An unexpected journey - Part 3

We were awakened the next morning by a rooster crowing (a not-terribly unusual sound in Cuba's capital city). We had breakfast at the hotel (included in the price of the room). Our fellow guests appeared mostly to be European tourists, most in their 20s and 30s. After breakfast we waited anxiously for Albon’s call.

Along the way we met our benefactor from the night before, who turned out to be a Canadian named Doug who was on his first visit to Cuba, solo, as sort of a bucket-list thing. He was a very pleasant guy and we took his email and promised to let him know when we paid his good gesture forward.

When Albon did call, he had some good news; he had found two seats on an Air Canada flight out the next day at a cost of about $1800CAD apiece. We had to get ourselves down to the Air Canada office on the Malecón and pony up for them.

We asked the front desk to call us a cab and walked from the cool hotel veranda with its rocking chairs down to the sidewalk. In a few minutes, here came our cab – the single most battered and decrepit Lada I have ever seen or possibly ever will. The lining of the rear doors was missing completely. I don’t recall if it had seat belts or not, but since so far no Cuban car I had ever been in had, I doubt it. But we agreed on a price and he whisked us a dozen or so blocks to the Malecón and pointed us to an office building where he assured us we would find Air Canada.

We wandered through the dark building for a little bit before finding the Air Canada agent. I have never, ever in my life been so relieved to see a maple leaf. When we entered the tiny office, the ticket agent was deep in negotiations with an older gentleman who was apparently arranging to visit someone in Canada. It took a long time to work out the details so we sat and waited while the man finally paid for his flight with a large fistful of small Cuban notes. With him taken care of, it was our turn.

This guy, as it turns out, is the single greatest Air Canada agent in the world. Not only did he significantly reduce the cost of the flights from the original estimate, he was able to book us straight through Toronto and on a connecting flight to Fredericton.

(A note on that: when we were told by Albon that he had found two seats to Canada, we didn't even ask him where to and we didn't know until we got to the AC office. That’s how badly we wanted to be back in Canada. Could've been Edmonton, Vancouver. At that point we would have taken it, so great is your yearning for home when everything has gone pear-shaped.)

With flight booked (they took credit cards thank heavens), we headed to the busy street outside to see if we could hail a cab. And what a cab we hailed (probably bolsa negro), with an equally ostentatious driver. 

He took us back to the Hotel Paseo, where we now faced a couple of lingering dilemmas: we desperately needed to get our hands on some Cuban money to get us through the day and into the early hours of tomorrow when our flight would leave; and in the hotel crunch, we had nowhere at the moment to stay for the night as the Paseo was booked up.

No problemo to solve the first problem, the hotel staff told us; there was a cadeca (money exchange) just one block up and one block over. We set out for it and it didn't take long to note what an absolute scorcher of a day it was walking on the concrete sidewalks. (Remember I had my left arm tightly bandaged to my chest, which didn't help any.) When we got to the appointed area we could find no sign of a cadeca, and our attempts to get information from the workers at a nearby market stall weren't going well. Just then, I spotted the cadeca window – closed. “It’s closed on Mondays,” I said, reading the hours notice. What now?

We headed back to the hotel and just as we entered the lobby Albon called. Good timing and good news: he had found us a room for the night. As for the money dilemma, he told us to call a cab and have it take us to a full-service bank, which would be open on a Monday. He told us the name of the hotel and wished us well.

Well, who should our cabbie be but Mr. Lada? He took us a few blocks to a bank and agreed to wait while we took care of the transaction. I told him he’d better because at the moment we didn't have any Cuban money to pay him with!

As we approached the bank I saw a line coming out of the door. A very young security guard was standing on the steps. “This the cola?” I asked. “Yes,” and he guided us to a place at the end of it. The line moved surprisingly fast (for Cuba) and it wasn't too long before we were in the shade of the porch and then inside the door. As we progressed, we reached a table where a bank worker asked us what transaction we were here to do. When we told her we were here to exchange money, she gave us a ticket with a number and a letter on it.

The bank was set up like many service centers are: a series of numbered booths and a large number of chairs in the middle for clients awaiting their turn. Above all was a big screen onto which the next customer number was displayed, along with the number of the booth to which the customer with that number should proceed.

Husband sat down. I was too anxious to sit still and stood watching the activity buzzing around me. The young security guard approached me and urged me to sit. No, I was fine, I said. He was extremely shy but also extremely anxious to practice his English, so we chatted a little while we stood there. When I said I was from Canada he said “Toronto?” We talked about my accident and my route home to Canada. He really was a lovely young man and embarrassingly concerned about my comfort.

