December 2008
©2008 James Teitelbaum, all rights reserved.
Persistent prologue: I write these travelogues for myself, so that twenty years from now, I will be able to remember as much about these trips as possible. I include as much detail as possible so as to get it all fixed in writing before the memories fade. I share these with friends, family, and any complete strangers who find them, because people express interest. I know that these writings do ramble on a bit, but I do not require an editor; these writings are here as aids to my own memory not as attempts at serious travel writing -- although anecdotes from these journals have formed the core of my more formalized and proper travel writings, which have appeared in print and on the web elsewhere.
Part three, in which we travel to Trinidad, see a show at the Tropicana, and refrain from murdering someone.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
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Today we were to leave Havana and go to Trinidad, a small
town whose colorful buildings and quiet lifestyle have earned it a
World Heritage site status. The town of Trinidad is not to be
confused with the Caribbean island of the same name, where soca music
was invented. My first mistake of the day was leaving the travel
arrangements to
Nadine. She wanted to take an 8:15 a.m. bus. The bus station was complete pandemonium. No one had any idea what was going on. The women in the ticket booth had no computers, no phones, no paperwork, not even a pencil. Just a small cash box and a smaller amount of information as to what the bus plan was. We ended up on standby for the 8:15 a.m. bus, apparently, because Nadine had failed to find out that we needed to make a reservation. The best way to fight chaos is with order, and because of my choice in travel partners, I was now fighting chaos with chaos. Yes, this woman speaks Spanish twenty times better than I do, but if it weren’t for that, I might have strangled her by now. Interestingly, the meany Charlize Theron-clone and her friends from the Cancun airport was also in the bus station. They were wearing designer sweats. I'm going somewhere with this, really. At 8:15 a.m. the bus was ready to go, and there were a bunch of people ahead of us in line. The bus driver let a few of them on at a time, basically waiting to see how many seats two people took up (answer: two) before sending for another pair of people, and then waiting to see how many seats they took up (answer: two), and so on, until all of the seats were filled. We didn’t get on the bus. The next one was at 1:30 p.m. So, dog-tired, cranky, and annoyed, I was faced with sitting in the bus depot for five hours rather than sleeping in at comfy Casa Belkis. As luck would have it (sorta) there were cabbies milling about outside the depot, and I discovered that a ride to Trinidad in a mini-van would be about four times the cost of a bus ticket (the bus cost 25 CUC, the cab was 100 CUC). So if we split the cost four ways, the fare per person would be the same. A forlorn looking couple in their twenties had also been denied bussage (they were in line in front of us in fact), and we offered them an opportunity to listen to Nadine talk non-stop about herself for six hours, um, I mean an opportunity to share the minivan trip to Trinidad with us. Soon, we were on the road with Esther from Santiago, Chile
(now a
resident of France) and her French husband Julian. He is a sports
writer for a Parisian newspaper, and does not like Sarkozy at all.
Esther sat in front with the driver, who is also from Santiago. Not
sure why he’d want to come to Cuba from Santiago (although when I
visited that city, I didn’t especially care for it). Julian got stuck
with Nadine in the middle seat, and I stretched out in back. Rest was
futile in the jerky old van on bumpy roads. I closed my eyes and
meditated a lot, between occasional bouts of responding to what Julian
was saying, whenever he could get a word in edgewise with Nadine. He
told me to check out a soca player called Zinedine Zidane. I like soca
music (a form related to calypso). Looking this guy up at home months
later, it turns out that Zidane
is not a soca player, he is a soccer player. I dunno why Julian didn’t
say futbol; that I would have understood properly! Zidane
is also
apparently the most famous futbol player in the world;
but to
tell you the truth I can't even name one player on the Chicago Cubs
right now. Wait, isn't one of them named Sammy Soca???(*) |
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The road to Trinidad was mostly flat for most
of the way with perhaps
a few gentle hills.
As we got closer to Trinidad, the terrain became much more hilly, with
some bona-fide mountains springing up. The road was
well-maintained by the state, but there was almost no
traffic on it. It reminded me of a lot of the old U.S. highways that I
like to road trip on, the highways that the interstate system largely
replaced. The road to Trinidad was highway-ish, and mostly deserted.
What we did see a lot of were clusters of people waiting at various
crossroads and entry ramps. Hitchhiking is not illegal in Cuba, and in
fact the few motorists who use this trans-islandic highway are required
by law to pick up passengers needing a lift. Our vehicle was full, so
we didn’t have to stop for riders.
I saw a small herd of very skinny cows that had wandered right to
the
edge of the road. We had to slow down to make sure we didn’t hit them.
Their ribs and hips were sticking out. A billboard comparing George W.
Bush to Hitler was only slightly shocking, and others celebrating the
impending anniversary of the revolution were more patriotic. No
billboards contained advertising.
A few people
were selling squash and other related plant life on the side of
the road. Most of the farmland I saw looked abandoned. Why
can't these supposedly starving people grow themselves some food?
I looked this question up when I got home, and the BBC were happy to
accommodate me by publishing an article on that very subject on
December 29, 2008 (just two weeks after my return from Cuba).
They reported that Cuba spends US$2,000,000,000 per year importing food
(no report on why Fidel won't or can't let the locals grow their own
food), but under the rule of Raul, farmers are beginning to get their
ancestral farmlands back. So things are improving on that
front. Seems that productive industrial workers are also being
paid bonuses for the first time in generations.
About halfway to Trinidad, we stopped for a
stretch and a bathroom
break.
Contrasting the huge industrialized travel plazas of the American
landscape, the tiny cafe at the side of the dusty road had a small
cooler full of beverages and ice cream (natch), and a tiny souvenir
shop. It was
surrounded for miles in every direction by farms that didn’t seem to be
growing much. Across the street at a nearby intersection, some people
standing by the dusty rural cross road waiting for a lift were having a
sing-a-long to pass the time.
Shortly after
that, we passed a shrimp farm that was sort of interesting.
Our driver made a joke: Havana dates cost 3 CUC. You buy a bottle of
rum, you walk along the Malecon, and then you go home and screw.
He thought that was hilarious and also insightful. A real Geoge
Carlin, this guy was.
Although the day was quite pleasant for the most part, it had
grown
rather hot just as we pulled into Trinidad. Dragging luggage through
the cobblestone streets, trying to get our bearings and trying to find
a Casa Particulare to stay in, things became uncomfortably hot.
My first
impressions of Trinidad were of narrow cobblestone streets, lined on
either side
with single story houses, all rectangular boxes with slat windows, and
all painted in gay pastel colors. Women making crisp white linens and
lace lined two of the streets, looking to trap tourists into buying
their wares. Other types of souvenirs and local crafts were on display
as well. At the end of this maze of streets that could not possibly be
described with any word other than ‘quaint’ were a few public plazas
with statuary and larger buildings erected in the Colonial style. One
or two proper shops and even a small number of artist studios, open as
galleries, provided further hope for luring tourists to this tiny
Caribbean town, a mile or two inland from the sea. There is little in
Trinidad to suggest that the whole town hadn’t frozen in time, like
Havana but fifty years earlier still than Havana’s 1958 bubble. I later
learned that there was a considerably more run-down section of town as
well, but so far my impression was: sleepy, charming, anachronistic,
and very, very hot.
