Category Archives: Cuba

#7 THE bus toilet incident (The walk of shame!) Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in Cuba, fiction, holidays, humour, Pindar, religion

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There are two reasons we are making the six-hour journey to the farthest end of Cuba to Baracoa, firstly we have not been bowled over by Santiago, and secondly, I’m adamant that ‘there must be’ some tasty food somewhere on this island of 11.5 million people, and Baracoa is renowned for its ‘special’ Caribbean spicy sauce.

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We pass through Guantánamo, famous for two things to the outside world, Guantanamera (there’s only one Guantananera-a-a), the patriotic song about the girl from Guantanamo (Guantanamera is the Spanish for Guantanamo), and,

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the American sponsored Muslim holiday camp, in no way illegal and a breach of any human rights, this for me is like Trump getting elected, an illegal interrogation (Interrogation is American-English for torture!) centre, by a prozy country that hates you, and the people in power in the country you are detained in now have the other Castro brother in charge, that have both survived dozens of assignation attempts (although Fidel was the decoy for Raul), that would quite happily torture, the torturers happily torturing! (Wheels within wheels, outside wheels! – You can’t make this stuff up!) For this reason and many more I crane my neck as we get somewhere near the GITMO naval base, home to nearly ten-thousand American service personnel, allegedly protecting the Panama Canal – I wonder if the Chinese will set up a naval base to protect their investment in the Guatemala ship canal they are building to rival the Panama one? – We all know the answer already! All I can make out from the distance is a watch-tower and defiant stars and stripes flying aloft in the breeze.

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Apparently, inmates, both captives and interrogators were subjected to thirty-hours of the same song on a loop; Queens, We are the Champions of the World, Take Your Best Shot by Dope and Fuck You God, by Deicide, I understand the irony of the first two, but the last one is sending out very some mixed messages to monotheistic religions with the big fella at the pyramid! Saturday Night Fever is a strange choice, surely, Stayin Alive would have worked much better?

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But there is one, that baffles me, and it’s one of my very favourite tunes of all time, David Gray’s, Babylon. Chosen because of its biblical connotations, eh up, surely after a day of listening to this on a loop very loud, you realise there is not much ‘religious connotation’ in it, unless love and ecstasy are a new religion?

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I could quite easily listen to this on a loop interspersed with being force feed through a tube and waterboarded – total disclosure, I have never tried it! If you’re as baffled as me by all this, read more here: https://mic.com/articles/87851/11-popular-songs-the-cia-used-to-torture-prisoners-in-the-war-on-terror#.63IUyMIGw

 

Baracoa is a strange but enchanting place, sometimes as a traveller/tourist you step outside your body and observe yourself observing the new environment/culture/people. Here feels like that to me, the people going about their everyday business and you watching them in a Truman Showesque way. Baseball is the national sport of Cuba, at the end of pretty much the only sandy beach in the town is a baseball stadium, it is an impressive structure, especially from a distance, enormous in relation to all around – pretty much only a few low-level houses, a bit of sand and a flat sea, it rises up incongruously, white and spectacular.

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It draws you in, but as you get closer and up to it, it’s fighting a constant battle against the briny sea air, and looks like it’s coming off second best, inside it’s just as impressive. This stadium, and I exaggerate not, is actually on the beach! It is ‘Fields of Dreams.’ ‘Build it and they will come!’, but there are only about 80,000 people close enough to come. This stadium will stay with me forever, I get chatting to a craftsman inside the empty stadium and he fills me in with lots of facts, they can’t obviously compete with the big cities; Havana, Santiago, Cienfuegos and Camaguey, they are the Leicester City of Cuban Baseball. He tells me there are trials in a few days’ time, free to the public. I would be there, but we have booked onto a tour of the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park – I would love to see and hear the thwack of leather on wood in this mesmerising place – I’m so tempted to cancel the national park – I have no interest in baseball normally, it’s just ‘men-rounders’ and I have a degree in Ecology and a love of natural history. This is how captivating this stadium on the beach is!

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So, Lechita sauce (coconut, tomatoes, garlic and spices) is one of the reasons we have travelled to the farthest end of the island from Havana. In all honesty it is tastiest food I’ve sampled in Cuba, but it is no better than you would get in a supermarket packet back home, we are discussing this when the proud manager of the restaurant with the best Trip Advisor reputation (not much competition) sidles up to our table and asks, what we think of the food, as I’m about to give an honest considered opinion, The Wife espouses,

“It’s, just okay!” He turns and with a humph of his shoulders, disappears to more agreeable patrons from North Korea!

“Have you got Asperger’s?”

“Well, it is, just okay, isn’t it?” (Total disclosure, she does not have Asperger’s syndrome, just a poor filter and lack of tact.)

We are setting off from Baraco to Santiago, a five-hour journey, the bus is well over an hour late coming into the station and when it arrives the rear side front and stairs have been partly mangled, the lights smashed, and the windscreen has a crack running through it and the door is held shut with string, it has hit a lorry in the mountains and come off second best.

We have been happily chatting to an English couple from London, the husband has per-chance bumped into a Cuban-national friend he met here 15 years before, it is heart-warming to watch them at the station, like they are off to war on opposite sides, they are very unlikely to meet again, that’s sad, but this is the gripping hands across the divide stuff – ‘And we made our love on wasteland, And through the barricades,’ I don’t know why I think of the lyrics from this Spandau Ballet song as I watch two men hug and depart, probably forever, this is humanity acting locally, but thinking globally, something the people that run our countries could heed… That was a party-political broadcast from the ‘Global Common-Sense Party!’ The English couple have two very young children, a nine-month and a two-year old, I know what fun looks like, and two under twos travelling independently is not ‘it’, e.g. The wife is juggling a whinging the nine-month old later on the bus, whilst trying to read a novel, this looks like extreme reading to me, and could only be harder if she were trying in to do it under water and ironing at the same time! My wife says maybe we should help, I inform her I’ve done larval stage with my own children, and just watching this couple is absolutely exhausting.