Finally my number was posted on the big screen. I was nervous because one of the messages in rotation on that screen said in Spanish that clients should approach the tellers one at a time, and I was going to need Husband to help me understand what was going on (being hearing-impaired wasn't helping any of this by the way). Oh well, at least I was pretty certain the security guard wasn't going to tackle me.

The bank teller spoke very serviceable English which was an extremely pleasant surprise. (This was no cadeca for tourists. This was a Cuban peoples’ bank.) We were able to exchange several hundred Canadian dollars into Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC) to pay for the hotel, meals, taxis etc. until tomorrow.

Our cab driver was waiting patiently and we told him the name of the hotel we were headed to next and the general area. There was a long drive followed by us first not being able to find the hotel anywhere, then asking for directions, then ending up at the wrong hotel altogether. A call to Albon from the lobby of that (wrong) hotel led to clearance of the confusion; we’d misunderstood the name of the hotel over the phone. With corrected information in hand we traveled to the Hotel Bella Habana.

The hotel is across the street from the absolutely massive Ministerio de la Agricultura.

It was now late afternoon and still hot and we were exhausted. In the lobby, surrounded by our luggage, we discovered this hotel did take credit cards. As I stood there watching Husband check us in, the hotel manager approached with cold drinks. I was almost overwhelmed by this small gesture and so grateful.

The hotel room was again adequate and plain and we were very grateful for it. We hadn't eaten since breakfast and we went to the little cafeteria/bar that seemed to double as a pub for the area’s locals. We asked to see a menu and were surprised at the variety of offerings. When we commented on it to the bartender/server, he grinned and said, “Yes! We have this“ – pointing to the fish – “and this!” – pointing to the pork chops. I had the fish, Husband had the pork chops.

As we ate, someone approached us. It was Albon, finally in the flesh. Even though he had taken care of every detail and we were safely in a hotel for the night and booked on a flight in the morning, he said he felt he just had to come “see if [we] were all right”. (The assistance we got from both Hola Sun representatives in Cuba was so fine we later wrote Hola Sun to commend them.)

It was after work now and a gaggle of Cuban workers were enjoying beers at the other end of the bar. One fellow in particular had had perhaps one too many and was also not impressed with our presence in his pub, and wasn't afraid to loudly make the point. His friends shushed him and told him to simmer down. Eventually his daughter showed up and calmed him down after which we discovered she wasn't his daughter, she was his wife. Es Cuba.

We had a few Cristals and retired for the night after asking the front desk to book a cab for us for 3:30 am (our flight was sevenish). Our room overlooked an apartment building and some embassy or another, which appeared to be having quite the ‘do, as we watched uniformed guards admit limo after limo.

I spent another night “sleeping” sitting up (I would for weeks, but I didn't know that then). 3:30 comes early but there was our cab, right on schedule. A very dark ride to José Marti airport (even in urban areas Cuban roads and highways are very poorly lit). The cabbie helped us carry our bags into the terminal (4 bags, 3 arms, right?) and fortunately stuck around to help us get our bearings as José Marti was a bit of a zoo that morning. We couldn't see an Air Canada check-in counter anywhere. There was a massive lineup of people checking in for a flight to Panama as well as smaller lines for a couple of other flights. 

Finally we spotted an Air Canada sign at a deserted counter at the very end of the row, one lone soul in front of it. It was a Canadian backpacker headed back after a sojourn in Cuba and she was on our flight. Well, in that case, we seemed to be in the right place so our cabbie took his leave of us.

As is often the case in Cuba, things happen very slowly and then they happen very fast. Within no time we were at the head of a very substantial lineup for the Air Canada counter. Eventually, finally, an agent appeared and we began to check in. After check in we paid the $25CUC airport exit fee (this has since been absorbed into the cost of the flights themselves and is no longer a separate transaction) which gave me an opportunity to change some of those hundreds of CUCs it turns out I didn't need (because the hotel took a credit card) back into CAD.

After that, security, which is always very stringent in Cuba (the country has suffered numerous terrorist attacks) and finally on to the departure lounge, which was garish but afforded a view of an absolutely spectacular sunrise happening outside. 

Our fellow travellers were unremarkable save for the thirty-something woman who was sitting by herself drinking Cristals at 7 in the morning with “I just found out my Cuban boyfriend has several other women in three countries” written All. Over. Her.

