CUBA: DAY 6, LAST DAY IN HAVANA

Every Sunday at noon, the rhumba band starts playing in an artist-mecca alley way in Havana.  People come from everywhere and we heard that the place is jam-packed for the whole afternoon – people dancing their feet off.  It was a delightful mix of people – narrow alley, various paintings on the walls and some avant-garde art installations draped around (one wall had 4 bathtubs embedded in a wall with paintings on the insides), men smoking cigars, women with low-cut tops (although I noticed that Cuban woman have normal-sized breasts, not the enhanced-with-implants breasts you see in the US).  Our tour group got there a bit early to beat the crowd and the musicians were starting to warm up.  And yes, I bought the CD.

It turns out that the place is also the site of several Santeria shrines.  We had a Santeria specialist talk to our group and explain some basics, and learned that it is the religion of the majority of Cubans.  Yes, it is common to assume that most Cubans are Roman Catholics, but even those that call themselves Catholic still follow many Santeria customs.  And yes, they still sacrifice chickens.  We even saw a wooden statue of Babaloo Aiye (Father of the World).  I don’t mean to be too irreverent, but to me, Babaloo has always been either a song sung by Ricky Ricardo in I Love Lucy or a flaming dessert.  As the group was leaving the alley, we passed by a fortune teller who was reading tarot cards and looked rather intimidating.  I had to pay 1 CUC for permission to take her photo.

And then it was over.  On to the airport and home.

Here are a few general comments about Cuba.  Yes, Cuba is a poor country – they don’t have much of anything to export so they don’t have much money to import goods.  This means that most everything they make, use, wear, and eat is produced in Cuba.  Personally, I think that is pretty resourceful.  And they are absolute brilliant in recycling and reusing things.  The people, children, and dogs all looked well nourished.  The people were wonderfully friendly.  The streets, for the most part except some small alleys, were clean.  There was almost no litter on the streets.  There were no homeless people laying around on sidewalks – at least I didn’t see any.  And there were no beggars.  Oh, and I haven’t talked about Che Guevara – his picture is absolutely everywhere:  billboards, t-shirts, key chains, cups, and painted on walls.  He is a very popular hero.  And we also saw many, many billboards and graffiti on walls saying Free the Cuban 5.  If you haven’t heard about the Cuban 5, look it up.  The men are still very much in the forefront of Cuban attention.

In summary – GO TO CUBA.  You’ll have a great time.  As our Santaria guide said to us, “Don’t try to understand Cuba, just enjoy it.”

CUBA: DAY 5, MORE HAVANA

First stop was a visit to a senior center.  A big yawn, I thought, but not so.  In Cuba, extended families live together.  Children are in school all day, from early morning to late afternoon.  (School includes classroom work, lunch, play time, and fun activities – all with the intent of educating and taking care of the children while the parents are at work.)  While the parents are at work and the children are at school, the seniors get lonely rattling around the apartment by themselves, so the senior centers are places to go to and spend the day.  The centers provide lunch, social activities (games, especially dominos, prevail), quiet conversation, organized activities, exercise and other classes, physical therapy, and medical services.  It was quite nice.  Then we went off to an elementary school where I was impressed that the children all seemed engaged in the current activity and were not running around or being disruptive.

Then we hit one of the highlights:  a lesson in cigar rolling and a chance to sit in a cool courtyard, listen to a wonderful band (yes, I bought the CD) and enjoy what the Cubans call “the grand marriage,” which is a cup of Cuban coffee, a shot of Cuban rum, and a good Cuban cigar.  We were all served coffee, rum, and a cigar (a Cuban Romeo and Juliet, which is a mild cigar) and given a lesson in how to light and smoke a cigar.  I don’t smoke, but I definitely enjoyed smelling the wonderful aroma!  Great fun.

We visited a ballet school and watched a short demonstration and then went to a cemetery which was really interesting.  138 acres large, it has the most wonderful collection of sculptural tombstones.  You could probably wander through there for hours and be engrossed.

Dinner was at a paladar named Café Laurent and was fabulous.  What’s a paladar, you ask?  Well, in Cuba the government owns and runs most everything, and hires most of the population.  Relatively recently, in the last few years, the government has allowed a few private businesses to start up.  One of those are paladars, which are privately owned and run restaurants, operated in the owner’s house or apartment.  So we walked into an apartment building and rode up in a little, tiny, somewhat rickety elevator to the 5^th floor, and walked out into an apartment that looked like a European restaurant.  I highly recommend this place. 