As the heat bore down, a guidebook sent us to one Casa, but most
of
their rooms were full. The barefoot teenage girl who answered the door
was
eating something and had crumbs all over her t-shirt. She told us they
had one room left, but there was no air conditioning. Normally, this
would have been acceptable, but it felt like it was 100 degrees at that
moment, and escaping the heat was a crucial priority. She sent us to
another Casa (which was also in the guidebook), and they were full too.
But the woman at that second Casa sent us to her sister’s place, two
doors down, and we eventually bartered for a clean and cozy room off of
a shady courtyard (at Calle Maceo 430 near Colom). Not as nice as Casa
Belkis, but more than tolerable.
In order to get to the courtyard (and hence,
the room), we had to pass
through the living room and dining room of the people who own the Casa.
The twelve-foot ceilings and whitewashed walls reflected the sunlight,
making the room appear quite bright, and the furnishings were actually
rather elegant. The two rooms were full of antiques, but not someone’s
collection - these were the same furnishings that had been in this
family for many decades, carefully maintained because replacing it all
was
not an option. The end result is amazing: an art nouveau chandelier, a
century-old piano, and framed photos of people who have been dead for
fifty years. It was yet another Cuban anachronism, and it suited me
fine. I don’t think there was anything contemporary in the house at
all.
Although my eye was feeling much better, the damned cough was still with me, and I was exhausted from six hours in the van after waking up much too early. Nadine went out to explore, and mercifully left me to rest in the room by myself. Laying on the bed in the cool, quiet, semi-darkness with no one talking to me was just what I needed.
Eventually, I was rested up and went for a short walk around the
neighborhood.
On the corner of Calle Maceo, La Vega Shop Casa de Tobaco Caracol sells
tons of different cigars and
some rums. It is one of the only places I have seen the Havana Club
Barrel Proof (bargain priced at 29.50 CUC, or 10 CUC-bucks cheaper than
in Havana). Most Cuban can’t afford it
and most tourists are fine with the cheaper stuff, so few places carry
it.
A few blocks away, near the Casa, was a
building that was once a
larger theater, but it had partially collapsed and has no more roof.
The ancient brick walls of Teatro Brunet, erected in 1840, are
marginally intact, covered with vines, and form a boundary around what
is now a big open-air club. It was converted into a ‘center of culture’
in 1901. Rotating acts all night entertain with traditional live music,
DJ music, and dance performance. It is cool to hear
music among these atmospheric brick remains, with the stars visible
above.
This is a simple place - few shops, no pubs, no restaurants, no
museums, just a handful of
places to hear music, drink rum, and relax, usually in a partly or
wholly outdoor venue. This is the Cuban way; they play music and drink
rum, and seem to do little else in the evenings.
Nadine ended up seeing some music (inevitably... and even
mid-afternoon there is music happening), and came back to
the
room talking about a guy named Jose, a guitar player who she’d met. He
wanted to give her dancing lessons. Uh huh. Dancing
lessons. Sure. I
guess Jose is about 30 (Nadine is in her middle 40s), but she was keen
to go see his band later.
So much for Jeffrey the choreographer!
Now, late in the afternoon, we hiked up a mountain to a point
where
people go to watch the sun set.
To get there, we left the colorful and picturesque area of Trinidad and
wandered towards a miserable ghetto. It did not feel unsafe (Cuba’s
laws agains violent crime are extremely strict), but the level of
poverty I observed was unprecedented in my experience. And yet, as
noted earlier, these people have a certain pride and a certain dignity
that transcends a need for material wealth. I was almost convinced that
three generations of Castro had bred any consumerist desires right out
of their DNA. But still, eating nothing but beans and rice has to get
old.
Through the poor(er) part of town and up a hill, I saw the remains
of
an
abandoned church, crumbling into the hillside. A boy was flying a kite
up there, and I marveled at the simplicity of this small pleasure. No
iPhone, no video games, not even a bike or a Big Wheel, this kid was
entertaining himself with two sticks, some paper, and a ball of string.
A kite. Home-made. He knew how to fly it too, coaxing it up into the
sky, feeling the direction of the wind and working nature to his
advantage. Nearby, a really fat lady (rare in Cuba) with a moustache
was trying to talk to me, I think she wanted me to give her 3 CUC to
screw her. Not sure.
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Still higher up -- completely out of town and halfway up the mountain -- I spied a sort of rocky sinkhole in the ground with an iron fence covering it. A couple from Lithuania were looking at it also. A guard unlocked the gate, and took us into what ended up being a gigantic, multi-story nightclub in a cave system.
Disco Ayala!
The guard
was happy to show us around the deserted club, which was due to open
later that night.
He said that Ayala was the owner’s childhood
nickname.
We walked down a stone staircase into the middle of the
mountain.
Around one corner is a dried up underground river bed. In the opposite
direction is a huge cavern with a bar, a linoleum floor, and tables. Up
more
stone stairs at the far end of the room was another terraced level with
another bar, and then up another set of treacherous rocky stairs we
found the DJ booth, looking down over the other areas twenty or thirty
feet below.
The place was full of old 1950s green and red
plastic
chairs and linoleum covering the rock floor. It was cool in the cave,
and a natural skylight let a single intense shaft of light in. This
place is amazing, and I wanted to come back and hang out here when it
was open (the 3 CUC cover charge includes a drink); alas this was not
to be the case.
The guard (his name is pronounced “Yule”) led the four of us back out of the hole, we gave him a small tip and continued up the mountain path. The sun was very low in the sky by now, and I was fairly high up, but still had a way to go to get to the summit. Nadine pulled ahead of me and made it to the top. I could see the whole of the town spread out before me, and the Caribbean sea a mile or two in the distance. I pondered that in Cuba you can’t go anywhere without hearing the sound of congas. Even at the top of a mountain, I could see the village far below, and hear the slapping of skin on skin echoing off of the high-altitude hills. Like some old jungle movie starring Irish McCalla as Sheena of the Jungle, the natives are restless and their drums can be heard for miles.
Still higher; dragonflies everywhere. Big birds of prey circling
overhead. Falcons or hawks or buzzards?
The path wound endlessly up; I
was starting to get winded. Nadine pulled ahead, leaving me to my
thoughts. A French couple passed me; the girl was
wearing an expensive-looking sheath dress. I like
a girl who wears a designer dress to go mountain climbing. Leave it to
the French.
There is a radio broadcast tower at the top of the
mountain (left pic, below). Maybe
ten people were up there, squeezing in a last little
bit of elevation by climbing on to the roof of the radio building. The
guys who worked there provided a ladder. One couple had cocktails. On
the opposite side of the mountain from whence we came, there was a
green valley between smaller mountains (center pic, below).
