Cuba, 16-25 November 2007
Finally - I've written up my trip to Cuba, rather later than I planned. Anyway, here it is.
Day 0.5 (Thursday)
I arrived at Havana airport on Thursday afternoon, slightly delayed (not the fault of Virgin Atlantic, but Gatwick Airport, who decided to repair the runway at 9 am). After a protracted baggage retrieval process and one of the easiest trips through passport control ever (much, much easier than the US of A I have to add), I was finally in Cuba and being met by S, who had had a mere 4-hour flight from Toronto and no time change.
The first thing we had to do was queue to change money - you can't get Cuban money outside Cuba, and there are 2 different currencies: convertible pesos (CUC$) which you get when you change foreign currency, and Cuban pesos or 'moneda nacional', which are used by Cubans and worth 25 times less - although when you pay for goods and services you usually pay the same number of pesos. It still mostly works out cheaper than at home. Anyway, having got our pesos we took a rather hair-raising cab ride into the city. Every warning light on the dashboard was flashing, the music was blaring and we wove in and out of the (thankfully reasonably light by London standards) traffic at high speed. Not before time, we arrived at Casa Luis Miguel, our home for the next 3 nights. I was unsure what to expect, as we'd been driving through streets of somewhat decrepit colonial buildings - but when we got inside the 19th century house, it was beautifully restored with high ceilings, an inner courtyard open to the sky with a table and chairs, and a comfy bedroom with our own bathroom. Hurrah. Luis himself spoke good English, and it soon transpired he was a fixer and networker type. Whatever you needed he could either get it for you or knew someone who could. Our only desire at that point was to collapse for a bit and have dinner.
Casas particulares are a government initiative that licenses people to rent out no more than two rooms in their house to paying guests. For me, it's a reason to go to Cuba. Over dinner we met the other guests in the house, a lovely Greek couple who had been in Cuba for a couple of weeks and were able to give us lots of good advice - including the address of a casa in Trinidad (a town on Cuba's south coast, not the island!), which they insisted we must visit. They then asked if we'd like to join them in a walk to the old town, which we gladly accepted. Ended up wandering all over the place, and having a rather poor mojito in a bar. However, we got a taste of Havana, and earmarked a few spots to return to in daylight. My first impressions of the place were of a mix of crumbling and restored colonial buildings, old 1950s American cars, lots of Ladas, Cubans out and about but not quite as much street life as I expected. Bars with loud music. A great introduction! We returned home and I conked out for the night pretty much straight away.
Day 1 (Friday)
Friday morning we had breakfast with the Greeks and then S. and I headed out into town. We wandered with no particular goal, and found ourselves in a huge, touristy market behind the cathedral. All sorts of lovely things to buy, including a vast quantity of art - Havana is really a town of artists, with half the doorways in the old town leading to artists' studios and galleries. S. bought a couple of pictures for her apartment. After that we headed to the Plaza de la Catedral for photos, and then down towards Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway's favourite Havana hang-out. On the way we ran into an old woman whose photo is in the Lonely Planet; it seems that quite a few characters have cashed in on the tourist market and will pose for a photo for a peso. This particular old lady goes by the name of Graciela, and is 84 years old. She seems to be making a fairly good living, particularly as the average Cuban wage is CUC$10 (=250 cuban pesos) per month, and we paid her CUC$1 for a photo.
We found a suitable café for lunch where we could watch passers-by, and sat for an hour under the shade of the trees, watching the tourists until we realised that we needed to leg it if we were going to get to the Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas (Partagas cigar factory) before it closed to tours for the weekend and we missed our chance. Got there just as they were rounding people up for the last tour of the day - yay.
The cigar factory was fascinating. They keep up an incredible rate of production of the cigars - all of them hand-rolled, but if I was expecting a sweat shop, I didn't find one. Our smooth and charming guide, Jamil, explained the process of production, including the different types of leaf that are used for different purposes. We saw the whole process, from the drying of the leaves, to the rolling of the cigars and finally watched them being beautifully finished, bands applied, and then boxed. I ended up buying from the factory shop a box of 25 skinny Romeo y Julietas, the most reasonably-priced cigars I could find. Most of them were understandably (having seen what goes in to making them) outrageously expensive, although currently cheaper because of the embargo signed way back when by JFK (he ensured he imported a job lot before he signed it, mind you).
