Steven’s Cuba Blog

Cuba Chronicles, Chapter Seven

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

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.

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