A single-car train chugged
along on a curvy track between the hills, far below my perch atop the
radio control building atop the summit of the highest mountain around.
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The sunset was spectacular, easily worth the climb.
Naturally, it
was getting dark as we made the much easier descent; bats were flying
about.
By the time we made it back down the
mountain, it was completely
dark, and we had picked up a stray: a German girl named Varinia who was
traveling alone. She agreed to join us for dinner. We discovered a
Paladar, and were seated at one of four tables on a cozy two-tiered
patio behind someone’s home. As we were being seated, we walked through
the small and cramped kitchen. It was no different from what one
might find in a big city
apartment, where a woman and two young daughters were cooking for their
guests.
We were surprised to find lobster tail on the menu, at a
price
comparable to any of the other meals I’d had in Cuba, about 8 to 10 CUC
on the average. Nadine and Varinia ordered it, but I was skeptical of
the very idea of getting something bigger than a crawdad for the listed
price. I ordered a chicken breast. My meal came out looking like a
chicken that had been quite unsuccessful at crossing the road; both
lobster tails looked just fine! My roadkill meal looked like something
that
would be served to someone who had lost a bet. In this case it
was true - I should have bet on the lobster like the girls did.
All three meals came with some generic
food service French fries, some gnarly beans, and a smidge of avocado.
We also had some cheap beer from a can. (My share of the bill was 10.50
CUC). Couples from New Zealand, England, and France sat near us (what
is with all of the French in Cuba?).
Nadine ran off to see Jose the guitar player, leaving me with
Varinia. We discovered a green little park with century-old wrought
iron benches. There were a lot of people around, especially since there
was an ice cream shop near by. The only other thing in town open after
dark is a second, larger public area which was surrounded by several
places to go hear music. I liked the current spot, the quieter of the
two centers of evening social life in Trinidad.
After grabbing another pair of beers (1.30 CUC for a beer and a water!)
at the ice cream store, Varinia and I swapped travel stories, and she
gave me some advice on traveling in her home country of Germany. I do
plan to go there soon, very likely in 2010, or by 2011 for sure. She
and I talked architecture (her profession) for
a while. She is 27, enjoys her work, and has been to Egypt, Italy,
Morocco (her favorite), and France. She says she doesn’t read much,
isn’t interested in music, and doesn’t watch many movies. Claims to be
shy, but people who travel the world on their own aren’t usually
plagued with confidence problems. Nice girl. I’ll never see her again.
She and I soon made it to our respective Casas Particulares, but I was restless, so I went back out. Although all of the lace and linen vendors had vanished without a trace, this sleepy little town with its almost deserted streets is alive at night with the sound of music. Closest to home was the roofless Teatreo Brunet. I’d been able to hear the hypnotic sound of congas from my bed, two blocks away, and they lured my over to see what was happening there.
As I wandered, I noted that I have not seen any rats or roaches in
Cuba.
Nor have I seen any of the giant iguanas that I spied when I was at
Guantanamo Bay in 2007 on a music gig with Gary Sinise. We’d been
playing for the troops there, and the giant, docile lizards were
everywhere. None spotted at all this trip. There are lots of dogs
running around, here and in Havana. None of them
look mangy or mean, though. Just a lot of random gentle stray
pups.
They more or less ignore the people.
I heard a guy giving some girls directions, in excellent
unaccented
English. He was clearly an American, a real clean-cut businessman type.
We spoke briefly. He pegged my accent immediately as being from
Chicago. I didn’t think I had an accent at all, and not having been
originally raised in Chicago, I definitely never thought I had adopted
the local speech mannerisms. It occurred to me that this guy looked
like he might be the sort of guy who worked for the government:
clean-cut, fit, sharp-eyed, and serious looking. I wasn’t going to
admit to being an American; after having had a few beers and some rum I
was a little paranoid that he might be prowling around looking for
Yanks to bust for being in Cuba. Nonsense, clearly, but I told him I
was from Toronto anyway.
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Wandering further, the main city square, mentioned above (and pictured above right, in daylight), is surrounded by three or four music clubs, notably the Casa Musica, (the House of Music) the local outpost of a traditional fixture in all Cuban cities. It is sort of a public venue for hearing quality music every night. But on the big stone stairs in front of it there are two walk-up bars and a small stage with a band. Maybe one hundred people were sitting at some of the few tables, or on the steps, hearing the music. Basically, all of the tourists in town are here. Some local guy tried to get me to buy him beers, but his technique for scamming the tourists was amateurish, sloppy, and unrehearsed. I’d dealt with the pros in the big city of Havana at this point, and this yokel’s chops just weren’t impressing this particular tourista.
Around the corner I found another venue with sort of more traditional, century-old styles of Afro-Cuban music, and there was yet another club across the street from there. I spied Nadine, Jose, and his band in there, drinking rum. I said hello to them, but didn’t want to hang out. It was time for bed.
Even after all of this wandering, I made it home relatively early, but the same can not be said for Nadine, who did not make it home at all that night. She’d hit it off with Jose. If nothing else, I got a solid night’s sleep, and some peace of mind.
Until...
Monday, December 15, 2008
| Darkness. Quiet. Sleep. Eye all better. Cough slowly subsiding. Dreams of an exotic and forbidden island. Reality: I am on an exotic and forbidden island. Blissful slumber and solitude. Until... Like a cinematic cop making a drug
bust, Nadine burst into
the
room,
shouting at me before I was even awake. Flinging the door open,
allowing the morning sun to blind me like an atomic
blast, and
seemingly oblivious to the very idea that this might not be my ideal
way to begin the day, she strode into the room, cheerful and very, very
loud: “James! James! Wake up! Wake up! Wake
up! It’s beautiful day!
Let’s go! Let’s go!”. I’d buried my head under a pillow and through gritted teeth, I asked her to allow me a more gentle awakening. I even said please and thank you. Trying, trying, so very very hard, to take the high road, to be a better person in any and every situation than I might naturally want to be... but inside, well, inside I wondered if this woman was aware - having just experienced "the little death" in the arms of a Cuban musician - exactly how close to the BIG death she was. Breakfast in the Casa was pretty grim, especially compared to Casa Belkis in Havana. A very small plate of fruit (banana, pineapple, mango) some little rolls with a thin slice of cheese, and some sort of pureed fruit juice smoothie thing. I lay back down for a while, and Nadine went off to hit the
beach,
a
few miles away. Eventually I decided to explore the town some more.
Trinidad really is a very small little village, and there just isn’t
much to do here, aside from the half-dozen places to hear music at
night. |
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There are no glass windows in Trinidad, just shutters with wood slats, sometimes with a few metal bars set into the window sill for security. I strolled by the municipal archives, a building not so different from any of the adjacent one-story homes.
A windowless first floor room
was filled with thousands of bundles of yellowed folders lined up on
metal shelves; these are Trinidad’s birth, death, and marriage records
for the past 150 years. Although apparently left to rot or crumble in
the open air, the city’s history somehow remains intact in the dry
heat.
