Chapter 5 - Cuban Yarns

Preliminary Yarn-osaurus

Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. If it’s one thing, it’s a people divider. Not multiplier. Divider. And we're not talking about short division here. We're talking long division. The tricky stuff. What I’m saying is that some people love Cuba and some hate it. Some told us that it was an amazing place and many others told us to basically not go. So it was hard to know what to expect for the weeks ahead of us when Cat and I boarded the plane at Cancun, Mexico bound for the communist, Castro-ruled island in the Caribbean.

Cuba is like a step back in time. It’s how I imagine the 1950s or 60s to be. Although I was expecting classic old cars to be on the streets, I didn’t realize that more than every second car would be like that. There's hardly any internet. And there’s also something very alluring about the place. A few experiences of ours indicated that there is much hidden beneath the surface. There were also definitely moments when I absolutely despised the place. All this and more will be illustrated in the below babble.

Bienvenido's a Cuba! Where the horse still rules the transport world

Cuban old-mates absolutely love a sing-a-long.

First night/casa particulares'

Cuba was mayhem from the beginning. Even at the airport in Cancun we were directed over to a seedy ivory-dealer looking man to pay for a tourist visa before we could board the plane. If the bloke issuing the visa’s was legitimate than I must be Princess Peach from the Mario Brothers franchise. But d’ah well, did the job.

When we touched down in Havana, culture shock hit Cat and I like a right jab from Rocky Balboa to Apollo Creed in Rocky II (the one where Rocky beats Creed in an epic rematch). Bang! - straight to the jugular. Culture shock was everywhere. Culture shock was here, culture shock was there. Culture shock was in the ear, culture shock was in the rear.

Unless you have the cash to stay at luxury all-inclusive resorts, your only choice in Cuba is to do homestays in ‘Casa Particulares’ - a bedroom of a local’s house. There’s no such thing as hostels. But it seemed that most households in Cuba second as casa’s for tourists.

Havana Centro, not a bwaad spot

We had, of course, not booked anywhere the first night we arrived in Havana. So when our taxi driver from the airport told us he knew somewhere for us to stay in the middle of Havana Vieja (Old Havana) – the area where we wanted to stay, we agreed. However, we were of course not taken there. We were taken to Havana Centro - the area at the heart of everyday Havanian lives. What then eventuated was a series of offloads where we were led to the lounge rooms of people’s homes and sat awkwardly while everyone presumably discussed what to do with us. We were offloaded more times than a rugby world cup tournament tally. We of course had no idea what was going on given our limited Spanish and the non-existent English in Cuba. After being led to 3 different homes we were finally directed to a bedroom for us to sleep in for the night.

We learnt then and there that we had to just roll with the punches in order to enjoy Cuba.

While strolling the streets of Havana Centro on the first night we met two young, friendly locals who kindly offered to show us where a good and cheap restaurant was. There were 4 of us at this stage, as we had met another Aussie couple who 24 hours prior were honeymooning at a resort in Cancun. They now found themselves in opposite world.

Photo opp's to be had everywhere

Anyway, the 2 friendly Cubans decided to accompany us on the walk to the establishment so that we knew exactly where it was. They were so friendly that they then even decided to sit down at a table next to us and watch us eat at the restaurant to make sure we enjoyed the meal. After the meal they then even went to the restaurant owner and collected their ‘finders fee’ for bringing us to the restaurant. Yep, we got played. We got charged a higher price from the restaurant in order to cover their finder’s fee…

We re-learnt then and there that we had to just roll with the punches in order to enjoy Cuba.

Random Insights

The money

There are 2 currencies in Cuba. 1 for locals and 1 for tourists. 1 peso of the tourist currency (which equals 1 US dollar) is equivalent to 25 pesos of the local currency. The crazy thing is that often food and drinks are priced with the same figure – it just depends on what currency you hand over for payment.

Let me babble an example. A coffee almost always costs 1 peso in Cuba. So a local would pay 1 peso in local currency and a tourist would pay 1 peso in tourist currency. A tourist therefore pays 25 times more than a local, since that currency is worth 25 times more. If my maths is correct, which it may not be, that’s an increase of 2.5 billion million % for tourists. Tourists therefore often get completely ripped off, although sometimes you can also bag the local price for things. The unpredictability of expenditure is quite amazing in Cuba.