After the factory we felt in need of a beer and found a half-decent bar nearby. We sat and made plans to go to Trinidad on Sunday and do day trips from there, generally being more chilled-out. In the evening we went to La Guarida, the most famous paladar (restaurant in a private home) in Havana. It was used as a location for a film called 'Strawberry and Chocolate', and is lcoated on the third floor of a practically derelict colonial house. Inside it is rather more like a professional restaurant than the paladares we went to for the remainder of our trip; wonderful service, good food and a great atmosphere. Rounded off the evening with a walk to the Hotel Nacional. This took us through Centro Habana, ostensibly a seedy, worn and ramshackle area, but not threatening at all, even the dead rat in the road looked harmless. The Hotel Nacional is a huge building with a long, palm tree-lined driveway, it's full of tourists and the only Cubans you'll see are opening the door for you or mixing your mojito. The mojitos were fabulous though (in fact the barman guaranteed that we'd love them, or they'd be free) - we watched him add generous amounts of rum to them, so unsurprising. We walked home along the Malecon, where huge waves were coming over the sea wall and S. decided to get herself drenched to round off the day.
Day 2 (Saturday)
This morning was cultural, comprising a walk around the Cuban arts section of Havana's best art gallery, the Museo del Belles Artes. It was huge, and the work on display was really interesting, showing impressions of Cuban life over the years from colonial landscapes to more abstract and surreal stuf demonstrating aspects of modern Cuba. We spent a good long while in there, and then went to look around the book market in the Plaza del Armas. It was a veritable feast of stalls, but the stallholders harassed us so much that browsing wasn't a pleasant experience. Finally we decided to head for a restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide; by the time we got there it was after 3 pm and we were starving. I had shrimp in tomato sauce, we both had beer and then another beer, and sat for ages just chatting. We strolled back to the casa along the Padeo, where the Saturday art market was in progress, and called in at the Hotel Deauville in a futile attempt to buy bus tickets to Trinidad from their travel agent (she couldn't get through to the bus station on the phone). We decided we'd return the following morning and try again.
Upon our return to the casa we chilled out for a while, aiming to be up and about for 8 pm when Luis had promised that his brother would come by to make us mojitos. By 8 pm I was feeling totally exhausted and a bit queasy, blaming it on dehydration, so drank a load of water and went to bed. S decided she wasn't up to partying either, and turned in too. Not long after that there was a knock at the door - there was Luis' brother, holding two mojitos! Feeling really bad, I said we were both feeling unwell and were sleeping. Not long after that I started vomiting... and when I didn't stop, I realised it must have been the shrimp. It went on for most of the night, from both ends, with S getting more and more concerned as I lay on the bed moaning. I finally managed to get to sleep in the small hours, and woke up in the morning feeling completely wiped out, but better.
Day 3 (Sunday)
Had a shower and a very small breakfast, and S made another futile trip to the Hotel Deauville for bus tickets while I rested. We decided to head for the bus station anyway and take a chance that we'd be able to buy tickets there (there's some sort of system where you have to make a reservation in advance if you want to guarantee yourself a seat on your chosen service). With me still feeling like a limp rag, we packed up and took a taxi to the bus station. Contrary to popular feeling, we bought tickets right away and then waited an hour for the bus, with me nibbling on cheesy crackers and sipping water. The only thing of note at the bus station was the highly original departure board - a map of Cuba, with routes between the cities marked out on it. Only one bus at a time departed (this wasn't exactly the busiest capital city bus station in the world) and so you knew where it was going, the route lit up on the map. Easy to understand and if you know the location of your destination on the map, you don't even need to be literate.
The bus was basically full, but new and comfortable. After a while it dawned on us, and our fellow passengers, that the song coming through the speakers was the same one, over and over again. It was like Chinese water torture, and after about half an hour there was a minor revolution and someone went forward to a round of applause to speak to the driver. The song went off - blissful, and I managed to doze off, and spent most of the 6-hour trip in this state or nibbling crackers and sipping water. In between naps I saw that we passed fields of tobacco and sugar cane, stopped at the stown of Cienfuegos and had a couple of unscheduled stops in the middle of nowhere but still arrived on time in Trinidad around 7 pm. The grandson of our host met us and we had a 5-10 minute walk to the casa with our packs - not easy, but I made it!
And so we arrived at the casa of Mislady, an elderly lady who runs it with her two middle-aged daughters. The room was beautiful, all white cast iron bedsteads and sheets, spotlessly clean and opened on to a garden with orange trees a, banana trees, lilies and other lush plants which all resembled one of the glasshouses at Kew. A resident tree frog chirped away somewhere. It was all so restful after the noise and bustle of Havana, and exactly what I needed to properly recover from my unfortunate shrimp escapade.
