Talking About a Revolution, Havana
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Dodgy Taxi, Havana |
There's no mistaking which airport you are in when arriving in Havana. No sooner are you off the gangway and into the baggage claim, it seems every Cuban aboard produces a big fat Cuban cigar and immediately lights up as if asserting their right to "Cuban-ness". Public smoking laws are long way off in Cuba - indeed if a Cuban asks you for a cigarette and you reply that you don't smoke they'll mostly likely think you are giving them the brush-off in order to hang onto your smokes. The idea that somebody doesn't smoke is not only foreign, it's a plain ridiculous to the average Cuban.
Despite a flight time of only thirty minutes from Cancun, it had taken me most of the day to get this far. My taxi driver seemed intent on making up the lost time for me. Armed with his decrepit Lada, he launched us into the manic traffic where rule of size is the only law. I soon realized that, despite the muggy mid-afternoon heat, hanging my arm out of the open window was an extremely hazardous pastime as we weaved our way on a seemingly suicidal trajectory between big old '50's cars, dangerously overloaded trucks and packed "Camellos". Named after their double-hump shape, Camellos (camels) consist of a large belching truck cab with an enormous articulated rear section into which there must easily be over 300 people packed in until all you see is a long line of faces and various body parts pressed against a series of windows. These Goliaths obviously yield for nobody and take no prisoners (other than those getting on board).
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Packing them in, Camello, Havana |
I had the address of a family house to stay at, plucked partly at random from my guidebook, partly due to its central location. After navigating our way through the complex 'system' of one-way streets an increasingly irate taxi driver brought us to a street that resembled a bomb-site - rubble and garbage piled high, crumbling old colonial buildings held precariously together by rickety scaffolding. Gingerly ringing the bell at the designated address, I had a little trepidation at the thought of what may lie beyond the doorway. The family turned out to be super nice, the house fantastic and I was quickly made to feel completely at home. We sat and talked for hours about all manner of topics until, by the time I hit the streets for a walk, it was already getting dark.
How to make the perfect Mojito:
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Take a tall glass. Wandering alone around dodgy, dimly lit back streets would have been a risky undertaking in most Latin capitals, but here I felt relatively safe. One of the reasons for this is perhaps that there is so much life on the streets - people hanging out on steps outside doorways, gathered on street corners for animated debates or gossip sessions, others out on the street with table and chairs for boisterous games of dominoes where each tile is slammed down with enough force to drive it through the table while an army of kids play anarchic games of football close by. The streets were alive and full of people - life here is lived outside as much as in and it struck me how empty and lifeless our streets are by comparison, a whole element of communal living and interaction has disappeared from most Western societies.
Eventually I found myself out on the huge plaza surrounding the old Capitol buildings, strolling out along a wide avenue flanked by grand old colonial buildings to either side. I could hear the sound of Cuban jazz drifting down from a side street and went to investigate. The music was coming from a small bar on a corner, inside a five piece band looking as if they were having the time of their lives, the bar packed, smoky and raucous. Finding myself a good position at the bar, I sampled my first Cuban beer while watching the barman prepare a long line of that so-Cuban cocktail - the Mojito.
I had been warned about the hustlers in Old Havana - known in Cuba as jiniteros (jockeys), these guys are persistent, tenacious and resourceful to say the least, never failing to come up with a new twist on the old classics.
The Beginner's Guide to Favourite Street Scams in Cuba
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"Psst … wanna buy a cigar?" Cigar seller, scourge of Havana |
The most common variety are the ever-present cigar sellers who seem to be convinced that the sole reason anyone comes to Cuba is to amass a year's supply and will try to flog you second rate Cubanos for the price of a whole box in the government shops. Closely related are the dudes who always seem to be hanging out on street corners yet claim to work in a cigar factory around which they are always anxious to show their 'foreign friends', totally gratis of course ("No problem my friend, no money!"). These tours always end in someone's house in a dodgy part of town with the heavy pressure to buy yet more crappy cigars at inflated prices.
