Arriving in Cuba
On the airplane on our way to Cuba I realized I was supposed to bring evidence of my travel health coverage. Shoot. Fortunately, we were never asked about it and entered the socialist utopia without difficulty. I’m so curious about what we will find here. How different will it be? How isolated from capitalism? Will we even be able to tell that this country is a giant experiment (although isn’t every country, at every time) – a rebellious experiment though – that persists, stubbornly into the neoliberal era. We’re ready for what will come next I hope.
We arrive, on the plane we meet Erik, the Swedish backpacker who approaches us because we stand out with our backpacks amongst the ‘week long package’ tourists to Varadero. “Are you backpacking too?” he asks. In the airport, we then start chatting with Jen, a punk rock gal from Vancouver who spends her time ‘crewing’ on sailboats. She’s on her way to crew a boat to Guatemala where she’ll learn Spanish. Anyway the five of us decide to wait for the public bus, and drink a can of beer as we wait. As the package tourists leave, a fellow approaches us, offering us more expensive buses, then a taxi. Eventually as the prices fall, we accept. We’ll take a taxi to Havana. And so we do – passing fields, and horses and cows wandering by the road. People hitchhike. We get stopped by inspectors who look to see the taxi’s licence. Then we get into Havana proper, Sidney asleep and off we trot to our casa. We’re staying in one of a thousand casa particulars in Cuba. These are rooms in people’s homes, often quite beautiful. They cost about 30 bucks a night – far less than the hotels, which mostly seem to start at 100 or so. Ours is full of antiques and has a rooftop terrace that has a red squirrel and a parrot in a cage. There are Siamese cats, which please Sidney immensely. Looking off the balcony, we see a parade of vehicles, many old American cars from the 1950s, Ladas from the 1980s, bici-taxis or pedicabs, horse carts, motorbikes and bicycles. We head out for dinner after the sun goes down promptly at 6 pm. We had forgotten, it is Valentines Day and everyone – it seems also wants to go out for supper. Walking through the rutted streets with no streetlights, Sidney trips and falls – eventually I find us a place for supper. Although Sidney doesn’t eat much – we enjoy the simple food of rice and beans, and chicken for Mac and Sidney. The TV shows MTV – US Television must create a strain for the regime, with its material wealth. If I was an authoritarian leader, I’d definitely try and ban it. But I suppose I’m not. Off we go to bed.
Wednesday - Day 2
Sidney has made friends with the cats. These make him happy, unlike the food and chaos of Havana. There is a fair amount of whining here, which makes both Mac and I quite grumpy. We’re staying in Old Havana, Havana Vieja – which is a mix of gorgeous restored buildings, and apartments collapsing from their age. In the morning, I read Marx’s Capital Volume 1 on the terrace of the casa and in the afternoon, we walk down Obispo street, listening to the music, watching the people. Two women approach us with eggs. We don’t need any eggs. They try to explain. We try to understand. Oil! Oil! They want us to buy them oil, which we do. This scene will repeat itself a couple more times over the next couple of days. In the evening we hear protesters.. protesters? It turns out that they are Venezuelans, wearing vests that proclaim the world is a classroom – and are part of some sort of university conference. . They are marching around, declaring their love of Cuba. We follow along with the merry crew for a bit. Later that evening, we peer into a nightclub where apparently the Buena Vista social Club are performing. It may be, I have no idea – but the happily snapping tourists definitely seemed to think so. This will become our style, checking out the bands, often from the street.
Thursday - Day 3 – Ferries, Bici-Taxis and Automobiles
We move to the new casa particular because ours is now full. We’d only made reservations for the first two days, so this isn’t a great surprise. The new casa is full of slightly mangled children’s dolls and toys – sitting on the couches, and on the shelves. Our new landlady Mercy is packing people in. Our room has no antiques, but the breakfast is great and Mercy very friendly. In the morning, we saw the old gun store, now a gallery and posed next to Che’s gun (Mac was thrilled by the photo of himself with the M2 Carbine). Then we hid out in a restored convent building to do schoolwork – Mac teaching Sidney and I reading. Then in the afternoon, we took the ferry across the water to the fortress to go to the enormous Feria dos Libros- Latin Americas’ biggest bookfair. Unfortunately, Mac had his Swiss army knife with him and had to leave it with a young security guard at the ferry dock. The bookfair is phenomenal – stalls from Latin America, Russia, France, Germany and Australia. Lectures by writers, a lot of socialist tracts, and bouncy castles for the kids! I bought a comic book about immigrant rights. It seems to involve a lot of pictures to color where kids kick immigration officials in the cojones. Bizarro but kind of awesome. Leaving the bookfair, we get a ride in a giant, red, 1950s car. Amazing. When we return to the ferry dock our security guard has left, but the people there are extremely friendly, and keep mussing Sidney’s hair. Sidney doesn’t love this – but is getting used to it. Finally, heading home, we get a bici-taxi – feeling bad for the guy hauling us uphill and dodging the potholes.