Day 4 (Monday)
A relaxing morning spent wandering round the old town (Trinidad is a UN World Heritage site) and through the markets selling the usual wood and leather souvenirs but also linen emroidered in a distinctive local style. Had a long, lingering coffee sitting outside a cafe just above the Plaza Major listening to the live music and writing post cards. The afternoon we had a few goals in mind: first we found the small cigar factory, but there were men outside hassling us so we gave up on that and instead decided to make for an out-of-the way ceramics factory that the Rough Guide recommended. It was a decent walk out of the main tourist area and into the more residential (ie poor) parts of the town. Found the factory easily and were beckoned inside where there were shelves and shelves of pots and men making more pots at potter's wheels. An older man with a speech impediment that would have made him hard to understand in English, let alone Spanish, took it upon himself to give us a guided tour of the pot-making process. He then led us out of the factory and down the street, to some unspecified location which turned out to be what can only be described as the factory shop. The finished pots were on sale; all kinds of beautiful pottery at the most silly prices, which made me regret I didn't have room to take any back with me.
Back to the casa for a nap, and then out for dinner. We went to a paladar we'd passed earlier in the day, called 'Estela'. It was more like I'd expected a paladar to be; a house that we knocked on the front door of, and then were led through the living room (with a rather startling life-size pottery statue of Mary holding the body of Christ) and into a courtyard behind the house set with tables and chairs. So we had our dinner sitting among the trees, including one with melon-sized avocados hanging from it.
Day 5 (Tuesday)
We took the tourist steam train to the Valle de los Ingenicos, which was fun. The train doesn't always run, as it's very old and unreliable, but lucky for us the day we chose, it was in full working order. It's very touristy and had the inevitable guitarist serenading the passengers not terribly skilfully. We chugged through the mountains and valleys, passing cowboys on horseback, banana trees and children waving as we went passed. Our destination was Manaza-Iznaga, the centre of the sugar plantation, where as well as the plantation owners' mansion there is a tall tower built to keep an eye on the slaves (and a long row of market stalls all selling embroidered tablecloths). The train didn't stay long, and after 40 minutes we were on our way again, on a large loop of track which took us to another former plantation mansion converted into a restaurant, where we had lunch in the garden and had yet more live music. The main man in the band then made grasshoppers out of palm leaves, enough for one to give everyone there. I sat and mused on my thoughts of Cuba so far and wrote in my diary.
Cubans are a mixture of the genuinely friendly, the uninterested, and the hustlers, both male and female. Some are well aware of the potential the tourist market holds and exploit it to the limit: the characters who will let you photograph them for a peso, the waitress in Estela's paladar who had developed a really good line in asking customers what the English was for a particular word or phrase was, which was very endearing, makes you feel that you've helped her and presumably increases her tips. The ladies at our Trinidad casa were so wonderful, a complete contrast to the fixer Luis but both caring and hospitable. I really couldn't get my head around the fact that on the other end of the island is Guantanamo Bay. The whole place is so very untouched by modern America, unlike the rest of the world (even the much less developed Angola has been invaded by Coca Cola) that it feels like a parallel universe in some ways.
Day 6 (Wednesday)
We took a taxi the short distance to the fishing village of La Boca and another casa, run by a lovely older couple called Maria and Manuel. The house was right on the water, and although not as slick an operation as the previous places we'd stayed, was comfortable enough. They found us a couple of bikes we could 'hire' - real bone-shakers with no gears and only one brake, and we cycled the 6 km to the beach on the Peninsula de Ancon. It was hard work and the sun was beating down, but we made it eventually - except that my one brake cable snapped just as we arrived. Spent the afternoon under a beach umbrella, reading and writing in my diary; it was so peaceful.
Later in the afternoon I investigated the scuba diving centre attached to the hotel. I met one of the instructors and was very reassured, and decided that it would be a fab idea to dive the next day for my birthday. We wanted to be back in La Boca before it got too dark to see on the coast road, and so S (qualified cycle engineer, luckily!) made a temporary repair of the brake and kindly offered to ride the dodgy bike, being the bike expert that she is. After a bit of difficulty finding the right road off the peninsula, we cycled back home as the sun went down and the flies came out - swarms of them that got in every orifice as you rode along. By the time we were about a km short of La Boca, it was dusk, my thighs ached and I was terribly saddle-sore. Suddenly something scuttled across the road practically under my front wheel; it was at least six inches across and about as high, on long spindly legs and had some appendage raised up above its body. Too dark to make out what it was, my first, panicked thought was 'giant scorpion', but thinking about it later I decided it was a very big crab with its claws in the air. At the time it seemed like the stuff of nightmares, but if it was a large crab, that's okay. I'll never know!