Anyway, we quickly learned that the best way to eat and drink cheaply was to, a) get our hands on the local currency, b) improve our Spanish and c) try look as Cuban as possible. With my moustache getting along with my face better than mould to a 5 week old sambo, I knew I had c) in the bag. It was the a) and b) that were the trouble.

Once we got our hands on some of the local currency, most of the time we could use it. We then found ourselves bagging veggie filled omelletes, fresh guava juice and coffee breakfast for about 50 cents Australian. It was absolute bargain basement. That’s right, the bargains were being dealt out in the basement. Not on the rooftop terrace. Down below. In the basement.

If you weren’t so lucky in being able to use the local currency, or the owner wasn’t generally a fan of tourists, they would ask for the same figure in tourist money, or else just randomly make up a way higher price.

A typical local breakfast parlour

Shopping

In Cuba, there are no supermarkets. The shops come to you, usually in the cart section of a passing horse and cart. The driver screams at the top of their cigar infused lungs the name of whatever produce they may be selling that day. “CEBOLLA CEBOLLA CEBOLLA” and the clip-clopping of horse hooves was often our alarm in the early hours of the morning. But really, why have supermarkets when you can have super carts?

Moments of fun happy super special times

There were many, many moments of fun happy super special times in Cuba. Some of these moments of fun happy super special times follow:

Cat’s Birthday

Cat’s birthday was, just quietly, a belter. It is also featured on the epic trailer of this very Babble:




To detail what occurred, we:

• Were in Vinales, a ridiculously awesome countryside town close to heaps of tobacco and coffee fields.
• Went horse riding for a few hours with our fearless amigo, the one and only Sanchez 'Horse Whisperer' Ramazora.

How's the serenity?

Happy as the Honourable Larrold Emder

• Went on a tobacco plantation tour and bought some genuine cigars directly from the owner.
• Took a break from the horses by having a sneaky Coco Loco break where instead of pouring the drink for us they just gave us a coconut and a whole bottle of Havana Club Rum to do with as we pleased. It’s fair to say that I made the most of this opportunity by making my drink unbearably strong.
•  Enjoyed wild musicians singing Happy Birthday to Cat. They allowed us to get involved in some instrumentation as you can see from this video: 

• Sat on the rooftop of our casa and watched the sun set with cigar in hand and some 7 years aged Havana club to wash it down.

• Partied in the central square where there just so happened to be some sort of talent quest competition taking place that night. This bloke was a real crowd pleaser with his fiery rendition of something:

Unfortunately for Cat, she couldn’t quite accept that her birthday was over. She wanted to keep it rolling as long as possible. Of course, the in-depth babble proceeds...

The Cabaret show

In Cienfuego, 2 nights after Cat’s actual birthday, she was claiming it was still her birthday to local bar tenders in order to get free drinks (hang on, did somebody say “classic Cat?”). In the place where nothing usually comes for free, this trick actually worked. So, well lubricated on free cocktails, we attended a cabaret of scantily clad women and men dancing around singing spanish love songs on stage. As you do. Soon after the concert, still on a high from the Cuban spectacle, we saw hoards of young people walking in a certain direction. We thought, "Hey we’re sort of young, are we not?" So we followed them. We ended up in a club and attempted to sweat out the rum cocktails with some hardcore dancing. We were the only gringos in the club. On our stagger home, Cat realised her phone was missing.

There ensued the fastest running I’ve ever seen or taken part in. We ran here, we ran there, we ran everywhere. The Cienfuego locals had a right old laugh at us redfaced and puffed asking about a missing iphone (most had never heard the word iphone in their life). Still to this day, we don’t know when or where it disappeared. BUT, I have my suspicions about being the only gringos in a Cuban nightclub dancing like manic chooks. Suspicious times call for suspicious accusations. It was the Cubans.

