(Note-photos will follow when I get a proper internet connection in a few days)
Since my last post I have travelled to Baracoa, the furthest east in Cuba that you can go. And so altogether I have travelled by road from the far west of Cuba in Pinar del Rio to the far east in Baracoa. (Not something that is done very often and almost never alone, so I have learned.)
I am now in Santiago de Cuba for a final few days before I fly back to Puerto Rico via the Dominican Republic tomorrow.
Time for some reflections on what I have seen. I´ll start witht the differences I have noticed from one end of the country to the other.
Countryside
First the countryside. I have mentioned in previous pòsts the agrarian natureof the country. That persists throughout the country, although the nature of the agriculture changes with the terrain. In contrast to the rich tobacco and market garden crops of the west, the central part is flat and in places quite dry, ideal for sugar cane, pineapples, bananas, and for cattle ranching. In the mountainous areas of the Escambrai and the Sierra Maestracoffee is grown. In Baracoa they even grow cocoa and have a chocolate factory.
Ploughing is done by a team of oxen and a hand held plough, but as you move into the sugar cane growing parts of the country you see some ancient tractors for cultivating the cane. I am not sure how the cutting is done but you still see men walking along the road with their machetes in home made leather sheaths, so maybe that is still done by hand as well.
Although the cows tend to stay in their fields and the oxen are slow moving, goats and sheep wander the roadsides and one must be constantly vigilant for fear of hitting one of them and wiping out a family´s livelihood. For a country whose diet consists almost exclusively of chicken and pork, there are remarkably few chickens to be seen scratching around the road sides, unlike many Caribbean islands. Maybe they are considered too valuable to let loose. Pigs are certainly prized, and every countryside and village house has a pig in the yard. I´ve seen people walking their pig on a rop beside the road-- or maybe they were walking the pig to meet its inevitable fate. One day I say a huge one jump out of a truck and onto the autopista (motorway) and make a run for it. Everyone gave chase to catch this prize porker.
The central part of the country does not offer a great deal of scenic variety for the tourist, and there are long tracts of very similar countryside. However as soon as you near a hilly or mountainous area the scenery becomes really beautiful, although the roads are not! (see below).
Houses
Next, the houses. It is hard to describe the houses adequately but I have some good photos which I hope to upload to this blog in a few days time in Puerto Rico. As mentioned in previous posts the rural and village houses are pretty basic and small, ranging from wooden shacks to neat little pastel painted single story "bungalows" (which makes then sound rather grander than they are). Except for the 16th to 19th centry "casas" in the historic towns, there are no grand houses, and those historical houses are in varying states of repair from derelict to beautifully restored.
There are several areas of Soviet blight--places where the Cubans took Soviet advice in the 1960s and built hideous and soul-destroying concrete apartment buildings to house the people of a commune--sometimes you see these decaying monstrosities in the middle of the lush countryside where there would be enough space for everyone to have ten houses each. The ghastly structures might have been appropriate for a cold country like Russia whre putting people together for warmth and company made sense, but in a tropical country like Cuba?--what were they thinking of! Fortunately this blight is not widespread in the countryside, but is more prevalent in the suburbs of the cities and towns. It also seems more prevalent in eastern Cuba which was and still is more committed to the communist way than the more pragmatic western part of the country and Havana.
The cities
The cities (although they would hardly qualify as that in western urbanised countries --the bigger ones are around 250,000 and Santiago which is Cuba´s second city after Havana is under 500,000) have a lot in common (not always good things!) but each have their own character. Trinidad is charming, caught in an 18th century time warp with cobbled streets and rows of humble looking one story pastel painted houses whose doors open to reveal cool spacious courtyards inside. A step up are the grand, beautifully restored and furnished, two and even three storey "casas". And there are pretty plazas with trees and benches to sit on and watch the people go by.
Cienfuegos is a 19th century city, founded by French settlers with some wide boulevards and large plazas, exhuberant wedding cake-decorated casas and the most beautifully restored small 19th century theatre (Theatre Tomas Terry--yes really. He was a 19th century sugar robber baron turned philanthropist) where Enrico Caruso and Sarah Berhardt played.
Santa Clara is non-stop Che Guevera from one side to the other. Otherwise, as a city Santa Clara has little to recommend it to the visitor except a rather beautifully restored casa on the main plaza housing some fine 19th and early 20th century domestic furniture--fine French Sevres porcelain pieces, heavy mahogany tables and chairs with cane bottoms, lovely imported crystal chandeliers, and a great collection of old photos.