Day 7 (Thursday)
My birthday! As we sat at the front of the casa waiting for our taxi, a horse and cart went by and delivered milk to next door, in a 2-litre plastic bottle which was exchanged for an empty one. The taxi took us to the dive centre where our instructors - gung-ho Cubans called Leo and Igor - gave me a refresher and S an introduction to the basics in the hotel pool. They were great. Then it was all on the boat and off for the 20-minute ride out to the dive site. Everything was done for us, we didn't need to prep our equipment or anything. There were 3 other divers who were going on a deep dive with Leo; S and I would be guided in the shallower water with Igor.
Compared to the hotel swimming pool, the sea was balmy warm. S had a few moments' panic when we first started down the anchor line - unsurprising as it was her very first dive - but then we carried on down and swam along at around 8m depth, close to the coral. It wasn't anything like as teeming with life as in the Red Sea, but the water was warm and clear and the coral was clearly living (unlike the Red Sea, where it's mostly dead).
Upon our return to the boat, the other group had arrived immediately before us, and we swapped stories and someone broke open the rum for Cuba Libres. It was such a fantastic feeling, having just done a dive, sitting on a boat on the Caribbean with lovely people, drinking rum, on my birthday! Once back to shore S and I were joined by one of the other divers, a young German guy, and the three of us sat all afternoon at a table in the beach cafe drinking beers and chatting.
Back at the casa, Manuel had done whole dressed lobster for S. - I'd declined, after my previous bad experience with seafood. So I had chicken. And Maria had baked a bright pink cake which I was rather scared of, but was less scary than I thought upon eating it. Being in La Boca, slightly off the tourist trail, felt slightly more like experiencing a taste of Cuban life. After dinner I sat outside in on the porch. The road outside the house was very quiet. Maria chatted away with someone who called in on the way past and someone across the road called out 'Hasta manana' through the open window. TVs blared from a couple of houses and the dog sat beside me for a while. No-one in La Boca hassled us during our couple of days there, but that might have a lot to do with the fact that it is off the beaten track and the Playa Ancon, despite being a 'public beach' (with signs to that effect) is public to everyone except Cubans, with guards patrolling to keep it that way. For an ostensibly egalitarian country, this was rather ironic - I'm not sure Che would have approved...
Day 8-9 (Friday - Saturday)
Finished our time in La Boca with a short stroll and a drink at the tiny little Playa La Boca bar before taking a taxi back to Trinidad. Some souvenir shopping in the market, a visit to the Museo Romantico (a restored colonial house, with original furniture - huge tables, wardrobes and china shipped over from Europe) and then we took the bus to Santa Clara, a city in the centre of the island.
We were met at the bus station by our host, Mary, who took us to her house, a high-ceilinged apartment in an old colonial apartment block. Before dinner we had a stroll round the town, which is different again from the other places we've been. A modern, pedestrianised street of shops and cafes took us to a large square - the Parque Vidal - with beautiful colonial buildings, a theatre, library and coffee shops, one of which we decided to make a beeline for in the morning when it was open.
Unfortunately, in daylight the cafe turned out to be a soulless, air-conditioned box, so we walked further down the Boulevard and found a more characterful place to have coffee. We also found the local cinema, and discovered it was showing episodes of Lost - 2 at a time, each day! Then we procured ourselves a bicitaxi which took us on a rather strenuous (for the madly pedalling 'driver') ride out to the Che memorial, our main reason for being there. It's a huge structure on top of an artificial hill, topped with a massive statue of Che himself looking out over the largely empty Plaza de la Revolucion. He stands on top of a small museum dedicated to his life, with artifacts and photos. The funny thing is that you leave the museum with very little idea about the man himself; it's more about his achievements and military honours. Alongside it is a mausoleum dedicated to the heroes of the revolution which is a quiet, cool, reverential place.
To get back into town we managed to get a ride on a horse-drawn taxi. The driver clearly loved his horse, which seemed to be named John - Juan Bolero, or some such. Bought rum at a supermarket and had lunch at a local restaurant. One of the department stores we passed on the way back to the casa had 'Woolworths' spelled out in the tiles on the doorstep. Made me wonder what the place was like prior to the revolution, when lots of Americans came and Cuba was a popular holiday destination. I wish we'd been able to talk to the ladies in the casa at Trinidad, who would remember that time, and ask them how things have changed over the last 50 years.
Our evening bus back to Havana was mostly empty, and shortly after departure a film started which was an exploitative martial arts film with graphic violence and sex scenes - not really a film to show on a bus! I'm not sure what the censorship laws are in Cuba, but they clearly don't apply on buses. On our return to Havana we taxied back to Luis' place - he was full, but had arranged for us to stay in the Casa of some friends of his up the road. It was a lovely house with a tiled courtyard in the middle, a nice place to spend my last night in Cuba.
The next morning we had breakfast and a last walk around the old town: coffee and some present-buying then lunch before my taxi to the airport and the long, flight home.