After an hour and a half, we stop at the brother in laws place in the hills for refreshments, my bowels are corrugating. I try to relieve them, but they are like a lone-wolf misanthrope and refuse to be relieved. I think I hear them say, ‘keep your friends close, keep your enemas closer still’, I know which I am! The bus sets off again, then my bowels ebb and flow with greater potency and I’m caught in the bob and swell. Total disclosure, number three, there is a toilet at the back of the coach, that you can smell every time the door opens and what is about to depart from me should not be inflicted on humans with any sense of smell, never mind those in unfortunate close proximity to the washroom, believe me Americans, you would not wash in there afterwards, even euphemistically! So, for the second time I approach the co-driver and in my best Spanish taught to me by a Nazi (see last week’s blog), I proclaim, ‘Estoy un poco enfermo’, (I’m a little ill), forgetting the bus is held together by string. They inform me the bus will stop in San Antonio, I know this is before Guantánamo, so I think I can hang on a few minutes, a few minutes turn into twenty-five, The Wife is holding up a 5 CUC coin and asking me what it is worth in Cuban pesos, this is not a difficult calculation, but the bus has pulled over and the driver has climbed out of his window, I’m thinking I should do the same, he has gone to buy bananas, it is a national holiday the next day, inconveniencing fifty passengers and one in particular, I think this is it, toilet nirvana, and as I get up, he jumps back in and drives off again, the bastard! The Wife is still wittering on about the coin’s value held between us like a two-year old, she has an O-Level in maths! I get up and proclaim louder and more assertively this time to the co-driver, ‘Mi poco enfermo’, they feel obliged to pull over at a row of modern double-storey hoses, I’m watching like a hawk a very old-man leave his dwelling while the co-driver disentangles the string to open the door, I leap from the bus, just as the old-man turns the key in the lock and places it deep within his jacket pocket – the bastard!, by the time I have explained and he has unlocked it, it will be too late – if a siren is not going off, it should be! So, I burst through the open door of the house next door to the surprise of a startled middle-aged women watching tele. ‘mi poco enfermo’ and I vigorously rub my stomach, whilst looking pained, which is not hard, ‘oh,’, she replies and thinks I have come to call for her son!! She shouts up the stairs for Estevo, I’m very close to the worst of all social embarrassments now and I’m thinking the toilet has to be upstairs and just making a dash for it, I repeat my plea and pathos to Estevo as he descends into the living room, and thankfully he understands the strange gringos urgency and points to the back of the house and right, I just, only just, make it, relieved I get up only to have to sit down again, I’m in toilet-nirvana, now, eventually, it’s safe for everyone, if I get back on the bus. I try to give them money but ironically only have my emergency bus station toilet money, about twenty pence, the lovely Cuban people in the middle of nowhere with a flushing toilet are obviously offended, but I have made the gesture.(StCP!)

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Meanwhile The wife is telling the inquisitive bus that think I have a long-lost friend here, like the English guy earlier, about my toilet abrupta exploits, someone is translating for the benefit of the Spanish speakers (I am not making this up for comic effect, unfortunately!) As I leave the house fifty pairs of eyes are fixed on me as I make the walk of shame up the path of the house, and then the full length of the pavement adjacent to the bus, I feel obliged to report back to the whole bus when three people ask if I’m ok now? – as I make the second walk of shame back to my seat in the middle. The Wife is confused and I’m reticent to tell her all the full details unless she stands up and broadcasts it to the other passengers to be followed by laughter, then a second wave of laughter when translated!

“Did you go behind a bush?” The Wife asks.

“No, in the house there.” I point to my toilet facilitating friends stood in their open doorway waving as we pull off. (Again, I’m not making this up!)

“Some strangers house, what did they say?” She tries to clarify, bemused.

“Not sure, I was trying not to shit myself in a complete strangers Cuban house!” She laughs unkindly.

“What, you just burst in?”

“Yeah, the alternative consequence did not bear thinking about, needs must when the devil drives.” She laughs further, unkindly, then snorts out even more laughter for good measure.

“Did you not just go behind a bush?”

“Can you see any bushes in their front gardens?”

“What, a Complete strangers house?” She is still bemused, or the world’s best actor.

“Estevo was a complete stranger a few minutes ago, not any more, still not sure what mama’s called.” She carries on laughing like an unkind lunatic.

“I’ve never met anyone with such a delicate stomach as you.”

“I have the constitution of a royal, I’m descended from Louis the Fortieth and Beau Brummell, not peasant’s like you.” Occasionally over the next thirty minutes before we pull into Guantamamo, she just looks at me shakes her head and smiles – unkindly.

“At least I can do basic maths, it’s 1.25 pesos, you retard!” I reply, when I’ve have had enough of unkind admonishments.

This is The Wife’s favourite travel anecdote of the jaunt, normally her eyes glaze over when I recount a story from the various slings and arrows of embarrassing misfortune that have befallen me in my existential struggle though life, but this one delights her perversely, to such an extent she will actually say, ‘Tell them about the bus journey in Cuba’ then laugh beforehand, if The Wife laughs with just the strap line it has to be funny, and involve discomfort social-embarrassment and self-effacing parody on my behalf. Then as I start to recount the story, that even I’m getting bored with, she will start to laugh ahead of me and everyone else… unkindly!

* StCP! = Supporting the Cuban People

Next Time: Then the food changed into technicolor!

 

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

 

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Key Words: Baracoa, Guantanamo, Guantamemaro, walk of shame, Field of Dreams, Build it and they will come, Lechita sauce, Spandau ballet, Cuba

#6 When it’s gone, it’s gone: Santiago de Cuba. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America.

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cuba, food, holidays, humour, politics, travel, writing

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I find Santiago de Cuba underwhelming, I will explain. I’ve done my research, Santiago is the cultural capital of Cuba – try telling that to Havanans. It’s closer to Haiti and the Dominican Republic than Havana and is heavily steeped in Afro-Caribbean culture. Entrepreneurial and rebellious are adjectives to displace poor, and as the second city you can only compare it to the capital. We have coincided our travels to be in Santiago, the far end of the island from Havana, for the festival to end all festivals some would have us believe! We have fantastic central roof-top accommodation that looks westerly over the harbour, with only four ships of any size berthed, two of these are Chinese (Americas loss, I sense) below the distant rolling hills, it looks spectacular from afar.

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A couple of people contacted me to question if the $25US/month Cuban wage was in fact true, it’s an average. We are told a story of a high school English teacher that earned $50CUC/month, who gave his job up to conduct culture walking tours, the day I spoke to him he had led ten people at $10CUC each, he had made twice is monthly wage in one day! Tourism is the bag to be in. I speak with another teacher when we are browsing in the large indoor market, also an ex high school teacher, that now has a shoe stall and makes $60CUC from that ­- more when tourists are around, and still does private tutoring, like he said – who can survive on $25CUC/month!

