Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Report from Cuba
One doesn't spend long periods in cybercafés in Cuba, the cost is too unthinkable (I was paying 8 pesos convertibles, more or less dollars, the hour in a hotel bar because the connection was much faster than in places charging 6, only there could I open multiple windows, and only there could I print). The point being that this report is being written from Mexico City, where I am spending a week before returning to Guanajuato.
Though they share--más o menos--the same language, Guatemala and Cuba represent vastly different realities, and going from one to the other turns out to be something of a shock. The ethnicity and mestizaje are totally different--Mayans mixed or not with Europeans in one, Africans mixed or not with Europeans in the other. The topography (at least considering the part of Guatemala I travel in, the Western Highlands) is mountainous vs. more-or-less flat. The climate is maybe hot (a dry heat) during the day but always pleasant at night to memories of New York City in August and the tired cliché of "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." (I will admit that May in Cuba is less oppresive than June.) And of course Antigua is a small town and Havana a city of over 2 million. But like the pleasure of green tea and a brownie at the Café Condesa in Antigua, there is the pleasure of walking into the cool, elegant restaurant of the Hotel Florida (they have a veggie page on their multipage menu and serve iced tea) and the tall waiter remembering me from 11 months ago.
My two weeks in Cuba start badly and end brilliantly. I have almost always stayed in casas particulares (a step up from the homestay you may have had while studying Spanish), enjoying the possibility of getting a breakfast and cena to my (vegetarian) specifications. I had stayed twice in the house of a lovely couple with a great location but was looking to improve on a room that shares the bathroom with the adjoining room and that has no windows, which gives me claustrofobia. Through the Internet I have found the house of Humberto, offering private bath and windows, and have made and reconfirmed a reservation for two nights at the outset, a gap of three nights when I will be traveling, and then nine nights. The house turns out to have six rooms to rent, of which four are illegal because the limit is two, the owner turns out to be a 30ish lawyer who can make more money renting rooms than practicing law (especially since he won't be paying taxes on the four illegal rooms), and he also turns out to be a rat.
Late on the afternoon of my second day I am finally able to talk to Humberto, go over my time reserved thinking this is routine, and after much hemming and hawing and spending time on his computer with a very slow (and also illegal) connection to the Internet looking for our correspondence, apparently trying to show that I haven't reserved and reconfirmed my reservation for the nine nights--after all this, it turns out that he has given a reservation to a musical group for the last three nights of my stay. I go ballistic, insist that he find me another house for the whole nine nights, he makes a couple of phone calls and sends me to a house that turns out to be quite pathetic, which I turn down. Given that early the next morning I am going to Viñales, I say I will return to the house and look for another one.
In Viñales, to continue with the housing theme, I call Asela to ask her to call Mercedes to see if the room I stayed in last time will be available. To explain the cast of characters, Asela is a dear friend whom I met during my first trip to Cuba in 2003, when I had reserved a room in Santiago de Cuba and arrived to find that the room wasn't available, that I was going to stay at a house around the corner--very annoying, until I met Asela, owner of that house, who was gracious, helpful, really a delightful person to talk to, which we found ourselves doing for long periods after breakfast and cena. She has email, but not Internet access, thanks to the fact that she was a biology professor at the Universidad del Oriente, work she had to leave for reasons of health, but she has been able to keep her email. We have had an almost daily correspondence ever since. I had left with her the card of Mercedes, in whose house I had stayed last time and which under the current circumstances looked like the best I could do, she had been in contact with Mercedes mutually referring guests, so since she had Mercedes' phone number and I didn't, besides which it would be too embarrassing to call and say here I am but I haven't been staying in your house, I ask her to call, first to ask if she had room for two señoras, and if so to explain the situation and make a reservation. Which is what happens, a great relief, especially since this trip is different from the other three in that Asela is flying from Santiago to Havana to spend my final four and a half days with me.