After dinner, my sister and I went clubbing again, this time to the original, world renown Tropicana.  First of all, we had to take a cab because it is aboua 20 minute drive from the hotel and we decided to go in style.  So we rode to the Tropicana in a ’56 Buick convertible, red and white exterior with tuck and roll upholstery.  We also arranged for the driver to pick us up after the show -- driving through Havana at 1:00 AM in the balmy night air was sheer heaven.

Now, for the show.  The Tropicana is an outdoor venue, although it is covered with overhanging trees.  Tickets are very expensive (the $95 price is about equal to 3-month’s wages for the average worker) but the show was more than worth it.  Again, it was a revue of all the dance styles in Cuba and the Cuban dance roots.  The show is 2 hours, non-stop, and I would describe it as a Cuban version of a big Las Vegas show – lots of scantily clad dancing girls with big headdresses and thongs (one number even had the girls wearing big chandeliers!), macho men with bare chests and Cuban-sleeved shirts, about 40 dancers in all, 10 singers, and 15 musicians.  The costumes are very elaborate and high quality, the dancing is top notch, and the singing and music were fab.  And the $95 ticket includes a little plate of munchies and a small bottle of Havana Club rum.  All in all, it really was a great night.  And of course, they were selling CDs in the lobby and, you guessed it, I bought some CDs.  By the time we got back to the hotel and fell into bed, we were both exhausted but felt like at least we were trying our best to squeeze in as much of Cuba as possible.

CUBA: DAY 4, HAVANA

Breakfast buffet at the hotel (they put on quite a spread) and then off to Las Terrazos, which is a community 1.5 hours from Havana, in the country, that is focused on ecological preservation.  It has about 200 people who live there, a school, a doctor, and lots of ecology projects.  They have developed a nice tourism program with a small hotel and campground and restaurants for tourists.  While there, we visited two artist studios – one makes his own paper and then prints his paintings on cards and small-size prints.  The other is a painter.  Both were interesting.  Then we stopped for coffee at Maria’s house – she is famous for giving one cup of coffee (Cuban coffee is espresso with a bit of natural sugar mixed in) to workers and visitors as they pass by.  She is now a little old lady but her establishment still goes on. 
Then it was off to a farm house outdoor restaurant where they cook only over charcoal.  We ate under thatched-roofs accompanied by a terrific band (I bought the CD, of course).  The food was rice and black beans and shredded beef and chicken and was one of the best meals I’ve had so far.  (One comment about beef in Cuba:  it is rare because cattle require much more resources to raise than pigs or chickens.)  Oh yes, and a drink was included with lunch of course and this time I went for the Cuban dark beer Buckanero (muy fuerte!, as it says on the label).  Yum.  It’s so hard not to just start dancing everywhere because of the music that is always playing – it is an infectious rhythm.

Then it was off to visit the house of a famous Cuban artist, Jose Fuster, who has turned his house into a mosaic wonderland that he calls Fusterlandia.  I would describe his style as Picasso meets Gaudi.  Wonderfully whimsical.  He has also persuaded his neighbors for a couple of blocks in all directions from his house to allow him to turn their fences and outer walls into mosaic works of art.  Even the nearby bus stops are mosaic.  Fascinating.

Next stop was a craft market – a big warehouse (HOT in there!) with dozens of sellers offering cheap trinkets, hand-crafted items, paintings, conga drums, etc.  It was a mad house but interesting.  You do not see sellers all over the streets – they are confined to special markets and this is one of the few ways people can make extra money.  I ended up buying a small painting of an old American car on the street under a sign saying Havana Club (the national rum).  Not fine art but I couldn’t resist.

Let me digress for a minute and talk about toilets.  It became a topic of interest on my African trip (there’s a fun story about the resident frog in the toilet in one of the lodges) and once again toilets became a subject of attention in Cuba.  Because our hotel was a fancy hotel, the toilet in our bathroom had a toilet seat, toilet paper (Cuban toilet paper is very rough, much like what we call paper towels at home), and there were little bars of soap at the sink.  We discovered that to actually flush anything down the pipe, we had to pull the flush lever four times in rapid-fire succession.  Anything else just didn’t work.  And, of course, throughout Cuba, as in many other countries, you must put your used toilet paper in a canister that is always placed beside the toilet (which makes public toilets odiferous, however clean they are and they are pretty clean).  But that’s not the irritating part.  For the most part, no toilet paper is available, so you must bring your own (we were warned ahead of time), and you must also bring your own soap for washing your hands (I always carried a little hotel bar of soap in a small plastic bag).  And then, the public toilets do not have seats and they are really, really low to the ground.  A couple of times today I really had to think for a minute, trying to marshal my forces before getting up.