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I have learnt my Spanish from a set of cds on the way to work and back for two months. I have smashed the Luminar beginners course – if ever you are a representative of a food company attending a trade-fair in Madrid – I’m your man, although I felt a little cheated that the sexual chemistry between Mr Hanendez and Miss Roberts never conjugated in the present tense! – maybe it does in the advanced course when they get married, have relationship counselling, and eventual divorce? I moved onto intermediate (bought cheap on eBay – it’s my own fault), which consists of what I imagine to be an exiled Nazi war criminal giving Spanish lessons in South America somewhere (sorry I cannot be more specific than that), at least he sounds Germanic, male and life-weary, he spends most of the time berating his English university students, he does also appear to have a Weinsteinian favouritism to the females, his two catch phrases are ‘no, no, no, no, no one will understand you,’ and ‘you must get the push of the verb correct, to get the correct tense, it’s consssensual, not conselssual. Occasionally he reaps praise on one of the women and you can sense their utter relief that they have eventually appeased him – Stockholm syndrome comes to mind. So, one day we set off on a cultural walking tour as outlined in the Lonely Planet, we walk in the general direction of the farthest point to start and will work back towards Plaza Céspedes, near our casa, but half way to the start, we discover we have left the guidebook, containing the detailed route to navigate, it is 35C in the shade and neither of us is willing to go back for it, the blame game starts and we both agree that it’s the other persons fault! I have a good grasp of the route in parts of a foreign city that I never ventured into ever before and I have intermediate Spanish-Nazi to fall back on. I know Pedro Pico (a street named after PP himself –  is the starting point, and with a few ‘Donde esta Pedro Pico?’ We’ll have no problem finding it, two problems here, no local seems to know where Pedro Pico is, if he is a peak, a person, a priest, a shop, or a mime artist we are meeting or trying to find! Secondly, what Herr Eichmann has failed to tell me is that the people will not only not know what/where/who Pedro Pico is, but they will do so in machine-gun Spanish. After my third enquiry of PP and blank faces and machine-gun Spanish, at least I think it’s Spanish? The Wife is like a little dismissive echo, ‘fucking Pedro Pico!’ We eventually find Pedro Pico, it is a little forgettable side road, but not for us! Even now when the Wife is sleeping, and I whisper, ‘donde esta Pedro Pico?’ she will murmur back, ‘fucking pedro pico!’

A friend once told me that when her parents split up and her mother was going through her photograph albums with her new partner, and she was telling him about events with her ex-husband, it meant nothing to her knew partner – why should it, it was a previous life. I always remember this story when I’m living in my car just to ‘get away’ for a few days and it’s these little almost inconsequential events to the rest of the world that are invisible glue – we will always have Pedro Pico and The elephants at Kuala Lumpur Zoo! (https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6946206-28-a-woman-in-bloom-travails-through-life-sometimes-avoiding-the-p)

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We visit the Museum de Carnival, an aperitif to the carnival proper, the procession is the same night and we are excited after the museum. We have wandered down to have a pre-cursory look at the floats, thinking more will appear later (they don’t). Temporary spectator stands have been erected along the main wide road down by the docks where the flotilla sets out from.  When we return for the allotted start time it appears that everyone apart from the stall vendors are still getting organised. We wait around for a hour and a half, eventually they set off on Cuban time, then appear to stop for another half an hour, there are several ensembles of dancers, we watch most and a few floats – we are underwhelmed and bored, this is dubbed one of the greatest carnivals in the world, there is obviously no trades descriptions act in Cuba. We both agree, ‘Is that it, let’s go and do the other Cuban festival thang and get pissed on rum!’ And pissed we did get, mightily so. We had befriended a young male salsa teacher, Rico, the night before and half-arranged to meet up again with him. He has informed us he will take us to his ‘ghetto festival’ but is baffled to why we would even want to go when the main events are in the centre. I do the Cuban thing and buy a bottle of run and a two-litre bottle of coke, all of a sudden I have lots of friends, people Rico knows, if they’re a friend of Rico, they’re a friend of mine. We have no objection sharing drink with locals, we are in Delores Plaza, a professional sound system has been set up and dancing is occurring, ranging from professional salsa teacher all the way down to inebriated middle-aged gringo on holiday dancing! It’s great vibe, we still want to visit the ‘ghetto carnival’ but Rico is still baffled, he says this is much, much better, so we stay and buy another bottle of rum and coke and we gain even more friends. It’s a great night and we swim home, once home I casually vomit in the toilet, as I do so I think to myself in mid-reflux, ‘this is quite pleasant!’ – that’s when you know you are beyond pissed on Havana Club – I deserve to feel much worse the next day, but I have ejected most of my hangover into the Santiago sewer system.

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We are hassled by the same eccentric drunk the next day, I think his name is Mr Bidido, we endure him the first time, but he hassles us again, forgetting he has hassled us before and The Wife politely says, ‘We just want some privacy’ to which he replies ‘Well, fuck you then!’ in English.

I foolishly have a three-meat bird dish in a restaurant overlooking Delores Plaza, that consists of two unknown fowl and luncheon meat – this is again one of the better tourist restaurants! It can mean only one thing: Imodium on the trip to Baracoa, via Guantanamo, there’s a lovely bay there with a huge military complex on. This ‘bunged-up’ ride will pale into insignificance compared to the bus ride back and the ‘walk of shame’.

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We go and observe the bullet holes in the wall of the military barracks, where the first bungled event of the revelation occurred, almost terminating the path to the victorious republic before it was even born, if you want to an exemplar of how not to lead a guerrilla attack, read about this one, the then barracks is now a high school, has been from 1963, and you can casually wander in and take photos while school is in progress, no one asks us for a police check, DNA sample and two references, like they would in the UK, they are patriotically proud of the bullet holes next to the books.

We struggled to find bottle water at one point one day, and we had to ration what we had. The food often ran out in the restaurants. For example, in one of the better restaurants, next to the museum of carnival I order two dishes from the menu, the waiter says they’re not available, then we spend a few moments choosing an alternative to be told they’re not available, this feels like a sketch from Monty Python, so I ask him what is, he points to three dishes off the extensive list, there is no rice, chicken, tomatoes, green beans, etc, etc, we decide to get a sandwich, to be told the bread has run out, I’m not making this up, this in the second biggest city in Cuba! The answer to the scourge of food is, ‘it’s festival time!’ I semi-sarcastically ask if more people have turned up this year, it shoots above his head when he replies, ‘no, the same.’

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Santiago is a long, long, way behind Havana. I wanted to like it so much more, the pollution is absolutely horrendous, and although there are not many vehicles on the road the belching ancient lorries can instantly reduce your life-expectancy by six months as they pass. Not since India have I experienced pollution so choking. We did eat at one great Caribbean restaurant, St Pauli. It’s a double-edged sword, with more money and freedom, less embargoes, the food would not only be better quality, but actually available, tourism would be better organised, money would pour in and it would be a fantastic destination, but that is obviously not what everyone wants, I’d just be happy with decent available food and drinking water, then I could forgive the carnival to end all carnivals, which I’ve seen better in Moss Side, Manchester.

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P.S. So adamant was I at the time, without the guidebook to hand that it was Pedro Pico, I later realised it was Padro Pico, which makes much more sense, as this is a prominent unmissable tourist attraction, and not an insignificant side street! The Wife never re-checked the route later as I did, and it will always remain my secret – ‘Fucking Pedro Pico!!’

 

Next time:  THE bus toilet incident (The walk of shame!)