I could see bundles of documents with labels from the 19th century on
them.I wandered out of the central area, the cleaned-up area, and towards the part of town where locals live. The crappy part of Trinidad (everywhere except the tourist quarter) is filled with skinny horses, happy children, horse shit on streets where dirt was never replaced with cobblestone, and quizzical glances at a foreigner who had wandered away from the Casa Musica in the happily white-washed tourist zone.
More kites: one strangling an electrical pole, and another being flown by a kid. A different world from the space-age plastic kite I once had as a kid (it had a picture of the Apollo moon lander on it). But I never really bothered to learn how to properly launch it; I had other playthings to attract my attention. This Cuban kid has nothing but two sticks, a scrap of paper, and some string, but he is making the most of it. How much do we really need to be happy?
Actually, “contentment” is something I have been thinking about a lot, and this trip really made me think about it even more. Walking around the ghetto of Trinidad, I made some stream of consciousness musings into my tape recorder. There is nothing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that indicates material wealth as being a prerequisite for self-actualization. Level two indicates security of employment, resources, and property, but nowhere does it indicate that one has to be excessively wealthy. Maslow isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all, but his theories do have merit.
What I have been contemplating is whether or
not people ever reach
a
point in their lives where they feel like they have enough. A
big
enough house, enough friends, enough cash, enough attention from loved
ones. I am thinking that almost everyone would be unhappy if their
current levels of these things went down, but I wonder how many people
feel like they have the right amount of income, who feel like they
require no further material goods (other than replacing things that
wear out), who feel like their home is adequate to the point where they
wouldn’t upgrade it, and who feel like they require no more friends
than the ones they have. This ties into Buddhism more than Maslow, I
think, being free from desire, free from wanting. But the other half of
human suffering, aside from desire, is fear. Once we stop desiring more
than we have in life, we have to conquer the fear of losing what we do
have. That’s the hardest part.
So, these Cubans, they don’t have much, but
they also never
had
much, so they haven’t lost anything. Homeostasis of a sort. A kid who
has never even heard of a Wii is not going to miss not having
one, and will be perfectly content with a kite. Is the Wii kid happier
than the kite kid? Probably not, and when dad loss his job at the
investment company, the Wii kid is going to get fewer video games for
the holidays this year and become miserable; the kite kid will probably
always be able to scrounge some scrap paper and string together to make
new kites. The more we have, the more we stand to lose, and the more we
lose the more miserable we are.
Not having it means never losing it,
but the key is freeing yourself from wanting it in the first place.
Another thing...
The food in Cuba is rationed. There isn’t a lot of meat or fruit to go
around. I don’t know why, because there is a lot of open country here,
plenty of room for farming. But, the locals eat a lot of rice and
beans. The better food is reserved for the tourists. Tourists pay for
things, including Casa Particulares, in CUCs. The only locals who can
accept CUCs or pay for things in CUCs are people licensed to work the
tourist trade such as owners of legally operated Casas or Paladars.
These people also have the right to shop at the markets that carry the
tourist goods, the higher-quality goods. So, if someone owns a Casa,
and goes to market with a grip of CUCs (collected from their guests),
and uses this cash to pay for some nice cuts of meat (supposedly to
feed their guests), then who is to say whether or not this person is
actually buying some of this food for themselves, living a bit better
than their neighbor?
Is it this easy: all we need is our health,
some good people
around
us, and a roof over our head? Contentedness with what we have is
happiness, and maintaining what we have keeps us content. Failing to
achieve more than we think we deserve makes some of us unhappy.
Adjust
expectations.
Well... speaking of which, making it back to the better part of
town, I ended up back on the souvenir street. In addition to the linen
ladies, there were several people selling weird sculptures made of
animal horn and also people selling wooden abstract sculptures that
were kinda-sorta modernist. Like something one would see, well,
in Havana I suppose. Knockoffs of something once glimpsed at a modern
art salon in 1960. Too big and too fragile for the luggage. One of the
linen ladies tried to sell me a crocheted blouse for my “amore”.
I hacked my way through a sentence in Spanish (which wasn't true, but
it was funny): “mi amore is no mas
bueno”. She laughed and said something to the ladies in the booth
across from hers.
They found a few words in English for me: “you
have
beautiful eyes”.
Again!
Again with the eyes!
Eyes, plural, including the injured one!
Is this a standard line for dumpy middle aged Cuban women to use when
flirting with tourists?
And do they all do it so boldly?
But then it hit me.
Blue eyes in Latin America.
You just don’t see them.
My peepers must be a real novelty to these people, perhaps
striking to
them in the same way that those big green eyes on that Afghan girl in
that
famous National Geographic photo are to most other people.
Sure, the linen ladies had an ulterior motive (sales), but the woman in
the museum did not.
Hooray for exotica, and how funny that something
about my generic white American countenance could be thought of as
exotic to someone, somewhere.
Other things:
A lot of the street signs here, usually mounted on the sides of buildings at the street corners, are missing. Rather than replacing them, people have written the street names on the buildings, in chalk. At first I thought I was seeing graffiti. Then I realized there is no graffiti in Trinidad.
Rum in juice boxes (“designed like a wooden
barrel to seal in the
flavor”).
Everyone here has a bird cage in their home.
They put them in the
window during the day, and bring them in at night.
No glass. Just shuttered windows. The small amount of glass present is usually covered with duct tape to keep it from shattering during storms. Most of it is antique, and not replaceable; it is often cut into decorative shapes.
Walked by what was either a paint factory or a still in someone’s front room (left).
The predominant smell of Cuba is the exhaust fumes of cars built in 1950.Chilled out for a while back in the Casa.
Hung out on the patio and ate some trail mix.
An elderly man who lives in this house has the coolest pair of Vans. Where did he get these shoes, and how? Does he realize that he is wearing shoe meant for American teenagers? The mysteries of Cuba.
So, I went to a little mom and pop store, because they carried the
Barrel Proof. Thought I might be able to barter with the old lady in
there. By the time I got there, it was ten after five, and she was
closed. The fancy-pants cigar store on the corner sold me my two
bottles of Barrel Proof for 29.50 CUC each, as noted above.
Oh yeah...
And now: how to get it home?I had an empty American liquor bottle in my luggage, brought just for this eventuality.
I poured the contents of one of the Barrel Proof bottles into the good ol’ Kentucky booze receptacle. Now, at least I could claim that one of these was brought from home for personal use.
It did not end up being an issue.
After budgeting for the various busses and cabs I’ll need during the last few days of this trip, I am down to 17 CUC, plus 8000 pesos (about $70) in reserve. Nadine is going to loan me money to go the Tropicana night club in Havana tomorrow night, and other than that I just need to come up with cash for a few meals. I’ll be all right, I have just enough.
Nadine came back from the beach where she met a girl named Fatima.
We were to meet her around seven at the Teatreo Brunet (the 1840
theater with no more roof), to see Jose’s band again. Fatima is an
African
girl who now lives in France. She sets up micro-loans for people in
African nations so that they can buy simple necessities like clothing
or small appliances.
