Havana Nights (and other cuban tales) - Part 1

I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he
didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the
airport there were such enormous potholes.

Fidel Castro

And nor would I vote for Fidel, on the strength of the pot hole argument alone. It is also a fair bet that neither would 11 Million Cubans, given the chance. But, earlier than usual, I digress. The two things they do properly in Cuba is cigars and pot holes. The cigars are, provided you go for the good ones such as Cohiba or Romeo y Julieta, excellent. With the pot holes there is no need to be discerning; they are world class and they are everywhere.

It was a cold and pretty miserable March day in London when we set out for the tropical communist paradise of Cuba, to enjoy a well deserved 2 week holiday of sun, sand, rum and 30th Birthdays. With my 30th brithday bearing down and Bennett's following 5 days later we thought it appropriate to bring in the new phase of life with a bang in Castro's Cuba. Steve had organised a group of 10 inteprid travellers and Steve's girlfriend Kirsty organised the trip (Cubatour!), Shell had booked the flights and I had organised a month off from work

Brock to boss: "I'm taking a month off, I hope that's ok..."

so before I knew it Michelle, Steve, Kirsty, Paul (Divey from here on in) and I were sitting in bland high street chain coffee shop at Heathrow waiting to get on a plane. 2 other friends from University, Jo and Marie, were already in-country and Todd and Zoe were flying out the next day. Damo was the last of the group, joining us 4 days later mid tour in Cuba. We flew via Paris and after a long arduous flight, with only 1 meal I might add, we finally arrived in Havana.

Cuba is an interesting place. Muy, muy interesante, as the locals would say. The largest island of the Caribbean, a world power in the production of sugar and women's volleyball and a thorn in the side of US politics constantly for over 100 years. They have one of the world's highest literacy rates, a highly advanced biotechnology industry and a average monthly wage of about $20. The entire country is steeped in history, especially so in the exciting bits of yore, with towns ravaged by pirates, a US cavalry charge, a government effective controlled by the Mafia and finally a communist revolution that gave rise to the "New Man".

I like the concept of the New Man. Che Guevra's raison détre, it drove large parts of the revolution, especially after the military victory. It was a typically flawed socialist ideal of a worker who toiled for love of the state rather than personal gain, with typically socialist results of people that didn't love the state nor do any work; predictably ending up in widespread economic depression and politcal repression.

As the revolutionary fervor passed and Cuba entered the long dark reality of centrally planned economies and never ending 3 year plans, the rich and varied history became a homogenous lump of failures - the 10 million ton sugar harvest, artificial trade supports - Huge amounts of Soviet money for whatever crap the Cubans could churn out, and failed revolutions elsewhere in the world - over 450,000 sent to fight, 10,000 dead in Angola! Angola for goodness sake! Why would Cubans need to go anywhere near Angola? I understand the need for the communists to search build new markets for their revolutionary fervor and soviet arms however the very idea that Cuba would need to fight a war that in terms of manpower was about twice the Australian commitment to World War 2 does boggle the mind and lead us to ask - are these people insane?

Before I search for the answer to that question, I shall recount our travels which I hope will convey my impressions of what Cuba has become in the modern world since, as the saying goes, the proof is in the all inclusive, repetitive and stale pudding.

Flying into to Havana was exactly what I was hoping for - Sunshine, warmth and friendly enough immigration control who didn't seem to mind our handwritten visa's. We managed to get from the Airport to our first hotel with out too much trouble. Except for getting cash, that was a bit of trouble. Cuban money is fraught with problems and beset with trouble. The root of our present problem were, as with lots of things here, of Fidel's doing. Cuba, being a managed communist economy, shares much in common with other managed communist economies. Deciding on a value of their currency right at the forefront of the issues faced. Since the government manages, or at least attempts to manage, the prices of everything they can retain a vice like grip on the domestic value of the peso, in the case of the Cubans the Peso Moneda Nacionale (MN) or as I will refer to it from now on, the Worthless Cuban Peso (WCP). Since the WCP can't really be exchanged for goods or services no one actually wants any of these. They do get around though as all salaries are paid in the WCP. Oh sure you can purchase stuff with it; the following list is what I saw available for sale