Camaguey is the latest to receive the coveted World Heritage Site status which brings with it money for restoration and thus more tourists. But aside from a couple of pretty churches (Camaguey has remained quite religious throughout the revolutionary years. In one of them I watched a moving, traditional baptism of four babies and toddlers) it has little to detain a visitor. Holguin and Guantanamo have nothing historical about them and are just grubby polluted smelly crowded dusty places as far as I could see--you can pass through quickly unless you get lost like I did!
Santiago where I currently am is interesting, although clearly poor. It is in a beautiful situation on a fine bay, guarded by a well restored fort, leading out to the ocean, and with the rolling foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountains (from where Castro and his revolutionary band conducted their guerilla war during the 1950s) offering a picturesque backdrop. While all the other cities I have visited are situated on flat plains, Santiago itself has several hills giving it some interesting contours and neighbourhoods. Its buildings are a little different too--overhanging second storey balconies on some of the older buildings for example. It also has the oldest house in Cuba, built in 1522 for Diego Velasquez, the Spanish conquistadors´first governor of Cuba. It has been well restored and shows interesting Moorish influences--after all at that time Spain itself was still much influenced by its previous occupation by the Moors.
A more radically different small city (40,000) is Baracoa, which is a strange little place. The houses there are colourful and somehow different. Although it was visited by Columbus on his first voyage in 1492 and Baracoa was the first settlement in Cuba, being founded in 1511, it was cut off from the rest of Cuba for over four hundred years by impenetrable mountains and was only accessible by sea. It has a microcliamte which has nurtured many unique plants and animals including beautifully coloured snails. It also rains--a lot. It poured the whole time I was there.
Its inhabitants were a mix of indigenous Taino Indians who escaped decimation by the Spanish, some escaped slaves, French settlers escaping the slave revolts of the 18th century in nearby Haiti , and a selection of ornery, difficult people and riff raff from the rest of Cuba who were transported to what became Cuba´s Siberia. Even now Baracoa seems to attract an unlikely mix of visitors --not "holiday makers", but adventurers and drop outs and latter day hippies. Predictably I suppose, given its history, it was firmly in support of Fidel Castro and his Revolution and in 1964 in gratitude Castro built them a road through the mountains to connect them to the rest of the country. This is a remarkable engineerng feat which took four years to build, called "La Farola". Perversely, although the road is full of hairpin bends and precipitous sheer drop offs, it is one of the easier roads in Cuba to drive becaus it is solidly built, well engineered and with a well-maintained surface.
Driving
Which brings me to the driving. I have covered 1800 kilometers of very difficult driving. One cannot relax one´s vigilance for a moment. You can be sailing along a deserted stretch of "autopista"( the grandly named highway which was started by the Russians and abandoned immediately the Russians left in 1991) when suddenly it ends. Just like that. No warning signs. Nothing. And becomes a dirt road. Or you can be driving along a reasonably well surfaced national road when a huge car-eating pot-hole appears right in front of you. Or you see what looks like smooth asphalt ahead and it turns out to be bone-shaking"washboard".
Or you drive into a small town and you are surrounded on all sides by bicycles, horses, yelling people, wagons, buses, motorbikes, cars, diesel-belching trucks, dogs, chickens, pigs, all weaving in and out in some mad dance the steps of which you do not know. Or in a momentary lapse of attention you do not notice the one and only sign pointing out the direction you are heading for and you end up lost in the suburbs of some dusty town, driving beside a smelly polluted river.
Or you fail to notice the railway line crossing the highway and have to come to a last minute screeching halt. This is not only because the railway lines have no safety gates or bells or flashing lights and you are obliged by law (enforced apparently) to stop at each and every one oof them no matter that the foot high grass indicates it hasn´t seen a train for months or years. It is also because there is rarely any asphalt between the tracks where they cross the road and so if you hit them at anything faster than 5 kilometers an hour you break your axle.
Local transport
I think the biggest eye-opener for me has been the way the local people manage to get around. It really shows how lack of fuel has adversely affected the every day lives of the people. I´ve already touched on hitchhiking in my previous posts. Except for tourists´ rental cars, private cars less than 20 years old are really very rare, particularly as you move from the (relatively) wealthier western Cuba to poorer eastern Cuba. In the country horse and cart are the more or less exclusive modeof transport. In the towns, horse drawn carts, bicycles and scooters (more as you move eastward in the country and mostly ridden by men), bici-taxis (cycle rickshaws) and decrepit diesel buses.
In the cities and between the cities, particularly in the east, are what can only be described as cattle trucks for people. These are huge American 1950s and Soviet diesel trucks, some with a tarpaulin-shaded backs and some open, inside of which are masses of tightly packed people, mostly standing or the lucky ones sitting on the benches around the edge. These behemoths seem to be the main commuter transport here in Santiago. These trucks begin to roll (very noisily) outside my hotel window at 6 am, wave after wave of them.