Jose’s band were made up of two acoustic guitars, congas, a girl
singing, claves, a doghouse bass, and an electric keyboard (the
keys are a rarity for Cuba). They sounded pretty good, of
course. On break some of them sat down and chatted with us.
They were interested to hear about the music biz in the U.S. (my
occupation). I decided that Jose and Nadine were really Ricky
Ricardo and Lucy - the Cuban musician with the annoying American
sweetie!
The band got back to work as Nadine, Fatima, and I went to dinner. We’d heard of a certain Paladar that was supposed to be good, but it was closed this night. Echoing our adventure finding the Casa yesterday, the Paladar owner (who happened to be outside), sent us to her sister’s place. Knocking on the unmarked residential door was a little bit questionable, but we ended up inside, at Paladar Estela. We ate on a pleasant patio, once again behind someone’s house. Walking through their living room, we spied a life-sized (life-sized!) plaster statue of a dying Jesus being cradled in a woman’s arms. Bloody and dying. Life-sized. Also of prodigious size were the avocados growing on the huge tree in the center of the patio. These avocados were the size of grapefruits. They were three times larger than any avocados I have ever seen in my life. Yet, our hostess was not selling them in the local market, and no one in town seemed interested in avocados. This tree is a goldmine for this woman; these gigantic mutant fruits growing for free could probably net her more cash than the Paladar business.
The food was probably the best we got in Cuba. In fact, it
was the
only meal I had in Cuba that I would rate “good” or better; everything
else has been acceptable or less. This one was almost “very good”. We
started with a plate of cut squash and sweet potato, with little bits
of tomato and onion. Then we got a salad to share with some huge pieces
of avocado (natch) some decent-looking cucumbers (for once - they’ve
been pretty bad elsewhere) and a little bit of cabbage. Another plate
of veggies contained some tomatoes and lettuce, and we also got a plate
of rice. I got a nice piece of chicken. My share of dinner was 13.50
CUC.
With dinner we drank cinchanchara, a cocktail of honey, lemon, clear rum, and sparkling water. A few other places in town serve it too. It wasn’t anything special as served, but I’ll bet I can improve on the concept by playing with the ratios (try one sour, two sweet, three strong, four weak).
After dinner, Nadine and Fatima went off to see Jose and his friends. Fatima was nice and a very interesting person, but I just had to be away from Nadine's condescending prattle. I was in a weird mood, the same mood that has been steadily intensifying this whole trip. I guess when things go poorly for me, I don’t get mad or explode, I get more introverted and want to go off on my own. My persistent cough, the eye injury, my ill-chosen travel buddy, and my conflicted feelings about this whole damned country had me down.
I wandered around the central plaza of town, watching the band and
the hundred or so people on the multi-level terraces leading up to the
Casa Musica. The amateur jackass scammer who tried to get me to buy him
booze last night tried me again. The bartender on the terraces (Pablo
by name), was freaking out over how awesome he thought my shirt was. He
said he’d trade me a box of cigars for it. I did not gie him the shirt
off my back. My double measure of Havana Club Anejo Reserva was 3 CUC.
I was greatful that Pablo wasn't complimenting me on my peepers.
The Charlize Theron look-alike (and her posse of friends) who
I
encountered in the Cancun airport, and who were also at the bus
terminal
in Havana, made an appearance on the terraces too. I recalled the
bitchy
aloofness she spat my way when I asked her a simple, non-threatening,
question in the Cancun airport, and her haughy demeanor later on. I
have seen them three times
now, in three different cities.
Were this David or Ellen from my Havana cab ride, or Julian and Esther
from the bus trip to Trinidad, or Varinia from last night, or Jeffrey
from Afrocubizante, or the Lithuanians that explored Disco Ayala with
me, or several other people, it would have been nice to
see them again and pass the evening chatting over a rum and some tunes.
But no, the one person I keep crossing paths with is
the mean one. Where did all of the cool people scatter to?
Wandering away from there a bit, I made some long-exposure photos
of
the Colonial-era buildings at night, poked my head into the other music
clubs, noted three art galleries open late-night on a Monday (all
showing generic hackwork for the drunken tourists to take home).
I
went into Hunter S. Thompson mode, uttering into my tape recorder “I am
tired of these Communist savages”. Wandering off of
the tourist zone,
but not quite into the ghetto zone, I came across a dirt parking lot
surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Hearing music coming from within, I
peeked inside via the open gate at the driveway, and was waved in by
one of the five musicians playing music to an audience of zero. I
politely declined the invitation, and decided to retire rather
early.
Walking home,
I
thought about race issues, or the lack thereof, in Cuba.
Cubans come in
many shades. There are people who look essentially Caucasian, some who
are clearly Hispanic, and some who could have come right over from
Ethiopia, but most Cubans fall somewhere in between these shades.
After centuries of interbreeding, Cubans exist in every
gradation between pasty white and midnight black. It is like a litter
of puppies! They seem to come out in all colors, even from the same
mother, if
we may use the metaphor of a motherland. There is no racial
problem, Cubans are Cubans, and that’s that. They all share the same
culture, and there are just too many
slight subtleties and variations in color for people to worry about it.
This makes me wonder if race issues elsewhere have less to do with the color of people’s skins, and more to do with differences in culture and behavior. In Chicago, there are dozens of ethnic enclaves all over the city. They each have their own customs, ways of speaking, ideas about social etiquette, and unnecessary religions. I’m not so sure that contemporary race predjudices come from the way people look, I think maybe it comes from the way people behave.
People say “why should I be judged by the color of my skin?”, and
I
say that you shouldn’t be. But the people who are doing the judging
might merely be using the color of the skin as an indicator of the
likelihood that there are certain theoretically incompatible cultural
traits lurking underneath. Skin color does not make people behave in
certain ways, but learned behavior and cultural behavioral traits do
exist within various ethnic groups, many of whom can be identified by
their outward appearance. Insular groups are going to develop
their own habits. If these behaviors are deemed negative by an
individual
from outside the group, then one can avoid these unwanted behaviors by
using the person’s exterior as an indicator that these traits may exist
within.
Thus, we have racism.
I am not justifying this mode of thinking, just contemplating
reasons why it might exist.
In Cuba, there is only one culture to speak of, and thus no race
problem, even though there are people of all colors (if
we believe the race problem is simply a symptom of a culture clash, as
I hypothesized above). In
Japan, a nation I visited six months prior to Cuba, there is only one
race. Foreigners are rare in Japan, and the Japanese race is relatively
pure. This racial purity is the opposite of Cuba. But Japan is also as
culturaly pure
as Cuba is (maybe due to both being island nations) so in that regard,
they are similar. Japanese people don’t seem to be xenophobic based on
people’s color, it is an outsider’s culture (or ignorance of local
customs) that is frowned upon. Japanese peope don’t care what color you
are, they care that your behavior is out of step with their own;
however your non-Japanese skin is an indicator that you will probably
behave badly (from their perspective).
