Steven’s Cuba Blog

Cuba Chronicles, Chapter Seven

January 19, 2006 at 12:30 pm | In Trip Report | 4 Comments

RETROGRADE

City of Santa Clara, Thursday, September 8th, 2005, 10:00am
I didn’t sleep much last night.

The heat was unbearable, but every time I turned on the air conditioner it rumbled like a Panzer. I was also thinking too much about what had happened the previous day, worried that the rest of my time here would be punctuated by encounters like these (they wouldn’t - I would end up not having any more “problems” in Cuba for the rest of my time here).

Yadin sensed my unease, and suggested that I take a day off (aren’t all these days ‘off’?) to relax and unwind. She was right - also, I’d been in Cuba for two weeks without ever visiting the beach! Without any (or rather, with considerably little) hesitation, I booked a bus to Las Brujas, a very small mixed tourist / cuban beach resort on the cayos of the north coast of Santa Clara. It’s about an hour away, past the little town of Remedios.

I met two italian tourists on the bus - they seemed alright but we didn’t talk much. After a brief stop in Remedios, we made it to the beach. As we pulled up, lo and behold, clouds were already moving. “Story of my life…”, I said to myself. My pessimism was unfounded, though, as the sky cleared up while I walked along the coast, away from the few other people on the beach, in search of a deserted area with a palm tree and a cheap plastic lounge chair.

With the sand under my feet, the sun beating down on my sunscreen-less (except for my tattoos) skin, and the ocean mist beckoning me to the waves, and not another human around (well, not in my immediate vicinity at least), everything just slowed down. For the first time in a very long time - years, perhaps - I felt completely, utterly relaxed. No work, no email, no responsiblity, no car payments, no ex-girlfriends, no debt. Nothing. Just the caress of the sun like a blanket on my (still-too-pale) body, the sound of the waves gently rolling up the sand, then retreating, and the sight of the pinkish translucency of your eyelid that you get when you sleep in sun with your eyes closed for too long… then you open them up and everything seems duo-tone, like you’re dreaming - or watching Requiem for a Dream.

The iPod shuffle starts playing “Sleep Now in The Fire“, which breaks the mood a little bit, so I do something I’ve never done before - I skip a Rage Against the Machine song. Bebel Gilberto starts whispering her silky smooth Brazilian Portuguese into my ear - August Day song.

Just like this rainstorm
This August day song
I dream of places far beyond

Ouvindo a chuva cair
No cinza um brilho aqui
Fico sózinha, distraída
Mesmo tom
Mesmo som
Como é bom, tão bom

This is the place, far beyond, I’ve always been dreaming of. This Island, this beach, these sights and sounds.
Anyways, this isn’t a blog about music; it’s a blog about Cuba.

My daydreaming is interrupted by the sound of giggling girls approaching. “Great,” I think to myself, “there goes my peaceful day of complete relaxation”. Slowly opening my eyes from their comatose state, I briefly catch a glimpse of the five twenty-something babes who then proceed to sit on the chairs right next to me (the rest of this side of the beach is nearly deserted), and start talking very loud in their lispy continental Spanish (”Cuantos Somos?” becomes “Cuantoth Thomoth“?) remove their clothing, and rub sunscreen lotion all over each other. I won’t get into details here, but I enjoyed the rest of the day very much talking to these complete strangers sitting topless a couple of feet away from me.

“Shit like this just doesn’t happen to me.”, I thought to myself. It seems to happen even less to the young cubans manning the bar at the other end of the beach - when I went there to refill my water bottle, they were zooming in on the girls with a pair of high-powered binoculars, giving me broad smiles and thumbs-ups while one of them gave me a new water bottle without accepting payment. They told me that cuban girls don’t sunbathe topless as Europeans do, so it’s pretty exciting when they get a bunch of young european tourists around here. As a joke, the bartenders offered to accompany back to my spot on the beach - just to be safe.

