Ann Aguirre

It’s been about a month since the cuba trip, give or take a week. Sorry for the delay, but Ann had important news to share and then I had a deluge of weirdness hit, so I had to wipe the excess off before writing again (weirdness does not, I found, stain when you wash properly in warm water with plenty of soap. Make what you will of that comment).

Ah, Cuba. I did not get a window seat, so I can’t describe the view of the island from above, but from later observations I must conclude that it included beaches, a lot of greenery and water in some relation to each other. Continued observations also failed to spot Halle Berry in an orange swimsuit or any black sailed pirate ships- much to my disappointment.

Our arrival was relatively prompt, humid and hot. The coldest part of the airport was the immigration station, where an officer of the Cuban government said all of two words (”look here”) while shuffling the passport, entry form and a camera with which they record your arrival with a lovely mugshot that makes DMV licence photos seem like artistic portraits. The atmosphere of fun in the sun’s amplified by the automatic weapon bearing soldiers stationed throughout the airport.

Once out of the airport, though, the atmosphere lightened considerably. Not the humidity or heat, mind you, but at least we no longer felt like James McAvoy in Last King of Scotland: people walked and talked and shopped and rode their bikes, like people are wont to do. The one thing we noticed (we could not NOT notice, considering everyone and their mother would point this out during the next couple of days) was the number of cars from the 40s and 50s driving around. Less noticed by most, the architecture was gorgeous, even in the neighbourhoods where it was not kept up. Very european mediterranean, columns and ironwork everywhere on tree lined streets. A bit like New Orleans in a smaller scale, hard to describe.

Not sure what it says about me that I was more excited about the architecture than the beaches. Hmm.

So. Piled into a bus, drove to the hotel: a newer development, it was a lovely place like you’d find in pretty much any beach resort. Big bed, huge living room… okay, I admit it, I do love being pampered in trips like this even if I hate the actual ‘getting there’ part of travel. After an hour bus ride following a two hour plane flight sandwhiched into a four hour airport visit, though, I felt that I deserved it, dammit. What can I say? I am a child of the eighties. I even had a Michael Jackson… er, but I digress. And I really don’t think any of us wants to go there.

So, we had an hour before dinner. Showered, changed, went for a seafood with seafood dinner, combined with seafood. Then back on the bus and out to the Tropicana Cabaret in Havana. And this is when the weirdness really started drizzling again. It was like stepping into an “I Love Lucy” episode in technicolor, with costuming and songs from the heyday of the island, almost fifty years ago. It was, I admit, gorgeous… but strange to watch live.

Point of note: that was where I first tried a Mojito, prepared properly with mint and thick, sweet sugar syrup. Syrup that lulls your palate into a sense of complacency so the rum can sneak in the back way to your brain and have its way with it. It’s the Jack Sparrow of drinks: fruity, a little odd and so bloody appealing that you have to catch the sequel and then the third for the road.

The next day, woke up with a hangover. So we had breakfast at 7 AM, back on the bus with bags by 8:30 to tour the city and on to the first stop of the day at the central plaza to admire an ironwork, forty foot tall depiction of Che Guevara’s face. I think the tour guide was saying… something… but in all honesty, the woman almost put me to sleep with the monotone monologue on dates, times and the glorious revolution. More noteworthy’s the fact that they chose that morning to take us on a tour of a rum distillery. It’s pure marketing genius to take two busloads of hungover, hot, thirsty people and stick them in a hot, cramped space with nothing but rum to drink. I think everyone walked out of there with three or four bottles of rum and a couple of boxes of cigars (because, as another guide informed us, Cuba is all about ‘cigars, rum and women. And we don’t let you take our women’).

Out of the factory, and to a walking tour of the city’s center. Drank Mojitos near the hotel where Hemingway used to sit and drink and get inspired, had lunch in a converted house with an open air central patio. We wandered the stalls full of knickknacks, curios, souvenirs, t-shirts, ashtrays, glasses and all those things that someone, sometime, decided tourists love and tourists everywhere buy because it’s expected of them. We saw an old man smoking a hand-rolled cigar the size of his forearm and I watched my brother-in-law argue for forty five minutes with a kid that wanted to draw his caricature and chased him around town. And then we piled back into the bus for yet another two hour drive to the beach town where we’d be spending the rest of our stay.

We stopped on the way for Piña Coladas, made fresh as we watched. We also had a new tour guide who filled us in on the details of life in the island: she was funny, animated and seemed genuinely glad to be there (unlike our previous guide, who seemed eager to be rid of us. Not that I blame her, mind you, seeing how rowdy and obnoxious some of the people were… but anyway…). Without going so far into detail that this might turn into a political commentary, I’ll just say that life is difficult and so full of bureaucracy that it makes dealing with almost any non-Cuban government agency seem easy by comparison.

That evening, we arrived at the hotel. The lobby was gorgeous, plants and fountains all over the place. The rooms were less so, old paint and air conditioner leaks all over the place. Varadero was a popular resort town in the fifties, and it showed its age: tourism income from Havana has not made its way along the coast. It was no worse than some other place I’ve stayed in, though, and much better than some of the places I used to spend weekends in when in high school (that’s a story for another time). Once again hot, sweaty and tired, as was proving to be the motif for the trip, we retired to our rooms before dinner. There was no single restaurant big enough to handle all of us, so we were split among three shifts and three restaurants for dinner that night: seafood for my brother, sister and I along with the brother in law, future sister in law and toddler niece. A german couple dining near us had a toddler son whom my niece immediately charmed by babbling at him for a good five minutes. Arrangements for their future marriage are pending, awaiting my brother in law’s acceptance that his little girl’s a flirt. Oh, how I am going to laugh in ten years.

Which serves him right, considering how he’s going to laugh at me in two or three years, considering that my daughter’s an even bigger flirt.

It was after dinner, when we’d retired, that I experienced the surreal experience of Cuban television, when I finally turned it on to Matt Damon slouching in a chair speaking Russian.

Okay, that’s misleading. A little. I had apparently stumbled across the Russian version of Comedy Central (either that or Russian people are a hell of a lot happier than you’d think from watching the news) and the comedian in question just happened to look a lot like a slightly younger Mr. Damon. Since I don’t speak Russian, I could not tell you why he was slouched on the chair with someone moaning off-stage, or why it was so hilarious for the audience. Since my other choices were a couple of local stations extolling the beauty of China’s political system, special coverage of Cuban teams in the Olympics and Disney channel (which in itself is more than a little bizarre, when you think about it), I settled on Discovery Channel in Spanish.

And promptly passed out.

The last day, and pictures (I hope), soon.