To return to Viñales, a town of 10,000 three and a half hours to the west of Havana (my first venture in that direction), it is noted for the unique geography of its surroundings, characterized by mogotes, which are limestone knolls as high as 600 meters with trees growing out of them and underground rivers flowing through them and creating caves. (The caves were frequent hiding places for runaway slaves.) It turns out that the dueña of my house is a guide in the national park, and the day after my arrrival I accompany her on a two-and-a-half-hour caminata (hike), which she offers daily through various of the classy hotels located a short distances from the town. It happens that no one else has signed up that day, so I get a private tour, first on a paved road, then an unpaved one, then on paths on the sides of fields and of houses, the mogotes always in the background. The agriculture is tobacco, vegetables, and fruit, of which I see some of my favorites growing for the first time. I also see the high-peaked houses where tobacco is dried. The agricultural techniques are extremely low-tech, meaning oxen pulling the plows. There are absolutely no cars in sight. The houses of the campesinos have the same porches with columns as the houses in the town but the roofs are usually made with leaves of the royal palm instead of roof tiles. Toward the end of the caminata we stop at the house of campesinos known to my guide, sit on the rocking chairs in front and eat pink guayabas offered by our hostess.
My second day in Viñales I explore the most user-friendly of the caves, hiring a taxi to take me there, wait for me, and bring me back. With a group of Germans, their Cuban guide translating to Spanish for my benefit, we walk for a while through the tortuously shaped environs, until we arrive at the river and ride in a boat until we exit, a profusion of vines hanging down from above.
I return to Havana on a Saturday and move to Mercedes' house on Monday rather than Wednesday, as reserved by Asela. Humberto greets me on my arrival with open arms, not to tell me of the house he promised to find for me, but because he needs a foreigner to go somewhere and sign a contract for a cell phone. Thinking this will happen nearby, I say OK, in 15 minutes, after which he introduces me to his cousin, who is going to drive me to Playa, a municipio about three municipios to the west of Havana Vieja, where I am. I immediately back off, saying I thought it would be close, I have to do email and go to the Gran Teatro, and besides, I don't owe you a favor because you're throwing me out. At breakfast the next day--the guests pay daily, and the employee who makes breakfast has little slips of paper with the charges for each room--I discover that Humberto has raised the price of my room from 25 to 30 pesos convertibles. This sends me to a pay phone to arrange to move the next day.
Arriving at Mercedes' house, I confess to Jorge, her husband, that I had wanted a room with private bath, he shows me to my previous room--and comes back a few minutes later to say that in the afternoon, when another guest leaves, I will be moving to another room that has wider beds and a bathroom that is "más independiente," which turns out to mean that they shower in it when their guests are out and use a half bathroom otherwise.
In the meantime, on Saturday I have been able to experience one of the joys of Havana Vieja, a concert of chamberr music at the Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis, a former church and convent gracing the Plaza San Francisco, now used as a small concert hall and a museum of religious art. Cuban musicians and dancers, I have found, are dependably excellent, even brilliant, as is the case with these three duos--violin and piano, two pianos, and cello and piano. I am especially impressed by the young cellist, who plays sonatas for cello and piano by Shostakovich and Miaskovski without a score.
Once my lodging problem is resolved, I can relax, enjoy the leisurely pace and arquitectural unity of Havana Vieja, wonder what happened to all the jineteros who used to molest me, sip lemonades while listening to musical groups at the Café Mina, discover the new Museo de Chocolate, whose café serves a hot chocolate that is like drinking a Hershey bar--and plan for Asela's visit, a project much wished for and long in the making.
Except for the ordeal of staying up until 3-something in the morning awaiting her taxi (Cubana offers certain types of flights for Cubans at extremely low prices but sometimes extremely inconvenient schedules), the visit goes brilliantly, starting with our arrival at the Café Mina just as my favorite group (Raices Cubanas) is getting ready to play. Asela is tireless, soaks up everything, raves about Eusebio Leal (in charge of the restoration of Havana Vieja), and adapts well to situations that as a Cuban she has never experienced--eating in an elegant hotel restaurant, using the bathroom at a least four classy hotels, sipping lemonades in cafés meant for tourists. (It helps that Asela doesn't look Cuban, even has blue eyes.) Going into museums, on the other hand, she reverts to being Cuban to take advantage of an entry fee in pesos corrientes (24 to the US dollar) instead of the pesos convertibles (now slightly more than the dollar) that I have to spend.
My program for our four days together is two days exploring Havana Vieja's four plazas and attractions on and between them, one day seeing the churches and convents in the southern part of Havana Vieja and the Alameda de Paula, and one day along the part of Centro Havana adjoining Havana Vieja. The second day we make an unscheduled trip to Vedado because it turns out that Cubana insists on reconfirming in person and since we're there have lemonades and use the bathroom at the Hotel Nacional.