I took plenty of photos, which will make much more sense with the above commentary. They can be found here, with explanatory captions.
Day 0.5 (Thursday)
I arrived at Havana airport on Thursday afternoon, slightly delayed (not the fault of Virgin Atlantic, but Gatwick Airport, who decided to repair the runway at 9 am). After a protracted baggage retrieval process and one of the easiest trips through passport control ever (much, much easier than the US of A I have to add), I was finally in Cuba and being met by S, who had had a mere 4-hour flight from Toronto and no time change.
The first thing we had to do was queue to change money - you can't get Cuban money outside Cuba, and there are 2 different currencies: convertible pesos (CUC$) which you get when you change foreign currency, and Cuban pesos or 'moneda nacional', which are used by Cubans and worth 25 times less - although when you pay for goods and services you usually pay the same number of pesos. It still mostly works out cheaper than at home. Anyway, having got our pesos we took a rather hair-raising cab ride into the city. Every warning light on the dashboard was flashing, the music was blaring and we wove in and out of the (thankfully reasonably light by London standards) traffic at high speed. Not before time, we arrived at Casa Luis Miguel, our home for the next 3 nights. I was unsure what to expect, as we'd been driving through streets of somewhat decrepit colonial buildings - but when we got inside the 19th century house, it was beautifully restored with high ceilings, an inner courtyard open to the sky with a table and chairs, and a comfy bedroom with our own bathroom. Hurrah. Luis himself spoke good English, and it soon transpired he was a fixer and networker type. Whatever you needed he could either get it for you or knew someone who could. Our only desire at that point was to collapse for a bit and have dinner.
Casas particulares are a government initiative that licenses people to rent out no more than two rooms in their house to paying guests. For me, it's a reason to go to Cuba. Over dinner we met the other guests in the house, a lovely Greek couple who had been in Cuba for a couple of weeks and were able to give us lots of good advice - including the address of a casa in Trinidad (a town on Cuba's south coast, not the island!), which they insisted we must visit. They then asked if we'd like to join them in a walk to the old town, which we gladly accepted. Ended up wandering all over the place, and having a rather poor mojito in a bar. However, we got a taste of Havana, and earmarked a few spots to return to in daylight. My first impressions of the place were of a mix of crumbling and restored colonial buildings, old 1950s American cars, lots of Ladas, Cubans out and about but not quite as much street life as I expected. Bars with loud music. A great introduction! We returned home and I conked out for the night pretty much straight away.
Day 1 (Friday)
Friday morning we had breakfast with the Greeks and then S. and I headed out into town. We wandered with no particular goal, and found ourselves in a huge, touristy market behind the cathedral. All sorts of lovely things to buy, including a vast quantity of art - Havana is really a town of artists, with half the doorways in the old town leading to artists' studios and galleries. S. bought a couple of pictures for her apartment. After that we headed to the Plaza de la Catedral for photos, and then down towards Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway's favourite Havana hang-out. On the way we ran into an old woman whose photo is in the Lonely Planet; it seems that quite a few characters have cashed in on the tourist market and will pose for a photo for a peso. This particular old lady goes by the name of Graciela, and is 84 years old. She seems to be making a fairly good living, particularly as the average Cuban wage is CUC$10 (=250 cuban pesos) per month, and we paid her CUC$1 for a photo.
We found a suitable café for lunch where we could watch passers-by, and sat for an hour under the shade of the trees, watching the tourists until we realised that we needed to leg it if we were going to get to the Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas (Partagas cigar factory) before it closed to tours for the weekend and we missed our chance. Got there just as they were rounding people up for the last tour of the day - yay.
The cigar factory was fascinating. They keep up an incredible rate of production of the cigars - all of them hand-rolled, but if I was expecting a sweat shop, I didn't find one. Our smooth and charming guide, Jamil, explained the process of production, including the different types of leaf that are used for different purposes. We saw the whole process, from the drying of the leaves, to the rolling of the cigars and finally watched them being beautifully finished, bands applied, and then boxed. I ended up buying from the factory shop a box of 25 skinny Romeo y Julietas, the most reasonably-priced cigars I could find. Most of them were understandably (having seen what goes in to making them) outrageously expensive, although currently cheaper because of the embargo signed way back when by JFK (he ensured he imported a job lot before he signed it, mind you).