Friday - Day 4 – Ballet Espana de Cuba
Today was kind of annoying – spent trying to get online and call home. Finally we found a fancy hotel where we paid about 10 bucks for an hour. We then rewarded Sidney’s patience with our grumpiness by going on a horse and carriage ride around town to see the sights. This was pretty hilarious. Our driver was accompanied with a government tour guide, who had apparently developed a lot of ‘relationships’ with various establishments. It became clear that he got a kickback if he successfully got us to do various things. These included a cigar place, a restaurant, women who posed with us for a photo, and a place where Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra used to drink mojitos, where he asked us buy himself and the driver mojitos. No worries, kind of funny. A man has to do what a man has to do to survive. Then we walked down along the water, stopping to read Harry Potter’s Goblet of Fire and drinking beer. After dinner, Mac and Sidney went back to the casa and I went to see the Ballet. It was fascinating. The ticket wasn’t cheap. Nor was it really a ballet. It was a flamenco version of Phantom of the Opera. I had great seats in the great old, ornate theatre, mostly surrounded by tourists, although my left side neighbor may not have been. She seemed agitated, and muttered away angrily during the performance, until, having had enough of something or other, left the room. The performers were pretty good – although the leads were a bit over the top for me. All grimace and arm-flapping with little tension. But the crowd loved it – and gave them a standing ovation. I walked home – it feels safe here, to find the guys still awake.
Saturday – Day 5 – Disaster
We were planning to go to the Museo de la Revolution today, but first, needed to get some money from the bank. I planned to get a Mastercard advance, as the travel book recommended - having become aware that no ATMs seemed to have the cirrus or interact signs on them (even though the travel book said that you could also draw money on non-US accounts). After having some difficulty finding an open bureau de change – called a Cadeca, we lined up and I entered. We only had about 20 bucks left in Cuban money. But the card didn’t work. They called mastercard and they told me that my card wouldn’t work in cuba. Nor would my debit card. Panic set in. Fortunately we had just moved to a new casa and one doesn’t pay until one leaves. We changed our remaining Canadian money. We’ll have to get money wired from Canada – but Mac’s dad is mysteriously not answering his phone. A bit stressful. We made sandwiches and drank beer and listened to Cuban music by standing outside bars. More harry potter. Our friends Liisa and Jenny also arrive in town tomorrow, maybe they can loan us some cash. Otherwise? May have to sell my camera or something. Xo
Sunday - Day 6
We tried to leave a message for Liisa and Jenny today, but it seems like they aren’t there. Unclear. So we went for a walk along the Malecon – the seafront boulevard where the waves come crashing in. Read some more Harry Potter and then Mac and Sidney went back to the casa and I went onwards to see some rumba – the percussion based Afro—Cuban music. There, I ran into Jen, the sailor gal from the plane, and Michelle Hardesty, a friend from grad school, also in the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, the radical marching band. She is also on sabbatical – from Hampshire College and studying Cuban literature, drumming and doing some writing. What a lovely surprise! She and sailor Jen had met via a mutual friend. Anyway, we enjoyed the music – chatted with some of the many men who approached us, and checked out some of the massive wall, gorgeous wall murals and sculptures. I told them of our plight and although Michele has only brought enough money for her two months here – given that she can’t obtain money from the US - she promised to loan us some until our wire came in. This included paying for a meal in a restaurant. Yay! So we went out to dinner. So nice!