As the sun crept away over the horizon, I reluctantly realized it was time to leave. After stopping to get a sandwich composed of two paper-thin layers of bread covering a ham-like substance (probably ham), I grabbed the bus back to Santa Clara, and went over the conversation I had with the Spanish girls. In retrospect, I was pretty damn smooth - a rare event indeed. Now, I had met lots of incredible friendly Cuban girls (as mentioned previously), but I’d always been reluctant to go beyond anything resembling respectful distant conversation with them. With these spanish extranjeras, I was able to open up much more… why?

Well, here’s the thing - while it’s no secret what I think about Cuban women, I also have to mention that all the guys I met in Cuba were also fantastic people as well. I met lots that I had wonderful conversations with, and came away thinking, “Man, if I knew this dude back home in Montreal, we’d probably be best friend now.” I sometimes almost felt guilty flirting with a Cuban woman, because I’d be thinking to myself what incredible people the Cuban men are as well, and felt like I wasn’t allowed to “step on their territory” - I’m pretty childish and petty that way sometimes. Why? Well, one of the main reasons was that I often got the impression that my main draw to some of the ladies I’d speak to was the fact that I was a foreigner. My suspicions would be confirmed as I would talk about this topic candidly with others later on during my trip; some Cuban men don’t appreciate seeing a foreigner with a Cuban lady, for various [totally understandable] reasons I’ll get into later. Then again, it really shouldn’t matter - foreigner or cuban, we’re all human beings. Sadly, the impression I got of most other foreigners there was a very negative one, so I suppose it’s understandable why Cuban guys are wary of them.

Anyhow, the next couple of days in Santa Clara were great yet pretty uneventful… next stop: Cienfuegos.

Technorati Tags: cuba, cuban society, puppy, remedios, santa clara, trip report, villa clara, visit

Cuba Chronicles, Chapter Six

January 5, 2006 at 2:32 am | In Trip Report | 9 Comments

INCEPTION

City of Santa Clara, Wednesday, September 7th, 2005, 10:30am
I woke up early and feeling great to the sounds of dogs and pigs making their respective noises - this in downtown Santa Clara - and after a great breakfast and a lovely chat with my host Yadin, I drew up a list of sites that I wanted to visit. Santa Clara is a hotbed of revolutionary sites, museums and items to see, which makes sense given its rich history and central position during the 1959 revolution.

At the top of my list was the Che Guevara memorial (and, since 1999, mausoleum). I decided to leave the bike at home and take advantage of the beautiful morning air, walking the 15 - 20 minutes from downtown to the memorial. It’s pretty much a straight line up one of Santa Clara’s main boulevards, lined with peso ice cream stands (about the equivalent of 6 canadian pennies for a surprisingly good cone of ice cream) and other small ‘businesses’.

Now, regardless of your politics, a visit to the memorial is a nearly religious experience - and the museum’s caretakers make sure of it. A huge, sprawling homage to the most recognizable face of the Cuban revolution, it’s a must-see if you’re in or around the Santa Clara city area. Entrance is free, though there is a small fee for storing your bag or backpack before entering (they aren’t allowed inside the complex). Photography is also permitted outside, but not inside.

I started off indoors, preferring to take advantage of the air conditioning after my walk right away. There are two rooms: the first is the mausoleum where the remains of Che and some of his fellow guerilla soldiers lay entombed in the wall. There is some quasi-religious music playing, very dim lighting, and an ‘eternal candle’ burning at one end of the room. Although photographs are not permitted, I asked the attendant if I could take some notes. This would prove to be a mistake as I’ll explain later, though she didn’t object at the time.

I spent some extra time walking around and reading the name under the faces on the wall, though I didn’t recognize any of them besides Che. I then left the room, went outside (the mausoleum and museum aren’t directly connected) and entered the (heavily air-conditioned) museum. Here, you can find all sorts of items and tools used by Che during his campaign in the Sierra Maestra, as well as letters he wrote and some photos of him that I haven’t seen anywhere else. All of the items have some interesting accompanying text, and some of them were quite fascinating to behold (the Molotov Cocktails made from Canada Dry bottles were particularly cool). It does get a bit much at one point, though… I could do without seeing his inhaler, or improvised dentists tools he used in the wild.