The climax of our time together is a performance the night before our joint departure in the Gran Teatro de La Habana, a neobaroque marvel, of the Compañía Flamenca Ecos. The performance is electrifying and also innovative--one dance features six dancers who start out sitting on straight chairs, another has the dancers using canes to supplement their tapateo.
Though they share--más o menos--the same language, Guatemala and Cuba represent vastly different realities, and going from one to the other turns out to be something of a shock. The ethnicity and mestizaje are totally different--Mayans mixed or not with Europeans in one, Africans mixed or not with Europeans in the other. The topography (at least considering the part of Guatemala I travel in, the Western Highlands) is mountainous vs. more-or-less flat. The climate is maybe hot (a dry heat) during the day but always pleasant at night to memories of New York City in August and the tired cliché of "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." (I will admit that May in Cuba is less oppresive than June.) And of course Antigua is a small town and Havana a city of over 2 million. But like the pleasure of green tea and a brownie at the Café Condesa in Antigua, there is the pleasure of walking into the cool, elegant restaurant of the Hotel Florida (they have a veggie page on their multipage menu and serve iced tea) and the tall waiter remembering me from 11 months ago.
My two weeks in Cuba start badly and end brilliantly. I have almost always stayed in casas particulares (a step up from the homestay you may have had while studying Spanish), enjoying the possibility of getting a breakfast and cena to my (vegetarian) specifications. I had stayed twice in the house of a lovely couple with a great location but was looking to improve on a room that shares the bathroom with the adjoining room and that has no windows, which gives me claustrofobia. Through the Internet I have found the house of Humberto, offering private bath and windows, and have made and reconfirmed a reservation for two nights at the outset, a gap of three nights when I will be traveling, and then nine nights. The house turns out to have six rooms to rent, of which four are illegal because the limit is two, the owner turns out to be a 30ish lawyer who can make more money renting rooms than practicing law (especially since he won't be paying taxes on the four illegal rooms), and he also turns out to be a rat.
Late on the afternoon of my second day I am finally able to talk to Humberto, go over my time reserved thinking this is routine, and after much hemming and hawing and spending time on his computer with a very slow (and also illegal) connection to the Internet looking for our correspondence, apparently trying to show that I haven't reserved and reconfirmed my reservation for the nine nights--after all this, it turns out that he has given a reservation to a musical group for the last three nights of my stay. I go ballistic, insist that he find me another house for the whole nine nights, he makes a couple of phone calls and sends me to a house that turns out to be quite pathetic, which I turn down. Given that early the next morning I am going to Viñales, I say I will return to the house and look for another one.
In Viñales, to continue with the housing theme, I call Asela to ask her to call Mercedes to see if the room I stayed in last time will be available. To explain the cast of characters, Asela is a dear friend whom I met during my first trip to Cuba in 2003, when I had reserved a room in Santiago de Cuba and arrived to find that the room wasn't available, that I was going to stay at a house around the corner--very annoying, until I met Asela, owner of that house, who was gracious, helpful, really a delightful person to talk to, which we found ourselves doing for long periods after breakfast and cena. She has email, but not Internet access, thanks to the fact that she was a biology professor at the Universidad del Oriente, work she had to leave for reasons of health, but she has been able to keep her email. We have had an almost daily correspondence ever since. I had left with her the card of Mercedes, in whose house I had stayed last time and which under the current circumstances looked like the best I could do, she had been in contact with Mercedes mutually referring guests, so since she had Mercedes' phone number and I didn't, besides which it would be too embarrassing to call and say here I am but I haven't been staying in your house, I ask her to call, first to ask if she had room for two señoras, and if so to explain the situation and make a reservation. Which is what happens, a great relief, especially since this trip is different from the other three in that Asela is flying from Santiago to Havana to spend my final four and a half days with me.
To return to Viñales, a town of 10,000 three and a half hours to the west of Havana (my first venture in that direction), it is noted for the unique geography of its surroundings, characterized by mogotes, which are limestone knolls as high as 600 meters with trees growing out of them and underground rivers flowing through them and creating caves. (The caves were frequent hiding places for runaway slaves.) It turns out that the dueña of my house is a guide in the national park, and the day after my arrrival I accompany her on a two-and-a-half-hour caminata (hike), which she offers daily through various of the classy hotels located a short distances from the town. It happens that no one else has signed up that day, so I get a private tour, first on a paved road, then an unpaved one, then on paths on the sides of fields and of houses, the mogotes always in the background. The agriculture is tobacco, vegetables, and fruit, of which I see some of my favorites growing for the first time. I also see the high-peaked houses where tobacco is dried. The agricultural techniques are extremely low-tech, meaning oxen pulling the plows. There are absolutely no cars in sight. The houses of the campesinos have the same porches with columns as the houses in the town but the roofs are usually made with leaves of the royal palm instead of roof tiles. Toward the end of the caminata we stop at the house of campesinos known to my guide, sit on the rocking chairs in front and eat pink guayabas offered by our hostess.