• a burlap sack with some rice in it,
• a very cheap flight from Santiago to Havana (subject to availability: current waiting time about 3 years)
• some tinned food including black beans and white beans
  
• counterfeit cigars

Unfortunately for the Cubans, that is a comprehensive list. And whilst US$1 will get you 24 WCP's or so the fact you cant buy anything you want with it makes the peso functionally worthless, especially when they deal with foreigners who are certainly not interested in the beans and rice, and only marginally interested in the conterfeit cigars. This led the Cubans to introduce a new parallel currency (masters of financial innovation!) for people with real hard currency (US dollars, Pound Sterling, Argentinian Peso, you know stable money) to exchange - the Convertible Peso (the CUC). The convertible is pegged to the US dollar at about CUC$0.92 to US$1 and can be used to buy things: Dinner was generally about CUC$10; we bought a round of Mojitos in a crappy bar in Havana for CUC$5 each; a 750ml bottle of olive oil can be purchased for about CUC$60. With the notable exception of Rum (CUC$3 for a 750ml bottle) and Cigars (about CUC$2-4 each) Cuba is very, very expensive.

But I digress. We were at the airport and needed some cash - any sort would do - to get into town. We'd done a bit of research before leaving and I'd found a couple of websites saying that there were lots of ATM's in Cuba and they worked well as long as your Card wasn't issued by a US company such as Visa. We'd bought some pounds just in case (about 500) but were planning on using the ATM's for most of our purchasing needs. So we found the cash machine at the airport and I tried my card (RBS). No joy. Shell tried her card (Barclays). Nope. Hmmmm, we started thinking. Steve tried his card (HSBC, Premier account no less). No. Divey tried his card (NatWest), and lo and behold money magically appeared from the machine, with us none the wiser as to why our cards failed. We found a taxi driver, negotiated a price in spanish and we were on our way.

Havana was just like I'd imagined it. Ancient cars spluttering along highways bereft of clutter such as line markings or traffic signals, a bus that was well beyond full, beautiful sunshine and all sorts of people taking it easy. Our first night was spent in the rather salubrious Hotel Parque Central, one of the newer and better hotels in Havana, notable for it's rooftop pool with excellent city views. We hit the pool to try and wind down after the long flight and, after a shower, met up with Jo and Marie who had arrived from Australia the day prior. We had a refreshing Mojito and admired the views and enjoyed the warmth. The city is like nothing else you can imagine. There is the huge Captitolo building, built in 1929 and modelled on the US Congress, but bigger and with more bits falling off. The rest of the city was a visual cacophony of ancient buildings that were either in the process of or had just finished collapsing, nasty 60's style 6 storey concrete horrors that were stained with age and neglect and occaisionally a lovely old buildings such as the Telegrafo Hotel that had been looked after and restored.

We headed out for dinner and found, with the help of a tout, a rather strange restaurant on the 2nd floor of a old building that looked like a construction site from the outside but turned out to be quite a nice place inside. I had a smoked pork loin, Shell had something really garlicky and the general consensus was that it wasn't too bad, if a bit more expensive than we had thought. The next morning we had a nice hotel breakfast and day to explore the sights of Havana. We set off walking around the Capitol building, found an old Cigar factory and wandered around marvelling that a place like Havana can exist in 2009. I can't really do it justice in description, it needs to be seen, smelt and tasted. The roads are in a terrible state, families live in apartments in buildings that would be condemned in Cambodia. But still there are shops selling popcorn and ice cream and we even saw an Adidas store. Later on we found out that we had been walking through Havana Centro, a nasty part of town which is pretty much last on the list of Havana suburbs schedule for restoration. We still had fun walking around, trying to dodge the rubbish and gigantic old cars that tore up and down the streets.

