Trinidad, Cuba

Trinidad, just along the coast from Cienfuegos, is Cuba’s ‘party central’. Very touristy but very nice. We’ve never seen so many bands playing at the one time in any town before. People lie low in the heat of the day, but come nightfall, the cobblestone streets fill fast with locals and tourists (the latter probably outnumbering the former), and the restaurants, cafes and bars swing into action. Then the bands start up.

We spent our days here soaking up the atmosphere and sitting and listening to the great musicians in action. Leetuan attended the Christmas Eve service in the cathedral, conducted in Spanish of course, while I sat in the adjacent park and tried to connect to the internet on Cuba’s infernal system. The internet in Cuba is woeful – nearly unusable. Each town’s connection is in the form of a wireless network set up in the vicinity of a designated park. Hundreds of young people and families sit in the park at all hours of the day and night, using scratch cards (each costing about AUD$3 for one hour, and containing a user login and password) to connect to the internet, mostly to use their smartphones to speak with relatives and friends. But the system is hopelessly overloaded (this causing frequent disconnects), and oh so slooooow.

 

Epistle of the lost underpants …

A couple of days before Christmas we took a tourist bus to the Playa Ancon resort on the Caribbean coast about 20km south of Trinidad. We changed into our bathers in a bar toilet, found recliner lounges under coco palms on the beach and took turns swimming in the Caribbean Sea while the other stood (laid) watch over our valuables. We decided to have lunch at Club Amigo Ancon a couple of hundred metres along the beach. Once there I changed back into my dry shorts but found that my underpants were not with them. Our blood began to run cold when we searched our bag and seat several times but they were nowhere to be found.

Normally the loss of such an item wouldn’t rate a mention, but astute readers will remember the pocket Leetuan had sewn onto them for storing the other family jewels; namely our cash and bank cards. And on this day there was a lot of cash as well as the cards, as we had cashed up ready for our approaching departure from Trinidad. We ran back down the beach and searched where we had been swimming. No sign. Far more likely was that they had fallen from my shorts in the toilet after initially changing into bathers. I ran across to the bar toilet to search there, only to find it now locked! Hot, sweaty and red-faced, I tried to explain to the bar staff what had happened and asked for the toilet to be reopened, but they just shrugged their shoulders and went on making mojitos for other tourists who were far more relaxed than we now were.

The horrible reality was dawning – it was fast becoming clear exactly what had happened. It was impossible that the toilet attendant whom I had tipped so generously could have missed seeing the underpants on the floor after I left. When she picked them up she certainly would have seen the plastic bag in the pocket and the fat wad of cash inside, that for her would have been more than two years’ wages. Clearly she had immediately locked the door, resigned from her job, paid off the others to keep their mouths shut, and at this very moment was probably already boarding a boat to begin a new life in Florida. The BITCH!

Our day ruined, and smarting from the loss of so much cash as well as our bank cards, our thoughts turned to how we would contact the bank to cancel the cards. We decided to go back up the beach to Club Amigo Ancon and sit in the cool while we planned our next steps. Once there, despite knowing it was futile, I looked again around the couch where we had been searching a few minutes earlier. Of course there was nothing there. I glanced into a small dark gap between that couch and the next, and noticed something on the floor. It looked like a stone. I reached in and picked it up. It was cloth, grey cloth, it was a pair of underpants, MY underpants, and with a plastic bag of cash and cards in the pocket! I waved them around my head as Leetuan approached and when she saw what it was she exploded with relief and laughter and hugged me, and we began to jump up and down together, as you do in Cuba. We stopped when we realized that the reception staff, who were all now staring at us, must be wondering why that woman was hugging and jumping up and down with that red-faced sweaty guy swinging his underpants around his head.

We calmed down and a little later headed for the restaurant to celebrate this wholly unlikely and hugely relieving turn of events, and on the way in the true spirit of Christmas I mentally forgave the toilet attendant for stealing our cash and fleeing to Florida. Forgive and forget I say.

That’s a lie. I actually mentally apologized to her for suspecting that she had made off with our things.

The restaurant lunch turned out to be an all-inclusive buffet, all-inclusive meaning also including all the alcoholic drinks you wanted, for the unbelievably low price of 10 CUC (AUD$14). After a terrible start the day was improving fast. And as if it couldn’t get any better I saw a guy go past with brussel sprouts on his plate. Brussel sprouts?? OMG – my favourite vegetable! And in Cuba too, where the only vegetables we’d seen for the past fortnight were tomatoes, yam and cucumber. I tracked down the source of the sprouts and made room on my plate. We had a sizeable lunch but not nearly as much as the package tourists staying at the resort, most of whom seemed to be from Canada or Poland.