After the factory we felt in need of a beer and found a half-decent bar nearby. We sat and made plans to go to Trinidad on Sunday and do day trips from there, generally being more chilled-out. In the evening we went to La Guarida, the most famous paladar (restaurant in a private home) in Havana. It was used as a location for a film called 'Strawberry and Chocolate', and is lcoated on the third floor of a practically derelict colonial house. Inside it is rather more like a professional restaurant than the paladares we went to for the remainder of our trip; wonderful service, good food and a great atmosphere. Rounded off the evening with a walk to the Hotel Nacional. This took us through Centro Habana, ostensibly a seedy, worn and ramshackle area, but not threatening at all, even the dead rat in the road looked harmless. The Hotel Nacional is a huge building with a long, palm tree-lined driveway, it's full of tourists and the only Cubans you'll see are opening the door for you or mixing your mojito. The mojitos were fabulous though (in fact the barman guaranteed that we'd love them, or they'd be free) - we watched him add generous amounts of rum to them, so unsurprising. We walked home along the Malecon, where huge waves were coming over the sea wall and S. decided to get herself drenched to round off the day.
Day 2 (Saturday)
This morning was cultural, comprising a walk around the Cuban arts section of Havana's best art gallery, the Museo del Belles Artes. It was huge, and the work on display was really interesting, showing impressions of Cuban life over the years from colonial landscapes to more abstract and surreal stuf demonstrating aspects of modern Cuba. We spent a good long while in there, and then went to look around the book market in the Plaza del Armas. It was a veritable feast of stalls, but the stallholders harassed us so much that browsing wasn't a pleasant experience. Finally we decided to head for a restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide; by the time we got there it was after 3 pm and we were starving. I had shrimp in tomato sauce, we both had beer and then another beer, and sat for ages just chatting. We strolled back to the casa along the Padeo, where the Saturday art market was in progress, and called in at the Hotel Deauville in a futile attempt to buy bus tickets to Trinidad from their travel agent (she couldn't get through to the bus station on the phone). We decided we'd return the following morning and try again.
Upon our return to the casa we chilled out for a while, aiming to be up and about for 8 pm when Luis had promised that his brother would come by to make us mojitos. By 8 pm I was feeling totally exhausted and a bit queasy, blaming it on dehydration, so drank a load of water and went to bed. S decided she wasn't up to partying either, and turned in too. Not long after that there was a knock at the door - there was Luis' brother, holding two mojitos! Feeling really bad, I said we were both feeling unwell and were sleeping. Not long after that I started vomiting... and when I didn't stop, I realised it must have been the shrimp. It went on for most of the night, from both ends, with S getting more and more concerned as I lay on the bed moaning. I finally managed to get to sleep in the small hours, and woke up in the morning feeling completely wiped out, but better.
Day 3 (Sunday)
Had a shower and a very small breakfast, and S made another futile trip to the Hotel Deauville for bus tickets while I rested. We decided to head for the bus station anyway and take a chance that we'd be able to buy tickets there (there's some sort of system where you have to make a reservation in advance if you want to guarantee yourself a seat on your chosen service). With me still feeling like a limp rag, we packed up and took a taxi to the bus station. Contrary to popular feeling, we bought tickets right away and then waited an hour for the bus, with me nibbling on cheesy crackers and sipping water. The only thing of note at the bus station was the highly original departure board - a map of Cuba, with routes between the cities marked out on it. Only one bus at a time departed (this wasn't exactly the busiest capital city bus station in the world) and so you knew where it was going, the route lit up on the map. Easy to understand and if you know the location of your destination on the map, you don't even need to be literate.
The bus was basically full, but new and comfortable. After a while it dawned on us, and our fellow passengers, that the song coming through the speakers was the same one, over and over again. It was like Chinese water torture, and after about half an hour there was a minor revolution and someone went forward to a round of applause to speak to the driver. The song went off - blissful, and I managed to doze off, and spent most of the 6-hour trip in this state or nibbling crackers and sipping water. In between naps I saw that we passed fields of tobacco and sugar cane, stopped at the stown of Cienfuegos and had a couple of unscheduled stops in the middle of nowhere but still arrived on time in Trinidad around 7 pm. The grandson of our host met us and we had a 5-10 minute walk to the casa with our packs - not easy, but I made it!
And so we arrived at the casa of Mislady, an elderly lady who runs it with her two middle-aged daughters. The room was beautiful, all white cast iron bedsteads and sheets, spotlessly clean and opened on to a garden with orange trees a, banana trees, lilies and other lush plants which all resembled one of the glasshouses at Kew. A resident tree frog chirped away somewhere. It was all so restful after the noise and bustle of Havana, and exactly what I needed to properly recover from my unfortunate shrimp escapade.
