CUBA:
July 12-19, 2017
2017-07-12 - WEDNESDAY- HAVANA DAY 1
“That's
a 1938 Ford”.
“I
like Fords”
“That
one…1956 Chevrolet…good.” 57 also good. 59, too. 58? Bah! Bad”
Ruben, our cabby, is on a roll,
ticking off the inhabitants of La Habana's Metal Mobile Museum, as he drives us
down uncrowded, wide, tree-lined roads from Jose Marti Airport into the
city at 9 in the morning.
We've been up since 3. We've flown
50 minutes through the air, and fifty years through time.
Cuba's cars are time machines,
yanking me back to junior high school when we could all identify cars by make,
model and year. It was easy. To crib a line from Gloria Swanson in ‘Sunset
Boulevard', back then the cars “had faces”. We loved them, even when the
grotesque, finned land sharks of the mid and late fifties ate up the classy
soft lines of the early years of the decade.
They're all here, wildly different
in shape, trim, size, personality. And while the flaring tail fins and Dolly
Parton bumpers deserved to languish in the eddies of the auto gene pool, most of
La Habana's cars are moving indictments of the melted imaginations in charge of
car design 60 years later.
Imagination is not in short supply
in Cuba. It keeps our junior high school metal fantasies running half a
century on, creates replacement parts while the genuine ones languish on the
other side of pointless sanctions, and thumbs a big creative nose at the
Buy, Buy, Buy ethic that maintains the world's car industries. It keeps the
cars colorful, long after the original glossy finishes have been dissolved by
tropic sun and rain. Most of the paint jobs are brushed on Back Yard Specials
(By Hand, Detailing and Mojitos Extra).
“It's
crazy”! is cabby Ruben’s approving
descriptor of choice as he identifies every car we pass, by make, model, year.
He's an engineer, managed a factory, didn’t earn enough. “Factory was
government, so….”. He earns more driving a cab.
He points to a high rise. “Hospital” “All free”.
Cuba's imagination is not limited to
cars.
===================================================================
2017-07-13 - THURSDAY - HAVANA DAY 2
The tropics are not easy on Old
Havana's masonry confections. These painted ladies ‘of a certain age’,
sun-struck, and rain-washed too often, fade, crumble, even droop into the
narrow streets. We will live in one for a week.
Our digs are at Cuba 155 between
Tejadillo and Empedrado (addresses specify the cross streets that enclose the
location) the heart of Habana Vieja, but off the tourist track.
‘The rooms are tall, to cool' says
our host, Francisco. We guess 18 feet, sorry, 5 meters. He and Elisabeth have
given us keys to their 2-bedroom home, kitchen, parlor (with sofa, table,
chairs, refrigerator). The bedrooms and bathroom are bigger than ours in
Florida. AC drains Habana's heat from the bedroom, but not Habana's
verve.
The energy of Habana Vieja is life lived,
loudly, in color. It pushes through the 8-foot wooden shutters of Francisco's
house, temptation. We give in.
Habana Vieja is a wrinkled and
experienced city, with little time for artifice. There is music, much from the
elided vowels of Cuban Spanish, which has left consonants back in Iberia, and
rides on the rolling softnesses of Africa. Or so my ears tell me. And Habaneros
hola, buen díá, welcome one another, and us, with smiles. They are easy to
know.
Yesterday we met Sidro. Smart
and smiling in black trousers and white shirt, tight, the way Cubanos/as like
their clothes, he's the elegant tout for his restaurant offering pizza, pasta,
and Cuban specialties just down the street from Number 155. His black hair is
top-knotted into a samurai do. The picture of me in my top knot as samurai in
Madama Butterfly gets me a laugh, thumbs up, and a back slap. Photos follow,
then prints, then even bigger smiles. His daughter appears, with her abuela, Sidro’s
mother, for her photo op. They're our first new neighbors.
Oscar follows. He is on the next corner,
charms us into his second-floor restaurant and delivers luscious mango mojitos.
The ropa viejo (‘old clothes'), pulled pork, is almost as yummy as the luscious
pick 1955 Chevy convertible sitting on the narrow street below. The other
waiters, and the cooks, laugh at their prints.