Rolling Stones Concert

By pure coincidence, on our final night in Cuba, the Rolling Stones decided to play a free gig in Havana. Yep, I’m being totally scissors about it. Not paper, not rock, but SCISSORS. Photos and videos describe it best, but all I will say is the following:

• it was the biggest concert ever held in Cuba
• it was attended by over half a million people
• toilets were a non-enclosed cubicle placed next to the gutter for waste to simply flow down the gutter and into drains
• it was BYO as much alcohol as you could carry, but unlike if that was the case in Australia, it was a relatively chilled atmosphere
• attendees stood on rooftops and climbed goal posts to get a view, and
• Mick Jagger still has it.

The Malecon

The Malecon in Havana is, in my opinion, the coolest road in the world. The road winds around the sea and thousands of people sit along the boardwalk next to it at sunset and just soak up the atmosphere. While sitting on the boardwalk at dusk and watching the constant flow of 1950s American cars, some of them heading to casinos, I couldn’t help but think I had transcended time.

Malecon dreamin'

Train Race of Peril

In Trinidad, we took an amazing train journey out of town. However, the train reached an old house where the only thing to do was to have a super expensive lunch. It wasn’t going to leave back to town for an hour. So instead of taking up the lunch offer, we decided to race back along the track for 3 kilometres to where we had seen an interesting looking slave tower which in the past was used by a master to keep an eye on his slaves working the fields. We found ourselves running along the train track, which turned out to be riddled with dodgy wooden planks and great chasms over bridges. It was a race against the train back to the slave tower, which we won.

‘Coppelia’ ice creamery

In Havana we visited an ice cream place called ‘Coppelia’. It was kind of like Messina in Sydney but on some ultra mega steroids. The place literally encompassed a whole 100 metre by 100 metre park. So I guess it’s not really like Messina at all, except for the fact that it’s an ice creamery.

The queue for banana. Is anyone surprised it's the shortest queue?

Anyway, initially you queue up on a corner of the park which is entirely dependent upon the flavor of ice cream you wish to partake in once inside. We decided to just queue at the corner which had the shortest line. Unsurprisingly, we were in for banana ice cream that day. When it was our turn to finally enter the Coppelia ice creamery proper, we were directed by security guards towards a separate gringo tent where prices were classically way higher than the normal ice creamery. We followed orders and headed towards the gringo tent but then cheekily skewed off to the local establishment when the guards weren’t looking. Once inside the local hangout we drowned ourselves in what was the equivalent of 10 cent scoops of banana ice cream. We copped many stares but it was banana g-g-g-gaaauuudd-ness.

This. is. how. we. do.

Moments of bewilderment

Many, many things happened in Cuba which were simply beyond explanation. Although I’ve just said they were beyond explanation, here’s an explanation of them:

Refused Service

At random times I was blatantly refused service for no reason that I could find. I searched for it, but couldn’t find it. On one occasion I attempted to buy some bread from a bakery in Vinales. I could see an abundance of bread and had the denari to purchase this good. You may be aware that in the normal world, the exchange of goods for denaro is a common occurrence. But in Cuba I was flat out denied the exchange. Less than an hour later I attempted to buy some soft drink from a supermarket and was also blatantly refused. To this day I have no idea why.

Likewise, on another occasion at Punta Gorda park in Cienfeugo, we joined a queue for a beer that was very short. However, the bartender indicated to us that he would not serve us. Apparently we had to join the much longer queue on the other side of the park and buy the more expensive beverage because we were tourists.

Cave party in Trinidad

Appropriately blurry

By looking at this subheading, you would expect this part to be under the fun happy super special times section. And mostly, partying in a cave in Trinidad was quite fun happy super special. However, we were later told that when our mate left the cave he witnessed a local bloke get completely bashed by a couple of police officers. We later learned the reason the innocent guy copped a beating - he was apparently speaking with tourists too much in the club. This is another oddity about the Cuban life. Apparently Cubans are only to speak with tourists if they must, but they shouldn’t do so on a discretionary basis. Interesting times.

But anyway, Trinidad and La Boca were generally quality towns. Here's a few snaps of them:

                                 

Money issues

There were about 10 ATM’s in the whole of Cuba, and not 1 of them worked (because our Citibank bank card is associated with America). This meant that on 2 occasions I had to join what seemed like every other Cuban in the bank ‘line’ in order to try get money out directly from the bank. A system was non-existent for who was next to be selected and served by the bank staff. Everyone crowded outside of the closed bank doors until a security guard would pop out and select a person at random who was invited to join the queue inside the building.