On a more pleasant note, I saw my dream car this morning – a ’57 Chevy Belair, white and creamy lemon yellow.  And it was in beautiful shape.  Mmmmmm.  I’ve lost my heart in Havana (or Habana as it is most often spelled here).

We decided to go out clubbing again after dinner and bought tickets to the Buena Vista Social Club show.  OMG, I had no idea the group that was revitalized by Ry Cooder in the ‘90s was still going strong, with even some of the original people and a few new ones who are slightly younger.  And my hats off to the two female singers – old broads with pipes that still sound good and they’re still wearing high-heeled shoes!  The show started at 9:30 and they played non-stop.  We left at 11 PM and were told that the show goes until 12:30!!  I don’t know how they do it but we had a grand time.  I am now officially, really tired with two days of busy touring left. Having fun isn’t always as easy as it looks!

CUBA: DAY 3, ARRIVING IN HAVANA

First of all, I must explain that my sister and I traveled to Havana on a tour arranged by Friendly Planet.  These tours are called people-to-people educational programs and must follow strict guidelines dictated by the US government.  The tour company arranges charter flights between Miami and Havana on American Airlines 737s and packs in a lot of activities.  In order for the tour company to keep their license for tours to Cuba, attendees must be present at all the activities (unless someone really has a good reason to stay behind, such as illness).  There is very little unscheduled, on-your-own time.  Frankly the list of activities included a bunch of things that sounded boring to me (visiting an elementary school and a senior center, for example) but I was surprised that most every activity turned out to be interesting.  Every day was fully packed!  So now that I have set the scene…

Boarded the hotel shuttle at 7:00 AM to arrive at the airport by 7:20, turned over our passports and tickets for the charter flight to the Miami tour escort (more on the tour escort later), stood in line at the airport check-in counter for an hour while the agent processed the paperwork (and yes, our tour had a designated agent just to process our papers but on a Cuba tour you must learn to relax and allow things to happen on Cuban time), checked in our bags (total allowed weight was 44 pounds for the check-in bag plus carry on bag), got our passports back with tickets and Cuban visa, went through security, arrived at the gate by 8:30 AM and waited to board at 10:30 for an 11 AM flight.  Total flight time was 50 minutes on an American Airlines 737.  Waiting at the gate area was fun though – lots of Cuban Americans were also on the charter flight, going to visit family back home.  The younger women (anyone under 50) were wearing tight, tight clothing, with lots of cleavage showing, and high, high heels.  Lots of makeup and bling.  Many of the men were wearing the traditional shoe with Cuban heels and pointed toes.  One older man sitting in front of me was just relaxing and singing to himself.  People-watching was great!

Upon arrival we went through immigration, they took half the visa and stamped the passport, got our luggage, handed our health form (a form where you state that you do not have a cough or the sniffles) to the uniformed nurses (complete with starched nurse caps), went through customs and handed over the customs form, and at last entered the airport lobby where we were met by our Havana tour escort Tracy (who is American, works for Friendly Planet, and handles logistics, hotel and restaurant payments, tipping, and such and checks that we are all there and does general herding) and our local guide Jorge (who works for a Cuban tour agency and provides all the commentary about the sights we visit).  The bus was air conditioned and it felt lovely. 

We had 21 people in our tour group.  As soon as each of us boarded the bus, we all jumped out again to start taking photos of the old cars driving around the airport.  We couldn’t help ourselves.

HAVANA, FIRST GLIMPSE

Oh my, the cars!!!  The music!!!  The ambiance!!!  Did I mention the old cars everywhere?  And everywhere you go there is some group playing wonderful music – some hired by restaurants and some just playing on the street corner.  I am already in heaven.

We first headed for central Havana, in the old Havana section.  We strolled down a few streets and ended up at a lovely restaurant and were greeted by mohitos (made with Cuba’s own Havana Club rum, of course) and a 3-course lunch, serenaded by a great group.  I just had to buy a CD (which is one of the legal things you can buy and bring back into the USA – the legal take-home items are the “ABCs”: art, books, and CDs).

After lunch we strolled for a few more blocks to a beautiful square (plaza) that commemorates the beginning of the Cuban revolution against Spain.  Back to the bus and on to the Hotel Nacional, which was built in the 1930’s with the help of US mob money and mimics the Hotel Biltmore in Miami.  Havana was the vacation spot for American mobsters as well as a place to do business.  And the Hotel Nacional is the best hotel in town.  So we probably walked in the footsteps of Meyer Lansky, Al Capone and many others.  Anyway, we were seated on comfy seats on the veranda and greeted with mohitos (apparently this is a standard greeting at all hotels and most restaurants – a tradition I can appreciate).