Day 4 (Monday)
A relaxing morning spent wandering round the old town (Trinidad is a UN World Heritage site) and through the markets selling the usual wood and leather souvenirs but also linen emroidered in a distinctive local style. Had a long, lingering coffee sitting outside a cafe just above the Plaza Major listening to the live music and writing post cards. The afternoon we had a few goals in mind: first we found the small cigar factory, but there were men outside hassling us so we gave up on that and instead decided to make for an out-of-the way ceramics factory that the Rough Guide recommended. It was a decent walk out of the main tourist area and into the more residential (ie poor) parts of the town. Found the factory easily and were beckoned inside where there were shelves and shelves of pots and men making more pots at potter's wheels. An older man with a speech impediment that would have made him hard to understand in English, let alone Spanish, took it upon himself to give us a guided tour of the pot-making process. He then led us out of the factory and down the street, to some unspecified location which turned out to be what can only be described as the factory shop. The finished pots were on sale; all kinds of beautiful pottery at the most silly prices, which made me regret I didn't have room to take any back with me.
Back to the casa for a nap, and then out for dinner. We went to a paladar we'd passed earlier in the day, called 'Estela'. It was more like I'd expected a paladar to be; a house that we knocked on the front door of, and then were led through the living room (with a rather startling life-size pottery statue of Mary holding the body of Christ) and into a courtyard behind the house set with tables and chairs. So we had our dinner sitting among the trees, including one with melon-sized avocados hanging from it.
Day 5 (Tuesday)
We took the tourist steam train to the Valle de los Ingenicos, which was fun. The train doesn't always run, as it's very old and unreliable, but lucky for us the day we chose, it was in full working order. It's very touristy and had the inevitable guitarist serenading the passengers not terribly skilfully. We chugged through the mountains and valleys, passing cowboys on horseback, banana trees and children waving as we went passed. Our destination was Manaza-Iznaga, the centre of the sugar plantation, where as well as the plantation owners' mansion there is a tall tower built to keep an eye on the slaves (and a long row of market stalls all selling embroidered tablecloths). The train didn't stay long, and after 40 minutes we were on our way again, on a large loop of track which took us to another former plantation mansion converted into a restaurant, where we had lunch in the garden and had yet more live music. The main man in the band then made grasshoppers out of palm leaves, enough for one to give everyone there. I sat and mused on my thoughts of Cuba so far and wrote in my diary.
Cubans are a mixture of the genuinely friendly, the uninterested, and the hustlers, both male and female. Some are well aware of the potential the tourist market holds and exploit it to the limit: the characters who will let you photograph them for a peso, the waitress in Estela's paladar who had developed a really good line in asking customers what the English was for a particular word or phrase was, which was very endearing, makes you feel that you've helped her and presumably increases her tips. The ladies at our Trinidad casa were so wonderful, a complete contrast to the fixer Luis but both caring and hospitable. I really couldn't get my head around the fact that on the other end of the island is Guantanamo Bay. The whole place is so very untouched by modern America, unlike the rest of the world (even the much less developed Angola has been invaded by Coca Cola) that it feels like a parallel universe in some ways.
Day 6 (Wednesday)
We took a taxi the short distance to the fishing village of La Boca and another casa, run by a lovely older couple called Maria and Manuel. The house was right on the water, and although not as slick an operation as the previous places we'd stayed, was comfortable enough. They found us a couple of bikes we could 'hire' - real bone-shakers with no gears and only one brake, and we cycled the 6 km to the beach on the Peninsula de Ancon. It was hard work and the sun was beating down, but we made it eventually - except that my one brake cable snapped just as we arrived. Spent the afternoon under a beach umbrella, reading and writing in my diary; it was so peaceful.
Later in the afternoon I investigated the scuba diving centre attached to the hotel. I met one of the instructors and was very reassured, and decided that it would be a fab idea to dive the next day for my birthday. We wanted to be back in La Boca before it got too dark to see on the coast road, and so S (qualified cycle engineer, luckily!) made a temporary repair of the brake and kindly offered to ride the dodgy bike, being the bike expert that she is. After a bit of difficulty finding the right road off the peninsula, we cycled back home as the sun went down and the flies came out - swarms of them that got in every orifice as you rode along. By the time we were about a km short of La Boca, it was dusk, my thighs ached and I was terribly saddle-sore. Suddenly something scuttled across the road practically under my front wheel; it was at least six inches across and about as high, on long spindly legs and had some appendage raised up above its body. Too dark to make out what it was, my first, panicked thought was 'giant scorpion', but thinking about it later I decided it was a very big crab with its claws in the air. At the time it seemed like the stuff of nightmares, but if it was a large crab, that's okay. I'll never know!
Day 7 (Thursday)
My birthday! As we sat at the front of the casa waiting for our taxi, a horse and cart went by and delivered milk to next door, in a 2-litre plastic bottle which was exchanged for an empty one. The taxi took us to the dive centre where our instructors - gung-ho Cubans called Leo and Igor - gave me a refresher and S an introduction to the basics in the hotel pool. They were great. Then it was all on the boat and off for the 20-minute ride out to the dive site. Everything was done for us, we didn't need to prep our equipment or anything. There were 3 other divers who were going on a deep dive with Leo; S and I would be guided in the shallower water with Igor.