There does seem to be a relatively dependable system of rural public transport. Even tertiary roads have rural bus stops with people waiting patiently. The buses are in different categories it seems, from horse drawn carts with rudimentary wooden benches for short distances, to people-cattle buses for commuters, to the ancient diesel buses for longer distances and for really long intercity routes a network of relatively new Chinese-made long distance buses. It all seem to work relatively efficiently--but then I don´t have to travel on them!
The people
The people. I´ve mentioned in previous posts that the Cubans seem to be a resourceful and tough people. They are survivors. And they are a true melting pot. You may see marginally more black or chocolate skins in the east (Oriente it is called) but in every part of the country you can see a mix of pale skins and light hair and European features, some blackcurly hair and dark skin, and everything in between. Apparently 70% of Cubans have mixed blood which is not surprising given its history, although the official census of 2002 puts it at 24% mulato (mixed race), 65% white (many in the eastern part of the country are of French stock having moved from Haiti to escape the slave revolts in the 18th century) 10% black, and 1% Chinese.
Are all treated the same? That is hard to know. I have heard that there are prejudices and that those with darker skins don´t get the same opporutnities, but there is little evidence for a casual observer to go on. The jiniteros and jiniteras (hustlers and prostitutes) do seem to be mostly mixed race but that may well be because of the tastes of the tourists they cater for (see below).
One thing is for sure, the gap between rich and poor is not very wide. I have seen enough of the country and the cities to be sure that there are no hidden mansions or luxury villas or stately homes hidden down country lanes. And there are no Mercedes or BMWs on the roads. There are differences--some people clearly have done a little better than their neighbours. They have an ancient car instead of a bicycle, their little house is in better repair with some fancy decorative grills over the window shutters. In extreme cases they might be building a second story onto their bungalow. Some people may have a more colourful T shirt or baseball cap, or better sandals, or even a little jewellery and a fancy manicure. But on the whole most people seem to be living within a narrow social band. There is certainly no deference to officialdom or wealth.
The tourists
The tourists are an interesting mixed bag. Although there were English tourists in Havana and the western part of the country, there are almost none here in the east. Spanish, Italians, Canadians, Germans and French predominate. Yesterday I saw a Japanese tour, wearing their face masks that they wear in Tokyo to filter out the pollution. Not sure they will suffice here!
Most tourists seem to travel in tour groups, although there are a lot of young couples seeing the world, some active-looking older couples, and some small groupings of men and of women. Almost no one alone. I overheard a rather shocking conversation between an outspoken Cuban guide and two French tourists. He was categorising the tourists he sees. I will not name the nationalities as he did, but in essence he was saying that different nationalities come for different reasons--some for the beach and the suntan , some because it is a very cheap holiday, some for the rum, some for the idealism, some for the culture, and some for the "mulatos" as he called them.
The hotels
The hotels- strange places most of them. Havana has some good international quality ones (and lots of dumps)and Trinidad has a very nice high quality historic one. It is downhill after that I am afraid. Most of the "best" hotels were built in the 19th century and hardly touched since.
The quality deteriorates markedly, as does the food, the further east you go. Even here in Santiago in the best hotel, the Casa Grande with its lovely wide people-watching, prostitute-patrolled terrace where Grahame Greene made his notes for "Our Man in Havana" while waiting to interview Fidel just before the Revolution (he didn´t come), my bath tub has no taps, the elevator has been broken for months, the restaurant has closed up, and there is a miserable breakfast buffet of congealed eggs, bacon awash in fat, suspect weiners, tasteless processed cheese, plobby bread, hard pastries, unripe fruit and cold coffee. And yet my room has airconditioning, a hairdryer and a safe. I think those must be the items which determine your "star" rating, so even if the mattress does not deserve the name, the curtain rod falls down, the door to the cupboard is off its hinges, the TV produces mostly snow, and there is one lamp with a 40 watt bulb, you can say that you have a four star rating.
Many guidebooks extol the virtues of the casas particulares, the rooms to let in private homes which usually include a meal. I tried one and it was a disaster, but that is probably not be enough experience to judge by. However I think it would be difficult to rely on finding a casas particulares on your first trip to Cuba or if like me you do not speak any Spanish--although I am learning! "Una cerveza por favor".
The paladares (private restaurants) are a dfferent matter. Many have been driven out of business by heavy state regulation and taxes but the ones I have tried have been quite good by Cuban food standards-but usually only serving pork or chicken and maybe some shrimps. One I went to in Trinidad deserves to be named in case you ever find yourself there''Son y Sol".