Monday (family day in Canada) – Day 7
Family Day in Canada means the banks are closed there, so we have no more information about money from that end, except that Western Union will not wire money to Cuba despite their offices that are everywhere here in Cuba. While Mac and Sidney did schoolwork and I went to one bank who said that they could do a transfer but that it would take many days. They sent me to Asitour, the place for tourists in trouble. I knew I was in trouble when the fellow there didn’t speak any English. After some waiting, a woman came down from upstairs and told me that they couldn’t do a wire transfer for me, but that the bank across the road could. She wrote a note to give the teller there explaining what I wanted. I went to line up at Banco Metropolitan. There is an amazing ‘lining up’ system in Cuba. When you arrive at a line, you ask, ‘el ultimo?’ and the person who is last in line tells you who you’re behind. Then, because lining up is so common and so lengthy, often people go and do their shopping, sit and have a cigarette etc, while they wait for the person ahead of them to get closer to their goal. I was behind an elderly woman in a blue dress, quite frail, with long dyed black hair. She kept disappearing but would meet my eyes when she returned. We waited for two hours. One woman, quite agitated – standing there with her daughter told me ‘only in this country!’ I assured her that we lined up too – albeit not for quite as long at the bank. Another fellow told me that ‘its hard being a small country, in a big world. In Cuba,’ he explained ‘we are very patient.’ I definitely agreed. The agitated woman tried to rush the queue but it obviously didn’t work as she exited again and remained in line. Eventually I got inside the bank and met with a woman who gave me a handy little pamphlet explaining how to get a wire transfer from Canada. It was labeled ‘remittances from Canada.’ I enquired ‘trabajo?’ (it works?) she assured me that yes, it would work. So we sent the information home via email and called mum to tell her. Great. Unfortunately phone calls keep getting cut off which is frustrating for all involved.. We buy $10 phone cards after lining up at the ‘telepunto’ which last about 3 minutes – yii! Which is of course, a significant amount of our budget at this point. Email is almost the same - $10 for an hour in the lobby of a grand hotel. Tried again to connect with Liisa and Jenny – and got an email that they’d switched casas to the suburb of Vedado. We sat outside their casa in the branches of a big tree for the afternoon and read Harry Potter – probably arousing the suspicion of the neighbours. Left a note and promised to return to try to connect with them in the morning.
Tuesday – Day 8
Got up in the morning and walked across Havana to Vedado to find Liisa and Jenny. I tried to figure out the bus system, but my Spanish wasn’t quite up to it and it wasn’t yet too hot – being only 8:30 am. When I got there they were lovely and generous and promised to loan us some money until our wire came in! What a relief.
We only have about $10 left and we already owe the casa over $100 for the nights we’ve stayed and the breakfasts we’ve eaten. I should mention the breakfasts – for $5 for all of us we get fresh juice, eggs, bread, yogurt, fruit and coffee. It really does start us on the day. Unfortunately Sidney is often quite fussy at these moments, a bit embarrassing. But he is gradually coming into line – as it were. As is traditional here, children kiss the cheek of adults they meet – and Mary our hostess asks Sidney for ‘un beso’ but he refuses. Yii. She doesn’t seem to hold it against us though – always warm and welcoming. Today however we’re being shifted from our lovely room to a room that I fear may be her and her husbands bedroom. All there toiletries and shoes and stuff are on the shelves. Worriesome. Where will they sleep? Anyway – back to the crisis at hand.
Jenny and Liisa and I go the the giant Havana Libre hotel to try and get a cash advance on Jenny’s card. The Havana Libre was the Havana Hilton that Fidel and Che and the lot took over in the revolution. The lobby has a set of photos of all the bearded ones lounging around on the swanky furniture, guns askew. They don’t do cash advances but direct us somewhere or other where we can. But we can’t find that somewhere or other, so off we go to Havana Vieja, where we stay, to the Western Union. Jenny’s card is declined for some reason. Now, Jenny has her cellphone here and for some extraordinary cost, can actually call Visa who chastise her for not telling them she was going to Cuba, anyway, they authorize the cash advance and back we go and get it. Sweet sweet relief! Now we’ll be fine until the transfer comes in. We decide, having grown weary of Havana and all these shenanigans, that we’ll join Jenny and Liisa and Wendy and Kelly at the local beach for a couple of days while we await our transfer. In the evening, we eat food, and have some amazing Austrian microbrew, while listening to the Cuban resto-repertoire with Michelle, sailor Jen and one of the Hampshire students.