Who's that gringo in there?

It was testing times, especially when on one of these occasions I was waiting in line while Cat was in a communal taxi (with 10 other people) telling the driver to wait for me to get money out. By sheer luck I was randomly selected by the security guard after about 45 minutes of waiting to enter the bank, and was able to get money just in the nick of time for the taxi to turn up outside the bank with a stressed Cat inside.

Finding a home in Havana for the Rolling Stones

We met a bloke named Julio who we later figured out to be the Havana accommodation mafia boss. When we turned up to his guesthouse he informed us that there was no space because of the Rolling Stones concert but that we shouldn’t worry because he could sort something out.

Anyway, we agreed to seek his help to find accommodation, so Julio told us to follow him. We wondered across a desolate park square at night where one by one people who appeared to be friends of Julio joined us. Julio then led us down a dark alleyway and by this stage there was Julio and an additional 4 friends coming along for the stroll. I really didn’t know whether to trust the bloke and appropriately thought it was very odd that so many people were escorting us to our accommodation. I appropriately had Clubber Lang and Daniel San - my fist fighting palms - on standby, and I knew that we were in too deep to back out and refuse Julio’s help.

It turned out that Julio was a top bloke and led us to an absolutely amazing apartment, equipped with bedroom, kitchen, lounge room and balcony. The group of people following us were actually just his friend posse’. It was probably the nicest place that we stayed in the whole time we were in Cuba but at the preparatory stages it was certainly hairy times for a moment or two.

Immigration debacles yet again

As Cat and I attempted to leave the country from the airport in Varadero, I was immediately stopped at exit immigration. They brought in an English speaker who took Cat and I bother to the immigration offices. The English speaking immigration officer was very interested in our trip – we had to spend the next hour explaining to him and his buddies what a ‘round the world’ trip was. The immigration officers were completely bamboozled by the fact that we weren’t leaving Cuba to go home and that we were flying to Canada instead.

They also repeatedly asked us where all our cash was because they couldn’t fathom that we did not carry physical cash and that money could be kept in a bank account. It was annoying times but we were finally allowed to leave the country and had luckily arrived to the airport early enough to still make our flight. After the debacles we had in Belize (see immigration debacles in Chapter 2) at this point we really didn’t enjoy immigration systems.

Other random happenings:

• Every trip in the taxi collectivo’s took way longer than they should have due to an unbelievable amount of roadworks going on in Cuba. There were so many roadworks because of the impending Barack Obama visit. The Cubans were keen to impress the President with their high quality roads but realised that they didn’t have them.
• House advertising is a competitive market in Cuba. Check out this well developed marketing plan:

• Cat visited her first toilet cubicle without a door and was expected to tip a 2-toothed lady manning it.
• On our way home to Julio’s palace one night, Cat spotted a decapitated dog on the side of a regular Havana street. There was no head in sight.
• It's all about the colour in Cuba. Here's a few snaps of colourful times:

If you haven't seem the photo on the front of the Cuba Lonely Planet, this is pretty much it.

• On the Havana ‘hop on hop off’ bus tour we were told to stay seated while on the top deck for safety reasons. What we didn’t realise was that if you did actually stand up than you would have literally had your head decapitated by low lying electricity wires which lined some of the main roads. In hindsight, maybe that dog stood up on the bus…
• People were doing weird things everywhere on the streets of Havana in order to make a buck. Here's a couple of them:

Professor Dogsmith

The old adult baby trick

• Fumigation takes place in the streets of Cuba almost daily. At first we thought that Cubans must accidentally burn down there homes all the time. But it turns out that police fumigate for bugs very regularly. It was rather odd.

Absolutely fumin'

Is this bloke about to mow everyone down, Rambo IV style? Nah mate, he's just fumigating.

     Well, that closes the central America stage of our trip (and takes us to about the beginning of April…whoops). Next chapter, our brief stint in Canada and the US of A. Catch ya then ya babblin unravellin’ believers. Here’s cheers to the vicar!

Oh, and here's a bonus video of Havanan life on our ride to the airport. Enjoy!