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

 

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

 

 

#5: The revolution starts here. Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cuba, hobbits, holidays, humour, Pindar, politics, thewritingIMP, travel, Uncategorized

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two manatees

Santa Clara slap bang in the middle of Cuba was liberated by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his bandoleros in 1958 when he derailed a military train carrying 350 government troops and munitions, it sounded the death knell for Batista and Guevara is such a hero in these parts that a massive statue is located 2km from the city centre on the outskirts of town. It is the statue, and the museum that marks the spot of the derailing we have mainly come to see, although the museum was shut the day we tried to visit. Santa Clara is supposed to be an artsy edgy cultural centre, it was lovely, but no great shakes if you are on a tight schedule.

Carlo, the casa owner in Trinidad has arranged the next three accommodation places, this is a massive relief for us. I’m not sure if it is because of this, but Maria the owner of the Casa welcomes us like we are her children returning from a bloody war. The bon hommie is smothering, she speaks no English, so we are reliant on my pigeon Spanish, which is fun, but very tiring after a while.

We hired taxi from Trinidad, that we have paid 60CUC (*StCP! – see last week’s blog for average wages in Cuba – $25/month!) and takes an hour and a half, to drop us at the Che memorial first before Maria’s. The imposing Che is keeping watch on the very outskirts of town and fields – in case the local farmers rise up! Unsurprisingly it’s a very impressive memorial to the cigar smoker of the year 1959.

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Fidel Castro won it the year before in my completely made up poll to save time, Winston Churchill had a good run before, J F Kennedy did well just after, if George Burns is still alive(?) I should put him somewhere! Che smoking cigars was quite bad idea as he was a severe asthmatic! Dipping them in honey would have helped very little, but it gives you something to do when your waiting for another guerrilla battle to fight or a train to derail!

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With no internet we cannot book a bus at the station for the next day, but like the way of the world, Maria knows someone and we are sorted. If you can get a local to book your bus it saves a lot of hassle and queuing. The bus station toilet is up to public Cuban standards, they don’t do minus-star ratings in Cuba for obvious reasons. There is a cubicle designed for a pit pony and men at urinals nonchalantly ignore me, like I’m a naughty dwarf that has been sent out of class for tampering with himself! Until one fella looks in, not hard to achieve, and I reply a belligerent, pitiful ‘hola’, to which, thankfully he does not reply or strike up a conversation! Surprise, surprise, the toilet does not flush and I take the cistern lid off as experience of two previous casas gives me a good idea how to fix plumbing in Cuba, it is half full of water and disintegrating toilet paper! I maybe misguided, but I’m public spirited! Other urinators look on at the gringo on holiday trying to the fix plumbing! My Spanish isn’t good enough to do dismissive Spanish swearing, but I have a GCSE in International Body Language, so I know it is not something the casual toilet visitor would be prepared to undertake! I tell the attendant that the toilet is ‘se rompe’ it is broken, and begrudgingly he brings a bucket in to flush my embarrassment away in what appears to be a pilot episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm!’ I make a quick(ish) exit. The toilet opens into a café and the there’s one door with inadequate plantation shutters, health and safety would be apoplectic!

The bus takes 7 hours instead of 4, not helped by stopping at a Bali Hai type service station for nearly an hour and a half while the tourists held captive are fleeced or go hungry. We eventually reach Camagüey, everyone’s preferred destination except the drivers – there’s always two drivers on a bus in Cuba, the unions would not have it any other way!

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This looks like an extensive, efficient rail system  – don’t be fooled! The reality is below.

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There’s a train system in Cuba, honestly, it is mainly a single track between major towns and cities and here the station is literally crumbling to such an extent that it has a metal fence around it for fear of falling debris, although you’re chances of suing someone is about the same as a train arriving on time. I suspect when a train eventually passes through the town people throw a party! I eventually hope to catch the train back from Santigo de Cuba all the way back to Havana, when I suggest this to the casa owner she just belly-laughs at me with contempt. When I eventually see the ‘tourist train’ it has broken windows and looks like it has not moved for months. Avoid the trains, when they run, they usually breakdown, not surprising as they are mainly from the 1960s.

We like Camagüey, Cuba’s third biggest city, it has a real buzzy soul to it, although it takes us all our time there to learn to pronounce it right!

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My sandals that I have had for nearly ten years have flopped, unbound and become a severe tripping hazard. I bought them in Australia ten years ago, I have become attached to them on the occasions when it’s warm enough to wear them. So, I have to buy some new ones, we traipse around shoe shops losing the will to live until I settle on a pair of leather Adidas slip-ons, that would not be my first choice, but needs must, when otherwise you look like a homeless nomadic sadho! With them being new, cheap and hard to keep on, my feet turn tide-mark brown. I walk around like an oversized Hobbit, and the locals think it’s some form of British holiday ritual. If you want them they are size 9 UK, and would not fit the wide feet of a hobbit.

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The happy looking fella on the right must have been on holiday we I visited!

We love this city, my favourite place is Bar El Cambio in the corner of Parque Ignacio Agramonte, graffiti splattered walls, a few tables, very surely waiters (even when you order in Spanish!) I have visited this bar before through the writing of Hunter S Thompson, The Great Gozo himself used to drink in here. This for me is better than the tourist trap of the Hemmingway Bar in Havana, this still feels fresh, like he might wander in and join the surely bar staff in misanthropic banter. I could quite easy get pissed in here and be carried home as homage to the great man, wake up with a festival hangover and still smile. Instead of that we have booked a ticket to see some authentic Cuban music on the back of the great music we have sampled in Trinidad. When we get there, it is empty apart from three tables of tourist. It’s Cuba and eventually I have to visit a sit-down toilet, never expect to find a toilet seat and you won’t be disappointed! This toilet, for a mid-range venue does not surprise me and when I return to the table and report on the state of the toilet –The Wife says, “Image what the men’s is like?” I’ve been in the women’s pity pony cubicle, auditioning for yet another episode of ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’. The answer is pretty much the same – where are all the toilet seats? Are there endless gurning competitions occurring in Cuba?

Then the venue starts to fill up, the band start a two-hour sound check/tune up. It’s student night, there must be some promotion at the university as everyone is under the age of twenty-five and knows everyone else. They all do the Cuban drinking thing; two-litre bottle of cola and a full bottle of Havana Club per table. It is a surreal evening, the band cannot be heard above the chatter of completely uninterested students, it is like a Venereal Disease waiting room! We feel like middle aged tourists (full disclosure – we are!!) at one of our children’s twenty-firsts. It is absolutely fascinating, I get chatting to a few of the students about Cuba from their young educated viewpoint. They want little of the ‘Old Cuba’, they are looking far beyond the shores for change. They love their country, but as is the prerogative of the young they want so much more than their parents and grandparents had. They become disinterested in me when I tell them I have no sexually transmitted contagions to share, not since 1987 – it was dark, a lot of alcohol was involved and I think it was another human, the clinic told me it was definitely mammalian! They are not sure if I’m being serious, and neither am I after so much Havana Club and an afternoon in Bar El Cambio!