The flight home was also unremarkable. As we navigated Pearson International Airport in Toronto, heading for our connection, we entered an elevator and as the door closed Husband said, “You’re in Canada now” and I cried a little.

By 6:30 that afternoon I was in the emergency room of the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton.

When the doctor on call examined me and my x-rays, he said of the bandaging, “I couldn't do anything better than that. Leave it like that until the orthopedic surgeon sees you.”

By midnight I was in my own bed, and the unexpected journey was over.

Surgery – the whole purpose of the drive to get back to Canada – turned out not to be necessary (although it was on the table as an option for many weeks). To come was six months of healing and physiotherapy. My orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Scott Bowden, is probably the finest medical practitioner in any field I've ever dealt with. And now, six months later and with the help of a great physiotherapist, I have almost full range of motion and about 80% strength back in the arm, a remarkable outcome for what turned out, with the help of Canadian hi-def x-ray technology, to be a shockingly bad break.

I learned a few things on the unexpected journey. I learned that the Cuban people are even more resourceful, kind, and generous than I had thought – and I'd thought they were a lot. I learned that the key to getting through something like this is having good people (like 'Miguel' on Cayo Largo and Albon in Havana) in your corner. And I learned that Husband is an absolute rock in a crisis. He got us home, in the end. He is a trooper and a hero.

Oh, remember Doug? The Canadian who gave us the 10 CUC note so we could get some beers at the end of an unbelievably long day in Havana? We had promised him we'd pay the good deed forward. We realized that it would probably be a very long time, if ever, that we encountered someone in similar circumstances. So we thought of another place someone might turn if they were short on cash and in need of sustenance, and we made a donation in his name to the local food bank. We emailed him as promised to let him know.

He emailed back that his own trip had turned into something of an unexpected journey: on his last day in Cuba, he had a heart attack and spent several weeks in hospital in-country. The care was good, and he is on the mend.

All's well that ends well.

ronnie

An unexpected journey - Part 2

We had no money on us, having come to the clinic directly from the beach, so we were told a clinic rep would meet us at the Cayo Largo airport (which has a banco, where, unlike a cadeca or money exchange, we can draw money from a credit card account) to settle that bill. The HolaSun rep (This won't do. We have to give this good man a name. I choose Miguel.) picked us up at the resort at the appointed time (about 6 pm) and drove us to the airport.

We were about to learn some home truths about domestic travel in Cuba.

The airport was where we learned that AeroCaribbean doesn't accept credit cards and the airfare would have to be paid in cash, too. We were helped by Miguel and the banco staffer to figure out how much Cuban money I would need to draw from my Canadian credit card to purchase the tickets and to settle the clinic bill. (In retrospect, we should have taken several hundred more CUCs against the card to assist with other charges and fees that would be encountered; we were not thinking that far ahead at the time.)

We got all that settled and got checked in for the flight. Miguel had told us he was handing us off to another company rep in Havana, Albon. Albon had his hands full with another client who was having problems so could not meet us in Havana, but he would call us that night. Not to worry, he assured us. Albon would take care of us.

Cayo Largo airport isn't air-conditioned and it was hot and humid. We approached security and parted ways with Miguel; we were on our own now. We went through security, which in Cuba (partly because of their experiences with terrorist attacks) is always stringent. As usual, we basically unpacked everything to display for them; the female security officer at the other end of the process looked at my bandaged arm and carefully repacked my entire carry-on bag for me, then assisted me with putting the light sweater I was wearing back over my broken shoulder (it was hot in the airport, but cool outside, not unusual for Cuba in April). Boarding time for the flight came and went; the boards began showing a new boarding time which also came and went. About an hour after our scheduled flight time, a boarding announcement was made. When I exited the gate and walked onto the tarmac, an airport worker noticed my condition and took my carry-on bag from me and took it all the way to the plane; he gave it to a flight attendant and apparently instructed her to take it right to my seat and place it in the overhead bin. This was the beginning of my astonishing experience of Cubans taking care of me and assisting me at every turn.

The plane was a small turboprop; it was, in fact, an ATR-42, a plane neither of us had ever flown on before. It was shabby and tired-looking. The most notable feature of this plane to me was that there is no cockpit access from the cabin or vice-versa. The crew enter through a completely different door than the passengers (passengers enter the plane from the rear). There could essentially be a massacre occurring in the cabin and the crew would be completely unaware unless one of the flight attendants or passengers phoned the cockpit. I decided I was personally not a fan of this configuration.

