The holiday to
And so, the six of us DR Project Trust volunteers set off to Cuba
for a holiday…
‘Socialism o Muerte’ was the message that greeted us painted
onto the side of an old warehouse as we drove out of Havana airport on Thursday morning . This is
going to be a good holiday.
Our trip started in Havana where, after a couple of crazy
music filled nights and hot days we travelled to the resting place of Che
Guevara in Santa Clara and from there down to the film set-like streets of
Trinidad. With a week left we headed to Cien Fuegos, the town liberated by Che,
then out to the campo in Viñales where we watched cigar production and walked
around the incredible valley before travelling back to Havana to finish our trip in style.
Throughout the whole trip we stayed in ‘casas particulares’ which are people’s
houses which they have opened up to travellers. People tend to earn more
catering to tourists than they do in their day jobs and as a result there are
‘casas’ everywhere you look in Cuba .
It’s a fantastic way to get a taste of Cuban life and means that you can
actually talk and spend some time with real people. We met some great
characters while we were staying in Casas, like Miguel in Santa Cara who whore
trilby hats 24/7, our hostess in Cien Fuegos who is a lecturer in industrial
engineering during the day, and Surama in Havana who is a doctor as her day
job, who said that she drank rum in the morning ‘to help her varicose veins’
and looked after us like we were her children. All of the Casas that we stayed
in were beautiful (other than the seemingly obligatory collection of creepy
china dolls which stare at you from every side table); you start to wonder how
people come to live in these amazing palaces. When we put the question to
Miguel in Santa Cara he explained that until now buying and selling houses in
Cuba was nearly impossible which meant that all of the houses that we stayed
hat had been passed down through the generations.
Speaking to real Cubans you start to realise the challenges of living in
One of the most interesting people who we talked to was our
hostess in Havana .
She said that by running the Casa for tourists she earns more than she does at
the hospital and from talking to her and her family we learned that the general
opinion is that the changes that are taking place in Cuba are having a positive effect
on society and are opening up people’s horizons and opportunities.
Staying in
In search of food one night we ended up in a restaurant situated in a guy’s front room. To get to the small living room which had balconies looking over the main street we walked through the kitchen where his sister prepared food and drinks. The Virgin Mary watched us from the wall as we drank and family photographs were stuck to the fridge. Private enterprise is just starting in
The coach journeys between all the cities were some of the
strangest of my life. As you roll out of the city the numbers of cars on the
roads become fewer and fewer and the pot holes became closer and closer
together. We drove along deserted highways dotted with wooden farm buildings,
palm trees and sugar cane plantations. The only other traffic other than the
occasional old car coughing along were old men in straw hats riding ancient
push bikes cigars firmly gripped between their lips and sugar cane strapped to
the rack on the back of their bike. We also saw lots of horse drawn carts
transporting people and produce between towns. We were informed later in the
trip that most people can’t afford the new cars that are slowly being imported
from the west and that the passed down classics can’t make the three hours from
one city to the next. The result of this is eerie highways filled with the
sound of the clopping of hooves and the creaking of old bicycle frames bouncing
along the potholed tarmac.
After the ghost ride from Havana
we arrived hot and tired in Santa
Clara where we were picked up from the bus station by
a horse drawn taxi! My heart sank, I thought it was just a touristy gimmick
that the casa owner thought we would enjoy. However, as we clopped through the
main streets I quickly realised that cars were few and far between. The streets
were busy with horse drawn carts, people giving each other lifts on rusty
bicycles, and ancient buses from the 60s which creaked and puffed to a stop at
bus stops outside low rise apartment buildings where horses grazed on the front
greens and kids bounced footballs off the walls. In both Santa Clara and Cien Fuegos bicycles were
everywhere, boyfriends gave girlfriends backies and long legged school children
raced each other down along the streets. Everywhere you looked felt like a
scene from a 50s movie.
From the Cuban-ness of Santa Clara
we were transported to the film set-like winding streets of Trinidad .
Trinidad was possibly the quaintest place that
we visited: with its brightly coloured buildings and classic cars it felt like
something out of a story book. During our stay we took a trip out to a valley
just outside of the city where, during the slave trade, huge sugar plantations
had been worked by saves brought from Africa .