Shopping
I´ve touchd on the dual economy in previous posts. This is at its most stark in the shops. Those where you can only buy in Cuban pesos the goods are scant and of very poor quality and are limited to the bare necessities of life. Consumer goods such as electrical appliances and colourful clothers are only available in CUC (convertible peso) stores (hence everyone´s quest to tap the tourist for CUCs). The quality is still very poor but you can see people staring admiringly and covetously into the windows of these shops. One CUC store in Cienfuegos featured as its star window display a western style porcelain toilet( with seat!) and beside it a shiny green gas-powered lawn mower. I never saw a single lawn in the whole of Cuba!
Television
The TVs, when they work, have a bizarre range of channels. A Cuban one of course, and a music channel sometimes playing some good Cuban music. Several other Spanish language ones, from Venezuela, from Spain. Two Chinese channels ! Two German ones. Sky Sports and some HBO movies dubbed into Spanish. And CNN. BBC where are you?
Wandering fumigators
I first saw these in Havana and have seen them in all the places I have visited. Men walk the streets like itinerant knife-grinders or tinkers of old, holding what looks like a flame thrower. It is, sort of. When they are hired by a shop or householder they go inside and let go a burst of choking sweetish-smelling smoke. No masks of course. But I don´t seem to have sufferend any ill-effects from involuntarily breathing the stuff on several occasions.I´m not sure what it does kill--I´ve seen some big cockroaches around so maybe it is them. What Cuba does not seem to have is many mosquitoes, which is a treat after other parts of the Caribbean. So maybe the fumigation deals with them too.
Pizza
Cubans have taken pizza and spaghetti to their hearts. It is the street food of choice for the locals and is the only alternative to pork and chicken on most menus. It is pretty tasteless stuff and bland like all Cuban food.
Lunch is invariably a "sandwich", Jim, but not as we know it. It consists of two inch-thick slabs of tasteless white bread with a wafer thin slice of processed ham and maybe, if you have decided to push the boat out, you might also get a slice of processed cheese and a swipe of mustard or mayonnaise. No butter, no lettuce, no tomato, no salt.
Guantanamo
Sorry folks. Gtmo is a boring industrial town and there is no sign whatsoever of the US camp. It is quite a long way south of the city and surrounded by 27 miles of fence. No Cubans work there and there is no interaction whatsoever. The only sign that it exists is heightened police security checkpoints. I was usually waved through, although I was stopped once and my papers were given a perfunctory glance and I was on my way.
Hitchhikers
My highest score for one day was 15. That included one family group of eight all at once--four adults, four children and two (empty) matchwood birdcages in my small Suzuki hatchback. On scrambling out at their desitnation about 15 kilometres later the father turned me with a shy smile and a carefully articulated "thank you" which he had clearly been practising to himself throughout the ride.
Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista--did you know...
They were both born in Holguin province in central Cuba, which pre-revolution was the empire of the gigantic American United Fruit Corporation. It is an area of little tourist interest but it is surprising that it produced the two men who changed the face of Cuba in the mid-20th century. Batista, the best friend of Meyer Lansky and his Mafia cronies, who presided over the sleaze and excess of Cuba in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, was a low-born poor mulato with some Chinese blood, but shrewd and wiley. Castro,the fiery eloquent revolutionary and friend of the Soviets at the height of the American "reds under the bed" hysteria, was the privileged well-educated son of a wealthy Spanish plantation owner. Surely it should have been the other way round? One story has it that because they wer both from the same province and Fidel was regarded as an up and coming young man of the district, when he married in 1944, Batista, already a powerful dictator, gave Fidel and his new wife a generous wedding present!
Cuba is hard work!
So, Cuba is not for the faint-hearted. With the possible exception of the all-inclusive beach resorts ( not my thing so I didn´t try them), Cuba is for travellers and adventurers not holiday makers. Good guidebooks and maps (which you must bring with you from abroad--no tourist information or maps is available here) are essential. But do read carefully between the glowing lines of the guidebooks-- not all is all is as it seems. Cuba is hard work.
Summary
Why did I do it? I´m not quite sure--because it was there to be done, I suppose. Am I glad I did it? Definitely. Will I do it again? Parts of it. I would certainly go back to Havana. Probably also to Trinidad. Maybe to Santiago. Maybe to Vinales. I would not drive through the central part to visit the other cities--I would fly. I would take my own bath plug and some food.
There have ben so many surprises, good and bad, and some wonderful moments. I certainly admire the Cubans and wish them well. I hope things work out for the country.
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