Take-off was uneventful. It was well after dark by now, so we turned on the reading light over my seat. Which proceeded to flicker on and off for the duration of the 45 minute flight. All sorts of wonderful electrical problems were running through my head.

A few minutes into the flight the attendants came by with coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker so I declined. Husband, very much a coffee drinker, accepted. After a sip he informed me it had booze in it. I decided I should have become a coffee drinker.

In the end we made it there just fine (as I knew we would), and taxied onto the tarmac at Jose Martí airport in Havana.

And waited.

And waited.

The plane, remarkably, was also not air-conditioned, and quickly became sweltering. Not a murmer of complaint. Again, not unusual for Cuba.

We saw some airport workers approach the plane. Ah! Something's happening. Wait... what? They're all fleeing for some reason. Is there a bomb on board? And we waited some more. Then we taxied to another place. And now we were allowed to disembark.

Wherever we were, we were so far from the airport at this point that there was a large city bus waiting for us to board. Nothing could surprise me at this point – nothing but the Cubans around me holding bus doors open for me and fussing over me and insisting I take someone's seat on the crowded bus.

I found myself sitting next to a young man with a cast on his arm. I gestured to my broken wing. “Did you do that on Cayo Largo?” I asked. On a nearby cayo, it turns out. He is Cuban and was working there. He was now coming to Havana for surgery on it.

We finally reached the airport. Much of the next few minutes is a blur. With 4 bags and 3 working arms, I knew we'd need a luggage cart to get our things to a taxi. It appeared I couldn't get a luggage cart without breaking security. But could I get back in to Husband with the luggage if I dis so? I pantomimed all this (with one arm) to a security guard manning the exit from the secure zone into the public area. Either I conveyed it or I annoyed her enough for her to say “Go!” I ran out, grabbed a luggage cart, and went back into the luggage conveyer. We collected our bags and exited the airport, two naifs in Havana.

Well, not that naive. Miguel had brilliantly even told us what was a fair taxi fare to our hotel. We located a cab driver piloting a decrepit Lada and agreed on that price, and hopped into the cab. It was after 10pm and we were exhausted, but we were finally one step closer to home.

I rolled my window down. It was a magical ride into Havana, through it, and to our hotel, the Hotel Paseo Habana . We'd only been to Havana once before, but we found ourselves spotting landmarks familiar to us, like Revolution Square with the great sculptures of Ché Guevera and Camilo Cienfuegos. The boulevards were wide and breezy and we experienced first-hand that Havana drivers do not slow down in the least for the many jaywalkers who amble across them.

We arrived at the hotel to discover (I admit, to my surprise) that they also did not accept credit cards. We were about to find ourselves in a small crisis. We had plenty of CAD on hand, but had exchanged very little CAD into CUC on our arrival at the hotel in Cayo Largo – it was our first day. We didn't have the foresight to draw extra money from the credit card at the airport – simply not thinking (and assuming, as I had used my credit card successfully many times previously in Cuba, that hotels and airlines would accept credit).

So we found ourselves quite literally pulling every CUC note, every CUC coin, from our purses and pockets to pour on the lobby desk of the hotel to cover the bill for the night. (One night, remember; we'd have to be somewhere else tomorrow, as they were fully booked.)

Well we managed to scare up the night's fee. Relief! Once that was taken care of, the desk clerk (a wonderful woman who was a former professor of English) gestured to the bellhop and said, “Would you like him to get you something for your room? Some cervesas, some wine?”

We laughed out loud. “We have no money! We have given you every centavo!”

At that moment, a stranger standing behind us stepped up. He had been waiting behind us to check in to the hotel.

“Here,” he said, thrusting a $10 CUC note at us. “Get yourselves something. You've had a hard day.”

“Oh no,” Husband said. “We couldn't.”

“Are you kidding me?” I thought to myself. I grabbed that note. “Thank you, thank you. I promise we'll pay it forward.” (I meant that, and we did. Remind me to tell you about that later.)

We were taken upstairs to our room, which was perfectly acceptable and perfectly absurd. (The lamps had aspirational paintings of wolves and moons on them.) We begged the bellhop to bring us a few cans of Cristal beer, pressed the 10CUC note into his hand, crossed our fingers, and hoped. God bless him, he was back in 10 minutes and even tried to give us the change. No, sir, that's your tip for giving us some comfort after the worst day ever. 

