits of international trade.

Clearly, the Cuban model isn´t working - the people are poor and have very little freedom, and everything is in decay. But there is a lot to say for a society - and many Cubanos are quick to point out this fact - that has nearly 100% literacy and virtually no crime.

Castro, we surmise, is feeling lonely. His great revolutionary pals died a long time ago - Che Guevara in the Bolivian struggle in ´67, Camilo Cienfuegos in a plain crash a few years after the revolution of ´59. Only his brother Raul remains.

So Fidel puts up countless bill boards, keeping them alive as revolutionary heroes 40 years after the fact. Che´s "Hasta la victoria siempre" is everywhere."Nosotros vamos bien" (we are doing well), he is painfully insistent. "Only socialism can create a better world," among the seemingly unstoppable decay.

So, yes, we struggle to pigeonhole this country. We know we like it and it fascinates us. So we give out our dollar (everything´s a dollar, from a boy on a bike leading us to our casa, to having a song played on the street, to random requests for dinero) and try to imagine what that dollar means to the recipient. We give people lifts in our fancy car (Skoda Fabia Combi), pine for modern European food and wonder what Cuba will be like once Castro is no longer there.

Amanda´s cough is a little better.

PS: Can´t seem to do anything about crappy positioning of photos. Desculpe.