This theory is admittedly half baked. Check back with me sometime
after the next time I sneak in to an ethnically mixed Communist island
nation and have ponder it more while drinking rum.
Non-sequetir:
Here are some cars.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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Up at 7:20 a.m. for the bus back to Havana. Unlike the relatively comfortable ride to Trinidad, the van we took back to Havana was a rickety old thing, with no air conditioning, so we had the windows open for the whole six hours. Fortunately, the day was nice, neither too hot nor too cold, but it was loud and windy. The driver was a snaggletoothed old coot who kept whipping out a comb while he was driving so as to be able to primp his thinning coif. He pulled over at a roadside stand at one point to buy a ham sandwich; he didn’t explain why we were stopping or offer us the opportunity to join him and feed ourselves. Next to the driver in the front seat was some guy who never
spoke
a
word to any of us the whole trip. He wore headphones the whole way. No
idea what his nationality was. In the middle seat were a French couple
and me, all squeezed together. The woman smiled at me in a polite
manner once or twice, but the pair of them were speaking French to each
other the whole way and made no effort towards conversation. In the
back seat were a couple speaking Italian, and Nadine, who was so tired
from staying up all night drinking and screwing, that she passed out
and didn’t say a word the entire trip. Munching my dwindling trail mix, jerky, and power bar
rations, I
observed a
farmer
plowing his fields with oxen. The beasts were pulling a wooden plow
with an iron blade on it, right out of a 19th century (or older) genre
painting. The bus dropped most of the passengers off near central
Havana,
not
far from the Hotel Plaza (where I spent my first night in town). The
driver took Nadine and I back to Vedado. |
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At the Havana Riviera, I took a ton of pictures of
this amazing - and virtually deserted - resort from the glory days of
Havana as America’s playground. I showed two of the guards photocopies
of pages from Pete’s book, and indicated that they were working in the “numero
uno muy importante” location in the whole book, but they seemed
unimpressed.
I, however, was impressed. The entire building,
all of it, is
covered
in small mosaic tiles. I like the modernist sculptures in the lobby of
dancing couples, I like the spiral staircase that goes nowhere (Sarah
Palin must have commissioned it), I like the mysterious corridor
leading to a nightclub, I like the clean, open, and sunny coffee shop
with mid-century murals inside, and I like the pool area.
(The next two pics to the left and the next three to the right
are the Havana Riviera).
Two guys were
outside working on restoring the sculptural fountains in front of the
building. Good deal.
A larger sculpture is being either held up or
fixed up by scaffolding all over it.
That one was made in 1957 by D.C.
Elobert. Or D. G. Elabert. Hard to tell, the signature was worn.
As I walked around the vast lobby, I noted that most of the lights
were off.
This was another phenomenon that I observed all over Havana.
During the day, they let sunlight do its job, but even with curtains
and windows open, some larger rooms can remain dusky. I am not sure if
this is all to save electricity, to diminish heat as much as possible,
or because lightbulbs are in short supply (maybe all of the above), but
Havana doesn’t do incandescent lighting before sundown.
Walking back along the Malecon from the Havana Riviera
towards
Casa
Belkis, it got rather brutally hot, but I trudged onward, taking more
pictures and taking in the residential part of Havana for the last
time.
As I walked, my hand gently and briefly brushed against a bush;
somehow in this millisecond of contact, something bit me, and a swollen
welt appeared on my finger a few minutes later. The digit went numb,
the welt grew fast.
Another damned injury on this trip.
What the hell?
For all I know it was the bush itself that bit me. After
everything else that has conspired to beat me up on the trip, running
across some sort of angry sentient carnivorous
shrubbery would not have surprised me at all.
Back at Belkis, I relaxed for a bit, and then went on a mission: Naomi had sent me two care packages to be delivered to two parties she had befriended when her party visited Havana to reconnoiter for Pete’s book.
I was not able to locate Andres, their
chauffeur and guide, but I
did find Arturo and Barbarita, a middle-aged couple who live just a few
blocks from Belkis.
I approached their apartment building, unannounced
and unexpected. The landlady was suspicious of me, naturally, but when
I showed her a photo of Arturo, Barbarita, and Sven, and said “mi
amigos”, she summoned Arturo, who was working in the basement.
Confronted with the photo, his face lit up and he was delighted to take
me upstairs to meet his wife. They buzzed around the apartment, gleeful
at having some company. If I understood Arturo right, he was a merchant
marine who retired two years ago at age 60. This is the standard
retirement age in Cuba. Arturo and Barbarita “made me” drink some rum,
and showed me photos of their impossibly gorgeous teenage daughter,
including shots of her winning a pageant. She is in Miami now,
apparently. I noticed that Barbarita had a small collection of
decorative china plates, not unlike the ones at Casa Belkis. Is this a
status symbol for middle aged Cuban women?
Hanging on their wall near the kitchen was
this sort of
giant canvas banner, bright yellow in color, advertising some sort of
lemon-flavored Japanese liqueur. It seemed really out of place.
What is
the story with this?
How does something like this make it to the
home
of a middle aged Cuban couple who can’t even get toothpaste regularly?
Did they think it was art? It was an advertisement.
But... ads are so
rare in Cuba... maybe they didn’t recognize it for what it is?
Or maybe
a Japanese visitor stayed with them?
But even as much as the Japanese
love giving gifts, what an odd and bulky thing to lug from Japan. A
mystery.
I gave them the aspirin, toothpaste, soap, and band-aids that Naomi had sent me to Cuba with; I was skeptical at first about schlepping this stuff with me, but after a week in Cuba, I am thoroughly convinced as to how much this simple gesture means to these people. They just can’t get this stuff here. They gave me a present of some small cigars. I didn’t want to take them (partially because I don't smoke, but also because it was my mission to give things to these people, not to take from them). The visit lasted barely twenty minutes, but it was a really positive thing, it was clear that a visit from a complete stranger bearing small gifts from people who can barely be called friends made a huge difference to these people, and it really made their day - if not their month.
My mood was therefore just fine as I walked in the now-dark Havana
evening towards Casa Belkis.
Getting into the shower in preparation for a night out, I scraped
my
knuckle on the glass door, cutting the finger next to the one
that had
been instantaneously stung by some mean old plant life an hour earlier.
Another damned injury on this trip.
What the hell?
And I am still fucking coughing.
At least I didn’t go
blind.
Yet.
Dinner was at a Paladar near Casa Belkis. Along with that
one
Paladar in Trinidad, this was a tie for the best meal I had in Cuba.
The place had four tables set on a patio, with the kitchen just inside
the house, and a small bar near the door. To get to the patio, one has
to travel from the sidewalk over a little bridge through a small but
lush garden of tall
plants that mostly obscure the dining area from the street. Festive
lighting, good food, and a super-friendly owner complete the vibe to
make this one a winner.