STD and Teen Girls

Next time: When it’s gone, it’s gone: Santigo de Cuba.

* StCP! = Supporting the Cuban People

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

BookCoverImage

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

#4: So, you think you’re badly paid!  Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

19 Tuesday Sep 2017

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When we arrive in beautiful colonial UNESCO protected Trinidad, Cuba, a place that looks as though the clocks stopped in 1850 there is the usual scrum at a plaza (Carrillo) where the bus pulls in. We have a strategy that works for us, I leave the bags with The Wife in a bar/restaurant/shade etc and I go on the hunt for accommodation. My bicycle rickshaw driver is Daniel and I think I have negotiated a 2CUC ride to the casa that is top of our list. It is full and Daniel takes me to similar places, most are full, eventually we find a great casa run by a young lawyer. We return to The Wife in Plaza that also houses the hospital. Daniel now wants 15CUC. I lie and say we only have 7 until we can get to the bank, we have an emergency 10CUC note. He has told me he only picks tourists up, for obvious reasons. He reluctantly takes the 7CUC, you mean bastard I hear you say, or is that just paranoid tinnitus? Before you judge too harshly, let me explain the average monthly wage in Cuba: 20-25 CUC. Exchange rates can vary obviously, especially if you decide to leave your European brothers and sisters, for God knows what unbelievable reason! 20CUC is £25, or US$20 per month, just stop and think about that for a short moment (think… think… ok, carry on), this is for an entire month!! The world average is £928/ month – so the average Cuban is getting paid roughly 1/40th the average of the entire global monthly pay – no wonder young Cubans want change when they look out at the rest of the world through the internet! I have just paid a rickshaw driver, albeit a pleasant one, the equivalent of well over a week’s wage for less than an hour’s work! No wonder he only picks tourists up!

trinidad

We get to the casa particular and we get chatting to the owner, let’s call him Carlo, the reason I’m changing his name, he tells us a lot about the politics of Cuba which I may refer to later. Carlo is in his mid-thirties, he is an ex-lawyer, when he was qualified he was earning 25CUC/ month, his wife is a doctor in the hospital, she earns 25CUC per month. The average casa in Cuba costs 25CUC per night, or, a month’s wages for a local – this is why Carlo is no longer a lawyer. The government take a set amount of monthly tax, he pays 500CUC as he has two rooms in his house, anything after ten nights full occupation is pure profit.  They are wealthy, as are many other Cubans by local standards for basically doing bed and breakfast, breakfast by the way is usually 5CUC each, but they are massive, tasty and impossible to finish. Carlo is renovating a five-bed casa across the street to rent out, he is about to become even wealthier. Tourism is the game to get into, it is the difference between living on the bread line, like a lot of rural Cubans do, ‘They go to bed hungry many nights’ Carlo tells me, ‘And that’s not right.’ He adds. That is one thing ingrained socialism does, it breeds empathy, we meet it everywhere we go – apart from taxi drivers in Havana! Although Carlo tells me Cuba is not a socialist country, but the people in power want the outside would to perceive it that way! I ask him about corruption, he has had to pay the local administrator 50CUC for permission to renovate his new casa, he tells me it is not too bad. When I suggest that 50CUC is two months average wage he dismisses this as money he can make in a single night. His two bedrooms are full for four months solid and he is wealthy enough to have visited his friend in France. While we are on France, I spent many hours meeting French people last summer and trying to explain why the British decided to leave Europe and eventually when I could not help them any more with their total bafflement, I just shrugged my shoulders and apologised for the slightly higher majority (52% to 48%), most of which will be dead before any possibly ‘significant’ benefits are seen! Deep breath, move on. While still on France.

We meet a French couple who seek out the museum curator in Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos is twinned with the French woman’s home town, so she is interested to meet the curator, he gets paid 15CUC per month! He’s the boss, but she tells us he is not complaining as he has got to visit France twice because of his job! It is better in Cuba to do anything within tourism than any traditional indigenous occupation, this is the general consensus. Carlo said the game changer for him was not getting a degree in law, it was taking the optional module to learn English, by being able to speak English he rents his casa easier and can take pre-bookings, he also speaks French. I could tell you many other similar stories to emphasis the point, the graduate computer programmer that takes groups on wildlife walks as he gets paid fifty times more than programming – Cuba needs as many computer experts as it can recruit, believe me, or the teachers of English and History that no longer teach, but take guided tours exclusively for tourists.

The incredible monthly Cuban wage is the reason why government shops exist and the reason why a tourist is forbidden from buying a breezeblock of cheese for 15CUC! If there is actually any cheese available to buy  – when it’s gone, it’s gone, and it’s often gone!

My Wife is a lawyer, and Carlo literally gasps when she tells him how much the firms she has worked for charge per hour – five times average monthly Cuban wage! He informs us about his wife’s work in the hospital, the basic levels; lack of equipment and drugs. People even have to bring their own paracetamol with them when they come in. His wife loves working in the hospital and with the rent from his casa and him at home to look after their children; she can afford to carry on doing it.

trin car

A two-tier system operates in Cuba, you pay the equivalent UK prices to travel on the buses, which if you have travelled quite extensively in the developing world, is quite surprising, but I suppose you have ticked the box on the visa application that states: ‘Supporting the Cuban People’, and you certainly have plenty of first-hand experience of that while you are there.  You can see why foreign multinationals would want to operate there, a work force with the highest literacy rate in the world and one of the lowest labour costs, and on the doorstep of the United States and Mexico, etc.

The clip-clop of hooves in the morning In Trinidad gently wakes you, it’s real cowboy country. There is a lovely beach close by, Playa Anson, we spend a day there and are picked up in a Lada taxi as a storm blows in and the skies look as though they are about to haemorrhage, the taxi has no glass in driver’s side window and the inadequate plastic sheet does not keep the lashing rain out. The drive back costs us 20CUC, and the fact we are getting wet does not appear to bother the driver, it is all part of the experience, there’s no customer service department, and there’s still a living to make!

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Look at the belligerence in the eyes of El-Loco Bastiddo at the back!

We decide, well, The Wife has decided we have to experience the horse trek, in horse country. I’m not a fan of horses. I had a girlfriend at teacher training college that had ridden all her life and when we went to stay with her parents and I informed her about my unease with a big beast between my legs, she dismissed me and told me to watch her as she took off across a large field for a stirrup to come lose and her to fall heavily to the ground; she has been in a bath-chair ever since and fed through a straw, ok, I made the last bit up, she can feed herself now, she’s fine, she got up dazed but unbelievably uninjured, but I remember thinking you know what you’re doing and you fell off, and quite quickly at the very start!  I don’t like being that high up, as if you fall off you hurt yourself and it feels like you are doing a public hokey-kokey whilst trying to stop smuggled drugs falling out of your back passage – I appreciate this is not everyone’s view on equine activities! We trek up to a waterfall at one point my horse, El-Loco Bastiddo, I forget its real name, bolts off I pull it back and it nearly dislocates my shoulder. I’m also in trouble as I have forgotten to transfer the wallet from one bag to another when I’ve been to the bus station earlier by myself, the bus was booked up for two solid days up to Santa Clara. The taxi driver, a friend of Carlo has reduced his price massively when he thinks we will get the bus! The waterfall is lovely and we bath and chat to several people. An Irish woman tells us the prices in Cuba have gone up five times in the last five years.