It had been a hot, draining, emotional roller coaster of a day, and mid-afternoon we caught the bus back to Trinidad, giving plenty of time on the way to contemplate that age-old unanswerable question that haunts all backpackers – should I leave my passport and valuables back in my room or take them with me?  Don’t ask me.

Cienfuegos, Cuba

What should have been a 5 hour bus trip from Vinales to Cienfuegos on Cuba’s central south coast became an 8.5 hour trial after our bus broke down on the way and we had to stand on the edge of the highway with the other passengers for 3.5 hours until a replacement arrived.

Cienfuegos was originally established by French, not Spanish, settlers and this shows in the wide, open boulevards and streets. It seems to be a little more affluent than other places with some beautiful colonial era buildings in reasonable state of repair, and pockets of relative modernity amongst the dilapidation.

Public transport in Cienfuegos though is not on buses, but on carts drawn by horses, hundreds of which clip clop up and down the streets. Sadly, a few of them seemed to be a bit lame and should have been recuperating, not working, we thought.

We stumbled on a great concert when we checked out the impressive late 19^th century Teatro Tomas Terry in the city centre plaza, a couple of hours after arriving in Cienfuegos. The show was to start in 10 minutes time, so we bought tickets and went straight in. The musicians were the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, visiting from New Orleans in the USA, supported towards the end by an Afro Cuban band from Santiago de Cuba. The show was hot (so too was the theatre unfortunately, almost intolerably so) and the audience went wild – the old theatre was rockin’ that night.

We took a bicycle taxi 2km south to the pleasant seaside suburb of Punta Gorda. I was recovering from a minor stomach upset; we’ve both had a few of these in Cuba, in fact more than we’ve previously had in total during all of our travels of the last 7 years! Whiling away the afternoon in a cooling sea breeze under the palms beside the pool of the Jagua Hotel, after medication consisting of a Gastro-stop, passable toasted ham sandwich and cold beer, was just what the doctor ordered.

Vinales, Cuba

From Havana we took a bus about 3.5 hours south-west to the town of Vinales in the valley of the same name. The countryside here is idyllic (though I’m sure the lives for the locals are a lot tougher); everywhere is green and the soil is perfect for the tobacco that makes the world’s best cigars. We hired a casa in the town centre and spent three days hanging around and soaking up the pleasant laid-back ambience.

Hike to Los Aquaticos

On one of the days we were up before daybreak and did a 10km or so hike out of Vinales and halfway up a mountainside to the tiny community of Los Aquaticos. Our trail took us through tobacco fields amongst farmers at work and then forest as we began the ascent on a soggy clay path. At several places along the way Leetuan used her Spanish to ask farmers for directions and they were happy to point the way. On our arrival at Los Aquaticos the friendly resident family sold us drinks – excellent fresh sugar cane juice extracted from a cane taken from their field and fed through a hand-driven knurled roller while we waited, and then later coffee brewed from their own coffee beans grown near their house. The views from Los Aquaticos over the farming land below were great and we took photos before beginning our return journey down the mountainside. We were back in Vinales by noon; time for yet another shower and then to stay out of the sun until at least 4.

Daytrip to Pina del Rio

On another day we took a collectivo, a shared taxi (this one a 1953 Chevrolet), to the region’s main town of Pina del Rio. We found that this place had little to recommend it, though we did visit the small interesting cigar factory. About 50 workers were seated, each at their own table, hand rolling cigars. Each person does the whole process, so each finished cigar is entirely their own work. The guide told us that the typical worker makes between 100 and 150 cigars a day, and their daily wage is around 1.5 CUC (about AUD$2.00). A single top quality cigar might cost around 7 CUC or more, so you can see that the labour component is a negligible cost relative to the cigar’s market value. A bit sad really. In Pina we also visited a factory that produces guava brandy and tasted some samples. It was OK but by now we had acquired a taste for rum and preferred that. It seemed to suit the climate.

Pina hasn’t always been this low key. In 1962 with Castro’s cooperation the Soviet Union installed nuclear weapons in Pina, provoking the “Cuban missile crisis” with the USA. While the world teetered on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, the two main players bared their teeth at one another. Eventually the Soviets blinked and took their missiles away, leaving the world to breathe a big sigh of relief.