We have a neighborhood in
Cuba.
Today we wander. Breakfast is huge
and fuels us for the day. The heat melts us by noon. We siesta through the hot
part of the day, then rejoin the streets at 5.
It has taken 5 centuries for the
genes from the Caribbean, Europe, Africa to produce the beautiful faces,
colors, and physiques of Habana Vieja. Dress is casual, verging on undress, and
running to much appreciated bare, toned torsos, and tight mid-thigh skirts
sprouting endless legs.
At Al Pirata, handsome Yariel and
his two beautiful assistants dish out guava, lime, grape, raspberry ice cream
over a sign:
ANTI RACIST ZONE
No Safe Space for
Fascism, Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, or Transphobia.
We have chosen our neighborhood
well.
===================================================================
2017-07-14 - FRIDAY - HAVANA DAY 3
“I come 8 in morning and go home
midnight”.
Twenty-something Yasel chats with me
for an hour in the narrow alley where his restaurant, La Pharmacia, spreads
stone tables in the morning shade. It's our place. He serves breakfast,
lunch, dinner, late night drinks for 16 hours two days in a row, then has two
days off, then repeats. He’s articulate, bright, informed, a product of free
education, including university, and one of the world highest literacy rated.
His degree is in Economics. Jobs are scarce. ‘So, I do this'.
His small room a ferry ride across the
bay costs $16 a month. That's probably half what he earns.
Two of us have our usual huge
breakfasts for $13.
We leave a good tip.
Stoked with La Pharmacia's Special
Breakfast that will last until mojitos call at sunset, we set off on the
morning's next expedition: The Search for The Elusive Wi-Fi. We find a spot in
a crowd of people leaning on the wall outside a hotel and add our tap-taps to
the morning music. There's only one Internet provider and the password in our
$3 scratch-off card works anywhere in Cuba. Connections can be flippant and
lethargic, but we connect with Abel in Ethiopia, Hossein in Iran, and Dennis'
niece, Heather, who will join us here on Saturday.
Then, we turn off ‘out there' and
wallow in the colors ‘in here'.
We wander. It drizzles steam.
There's music. We stop for ice cream at Al Pirata, and chat with Javier.
We nap in the cool AC of our house. Francisco and Elisabeth visit to make
sure we're happy.
We are.
2017-07-14 &15 - SATURDAY & SUNDAY - HAVANA DAYS 4 & 5
The drums take us prisoner, beating
us into submission to a rhythm straight out of Africa. The brass gongs swirl
higher notes into the heat. The chants, repeated, repeated, repeated,
insinuate, drive deep into the pulse of the crowd. We move with it, slipping
into and out of the hot sun, dripping sweat, dripping whiteness, greeted,
welcomed, enveloped by Pena Cultural Afrocubana, in a neighborhood of Cuba's
Afro folk.
It's a great welcome to La Habana's
explosive color for Dennis' niece Heather, arrived yesterday to make us a
threesome. Like us, she ‘gets’ travel, and gets Habana Vieja.
We've been walking around La Habana
for six hours, foot sore now, parboiled, and heading home in a 1956 Plymouth
(with very dodgy doors) but bodies still twitching to the music. We say goodbye
to our excellent guide, Leysa, a Trip Advisor find of Heather's.
Scrumptious lunch is in another of
La Habana's private restaurants. Leysa tells me that workers in
government run places earn little but can't be fired without a long legal
process. In private places, like Al Pirata and our restaurant …now springing up
all over…they have no job security but can earn much more money, maybe $10 a
day, with tips in a good place. So, she says, in government restaurants the
food and service are bad, because nobody cares.
She has lived in Bahamas, Colombia,
Washington, DC with her journalist father and seen how other systems work,
including ours. She suggests we may need a revolution to get rid of tRump, “but not a Communist one”.
Later, the heat washed off in a
cool shower, we maul some mojitos and pig out again on tender pork, black
beans, fried plantains, then thin slices of cheese, tangy icebergs floating a
sea of mango puree, all delivered by Losso beneath his sly, impish grin, and
Obama ears. Oscar’s smile opens, spreads, is measured in acres as he
conjures up his specialty, mango mojitos. Their restaurant, Esquina, just down
the street from our place, is now part of ‘our’ neighborhood.