We found a small bar along some back street and thought let's get another mojito. We walked in and caused a rucus! Such excitement, people running all over the place babbling in spanish trying to get 7 chairs sorted out for the gringos. Getting caught up in all the excitement, no one really asked how much a drink would cost so we bought them for anyone that would come and sit near us. It was actually quite a lot of fun. They spoke no english, we spoke very little spanish but we talked. Everyone was in good spirits until the crusty old guy Divey and I had been trying to talk to - me gusta cerveza! - decided it was time for us to go and meet his cousin to buy some cigars, much cheaper than at the shops. We weren't really interested, which got him a bit agitated and then he started carrying on a bit. He eventually settled down but I'm sure he tried to put some voodoo curse on us or something. At the very least he got the bar owner to charge us about 10 times the value for the drinks; the bill showed $40 CUC for a round of 8 mojitos, which worked out to roughly $85 Australian dollars. A bit annoyed but putting it down to the fresh tourist tax that all must pay, we cracked on.

Eventually we found some hotels that had a restaurant attached and had lunch that again wasn't bad as long as you didn't get fancy. I wasn't too hungry so I thought I'd get the Bread with Tomato, Ham and Cheese. I've no idea what I was thinking: I guess I wanted a bruschetta sort of thing with some nice bread, fancy proscuitto and good cheese and perhaps some olive oil, who knows? We already knew that nobody goes to Cuba for the food. Read it a million times. It's usually the first thing people say when you mention you are travelling to Cuba, but I'd forgotten all that, and ordered the Bread with Tomato Ham and Cheese. Imagine you asked a 10 year old who had never seen a sandwich to get you a plate with bread, ham, cheese and tomato. That's what I got. A plate with a bit of bread (stale) on one side, 3 half slices of the standard evil cheese of cuba - it's a bit like kraft singles but more processed and plasticky, half a sliced up tomato and cuban ham. For all their acheivements, one thing they do not do well in Cuba is food. And among the things they do worst with respect to food is ham. It looks bad. It tastes bad. I doubt it is made out of pig at all, or if it is the pigs must lead a hard and unpleasent life. They must be especially punished and tortured to really ruin the animal before it goes to the ham factory. Or maybe there is only one ham factory for the whole country and they don't have a very good recipe. Whatever the causes one thing is for sure: if word got out to the cuban population at large about the sort of ham you can get in the real world there would be civil unrest, coups and revolution. It is that bad.

And there it was, my $5 CUC lunch staring me in the face. A peice of bread, half a tomato, cheese and this ham. Not really what I was expecting but exactly what I had ordered. Abd you don't go to Cuba for the food, do you? Shell got homestyle chicken which was ok, Steve got fish which he said was good so I must have just been unlucky I thought. But I did learn an important lesson - our expectations on the food would need to change. On the flip side, the beers were good, the company good and the taxi we got back to the hotel only broke down once and ran out of petrol once so it was all looking up.

We got back to the hotel, and although we had actually checked out as we were staying in a different hotel that evening, we went for a swim anyway and had another drink on the rooftop bar! Some guy asked us if we were staying at the hotel - of course we are. At least we were.... Anyway we needed to find the new hotel so I again got to employ my newly aquired spanish language capabilities. Picking one of the few hotel employees that wouldn't speak spanish I wandered up and said

Me: "Excuse me, where is Hotel Plaza?"
Him:

Maybe I should try a yes no question

Me: "Is it far?"
Him: "No", which I understood. And then he started laughing a bit with his mate
Me, brandishing a very poor map: "Where?"
Him: "It's next door", of which I kind of picked up the gist
Me: "In front of this?" - I don't know how to say next door in spanish
Him: "Yes, just left" - but I struggle with the word for left. I am, however, good at the word for right
Me: "No right?"
Him, still thinking this was all very funny, walked out the front so he could point it out to me: "There"

And it was across the road, perhaps 12 metres away. But at least I'd found it. Finally Todd and Zoe arrived, we checked into the new hotel which, was a bit more "real" insofar as Cuban hotels would go, and we headed out for some Italian, which was ok with the exception of the ham. After dinner some of us headed out for a drink whilst others conserved their strength because tomorrow, with our travelling group almost complete, we were ready for the next phase: The tour!