My next discovery was that I wasn’t able to lie down and I was going to be spending the night sleeping in a chair in the room. Albon had called the hotel before we arrived and left us the message that he would be in touch with us in the morning. At that moment, we had absolutely no idea if, how or when we would be able to get home to Canada. We were in Havana, and tomorrow – with the exception of the knowledge that we needed to get to a cadeca or bank – was a completely blank slate.

ronnie

An unexpected journey.

So I've been away from this blog for a super-long time this time, which is ironic because I have kind of an interesting story to share on it - but I haven't been able to.

In April, Husband and I went on our usual spring vacation in Cuba. Cayo Largo, to be exact, the tiny key that has become our home away from home after repeated visits. The trip was for two weeks, and it was to be a much, much-needed break after a dreadful winter that saw us pounded and pounded with metres of snow. It was also to be a rest and reprieve for both of us after the devastating unexpected loss in March of my mom-in-law.

We arrived in Cuba on the evening of April 11. We spent the evening greeting staff at the resort, many of whom we've gotten to know over multiple visits. We spent the evening in the lobby bar, retired to bed, and got up excited to begin our two week vacation.

By 3pm, I had fallen and broken my left shoulder.

We went to the clinic in the workers' village on the cayo and were seen by the resident doctor. He x-rayed it using a machine that surely dates to before the revolution. He didn't have a lot of English, but one of the nurses helped, and a little while later our (Cuban, fluent in English) rep from our tour company turned up. (How? The hotel must have phoned him - we didn't even think to do so.)

It was definitely broken and the doctor was pretty certain it was going to need surgery. It was suggested that we might want to go to Havana and have the surgery done there. We considered it, but my past health issues mean any time I go under general anesthesia I am at increased risk, and our very limited Spanish meant we didn't feel we could make informed decisions. So we told the HolaSun rep that we wanted to go home as soon as possible to deal with it here. That distressed him a little; there were no flights out of Cayo Largo for a week, and even if we hopped over to Havana on a plane to try to find from there, all the flights to Canada from Havana were pretty much fully booked. Furthermore, Havana was seeing a significant uptick in bookings due to increased visits by Americans under the relaxed travel restrictions and the city was pretty solidly full. We still said we'd like to at least try.

The clinic visit, x-ray, a shot of morphine, and the bandaging of the arm to my chest for travel resulted in a fee of  $112 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos). That is about $145 CAD or $111 USD today, and our dollar was about 10 cents stronger back then. (The care, while limited, was excellent; when I finally presented myself at an emergency ward in Canada, the examining physician looked at the bandaging and said, "I can't do any better than that. Leave it that way until you see the orthopedic surgeon.")

But now we had to figure out how to get home ASAP. The HolaSun rep was able to arrange for us to get a couple of seats on an AeroCaribbean flight leaving that night for Havana, and was also able to miraculously book us a hotel room in Havana. Everything after that was completely wide open with no guarantees. Well, we thanked him and accepted the plan.

That led to two days of sheer off-the-charts adventure, which I have been dying to tell you all about ever since. But I only got permission to ditch my sling on Thursday; and in the interim I've been typing with one finger. It's kind of a long story to blog with just one finger.

More to come about AeroCaribbean, Havana, an Air Canada office on the Malecón, and the immense and generous kindness of strangers, Cuban and Canadian.

ronnie

Does anybody really know what time it is?

 This is a picture of two clocks on the wall in the internet centre at Sol Cayo Santa Maria. As you see, what was important in Cuba was the time in Havana, and the time in Moscow. After the "special period" when the Soviet Union collapsed and its massive support for Cuba was cut off, suddenly the time in Moscow didn't seem so important anymore. Both clocks are broken, which only seems appropriate. But there are plenty of echoes of Russia's significant presence there for decades, though - mostly in the multiple Cubans we've met in their 30s and 40s named Boris or Yuri or Dmitri.

We were on Cayo Santa Maria again, in fact our third time at this resort - the only one we've ever returned to, and the staff greet us like old friends.

I've posted just a few photos from the trip on Flickr. They're of a few oddities and some pics of the colony of semi-feral cats who live just outside the main buffet restaurant, between it and the pool. For the moment, they have the run of the place. Familiarity (encouraged by well-meaning, stupid guests who bring food out of the restaurant for them) and numbers may mean their future is not secure, but for the moment they live very comfortable lives.