We wander through our end of La
Habana Vieja. The gang at Al Pirata, our helado place of choice for luscious
guava ice cream, wave us over. Her boyfriend loved her picture, says Francesca.
Tall Yariel will be back on Monday for another 16-hour shift after his 2-day
break.
Our other neighbors, true Habaneros,
are friendly, gracious, smiling, fun, and hospitable. Francisco and Elisabeth
give us a package of ‘real cigars, the kind we smoke'. “Hola, Florida'” yells the guy in the pizza tee shirt from his
doorway across the street. Next door neighbor, Nora, offers to have her husband
make us breakfast tomorrow.
We're
home…again.
2017-07-17 - MONDAY - HAVANA DAY 6
Carlos catches my eye, nods with a
sly, street-wise grin, and leads me around the corner, out of sight. I score
with him again, the third time in three days. We know his price. I slip him
one…then another, then a third CUC. He passes me a fresh internet card. A
handshake, a tip of his cap, a wave, and he's off into the crowd to hook more
people up with their Wi-Fi addiction.
Armed anew, I join Dennis, Heather,
and the other leaners along the walls of La Floridita, linked in Wi-Fi
frustration, staring, hopeful, at unresponsive screens. No matter. Habana Vieja
will not be ignored, music pulling us away from cyber tap-tap to livelier
rhythms. We find them from 5 musicians in an open store front down the street,
guitar and company playing salsa, but whispering ‘mojito, mojito, mojito’.
The rum in these noon mojitos is a
bit rough, aged all of three hours, but our thirsty tongues are forgiving, give
it a pass, and it slides down easily in the heat.
Not so the Obispo pizzettas, Habana
Vieja's street snack du jour. Great-granddaddy may have been a pizza, but great-grand
mommy was a slice of Wonder Bread and recent ancestors include Ketchup and
Yellow Cheese. The pizzettas squish into doughy lumps, disappointing, barely
Threes in a world of Tasty Tens.
Drip, drip, plop, plop, then BANG,
and the sky falls, dumping a river onto the cobblestones, now Niagara on the
flat. From across the torrent, a lady waves at us to shelter in her shop. Once
again, the gringos are absorbed into Cuba's famous ‘We're all in this together’
hospitality.
Dinner is in a restaurant run by a
family from 6 tables in the front room of their house. It’s only a tad bigger
than ours, crowded, cooled by fans. It has no name other than its address,
Compostelo 157.
All the meals are the same price,
15CUC, and include rice and beans, fresh salad, bread. My shrimp with garlic is
so good, I consider defecting. Dennis and Heather groan in agreement over
their ropa vieja, and pork asado.
I forgive the pizzettas.
====================================================================
2017-07-18 - TUESDAY - HAVANA DAY 7
La Habana Vieja is addictive. It is
so rich, so redolent, that my senses, thickly stuffed, jam together. Colors and
sounds have a taste, textures... a smell, flavors...a color. I can't get
enough. Maybe this is why dogs hang out car windows?
So, we walk. The day before
yesterday we covered 7 miles (according to Heather’s pedi-thingy) through and
around Habana Vieja. Yesterday, still foot sore, we hopped on---and stayed
on--- the Habana HopOn HopOff bus to see the rest of the city. On the northern
edge of the city are the beaches, justly famous, the sea turquoise in
close, then lapis lazuli to the horizon. The beaches are upstaged by the houses
across the road, a spilled candy box of Art Deco-Caribo-Hispano-Mediterraneo
balconied confections, wrapped in colors luscious as tropical fruit drinks.
Away from the shore HopOnHopOff treats us to the best of the city. There must
be more, in Habana Centro. Next time.
At 8am yesterday morning, neighbor
Nora unpacked a 1956 Cadillac-sized basket and decorated our table with
rose-flowered China, an orchard of fresh fruit, bright yellow scrambled eggs,
ham, bread, fresh mango nectar, the color of dawn, coffee, hot milk.