A watch tower soared above the town where men in straw hats smoking cigars sat
outside wooden-slatted buildings and cowboys on horseback rode down the hot
streets. Even in small rural towns like this just standing next to people and
listening to conversations was surprising.
We passed a group of stall holders sewing together lace table cloths and
taking about the variation in education levels between their town and the
neighbouring Trinidad and how that affects
their children. No discussion of rice and beans or the latest tele novela here!
Next on the itinerary was Cien Fuegos. Cien Fuegos felt very
Cuban and wandering down the back streets of the town there was a lot of ‘I
love you baby’, ‘like your body’, ‘pssst marry me’ etc. etc. which somewhat
shattered the illusion that Cuban men are less creepy than Dominicans - was it
too much to hope for!? It provided (as it always does) a lot of hilarity and
made us feel like we were back in the DR.
The journey to Viñales was the longest we had: six hours to Havana then another three
to Viñales . During this time we had numerous opportunities to experience the
terrifying toilet women. Now, I haven’t mentioned the banshees of the baños up
to this point but I feel that the time is right. Pubic bathrooms (or baño in
Spanish) in Cuba
are all manned (or wommaned?) by very scary Cuban ladies. Imagine the
situation; you have just leapt of the bus, battled your way through the crowed,
hot service or bus station where there is a fair amount of ‘taxi lady, I give
you good price’ing, you’re bursting for a wee, your reach the bathroom to find
a fairly solid, middle aged Cuban lady planted firmly in the entrance of the
bathroom. As you try to sneak past a hand flies out to block your path and you
brace yourself for the inevitable ‘hay que pagar’ (‘you have to pay’) at the
same time you get the sinking feeling as you realise… you have no change! When
you try to challenge the fact that you are being asked to pay to use bathroom which looks like it hasn’t been
cleaned since the revolution and which NEVER has any toilet paper you are told
(with the accompanying death stare) that ‘you have to pay in every country in
the world’. With that you have options either risk certain death, defy scary
baño woman and march confidently past. You could run back to the bus for change
even though it may be gone by the time you get back from the bathroom or jut
cross your legs for another couple of hours until the next terrifying
encounter.
After a number of these scary encounters we arrived safely
in Viñales, a beautiful valley where huge tables of rock jutted out of the flat
floor. This is the land of cigar and coffee production and we took a trip to a
tobacco farm where the owner showed us round the huge thatched drying shed and
let us try some of his cigars. Being a national park the farms in Viñales are
prohibited from using chemicals and machinery meaning that all the work has to
be done by hand or animal. Huge oxen marched up the rutted tracks and pulled
ancient ploughs through the fields. The landscape looked like somewhere in Asia
rather than the Caribbean . Sitting on the roof
of the Casa we watched thunder storms roll in every evening across the valley.
Forked lightning and deafening thunder were regular sounds at about five in the
afternoon. Heads full of smoke and sun we travelled back to Havana from Viñales where
we spent an excellent last couple of days soaking up the last drops of live
Cuban music and rum before our flight home.
Now, onto the flight fiasco: we got to the airport for 6.30am ready to check in for our flight at 9.40 that morning. After not seeing the flight on the departures board we enquired at the Cubana airlines desk only to be told that it had been delayed until 7 that evening. We hadn’t been able to check the flight times due to the lack of internet access in
As we were
driving back to the airport after our strange, surreal afternoon we passed the
same sign that had greeted us as we entered the country; ‘Socialism ó Muerte’.
On the pavement outside an old car was parked, bonnet up, its oily-handed owner
prodding around its ancient innards as his passengers stared on with
expressions that indicated that maybe this wasn’t the first time that the
family car had given up the ghost. Looking at the broken down car under a relic from the revolution I couldn’t help
wondering how long this amazing, difficult and complicated country has left
before it changes for ever. For better or for worse the old Cuba , like
the classic cars which have been iconic symbols for so many years is reaching
the end of the road, and the path it takes will be watched by the whole world.
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