My second day in Viñales I explore the most user-friendly of the caves, hiring a taxi to take me there, wait for me, and bring me back. With a group of Germans, their Cuban guide translating to Spanish for my benefit, we walk for a while through the tortuously shaped environs, until we arrive at the river and ride in a boat until we exit, a profusion of vines hanging down from above.
I return to Havana on a Saturday and move to Mercedes' house on Monday rather than Wednesday, as reserved by Asela. Humberto greets me on my arrival with open arms, not to tell me of the house he promised to find for me, but because he needs a foreigner to go somewhere and sign a contract for a cell phone. Thinking this will happen nearby, I say OK, in 15 minutes, after which he introduces me to his cousin, who is going to drive me to Playa, a municipio about three municipios to the west of Havana Vieja, where I am. I immediately back off, saying I thought it would be close, I have to do email and go to the Gran Teatro, and besides, I don't owe you a favor because you're throwing me out. At breakfast the next day--the guests pay daily, and the employee who makes breakfast has little slips of paper with the charges for each room--I discover that Humberto has raised the price of my room from 25 to 30 pesos convertibles. This sends me to a pay phone to arrange to move the next day.
Arriving at Mercedes' house, I confess to Jorge, her husband, that I had wanted a room with private bath, he shows me to my previous room--and comes back a few minutes later to say that in the afternoon, when another guest leaves, I will be moving to another room that has wider beds and a bathroom that is "más independiente," which turns out to mean that they shower in it when their guests are out and use a half bathroom otherwise.
In the meantime, on Saturday I have been able to experience one of the joys of Havana Vieja, a concert of chamberr music at the Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis, a former church and convent gracing the Plaza San Francisco, now used as a small concert hall and a museum of religious art. Cuban musicians and dancers, I have found, are dependably excellent, even brilliant, as is the case with these three duos--violin and piano, two pianos, and cello and piano. I am especially impressed by the young cellist, who plays sonatas for cello and piano by Shostakovich and Miaskovski without a score.
Once my lodging problem is resolved, I can relax, enjoy the leisurely pace and arquitectural unity of Havana Vieja, wonder what happened to all the jineteros who used to molest me, sip lemonades while listening to musical groups at the Café Mina, discover the new Museo de Chocolate, whose café serves a hot chocolate that is like drinking a Hershey bar--and plan for Asela's visit, a project much wished for and long in the making.
Except for the ordeal of staying up until 3-something in the morning awaiting her taxi (Cubana offers certain types of flights for Cubans at extremely low prices but sometimes extremely inconvenient schedules), the visit goes brilliantly, starting with our arrival at the Café Mina just as my favorite group (Raices Cubanas) is getting ready to play. Asela is tireless, soaks up everything, raves about Eusebio Leal (in charge of the restoration of Havana Vieja), and adapts well to situations that as a Cuban she has never experienced--eating in an elegant hotel restaurant, using the bathroom at a least four classy hotels, sipping lemonades in cafés meant for tourists. (It helps that Asela doesn't look Cuban, even has blue eyes.) Going into museums, on the other hand, she reverts to being Cuban to take advantage of an entry fee in pesos corrientes (24 to the US dollar) instead of the pesos convertibles (now slightly more than the dollar) that I have to spend.
My program for our four days together is two days exploring Havana Vieja's four plazas and attractions on and between them, one day seeing the churches and convents in the southern part of Havana Vieja and the Alameda de Paula, and one day along the part of Centro Havana adjoining Havana Vieja. The second day we make an unscheduled trip to Vedado because it turns out that Cubana insists on reconfirming in person and since we're there have lemonades and use the bathroom at the Hotel Nacional.
The climax of our time together is a performance the night before our joint departure in the Gran Teatro de La Habana, a neobaroque marvel, of the Compañía Flamenca Ecos. The performance is electrifying and also innovative--one dance features six dancers who start out sitting on straight chairs, another has the dancers using canes to supplement their tapateo.