Wednesday – Day 9
We check out of the casa to go to the beach, Sidney kisses our hostess and all is well. Then Mac calls his dad. Apparently, Canadian banks won’t do a wire transfer to Cuba. Argh! But but – part of me rebels, knowing that many Cubans here get remittances from family in Canada. But he’s tried four banks – and they all say the same thing. Terry, my brother in law has spoken to Foreign Affairs – they’ve told him that if we go to the Embassy, we can arrange for a wire transfer to go there. Okay, Plan C or D or whatever we’re on now… So Mac and Sidney set off to meet the others to go to the beach and I head for the Embassy. When I get there, I tell my story to a stone faced woman who then proceeds to launch into a lecture – saying ‘we are not here to help people to have vacations, and hadn’t I read the travel advisory and maybe we should just return to Canada. ‘ When I tell her that we need at least $1000, she snorts derisively. No way, maybe, just maybe I can get $200 and then next Thursday, maybe $200 more. Well that won’t do at all. Given our cheap accommodation is over $200 a week. And we still have three more weeks. I’m furious and tell her that I am asking for a service, not begging a favour! and that she is an embarrassment to the embassy. (Now I’m embarrassed by my patriotic phrasing, alas.) Then I storm out of the embassy and burst into tears for my taxi driver. He is much more sympatico than the consular staffperson and tells me that Cuban women ‘make a lot of noise when they get angry’ they don’t cry. He urges me to make a lot of noise, and seems just as horrified at the behavior of the staff as I am. Feeling like money will be tight again (as we’ve spend almost half of our $1000 on our debts) – I ask him to drive me to the bus so I can get to Guanabo the beach. As its 2 pm, he tells me that given the time, I likely won’t get to the beach before dark to find the others. Feeling a tad fragile, I ask how much it would be for him to drive me to the beach. He’s already been in my ‘employ’ for about an hour – but he sweetly suggests $30 for our whole time. I up it to $40 knowing that he’s undercutting himself out of sympathy – given that a Havana 10 minute ride is about $5, and off we go. He’s my age – born in 1967, married with three kids – and unsurprisingly, his name is Ernesto (as in Ernesto Che Guevara). He drives me the hour to the beach and gives me his card to reach me if I get into more trouble. I walk up and down the beach, laptop strapped across my back, beside the pretty turquoise water and try to find the others. No luck. I try to call Mac’s Dad to tell him the news – the phone card dies almost instantly. I go to the phone office to buy a new one – nope – wrong place. I find the Western Union where they sell the cards and then a phone to call again. Then I head to the casa where we have a reservation and wait for Mac. We were supposed to meet at 5 pm. I show up at 4:30. By 7oclock, I’m pretty seriously worried. Where are they?? They haven’t shown up – and then the owner returns to the casa to tell me that he may have made a mistake. He thinks he may have a note from Mac. Indeed he does. Mac has decided to stay with Jenny and Liisa at the beach and cancelled the reservation. But the owner somehow didn’t put two and two together. I said I had a 7 year old son – he had seen Sidney but though he was 4 – or maybe 5 years old. Alas! He feels terrible because of course its now dark.. he calls me a cab and I take a cab to Mac, Sidney, Jenny and Liisa. I’m exhausted. But the new place is right on the water – and its our own wee house – two bedrooms, patio. Gorgeous. I down about three rum and sprites and some food (having not eaten since breakfast), and feel better. Jenny says she’ll do another advance that will allow us to survive. Thank god for friends. And screw the embargo that stops money from coming to Cuba.
Thursday Day 10
At the beach, reading Marx’s Capital. All is well.
Friday Day 11
Ah, life is a hilarious adventure here. After spending most of the day at the beach casa along with Kelly OSullivan and Wendy Forrest from OCAP who joined us, we said goodbye and headed for the ‘Hershey Train’ – so named because the Hershey company built it before the revolution, to transport their workers. It’s a tiny two car affair and rattles along between Matanzas and Havana. Apparently it would stop where we were, in Guanabo at 5 pm. So off we went to catch it. Except our poor Spanish confused our driver and instead of taking us to the Hershey train station, he started driving to the train station in Hershey, a fair distance away. No matter, once redirected he took us to the train station, but the two old fellows sitting there redirected us to another station. By station, I mean concrete platform in the fields. We were the only ones sitting there at 5 pm, and at 6 pm, watching ox carts (ox carts!) trundle by. The ox driver did offer us a ride to Havana however, hilariously. Gradually people arrived and the kids looked through Sidneys Harry Potter Lego book and all was well. When the train arrived from the west, something seemed not quite right as we all scrambled to get on. A Habana, si? I asked. Erm, no. This was the train going in the other direction. Ha! But the conductor was reassuring – take it this way, he suggested, and then take it back. Well, why the hell not? The alternative involved sitting in a darkened field or trying to figure out the buses. At least we were in motion! So we joined the crowd on the train and rocketed along through the fields, the lights out inside but the stars and moon increasingly bright outside – along with the glares of sparks the train gave off. Someone bought Sidney some candy; which of course I surreptitiously ate, because the little feller doesn’t like candy. We reached Hershey and crossed the platform and took the sucker back in the other direction. The train does indeed seem to stop at people’s houses and at as it arrived in Havana, seemed to drive right through them. You could honestly have reached out the window of the train and taken something off someone’s kitchen table, the train was so close to the buildings. We didn’t really arrive in Havana, but across the river in Casablanca, where there were no taxis to be found. We went to a little bar/café place and asked the driver to get us one. He called his buddy, who instead of a taxi drives a Lada with blacked out windows and a bumping stereo system. He drove us back to our casa as if it was the Indy 500 – with dogs, kids and bicitaxis dashing out of his way. Hair raising! Back ‘home’ our hosts welcomed us and gave us the room that I suspect is their own. But we were grateful to crash, laughing about our adventures today.