And then there was checking in, changing money, booking some evening entertainment, and finally getting into our room tired and very hot and sweaty.  Which brings me to the heat and humidity.  I know that I have moaned and groaned in the past about not tolerating heat very well, and especially how awful high humidity is, and yet I keep going to tropical destinations.  Go figure.  And Cuba is no exception.  When there is a breeze it is quite tolerable, much like Hawaii.  But in the city, walking down narrow streets, there is no breeze and it is really uncomfortable.  Luckily, I always pack a hand fan and today when I pulled it out of my purse I probably could have sold it for a good price!

Now back to changing money.  Cuba has two kinds of money:  the locals are paid in pesos, but foreigners are not allowed to obtain or spend pesos.  When you change money, you get convertible pesos, abbreviated as CUCs, and pronounced “kooks.”  And by the way, you pay ten percent more to exchange American dollars, so I brought Euros and got a much better rate.  You can spend CUCs anywhere.  The exchange is roughly 1 CUC = $1. 

A little about evening entertainment:  There is a lot of evening entertainment to choose from in Havanna.  I hadn’t thought much about this aspect when planning the trip, but all of a sudden there I was learning that I could go to nightclubs that I had heard about for years – and just like in the old movies, you sit at tables sipping rum drinks and watch spectacular stage shows or you listen to a band and dance.  Because we knew this was a short trip, we immediately recognized that we would need to go clubbing every night in order to cram in as much of the Havana experience as possible.  Yup, touring all day and then clubbing late into the night.  And my sister and I are no spring chickens.  Oh well, while in Rome…..as they say.

For our first night in Havana, we booked tickets for the cabaret show at the hotel.  The cabaret venue is called La Parisienne.  Oh my gosh!  The show was amazing.  It was a 1.5 hours long, non-stop revue of the cultural dance influences in Cuba and a revue of all the dance traditions in Central and South America – a cast of 35 dancers and singers and 6 musicians with thousands of costume changes, very scantily dressed girls, macho men, good singing, lots of Cuban sleeves and Cuban shoes for the men.  Some routines were very corny but some were quite good, especially the tango routine.  After a while I thought they were doing the finale number, but it only morphed into more dance numbers.  I counted four numbers worthy of being called a finale, and then they wanted the audience to come onstage and learn latin dancing.  I was afraid I’d throw my back out, and it was almost midnight, so we left.  The theater, the tables, and the show, felt like going back to the 1950’s.  We had a great time.  Total mohitos for the day:  3.

CUBA: DAY 2, MIAMI AND EVERGLADES TOUR

CUBA: DAY 2, MIAMI AND EVERGLADES TOUR

We scheduled another half day with our tour guide, with the intention of seeing the Everglades National Park.  But with the government shutdown, the park was closed so our guide, Martin, had to figure out something else, which turned out to be much better anyway.  We drove past the park and onto Miccosukee land (see yesterday’s blog), where we stopped at a place where they do airboat rides.  There weren’t any other tourists around so we got a small airboat all to ourselves, with Benny at the helm.  The Everglades are very different from a swamp:  the glades are moving, fresh water; swamps are often a mix of fresh and salt water and the water is stagnant.  Swamps usually have lots of cypress trees dripping with Spanish moss (which isn’t actually Spanish and isn’t moss, but I won’t quibble).  The glades often look like grasslands with a few trees here and there, or thick jungle, but there is little or no land – everything is in 3 to 5 feet of water.  Early settlers and native people often did not even use canoes – they just walked through the water because it is so shallow. 

Anyway, the airboat took off in the direction of tall sweet grass and saw-blade grass as far as I could see, with occasional small areas of open water filled with water lilies.  After about 10-15 minutes we arrived at a hummock, which is a small bit of land that has been slowly built up over hundreds of years.  Benny’s family, including aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and the like, had lived there for several generations living off the land in thatched, open-air, shelters built over the damp land.  The family finally moved into regular houses in the Miccosukee village in 1989 when the tribe opened a casino.

Apparently there are three alligators who live around there year-round.  We saw Papa, who was about 13 feet long – really big – and hiding just below the surface of the water.  Then Benny knelt down on the wooden walkway and called the alligators – making a sort of staccato croaking sound.  So Mama showed up, a bit smaller than Papa and much more active.  She swam in close to the walkway and lifted up her head towards Benny’s outstretched arm and snapped her jaws several times.  He didn’t seem to be worried.  Then we went to another wooden walkway where Jumper had arrived in response to Benny’s call.  Jumper crawled right up onto the walkway, opened and closed his jaws several times in attempt to get Benny’s arm, and then started basking in the sun.  Because Jumper blocked our access back to the airboat, Benny finally had to grab Jumper by the tail and push him, nose first, back into the water.  What a show.