When we eventually get off the horses, starving due to lack of funds to buy lunch, my arse is so bruised and battered it looks like I’ve been abused by a drunk medieval knight. It takes nearly a week for the pain of the bruising to fully dissipate – this is another reason why I don’t like horses.

IMG_5737

Me doing my best Putin impression at a waterfall in Cuba. A bear is just about off shot deciding whether to wrestle me!

Trinidad as I have said earlier is a beautiful place to walk around and marvel at. There is a good choice of food (by Cuban standards), the main plaza and surrounding streets offers vibrancy, dancing, great company, and even though it is on the tourist triangle you would be foolish to miss it out. Definitely go, think twice about a horse ride!

casa-de-la-musica

 Hasta la vista, Bucaneros.

 

Next time #5: The revolution starts here.

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

monochrome imp swirly letters

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

#3: Getting Ripped off, or supporting the Cuban People?   Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

02 Saturday Sep 2017

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two manatees

There is a famous Cuban film called: Strawberry and Chocolate, it won the Oscar for the best foreign film in 1994, as well as lots of other foreign awards, and it is partly set at Havana’s most famous outdoor ice-cream parlour, Coppelia. It is in the modern part of Havana. The guide book tells us that queuing is part of the Havanan experience, when we arrive we are informed we will wait at least one and a half hours to get served, Cubans seem happy to wait, I cannot even find the end of the queue! You can go to the VIP tourist section, pay more, well, get ripped off (supporting the Cuban people! (StCP!)).

Coppelis-parada.jpg

The ice cream can only be described as the quality you would get from a supermarket’s own brand when you are trying to save money and you have invited the whole class to your child’s birthday party, and that may be being generous on quality! The reason I highlight this is two-fold, firstly, I’m not sure Cubans actually know when they are queuing, it is so innate to them, and secondly, you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had it. Crap ice cream and excessive queuing would equate to elevated levels of moaning and complaining for many, dare I say, a first world problem!

st and c

The precursor to this is a journey in a motorised taxi, Havanan taxi drivers will rip you off if you don’t keep your wits about you. We have jumped in this taxi at the start of the Melecón, because it is incredibly hot (35°C), when we stop the driver switches the meter off that he has had on all the way. He times the fare by four! I remonstrate and I refuse to pay the amount he is demanding and tell him I’ll wait for the police – I have no idea the level corruption/integrity of Havana’s finest, but I’m prepared to find out, so is he, and why wouldn’t he if he can make several times his usual fare, (I will take about average wages in Cuba in the next blog). He then negotiates, when he realises I’m being serious. I end up giving him twice the ‘actual’ fare and walk off, he does not follow us, we do not get challenged by the law, unsurprisingly. This is taking StCP! too far. On our return to Havana in three weeks’ time, the taxi we get from the bus station, after 18 hours on a coach, is shared with two local women. We drop them first and they give the driver no money, even though we have agreed to share the cost of the ride. The driver then stops at a garage to get some cigarettes and leaves the meter running! When we get to our accommodation we are paying for the time it took him to laconically purchase cigs, and the two women’s ride home, then he tries to add some more on as well. We refuse to pay the exorbitant amount and he refuses to get our luggage out of the boot. The owner of the AirBnB intervenes and basically says the easiest way to resolve the issue is to pay him the full amount he is demanding! It still annoys me now, we would have given him a tip anyway. Be careful with taxi fares in Havana, negotiate before you get in, and not in a laissez faire/fare? way. If they pretend not to understand English, write it down, or type it into your phone. Nearly ALL Cuban people are lovely, but be wary of the capital’s taxi drivers!

motor taxi

We have explored Havana enough, we have our bearings, it will be great to return more knowledgeable. We are going to Viñales (pronounced Bin-yarl-es), we have by chance managed to share a ride with an Australian couple that are over to get married in Mexico, as it is half the price of doing it in Perth, Australia. Not half the price for their friends and relatives though! They work underground in the mining industry as explosive experts and I have a vision of them emerging from their shifts like the ‘Unbreakable’ Kimmy Schmidt and the Indiana Moles. If you complete twelve hours underground, you must emerge every time and think, ‘This is fucking brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant up here!’ Unless you are emerging into a barren desert, even then it’s probably pretty good. We have debated with an English couple we met on the plane the best way to get to Viñales. It is about three hours on the disserted roads, they have decided to get a collectivo – that is not only packed with other budget ‘cattle’ tourists, there is a good chance of carbon monoxide poisoning – think cloud on unsteady wheels, and just to add double insult to injury we pass them broken down on side of the motorway, when we chat to them later it has taken them 6 hours, compared to our two and a half and they have saved the equivalent of about five US dollars each.

bus+collectivo

Transport in Cuba is interesting, you will see huge numbers of Cubans waiting patiently by the side of the road, waiting to be picked up by anyone, or anything, as public transport is chronic. There is, you guessed it, a queuing system, but priority is given to the old, infirmed and the pregnant, my advice is not to wait outside a maternity hospital.

Viñales is a big tourist trap, it is part of the Cuban Golden ‘package tour’ triangle, along with Trinidad. We have booked accommodation in advance, via our Airbnb, the owner of the accommodation has lied to us to get her to stay at one of her friends places, as when we arrive with our cases the one we think we are staying at is full, but she knows of another less desirable one that is vacant. The Wife has rumbled this quickly, and when the guesthouse owner says something to her about this other place and then shows us the sub-standard accommodation, The Wife is shouting at her, ‘You give Cubans a bad name!’ The female guesthouse owner is shouting back at her in Spanish, I’m walking backwards from this cultural exchange at this point. The Wife doesn’t need my help, she needs a cold drink. I leave her in a bar and go on the hunt for accommodation, which I love, the nosiness, the negotiating and the badinage. Viñales is a tiny farming village of about 300 people that now accommodates 1,500 guests, being a beautiful UNESCO area has helped massively, it is a beautiful place, and you have to go. I find a lovely place with a veranda on a side road, that we discover is a cut through for noisy lorries early in the mornings. I don’t mind as early the next morning a happy farmer in a cart being drawn by two oxen wishes me ‘beunos dias’ and I return the greeting with a big smile and take a picture with my mind’s eye for a future cold dark winter’s mornings in England.