It was also a little pricier than most of the
other meals in Cuba (they wanted 17 CUC - roughly double the going
rate), but I guess you get what you pay for, everywhere you go. I was
almost completely out of money (save for a few Mexican pesos in reserve
for the voyage home). When I initially balked at eating at this Paladar
(due to the posted prices), the owner insisted that we sit down anyway,
and promised to accommodate us within our budget (10 CUC). I guess the
barter system is alive and well, everywhere you go.
When the food started coming out, I felt bad for having been
stingy,
because it ended up being great. The owner replenished our salad when
it ran out (a first and only for Cuba), and he took the oil and vinegar
off of the table and replaced it with better quality versions. My meal
was a robust half chicken (no gnarly flattened breast here) with rice
and beans on the plate, bread
and butter, and bottled water.
So, basically the same as my last five
dinners, but slightly better in quality.
I spotted a beverage behind the bar that I could not identify - Legendario Elixir de Cuba (since 1946). 34% abv. It is made in Havana within the Polar beer brewery on Linea. I tried a little. The elixir is sort of a sweetened rum-based thing with a few hints of spice, basically rum diluted with sugar and spice, etc. It was fine but nothing special. The owner would not let me pay for it, and even “made” me have another shot of it for dessert. When I asked to buy a water for the road, the wouldn’t take any money. I forced upon him!
These people are so used to poverty and to helping each other out, that when he saw that my CUCs were just about gone, I think he almost redoubled his efforts towards hospitality, and made sure I was far more than simply taken care of. For this friendly man, a lack of cash was not a reason to give me a half-assed meal, it was an excuse to help someone in need. Tipping isn’t generally expected in Havana, but after bartering from 17 CUC to 10 CUC for a meal, and then being given good food (for Cuba), great service, free booze, and free water, I had to leave this man with every CUC that I could afford.
As if that weren’t enough, two guys came to
the table and sang,
one
with a guitar and one with maracas.
The grand finale of this trip was now upon
me. A cab to Tropicana
Nightclub (2.50 CUC) dropped me off in a time warp, a fully
three-dimensional piece of the past, transported into 2008. This
old-style
club was built in 1939 and if it has ever been updated, that renovation
can not have happened any sooner than half a century ago.
It is a rather steep 70 CUC to get in (plus 5 CUC for a camera - if they see you with one, that is, and 15 CUC for video). Of course the show is performed by rote and geared towards tourists. I’d be tempted to call it a ripoff for the price, but the two hour spectacular employs a cast of nearly a hundred, including at least a dozen musicians, several dozen showgirls, a few featured dancers, and a bunch of specialty performers. Add the wait staff, Maitre'D, tech crew, management, and the upkeep costs on the costumes, sound, and lighting, and this place can’t be cheap to operate.
Surrounded on all sides by a lush jungle, the Tropicana is in an
outdoor clearing in the foliage where people can enjoy an old-style
cabaret show under the stars. An elaborate stage, itself a marvel of
mid-century design, is home to performers in elaborate costumes
singing, dancing, performing acrobatic feats, and transporting visitors
right back to grandpa’s era. The live band (in an elevated bandstand
off of stage left) is balanced by a huge, three-tiered side-stage to
stage right. I love the conga soloist on his own hydraulic-lift
platform, and the giant chandelier moving over the audience on a giant
track... followed by girls in chandelier dresses (you had to see them)
on stage.
This is so bad.
Like a parody of Vegas.
Chinese-style
acrobats (but Cuban of course) balancing on tall objects to Flight
of the Bumblebee.
Every campy shtick you can possibly imagine, all
lined up.
Hilarious.
Well worth the money, but dumb as hell.
One glass of champagne, upon being seated, is
free.
Rum is free.
Cola is not.
I drank the rum straight, and I think I got my share.
And then some.
Snacks are free but in extremely skimpy portions, and the snack waiter
is impossible to flag down.
Well, the night was beautiful, and since it was a Tuesday (and therefore not crowded) and since I was not part of a tour group, I managed to get a great table very close to the stage. The weather, the rum, the terrific sense of living in another time, and the pure kitsch of the show added up to me having a swell time.
Afterwards, the venue stays open for dancing, but most of the
audience
left immediately (the tour busses were a-waiting).
With some reluctance, I slunk out of there all too
soon, snapping pictures of the life-sized sculpture of the dancing
hours (a dozen nude women dancing around a fountain), the searchlights
reflecting on and around the palm trees, the neon everywhere (the arch
over the driveway, the sign on the street, and miles of the stuff in
the venue), the 1950s Googie cafe (Loi Jardines) off to the side
of the main building, the deco ballerina sculpture, the combo playing
exit music on the lanai (congas, cowbell, maracas, guitar, upright
bass, flute).
Afterwards, hailing a cab proved difficult, but some random guy and his girlfriend offered a ride for 3 CUC. Remember that this is a nation where there is almost no violent crime, and where hitchhiking is not only encouraged, but is enforced by law. The only problem was that this guy had no earthly clue, at all, where he was going. He drove in some sort of nautilus pattern, a big spiral, around and around Vedado until he finally swirled around to Casa Belkis. Even in my prodigious state of rumminess, I had a better clue how to get where we were going than this guy did, but I didn’t have the language skills to help. I did have a map, which I pulled out and showed to the guy, but apparently pictures are too complicated for him.
Unlocking the front gate of Casa Belkis and walking through the
garden area that leads to the front door, I encountered the elderly
security man. He is employed to sit in this garden from dusk until
dawn, for the safety and security of Mrs. Belkis's guests. For this
chore, he is paid the princely sum of one CUC per night. I sat down and
talked to him for a while, hacking my way through a conversation in my
horrible Spanish.
He reconfirmed what so many other Cubans had told me,
with infinite optimism - Cuba and America are neighbors.
If any Cubans
know any English at all, they all seem to know the word ‘neighbor’.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
|
Near Casa Belkis is a huge cemetery named after Christopher Columbus. It is said to contain just as many architectural marvels as the rest of the city. It is also said to contain oddities like squatters living in forgotten sepulchers abandoned by descendants of people who no one currently alive ever knew. I wanted to see it, but a little thing called “sleeping off the rum” got in the way. When I got up, I was shocked to discover the lateness of the
hour,
and I had to scramble just a bit to get to the airport. Angela (the
girl who had made breakfast the other mornings I stayed here) was gone,
and another woman made me some quick grub. It was pretty bad, and she
seemed annoyed at having to have to do this. The remainder of the care
package that Naomi had sent to Cuba with me was sitting on the bed (I
had been unable to locate Naomi’s other friend Andres), and when I went
back to the room to get my stuff, it was gone. Mrs. Belkis told me that a cab to the airport should cost no
more
than 12 to 15 CUC. Remember that the ride into town from the airport
had been 25 CUC (or 30 CUC for three people with multiple stops). Mrs.
Belkis was very emphatic about this. Walking towards the cemetery,
which I had to skip, but which was along a main road, I hailed a cab.