In the late afternoon on the outskirts of Pina we hailed another collectivo for the return trip to Vinales. But this one broke down about half way, and then again five more times before expiring big time just a few km from Vinales. Even the driver’s obvious mechanical wizardry wasn’t enough to coax the engine into life a 6^th time. We were rescued when a friend of the driver passed us in his own collectivo. He stopped, we piled into his Dodge, and a few minutes later we were back in Vinales, another day’s adventure behind us.

Leetuan rummaged in a garden and found a patch of mint. I rummaged in our backpack for the bottle of Havana Club and bag of lemons. Time for sunset mojitos and cigars (our one and only each of the latter) on the patio before dinner at El Olivo where we dined every night.

Havana, Cuba

A nice breakfast at Bogota International Airport in Colombia, a change of plane, and we were on our way again, arriving in Havana around noon on 8 December. We loaded up with Cuban cash from an airport ATM, which given Cuba’s poor telecommunications, wasn’t as straightforward as you might expect. Outside we did a deal with a taxi driver whose meter wasn’t working (no surprise there), and asked him to drop us off at an intersection we randomly chose in Habana Centro, the old dilapidated inner city residential district. Once there we waited until he slowly disappeared into the distance (so that he couldn’t try to muscle in on our accommodation arrangements and demand a commission be added to the price), and struck out to find a ‘casa particular’, Cuba’s equivalent of a homestay.

This is a government-licensed room with its own bathroom in a Cuban family’s house, sometimes conveniently with its own separate entrance. These are everywhere in Cuba. We had three deal-breaker requirements – it had to be clean (they all were), have air conditioning and at least warm, if not hot, water. We checked out four or five casas before choosing one in Aguila Street, the home of a friendly family and only a five minute walk to the malecon, Havana’s famous 8km long atmospheric sea wall over which ocean spray spills onto the road when the wind and tide are up.

While I was doing my final class for the year in China in November, Leetuan was back home attending Spanish classes. This has been hugely helpful, and she’s been charming the Cubans (particularly the older Senors) with her smiling efforts to speak Spanish, her ‘per favor Senors’ and ‘gracias Senors’, and her softly spoken respectful approach. The result has been friendly Cubans bending over backwards to help us. Despite the deprivations they live under, they seem generally to make the most of their lives and to have fun, liable at any moment to break out into dancing.

Cuba is a safe destination for travellers, though the dark gritty unlit alleyways of Habana Centro certainly did feel a bit dodgy late at night. But apart from a failed late afternoon pickpocketing attempt on myself, we had no problems. The former happened when I was looking at some fruit on a street side cart. I felt a faint touch deep in my pocket and in response I slammed my hand against the pocket, snaring a set of fingers retreating fast. I spun around and glared at their owner who pretended that he had stumbled onto me; then he made off fast. He took nothing – there was nothing in the pocket to take. My cash and bank cards were in a small plastic bag securely tucked away in a pocket Leetuan had deviously sown on my underpants! Good one Leetuan! More brownie points. I’d wager that few pickpockets, or even frisking muggers for that matter, would be prepared to put their fingers where needed to get their hands on my cash!

“Time warp” is certainly an apt description for Havana. Most of the cars on the streets, shared with people and bicycle taxis, are blue smoke belching American and Russian models from the 50s. Classic car enthusiasts (certainly those without asthma) must love this place.

We spent our days admiring the crumbling architecture of Habana Centro, and the internationally funded restorations taking place on the magnificent colonial era buildings in Habana Vieja district (such as the astonishing Grand Theatre of Habana). Occasional café stops for a shot of excellent Cuban coffee added to the pleasantness of it all. And then there was the music. Cubans (and to a lesser degree tourists) have to join long queues for most things – banks, shops, bus tickets, internet cards etc. The shops were poorly stocked relative to ours home, with little choice and empty shelves common in the grocery shops (there are no supermarkets as we know them), and many everyday goods we take for granted are simply unavailable. Cubans may not have much in a material sense, but they have the music. Boy do they have the music. It seeps out through the masonry cracks in the buildings, and mixes with the sounds from the bands in the streets to create a riot of public sound.

Havana Centro

Havana Vieja

We went to a chamber orchestra concert in St Francis of Assisi cathedral in Habana Vieja, to a Cuban pop music concert in La Casa de la Musica in Habana Centro where the rum flowed freely but being at least twice the age of everyone else there we were soon driven out by the ear-popping decibels, and twice late at night to the excellent la Zorra y El Cuervo (the Fox and the Crow) basement jazz club in Habana Vedado. One afternoon in Vedado we also stumbled on a street festival and procession with a lot of great Cuban music.

Havana was a blast; the queues for everything, woeful internet, poor food, shortages, blue vehicle fumes and trickling kerbside sewage effluents excepted.