Screen-Shot-2016-03-30-at-12.50.28-PM

We do a few of the tourist activities, tobacco/cigar/coffee production, on a guided walk with a young local woman. I have a dodgy stomach and as we pass her home on the outskirts of the village she points me to her toilet, which is outdoors and involves balancing on a precarious bowing thin plank of wood over a pit. It smells like it has dead mammals that have shat themselves just before they died somewhere in the gloom below – the thought of falling in their appears to cure me instantly. It is the other side of basic, it reminds me of the Australian joke: A Pommy visits an outback pub and is directed to the outdoor toilet by the landlord. Out the back are two open piles of shit, he climbs on the smallest pile and begins his business. Another man appears on the larger mound next to him. “You’re not from around here are you, mate?” “How can you tell?” “You’re in the bloody ladies!”

Viñales is the only pace The Wife gets a dodgy stomach in the entire time we are away – she has the stomach of a peasant, whereas I have the stomach of high-royalty! It is on the only occasion she has the panic-face of impending disaster she shoots into the bar in the corner of the main plaza. She runs past the confused man collecting the 1CUC entrance money and disappears for me to sort. I get drinks in and wait for the dancing to start and on her return when I ask over the state of the toilets she replies, ‘Marginally better than shitting myself!’ Like I said in the first blog, if you are a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the place for you. When we return home, our washing has been taken from the line along with the two French women in the next Casa. When we awake early the next morning to get our bus our washing has been returned, it would make for a dull Agatha Christie, but at least no one got murdered and everyone had clean underwear!

Like I said earlier, Viñales is a tourist trap, but it’s a beautiful tourist trap in a tropical landscape with friendly people and the best food we had in the whole of Cuba. If you’re in Cuba you have to go. You might even see a happy farmer with a smile as wide as his face wishing you ‘good morning’ leaving you in no doubt that it is, and when you reflect back on it and some of your first world problems you might just smile outwardly like a happy looney-ballooney or Nut-Womble!

IMG_5693

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #4: So, you think you’re badly paid!

 

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I wouldn’t mess with this desperado!

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

monochrome imp swirly letters

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

 

key words:

 

 

It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba. #2: Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America

18 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Cuba, humour, politics, travel, writing

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two manatees

The Museum de Revolución is the only attraction I want to go to immediately, the rest can wait until the end of the month when we meet friends back in Havana. I have also vowed to walk the entire length (5 miles) of The Melecón like a Habanero, after seeing a travel programme set there in my youth. We will do this twice, buy a bottle of rum and large bottle of coke, share and make friends. As you can imagine a Revolutionary ‘History is written by the victors’ Museum it is very partisan affair with blood splattered clothing of fallen ‘socialistas’ and ‘Cuban Freedom Fighters’ and the many souvenirs and trinkets aplenty. The US and the then US backed President Batista forces are referred to as ‘The tyranny’ like an unimaginative wrestler. A black and white photo of bloodshed of the rebel reads, ‘the Cuban Freedom Fighters being molested by the tyranny!’ ‘Molestation’ is a euphemism here! Massacres happened on both sides in equal measure. But by 1959 The Castro Brothers and poster boy, Che Guevara were rolling into Havana atop tanks smoking cigars. Whatever your views; and no system is perfect, but when they took over a small few and Americans (Gansters, Politians, etc) were doing very nicely. A million people did not go to school from a population of 7m (now it’s 11.5m), and Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the entire world, yes, the entire world! As well as some of the best doctors and hospitals, I googled about lifts in Cuba – it is more expensive to live on a bottom floor flat than the top, as nearly all apartments don’t have lifts. It is amazing how many Americans are either going or thinking of going to Havana for a ‘different’ kind of lift! People, pre-1959, were often starving in the countryside, this in a tropical country that was easily capable feed itself. So whatever turmoil the revolution brought for the few back then, you could see why it was not long before the revolution was snowballing to Castro and co.

Fidel Castro with members of his leftist guerrilla movement “26th of July Movement” entering La Havana after their victory over the forces of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

So historically back in 1959 revolution was more beneficial for the many not the few, and so was born The Cuban Republic, and the great animosity between a superpower and little tiny Cuba. Cuba is the ONLY country to defeat America in a Latin or South American conflict, so you can imagine how well that goes down with dick-swinging men in power? The botched Bay of Pigs invasion is still a cause of embarrassment for some at the top of the US military.

bayofmap

In 1963 the world was on the brink of nuclear disaster, like never before, (hopefully). A tour I successfully tried to get on while in Havana but failed, was a tour of the nuclear bunkers, a friend had been and said it had been fantastic and insightful, an elderly woman took them deep under Havana and summed the view of probably the entire world’s populous back then, as, “We were all absolutely terrified, we thought the missiles would fly and we would immerge into a nuclear wasteland.” Cuba would not have survived without the muscle of Russia, it’s bit like a the runty school bullies mate taunting you with the knowledge there is serious backup! But survived they have, in whatever form that is? Against the embargoes of many countries, the collapse of communism and Venezuela.

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Don’t forget to add to the animosity of the USA occupying a part of Cuba down in Guantanamo Bay; this is a legacy of the Spanish/American war over a century ago, and America says it is essential for guarding the Panama Canal, it obviously isn’t with their influence in Panama itself as well as neighbouring countries, such as Coast Rica. You would be rightly pissed off if a foreign country occupied your land. Imagine how Americans would feel if say Iran controlled Boston, or Mexico occupied Florida? It looked as though this might change under Obama, but is unlikely under Trump. US service personnel hate Guantanamo (GIT-MO also, ‘Old Droopy’), it is the only American base servicemen and women cannot step outside in the whole wide world! They are prisoners! I’m sure the irony does not escape them either, when the festival fireworks erupt and samba music fills the air.

We have the obligatory photo taken on the tank outside them Museum that Fidel Castro has ridden into Havana on in 1959. The Lonely Guide book makes me giggle as walk the short distant to have a look at ‘The Granma’ yacht that the revolutionaries crossed on from Mexico in 1956 to unsuccessfully have a go at a revolution, a botched ‘try before you buy’ attempt: “The Granma yacht is guided both night and day continually, I assume this is to stop someone stealing it and escaping in it!”

Granma yacht

It has not been easy over the years and decades, and people have suffered, as I will elaborate in later blogs, but young or old, Cubans are patriotic, even if the differing generations don’t agree on the best way forward. The outward internet-looking under thirties are not children of the revolution, they are the offspring of a global connected world, they see what it offers and of course they want a chunk of it. The old men that run the country know this; they don’t like it, but needs must when the devil drives. It will be interesting to stand behind unorganised rich Americans at money exchanges just to register the shock and expletives when the Cuban authorities tax them 10% to change over money – that’s the price of progress after so many decades of mistrust.