The driver quoted me a price of 25 CUC, but I insisted that he turn on
the meter. The meter read a bit over 12 CUC when we got to the airport,
so that is what I gave him. The cab driver had been playing a mix of 1970s/1980s U.S.
hits,
and this was the only American/British music I heard the entire time I
was in
Cuba. Every other moment of sonic goodness to reach my ears, bar none,
was pure Cuban music. And yet for some reason, I had - get this - “All
Over the World” by E.L.O. stuck in my head all week (groan). I guess it
was because of all the people I met from all over the world. |
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Speaking of which...
At the airport in Mexico, a very long week ago, I had to pay $15 for a visa into Cuba. At the Casa Particulares in both Havana and Trinidad, the owners had asked for the visas from Nadine and I, and had given them back later. In Trinidad, Nadine had collected my visa to give to the owner, and I did not get it back. I went through a small panic; if this visa was still in the Casa in Trinidad, how much trouble would I be in? Would I even be able to leave Cuba? How much of a fine would I have to pay? I ransacked my luggage, and it was gone. Well, long story short, Nadine had it, and had forgotten to give it back to me in Trinidad. If I would not have thought to ask her for it last night, I would have been thoroughly screwed after she and I finally parted company. She’d left the room early this morning, well before I woke up from my rum coma, and had gone back to Trinidad to be with Jose!
As I waited in line to present this visa to the
immigration
officer,
two other American guys were frantically digging through their bags;
they’d lost their visas for real.
There are nearly 150 flags hanging from the airport ceiling,
depicting the nations of the world.
Dropped my last CUCs on a few bottles of water, and a bottle of Ron Vedadero (to add to the two bottles of Barrel Proof and the six “airline” mini-bottles of Mulato and Santero already stashed in my suitcase), leaving me with about 30 CUC cents. This 30 cents makes me about the richest man in Cuba.
The plane was running late, but no one seemed concerned, and no announcements were made. This is Cuba, mister.
I left Cuba... mister.
Shot some lovely pics of Cuba and Cancun out the airplane windows.
Van to the hotel in Cancun was 140 pesos ($12-$13), and I had to wait like 45 minutes for it to leave. It was a private van, but the stingy driver was waiting to see if any other fares showed up. So I waited and waited. When we left, the guy looped around the airport a few times, finally got a radio call about another passenger, picked the guy up, and we hit the road. By 6:00 p.m. I was in my room in the Flamingo resort in Cancun. I was given a plastic bracelet, like you get in dance clubs, that I had to wear on my wrist for the duration of my visit. It became abundantly clear, almost immediately, that this hotel is used to catering to young spring breakers.
Checked email in the lobby, and checked out the room,
which has an
old faded poster of Chichen Itza on the wall, and a gorgeous balcony
view of the Gulf. Waves crash against the foundation of the building
directly below the balcony.
Cleaned up, and went for a walk. Cancun was just as dead as it had been a week ago. There is virtually nothing here that is interesting to me. The only thing of note that I spotted was a shopping center called Kukulcan Plaza that had a huge, elaborate stained glass dome in the center, depicting ancient Mayan historical scenes. As I was photographing it, a show started, in which the various scenes lit up as a recorded Spanish voice related the historical tales depicted in glass. Kukulcan Plaza was otherwise mostly empty, all of the stores having moved to La Isla, the newer open-air mall across the street. That sort of outdoor village design seems to be replacing the enclosed indoor mall in shopping plaza trends these days. Makes sense here, but certainly not in the midwest, where it is inexplicably just as popular.
Moving on, I visited a rather expensive European market with nice wines, cheeses, exotic foods, and a great liquor and liqueur selection. Should I ever be stuck in this town with a woman, this is the place to come for luxury foods. Bought a sort of apple tart desert thing that reminded me of my trip to France in 2007.
Had dinner at Sanborn’s, a sort of grubby
generic restaurant.
Eschewing (as always) anything that seemed to be part of a chain, and
tired of rice and beans, this was about my only option. Spent 136 pesos
(including tip) for four tacos (the kind that are rolled up in a soft
shell and fried), with some additional soft tortillas, a glob of rice,
a glob of guacamole, and a huge liter bottle of water. Can’t avoid the
rice, I guess. The waiter was a funny little awkward nerdy teenage guy.
A billboard advertising a bar boasts “What happens in La
Distilleria
stays in La Distilleria”.
It is officially time to make a new rule
banning any slogan stating “What happens in ____ stays in _____”.
That
slogan is over, done, not clever, not cool.
Walked on the beach for a minute, and hit the sack early.
This trip beat me up a little bit.
Between my minor injuries, dealing with Nadine, and a little bit of
stress about entering and exiting Cuba (which ended up being no problem
whatsoever), this trip was a little more difficult than most of my
other trips, and also not quite as fun.
Not one of my stellar
adventures.
Which ones were stellar?
Japan, Paris, Easter Island, my first
trans-American road trip, and a certain week in New York,
for starters.
England, Spain, Chile, Hawai’i, and some of my other road
trips didn’t exactly suck either.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Queen-sized four-post canopy beds lined up
outdoors, in the sand,
on
the beach.
I went down to the water on a beautiful, clear, hot day, and
splashed around in the Gulf for a bit. Kind of had to do it. The waves
pummeled me, challenging me to stay somewhat vertical, and pushing me
occasionally towards the few jagged rock outcroppings that break up the
otherwise soft and pristine sand.
Back in the room, I sat on the balcony
for well over an hour (that's my view to the right),
eating the last of my tail mix, granola bars,
and beef jerky while watching the waves roll in.
Decompressed from the
tough week in Cuba, contemplated the days ahead (I have ten hour work
days for three days in a row beginning tomorrow,
and here I am relaxing
with my feet up on the balcony rail of a Caribbean luxury resort).
Felt
the last hours of this trip ticking away.
Cancun airport.
Sittng in a seat, staring off into space.
Three teenage girls sat down next to me and started yapping amongst
themselves.
They eventually struck up friendly conversation with me.
Nice kids.
Friendly, smart.
Then I realized who they were.
They were the girls who had been following "Charlize Theron" all over
Mexico and Cuba.
"Charlize" was nowhere to be found, and without their bitchy clique
leader (Heathers, anyone?), the gals were allowed to go back to
being
just normal kids.
They did.
Was that story worth all of the set-up?
Connecting flight in Houston.
Voice mail for the first time since leaving home.
U.S. customs.
Officer barely glanced at my passport (stamped in Mexico only - Cuba
does not stamp), assumed I was just another asshole soaking up the sun
in Cancun, and waved me past without glancing up from his computer
monitor.
For that, I was worried about getting busted all week?
Landed in sub-freezing temperatures at the beginning of what would become the coldest and hardest winter out of the fifteen years I have spent in Chicago.
I can't remember a worse December.
Just watch those icicles form.
What do I care if icicles form?
I've got my rum to keep me warm.
Havana Club Barrel Proof, mi amigos!
(*) = I know, Sosa, Sosa.
Total trip cost - $1653.61
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Multimedia Left Orbit Temple Tiki Road Trip Big Stone Head Send e-mail to James Last updated on June 8, 2009 |
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