Compared to the hotel swimming pool, the sea was balmy warm. S had a few moments' panic when we first started down the anchor line - unsurprising as it was her very first dive - but then we carried on down and swam along at around 8m depth, close to the coral. It wasn't anything like as teeming with life as in the Red Sea, but the water was warm and clear and the coral was clearly living (unlike the Red Sea, where it's mostly dead).
Upon our return to the boat, the other group had arrived immediately before us, and we swapped stories and someone broke open the rum for Cuba Libres. It was such a fantastic feeling, having just done a dive, sitting on a boat on the Caribbean with lovely people, drinking rum, on my birthday! Once back to shore S and I were joined by one of the other divers, a young German guy, and the three of us sat all afternoon at a table in the beach cafe drinking beers and chatting.
Back at the casa, Manuel had done whole dressed lobster for S. - I'd declined, after my previous bad experience with seafood. So I had chicken. And Maria had baked a bright pink cake which I was rather scared of, but was less scary than I thought upon eating it. Being in La Boca, slightly off the tourist trail, felt slightly more like experiencing a taste of Cuban life. After dinner I sat outside in on the porch. The road outside the house was very quiet. Maria chatted away with someone who called in on the way past and someone across the road called out 'Hasta manana' through the open window. TVs blared from a couple of houses and the dog sat beside me for a while. No-one in La Boca hassled us during our couple of days there, but that might have a lot to do with the fact that it is off the beaten track and the Playa Ancon, despite being a 'public beach' (with signs to that effect) is public to everyone except Cubans, with guards patrolling to keep it that way. For an ostensibly egalitarian country, this was rather ironic - I'm not sure Che would have approved...
Day 8-9 (Friday - Saturday)
Finished our time in La Boca with a short stroll and a drink at the tiny little Playa La Boca bar before taking a taxi back to Trinidad. Some souvenir shopping in the market, a visit to the Museo Romantico (a restored colonial house, with original furniture - huge tables, wardrobes and china shipped over from Europe) and then we took the bus to Santa Clara, a city in the centre of the island.
We were met at the bus station by our host, Mary, who took us to her house, a high-ceilinged apartment in an old colonial apartment block. Before dinner we had a stroll round the town, which is different again from the other places we've been. A modern, pedestrianised street of shops and cafes took us to a large square - the Parque Vidal - with beautiful colonial buildings, a theatre, library and coffee shops, one of which we decided to make a beeline for in the morning when it was open.
Unfortunately, in daylight the cafe turned out to be a soulless, air-conditioned box, so we walked further down the Boulevard and found a more characterful place to have coffee. We also found the local cinema, and discovered it was showing episodes of Lost - 2 at a time, each day! Then we procured ourselves a bicitaxi which took us on a rather strenuous (for the madly pedalling 'driver') ride out to the Che memorial, our main reason for being there. It's a huge structure on top of an artificial hill, topped with a massive statue of Che himself looking out over the largely empty Plaza de la Revolucion. He stands on top of a small museum dedicated to his life, with artifacts and photos. The funny thing is that you leave the museum with very little idea about the man himself; it's more about his achievements and military honours. Alongside it is a mausoleum dedicated to the heroes of the revolution which is a quiet, cool, reverential place.
To get back into town we managed to get a ride on a horse-drawn taxi. The driver clearly loved his horse, which seemed to be named John - Juan Bolero, or some such. Bought rum at a supermarket and had lunch at a local restaurant. One of the department stores we passed on the way back to the casa had 'Woolworths' spelled out in the tiles on the doorstep. Made me wonder what the place was like prior to the revolution, when lots of Americans came and Cuba was a popular holiday destination. I wish we'd been able to talk to the ladies in the casa at Trinidad, who would remember that time, and ask them how things have changed over the last 50 years.
Our evening bus back to Havana was mostly empty, and shortly after departure a film started which was an exploitative martial arts film with graphic violence and sex scenes - not really a film to show on a bus! I'm not sure what the censorship laws are in Cuba, but they clearly don't apply on buses. On our return to Havana we taxied back to Luis' place - he was full, but had arranged for us to stay in the Casa of some friends of his up the road. It was a lovely house with a tiled courtyard in the middle, a nice place to spend my last night in Cuba.
The next morning we had breakfast and a last walk around the old town: coffee and some present-buying then lunch before my taxi to the airport and the long, flight home.
I took plenty of photos, which will make much more sense with the above commentary. They can be found here, with explanatory captions.