So Cuba is steeped in politics, it, among other things is what defines it. It is changing because it has to now, it has been abandoned by new oligarchs, dodgy presidents, and Venezuela is in turmoil, not helped by the crash of the oil price. It will survive because whatever the people are, they are incredibly resilient, it is their DNA, but change is blowing in with tourism, Americans that don’t already know the warmth and intelligence of the Cuban people soon will and by a process of osmosis they will meet and love Cubans, because we are not different, we all want the same things; to love and be loved, happy and healthy friends and family and enough to get by comfortably.

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

blocklinecol3 (4)

Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

BookCoverImage

 

Swimming with Dugongs: Adventures in Central America. #1: Cuba, da, da, da, da, da, Cuba.

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So this is ten years on from our family gap year. The kids have grown up, the nest abandoned, for now; The Boy is working/getting drunk, etc in Australia, The Girl is waiting to start Uni. We have planned to go to Cuba for a long time, we nearly went fifteen years ago when we came into a few grand – where there’s a claim, there’s certainly a blame! But I put my foot down which is a rarity in hours for ‘Pushover Pindar’ as the family unit call me, then laugh like psychopaths! Instead we had a new kitchen fitted in the dilapidated basic house which we had just moved into. When I say basic, it had a gas fire and a shower in the kitchen! Yes a shower in the kitchen with no door on it – the house had been a multiple social security tenant’s house. I only tell you this as a few people say we are always travelling, sometimes it’s a fine line between being assertive and relaxed.

It is planned, The Wife has sacked her job off, I’m working at an academic school that is so desperate for Science Teachers, they are letting me go early and come back late – two and a half months we will be away in total, hurrah.

vida vidal

The first and only major hurdle is getting visas for the Republic of Cuba. There is nothing on the online website’s dropdown menu that says we are going for a holiday, or we are tourists. The box you have to tick is ‘supporting the Cuban people!’ This will become our motto whenever we are being ripped off, which when you’re a tourist – ‘supporting the Cuban people’ is quite frequent.

You know you are in underdeveloped country when you have to line up patiently to have a headshot taken with a digital camera from an operative inside the customs both. People get annoyed, but we take it in our stride, it’s all part of the experience, I pass the time thinking of famous people in mug shots, I decide on Steve McQueen.

steve Mcqueen

Everyone’s bags are re-x-rayed, when it looks like we’re through! Money is a hassle in Cuba; there are two currencies that run side by side. The Cuban convertible (CUC) – tourist money and money the rich Cubans use (there are some, they all work in tourism!) and the peso, or local money, in theory only Cuban nationals can use this, but once you get acclimatised, you can buy some things with it, like food, especially in out the way places. We have to queue to get our CUCs as you cannot buy them beforehand; this takes nearly an hour at twelve o’clock at night. Cubans say their greatest exports are: cigars, rum, music and dancing. Whenever a Cuban tells me this I add, ‘queuing’ to the list! It always raises a smile.

The Airbnb we are staying in have ordered us a taxi, but it has not turned up. We have the hassle of negotiating a new one. There are two types of cars in Cuba; new ones, Japanese and Chinese produced, and old ones from before the revolution (1959!) classic American cars. We jump in one of the later and the pollution it’s producing is like something from Wacky Races. Heading into central Havana in an American Studebaker – if that doesn’t make you feel alive, stop the world and get off.

By now it’s 1.30am in the morning and the narrow and on first impression, shady looking and crumbling streets are empty. I pass the taxi driver the address along with my pigeon Spanish and he goes out of his was to make sure someone is home. From the outside, the apartment (112 Villages) looks rough, but inside it is immaculate, large ceilings, colonial elegance, fantastic.

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The government stipulates that all rented tourist’s rooms must have; AC, a fridge, shower/bathroom. We are too wired to sleep, so we head out and find a bar (Monserrate) still open and sip cuba libres. The toilets in Cuba are not for the feint-hearted! This is my first experience, a tiled bathroom, one lone urinal in the corner and one sit-downer, surrounded by an enclosure a pony could easily look over, it has a plantation shuttered saloon door on, with an ironic bolt lock. Anyone that enters the bathroom looks down on you both physically and socially. This is one of the posher bars that tourists frequent! I find it quite amusing, but if you’re a public-toiletaphob, Cuba is not the ‘sanitised’ place for you!

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We wake late to discover we are in the heart of the old town not far from Parque Central. It feels vibrant and safe, we eat brunch in Café Paris, queue for more currency for an hour and a half!, in a beautiful colonial bank. Use a service till if you can, there is no rhyme or reason which ones work, but some do. We go on an open top bus tour with Cuclo, the commentary is rubbish, a half interested young woman that looks as though she has been out clubbing all night tells us the name of every hotel, when it was built and how many people it can accommodate, and little else – I know more about Havana than her, except the history of the hotels! We get our bearings and sunburn.

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That’s me under the tv.

We head to PA’s bar on Agromante for great cold beers, I get chatting to the owner. He has football shirts adorning one wall of the top teams from around the world, with the omission of Man City! After much discussions he reluctantly agrees he should get a City shirt. The Wife asks me in all honesty if I know him! “I do now,’ I reply. The beer, heat and jetlag send us to sleep, we reluctantly pull ourselves out to get in sync with a walk and food in Plaza Vieja. Havana is crumbling, there is little money for renovation except in Vieja and the important public buildings, which have been restored meticulously back to their original architectural splendour. It has been going on since the 1970’s, Eusebio Leal Spengler is the mastermind, and the Habaguanex holding company (WWW.Habaguanex.ohc.cu) a charity that splits the money from tourism equally between restoration and social projects. I read recently there will be as many as 110 direct flights from the USA this year alone – that’s a lot of US dollar! The upside of this is a beautiful decaying city will be brought back to life and lots of people in Cuba will be better off. Havana reminds me of Beunos Aires, a city that is starting to decay around the edges – The Paris of the South, but forty years on from their financial disaster, again precipitated by America!

Cuba already feels good, we are relaxing into it, the people are friendly, and despite reports to the contrary, appear happy and helpful.

 

Here’s my initial/landing top 4 tips for Cuba;

  1. Pay an agency to sort your visa out, it’s not expensive and will save you mucho hassleo.
  2. When you land get enough money for at least three days, if in doubt go for a higher, rather than a lower amount.
  3. Buy an internet card (you put a code in to the only government provider available!) and head to a plaza with everyone else. Expect the connection to be poor to awful! Don’t use one of the big hotels.
  4. Americans only. If you get money out using an American account the Cuban bank/government will charge you 10%, yes 10%! Change all the money you need into Euros and exchange them. Western Union was good option for Americans I met.

15-Havanna-17

Hasta la vista, habaneros.

Next time, #2: It would be rude not to talk politics and revolution in Cuba –- Out 18/8/17

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

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Ian M Pindar writes books, and also about himself in the third person sometimes, so it looks as though he has a large team of dedicated professionals working around him. His latest book is in fact a novella and has the strange title of: ‘Foot-sex of the Mind’. It is not a Mills and Boon, but about finding out what is important in life far too late.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar

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