Now, I was debating over whether or not I would publish this next part of the story, but I decided to go ahead and mention it anyways.

During my time at the memorial, I kept taking notes in my moleskine notebook. Since I had asked the attendant beforehand, I figured it was alright… As I left the memorial, two uniformed police officers and one in plainclothes approached me, and asked me why I wanted to take notes here… I guess the attendant tattled on me after all. They questioned me along the usual lines (”Who are you?” “What are you doing here?” “Why are you taking notes?”). This went on for a good 5 minutes, culminating in being asked to see my passport. Normally, I’d go along with it, but I’d felt I did nothing wrong. There was a crowd of tourists there watching what was going on, and I was getting pretty upset. As I started to raise my voice, and argue that this is a public museum and not a military installation, the officers backed off and apologized. I tore out the pages with notes from my notebook and offered them to the plainclothes agent… he flashed an embarrassed smile and said “No lo necesito!”, but I insisted and he took them reluctantly in front of the other tourists. I just wanted to leave, so I also gave him my passport, whose number he made a note of.

I was a little pissed off at this point, so I only half-heartedly walked around the outside monument, snapping a few pics here and there before leaving back to town. 20 minutes of sun and 3 (20 cents worth!!!) ice cream cones later, I was already starting to feel better. I then walked all the way past the town center, to the “Monumento del tren blindado“, or “Monument of the armored train”. This is a monument to an assault that the revolutionary fighters led against a train full of the dictator Batista’s men and weapons. They used a bulldozer - which can be seen at the monument - to destroy the train tracks early in the morning, then laid in wait until the train derailed and they would ambush the troops (most of which were already dead). It was a major victory for the rebels as they captured a huge number of arms and supplies. The inside of one of the train carts is a small museum display, and costs 1 CUC to enter.

I was getting pretty hungry by 2:00pm, so I went back to the town center, where I had earlier spotted what looked like a fast-food joint. On closer inspection, it was a fast-food joint in Cuban pesos. This meant that I could buy 5 hamburgers and a glass of juice for what amounted to about 40 Canadian cents. Now, you get what you paid for… the burgers were literally bread and patty - no condiments - and I didn’t bother asking what the meat was, nor did I want to know. But they actually tasted pretty good… I had one at the restaurant, then I wised up, went back to the casa with the remaining 4 burgers, and got some ketchup, tomato, hot sauce and onions to freak them up with. Hmmmm… this is a tasty burgah! I was stuffed until dinner for less than a couple of Canadian quarters. I was always pretty much the only non-Cuban there, and this place became my mainstay lunch visit for every day I spent in Santa Clara.

I spent the remainder of the evening sitting around the town square, writing, listening to music, talking to strangers - who cease being strangers once they know your name - and girl-watching. After the sun went down in a dark red blaze of glory over the horizon, I made my way back to the casa, where Yadin had made sure a *huge* meal consisting of half a fried chicken, home fries, rice and much more was waiting for me. Stuffed beyond anything I’d eat over here - I generally don’t eat much, but feel terrible to leave food on the table, especially delicious Cuban food - I capped off the night having a drink with Yadin and talking while watching clips from Telesur on one of the state-run networks. After Telesur, we watched some Cuban shows, and I have to say that I was very impressed with the production values of Cuban television, all things considered. I mean, I catch some arab shows here sometimes, and they look like the producers, artists and designers came out of retirement after a 20 year hiatus. Cubavision compares very favorably to Al-Jazeera.

A note about my run-in at the Che Guevara monument: Yes, I was bothered, annoyed and upset at what happened. In retrospect, though, it really wasn’t a big deal, and it was the only “incident” I had in my two months in Cuba - and one which was arguably my own fault. I don’t exactly look harmless and unsuspicious, and they don’t often get people walking around taking notes. I’ve had much worse things happen to me in the United States. I’ve also heard scarier horror stories arising from similar situations elsewhere, especially in Latin America.

Technorati Tags: che guevara, chronicles, cuba, santa clara, trip report, villa clara, visit