Finally we climbed aboard again, donned our ear protectors (the airboat motor is very loud) and took off, back for shore, which really isn’t a shore but the road acts like a levy and is obviously higher than the water table.

Next stop was an art gallery owned by the photographer Clyde Butcher.  I’ve never heard of him, but apparently he is been called the Ansel Adams of the south, and that description is quite true.  He had some color photos but most were black and white, mostly studies of cypress trees, the everglades, and ghost orchids (which are rare and very difficult to find).  His work is truly stunning.  Then it was back to town, where we drove past the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church (a new combination for me) and then lunch at an all-Cuban, outdoor eatery – fresh tropical juices and a $10 heaping plate of suckling pig, rice and black beans, and fried cassava was enough to feed 5 people and was fabulous.  In general, food here is much cheaper than in California.

CUBA: DAY 1, MIAMI TOUR

CUBA:  DAY 1,  MIAMI TOUR

Egad – our guide, Martin, took us everywhere!  We saw Miami, Miami Beach (which is a separate island), Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove (no, not the old night club but a residential area), and Coral Gables (a poshy planned community completely surrounded by the city of Miami).  Miami is on the mainland but Biscayne Bay has lots of little islands with exclusive, gated communities (translation:  multi-million $$$ homes).  We drove out to Star Island and also looked at Fisher Island from across the water.  Fisher Island is so exclusive you can only get there by boat and they have an exclusive ferry boat for workmen and invitees to get there – the crew apparently grills everyone who tries to board the ferry.  Saw lots of wonderful art deco buildings on Miami Beach.  Even saw a team of guys in a cherry-picker truck slowly going to each palm tree and cutting down the coconuts so they don’t fall on people. 

The Miami city hall is in the building that was once the Pan Am terminal in the 1930’s.  It used to take a week to fly from Miami to Rio because they did sort hops down the coast.  In the entry lobby they have a terrazzo floor with a map of the US, Central and South America, showing all the Pan Am flight routes.  And the terminal and check-in counter is now the city council chambers, but they have kept the Pan Am art work on the walls and ceiling.  Don’t know why, but the ceiling has beautiful paintings of all the zodiac symbols. 

Was wonderfully delighted by the Wynwood outdoor art neighborhood.  This is the area where they have a huge outdoor art exhibit of modern art each year.  I remember reading about this sometime back.  Usually very well-known artists show and sell their work alongside unknowns, and the event attracts some big money.  Now, artists are invited to paint murals (if you can call it that) on the walls of the buildings in the area (mostly warehouses that the artists use as studios).  It is a dizzying display of styles and themes.

Miami is the 2^nd largest financial center in the Americas, after New York.  Doing business in Miami is easier, cheaper, and faster than anywhere in South or Central America.  Businessmen fly to Miami, and their clients or buyers fly from all over the world to meet them here.

A bit of Miami anthropological history:  the earliest people in the area were the Tequesta, most likely the people that greeted the first European explorer.  They all died out and there is very little evidence of their culture.  Currently, the native population is carried by the Seminoles and the Miccosukees.  The Seminoles are a part of the Creek Nation, who came down from the Carolinas.

Walked through the Miami Biltmore Hotel and was told an interesting story about Johnny Weismuller who played Tarzan in the early Tarzan movies.  The first movie was partly filed at the Biltmore Hotel where Johnny, a former Olympic diver, had a job as a pool boy.  He regularly gave diving exhibitions for the guests for fun and tips.  Well, on the first day of filming, the actors and crew were set up and ready to go but the actor who was hired to play Tarzan didn’t show up.  What to do?  So someone pointed to Johnny and said “what about him?”  “But he’s only a pool boy,” was the reply, “and he’s not an actor. He looks good but can he memorize and deliver lines?”  And then they realized that Tarzan had very few lines.  And so began his career.

One more interesting story about Miami.  There is a relatively new building called the New World Center, largely supported by Carnival Cruise Lines (a big surprise to me) and other large donors.  The building contains a music academy that is run in the winters and headed by Michael Tilson Thomas.  They only allow a small number of students (about 80, I think).  Students who are accepted receive three years, fully paid.  Now back to the building – the architect was Frank Gehry.  And how did he get the job?  Well, it turns out that Frank Gehry was Michael Tilson Thomas’s babysitter and they kept a friendship over the years.  You just never know how the people you meet in your life come around to intertwine later.

No alligator sightings today.