Coming up in Part 2 - The Tour we meet Carlos, Mike and the bus and we head west to find the real Cuba!

Parisian adventures with Aunty Libby and Alex

My Aunt Libby and my cousin Alex stayed with us in London for a few weeks in February, we all headed to Paris together for an amazing but cold long weekend.

I'm not being lazy,but I have decided to publish my Aunt's account of our weekend, as I think she has summed it up better than I could have. Also its nice to hear it described as seen through the eyes of someone who's not at all sick of looking at European churches and likes pastries almost as much as we do!

Paris, what can i say, it is the most magical city. It's streets are all cobble stones and narrow, there are patisseries on every block oozing with all their wonderful pastries and breads. We went to Norte Dame and the Louvre on the first day.

Notre Dame is a peaceful place, although there would have been 200 people in there looking around at the time there was still an amazing sense of peace and calm. There is no talking allowed when inside so even though it was full of people the silence made it even more special to reflect on the feelings you felt. I again lit a candle for my family and friends and a special one for Tash and her family. The Notre Dame is still a running church where it has small services everyday and it's traditional one on Sunday's.

We proceeded onto the Louvre, again what a place! It is big big big, we covered a lot of ground but really you need the whole day there if you want to see it all, maybe 2. We visited the famous painting of Mona Lisa and many more interesting paintings, statues and jewels. Not only are all the art works on display amazing but the building it self is worth the look.

In Paris everywhere you look they have amazing statues, lamp posts with statues, you turn a corner and look up and there is a building holding statues covered in gold leaf or green copper. The history in Paris is everywhere. I am glad we were there with Michelle and Brock, Alex and I can not speak French let alone read it, Brock and Michelle could read a couple of words and say some phrases, the waiter was very helpful. (Finding somewhere to eat dinner was an interesting experience, but we picked somewhere that was full of locals and were well rewarded)We had tea and called it a night (Exhausted, I have to add - ed).

2nd day in Paris, we went on a walking tour of the village of Montmatre, on the north side of Paris up the hill. The girl who was our guide was an excellent story teller. She took us to the house where Picasso, Toulouse-La Trec and Van Gogh , and told us of their lives. On the tour we started in the middle of hill and worked our way up.

As we walked up the hill over the cobble stones and through the narrow streets, our guide talked of all the history of the place. When we reached the top there was yet another church - the Sacré-Cœur, the hordes of people as promised by our guide, tourist stands with all the cheap tourist crap and a view of Paris that was fantastic. We worked our way down, this time 'til we came to a street full of strip joints, where the Moulin Rouge is. It was horrible and seedy. It was amazing how a little hill on Montmartre can hold 3 different kinds of lives!

Next stop was the Eiffel Tower (which i was calling the Leaning Tower all day daaaaa!). We took the lift up to the 2nd level as the top was full...

I am glad we only went to the 2nd level, I found the lift ride quite scary i had to close my eyes. Once we were out side on the level it was OK. It was now night fall and the tower lit up as did the city, what a spectacular view! You can see all of Paris from every different angle. You could even see down the long stretch of the river right up to the Sacré-Cœur on the hill in the village of Montmartre! On our last day in Paris we walked the famous road of fashion, a lot of beautiful stuff but with a big price, I took some photos of some shoes to show Xenia the fashions, even if I could afford to buy any they are much to nicer to anything in Tassie! The Parisian food was as good as you would expect, the pastries even better. People in Paris seem to all have dogs they take them every where, there is a lot of dog poo on the footpaths but you learn to watch your step as you are walking. Paris on a whole is a beautiful place, I would highly recommend it to any one."

We all had a great weekend in Paris, it really was cold, snowing even at one stage. It was great to spend time with Libby and Alex seeing as she has now returned to Australia(for the time being?). Brock loves France, I think mainly for the food, but you know what they say "the way to a mans heart is through his stomach". I think both the city of Paris and I have that under wraps!