Others are more original, such as the guy who walks up next to you and asks you where you are going. He will 'just happen' to be going the same direction as you and will ask if you mind if he walks with you so he can practice his English. Upon arrival at your destination, he'll claim to have guided you there and demand some ridiculous fee in compensation.
There are the guys who'll pretend to be wealthy Cubans, invite you for a drink in the nearest bar and order several of the most expensive drinks on the menu along with several packets of cigarettes then present you with the bill in cahoots with the barman who threatens to call the police if you don't pay.
There's endless permutations of these, but normally once you learn to spot them, they stick out a mile and you can actually have a bit of fun stringing them along for a while. Having said all this about the hustlers, as I delved into the back streets of Old Havana, I was left relatively in peace. There would be times later on when they would seem like a plague and I would be swatting them off like flies.
Wandering Habanero Style
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Coco taxis outside the Gran Teatro, Havana |
Taking streets at random, I wandered through town along narrow winding roads lined with crumbling old buildings that would suddenly open out onto grand squares or quiet hidden plazas. A lot of shop signposting seems to date from the '50's, along with the cars - this combined with the old buildings and lack of usual familiar signs of modern global commercial brands splashed everywhere can at times give the feeling of having passed through a time warp. Blowing a couple of days exploring town, photographing my impressions, I started to get a feeling for Cuba - at least from the Habanero perspective. There is an uneasiness here that I picked up on, like something unseen simmering below the surface. On the one hand are the veterans of the revolution who remember life under the brutal US puppet regimes that precipitated the rebellion and will support Castro no matter what. On the other hand are the people tired of the food shortages, power blackouts and severe lack of money to buy basic supplies (the average Cuban, after rations for food etc., receives only US$4 per month). A lot of these shortages are blamed by Castro on the crippling, utterly unnecessary US trade embargo, which to a certain extent is true. However, as I was later to discover, vast swathes of extremely fertile land lies fallow, the blackouts due to the unwillingness of Castro to pay $5 million for a replacement part in the central power station, meanwhile he steadily becomes one of the richest men in the world.
The King of Havana
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Smoking a stoogie with the King of Havana |
I met Haub, a Dutch guy I'd met in Mexico a few times, in town and we headed back to Bar Monserrat over both evenings - more great music, mojitos and cubanos with a guy locally known as the "King of Havana". Although a member of the dreaded cigar seller fraternity, he was a classic old guy, always sporting a loud Hawaiian shirt, a huge smile and a and a fistful of giant cubanos. Something of a celebrity, he would spend his evenings schmoozing the crowd in the bar, plying his wares. A smooth operator, he would never actually push his cigars, nevertheless pretty soon every table would have two or three on the go and would be calling him back for more. For some reason, he treated Haub and me like long lost friends and supplied us with endless cigars, always refusing any money from us. He once told me in confidence, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, that his wife worked in a cigar factory and secreted away choice leaves to be hand-rolled at home into the cigars he was offering at the bar - apparently very popular with the locals.
They Don't Make It Easy to Leave
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Old taxis and jinatera, Havana |
In the midst of negotiating a taxi-ride out the bus station, conveniently located out in the middle of nowhere right across the other side of town where no-one is ever going unless catching a bus (what is it with Latin countries and the placing of bus terminals in the least convenient location possible?), it turned out that we could just hire the taxi all the way out to Trinidad for the same cost as the bus fare. Deal agreed, we careened through the back streets of Havana with the same reckless abandon as the driver that had brought me from the airport. He turned around to us, grinning, as we ploughed down a narrow shopping street, sending pedestrians scattering, to tell us that we were taking back streets to avoid the police as taking us to Trinidad was in fact illegal. "No problem to you my friends!". That didn't exactly fill me with the greatest of confidence that the day was not about to take a significant turn for the worse, but I was at least a little more relaxed when his attention returned to the panicking walls of people, carts and bicycle rickshaws frantically parting like the Red Sea before Moses, encouraged by liberal application of the horn and various gesticulations and curses yelled out of the window.
Against all odds, we hit the open road and headed east to the old town of Trinidad …
Published February 6, 2006 based on travels in 2004
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Posted by Richard Allen on February 6th, 2006 in Articles.