Eduardo passes ‘azucar' for the coffee through the window. Nora laughs. “He cooks. I wash. And tomorrow? Omelet?
Frito? What time?” We go for omelets at 7 for this morning, Heather's last.
They are wrapped perfection, ham and cheese, and delicious. The nectar is
papaya, deep orange-red, upstaging even the mango.
La Habana days begin in color.
Today is Heather’s last Habana Vieja
walk before her 11am pick up. We will miss her. A lot.
We walk some favorite streets, greet
the handsome young touts who recognize us after a week as poor prospects, but
smile anyway. Her comment? “HOT,
exclamation point, before and after!” She's not talking about the weather.
Ditto.
The city has had hard times, and
often shows it. We share the streets with Habaneros and tourists dressed
(undressed?) for the heat and humidity. The Habaneros pull it off better, on
the street. But… At the entrance to the elegant Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia
Alonzo, named for Cuba's famed prima ballerina assoluta, is a poster offering
the rules for theater goers, in text and graphics: no smoking, no cell phones,
no food (the graphic is a hamburger), no sandals (image is a pair of flip
flops), no shorts. The text is only in English. I ask our guide why. “Cubans
know how to go to the theater. Tourists? They don’t. “
Respect for the arts, artists, one
another, and ourselves isn't so hard, is it?
Nora hugs Heather for her gift of
shampoo and conditioner, both expensive here. She fluffs her headdress of jet Medusa-curls.
“It's my umbrella.” Francisco and
Elisabeth come by to say goodbye. Angel arrives as promised, and Heather is off
at 11 in his cab. We miss her immediately.
Our trips always come down to people
This one is already a bit less colorful without her.
We repeat at Compostelo157, at 7,
early for Habaneros, but this gringo is ready for garlic shrimp and cold beer.
The guitarist and his drummer wife from yesterday come in soon after, smile an
immense welcome. He points to his guitar. The pictures we printed for him
are stuck on, bookends for the strings. We're the only customers. They play
anyway.
We leave Habana Vieja tomorrow.
Addicts.
===================================================================
2017-07-19 – WEDNESDAY - HAVANA DAY 8-HOME
Our
last walk is a slalom through sweat.
The sky is cloudless. By 9am, Habana
Vieja is a griddle.
We stick closer to the harbor waters
and catch a breeze on a bench under the flaming umbrellas of the Poinciana
trees. A cruise ship has dumped puddles of over-weight, and soon to be
over-heated, and over-red, tourists, crowding around patient and fluent tour
guides for their over-priced shore excursion: 2 hours in ‘exotic Cuba', and a
month’s salary for a waiter who works a 16-hour day. None of them look
happy, squishing and flip-flopping slow motion through the steam. Then, they're
back on board their floating skyscraper for ‘the drink of the day: real Cuban
mojitos' as Cuba drops over the horizon, now a checkmark on their travel
list.
It's not the way we travel, with
time enough to live life rather than sniff at it as we run by, but maybe 2
hours is better than none. That checkmark could capture something positive
about Cuba to take back to wherever home is, even if it's just the smile and
graciousness of their Habanero tour guide… ‘exotic Cuba’, now, with a
face.
By 10:45 we're verging on well-done,
and my tum is in slight, rumbling rebellion, perhaps from the heat, or too much
fruit for breakfast. Home is where the cool is, at 155 Cuba.
Lunch is another Eduardo (Euaro in
Cuban) special, real Cuban sandwiches (well, sandwiches made by real Cuban in
Cuba with Cuban ingredients, toasted bread, ham, cheese, cucumber), cold pineapple
juice (tummy be damned), left over fruit from breakfast (see previous
parentheses), and hot coffee, delivered by Nora, umbrella hair and flair in
abundance.
Elisabeth and Francisco come by at 2
to clean and say goodbye. Hugs all around seal our memories of Cuba.
As our airport cab turns our corner,
there's Oscar, Mojito Maestro from our restaurant. We stop, call his name, he
turns, sees us, waves, and that !!!!!!!! smile takes over his handsome face and
sends us on our way.
How
can we not return?