The big adventure this time saw me leaving my CI processor battery recharger kit on the bus from the airport (don't even ask) and a frantic race to track down which bus it was on and how to get it back, aided by a patient worker with the transport company who was supposed to be getting off work but who yes, managed to track down the bus and have it return to the resort where the driver appeared on the bus steps with the kit in hand like some sort of blue-collar angel. When people rave about the people of Cuba, this is the sort of thing they are talking about. She could have said "call tomorrow". She could have said "call the lost and found". Instead she tracked down the bus - based on nothing more than our description of the guide on board - with over half a dozen calls back and forth, and got the driver back to deliver the case (the driver was likely done for the day, too).

It had been a stressful few months and we both just pretty much crashed during this stay. Nothing more ambitious than that. We needed it. Flew back in time for the first snowstorm of the season. Ah well. It's Christmas!

ronnie

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig.

Cayo Santa Maria, November-December 2012

Came home to the first snowstorm of the season.

Oh, oh, oh - we flew directly over Cape Canaveral on the flight down. Incredible view. Probably the most exciting moment of the whole trip, really, for a couple of space nuts. And neither of us with a camera accessible.

More later. Hasta pronto, amigos y amigas.

ronnie

Odd Cuban moments

There are a lot of experiences we've had in Cuba that I don't blog about after I return home. This is because some involve resort staff, and you're worried that the management and tourism officials (who search for and read reviews and blogs about resorts and hotels) might be able to connect the dots and figure out which staff might be involved in these stories.

However, after ten trips to the island at nine hotels - and even more visits to other locations - it feels like it's okay to tell some stories that now cannot be tied to specific places or staff.

There have been some amusing ones.

Like the time we entered a little building to rent a vehicle and found the rental agent watching a Spanish sitcom on a portable tv with a can of Cristal beer prominently sitting on his desk. This at about 9 a.m. He looked at us, pointed to the television, and said, "Ha ha ha! This show, it always makes me laugh!" We automatically glanced at the television for a few seconds. When we looked back, the can of Cristal had... disappeared.

There have been some kinda pathetic ones.

We got on a shuttle to our resort with one or two other passengers - including someone I'll call "Don" from a town in Alberta. He had been in Cuba for quite some time working on a Cuban-Canadian economic partnership project there, he told us. He was quite young - 19-22, I'd say. He was very excited because he was back in Cuba to visit with his Cuban fiancée. And his parents were flying in tomorrow from Canada to meet his fianceé! Who would be meeting him at the resort!!! What could possibly go wrong?

So excited was he that he bought a six-pack of Cristal at the airport to drink on the shuttle bus to the resort.

Which he banged down in about 20 minutes.

When we stopped to drop off the other passenger at the first (very expensive) resort on the route, "Don" ran off the shuttle, crying loudly for directions to the nearest bathroom. The driver turned to us and said wearily, "He has drank 6 beers in 20 minutes." We sympathized.

We continued along to the resort we - and Don, and his parents, and his fiancée - would be staying at. We didn't see him again until the next day.

And the next, and the next.

His parents were clearly not at all impressed with their future daughter-in-law, who unfortunately dressed in the fashion some - some - young Cuban women favour. Which meets the Canadian eye as, um, very risqué.

Everybody at the table every time we saw them was clearly miserable, except for the fiancée, who seemed absolutely exuberant. By the third day, the parents and fiancée had all disappeared altogether, and all that was left was Don, sitting and drinking, alone.

Wonder whatever happened there.

There have been some downright weird ones.

Like the time we were kind of unofficially adopted by the matriarch of an Ontarian motorcycle gang family that was at a resort for the wedding of one of their daughters. What propelled the bulky, tattooed woman to take us into her favour was our refusal to engage with a dreadfully drunk woman who sat at our table (she was table-hopping all over the bar, having been cut off by the staff and seeking alcohol anyplace she could find it). When she sat down, we got up without a word and walked away. (Taking our drinks.) "You handled that with some f*****g class!" declared the motorcycle matriarch approvingly. The next day - by special invite - we attended the wedding of her (equally bulky, equally tattooed) daughter and the biker groom (do I have to add 'bulky, tattooed'?). The nuptials were attended by the entire motorcycle gang, who had remembered to bring dress shirts and pants but who had forgotten to put down their drinks before the ceremony. So they respectfully held their beer cups behind their backs while the lovely couple exchanged vows on the beach.

For the rest of the vacation, we were *down* with the motorcycle gang. Mama said so.

There have been some uncomfortable ones.

Remember the dreadfully drunk woman from the story above? Now, SHE was a piece of work.

40-ish, but all huge blond hair and skimpy clothing. Canadian, I'm sorry to say. And by the time we got to the bar, d r u n k as a skunk. I mean, really, really drunk. But still on her feet.

There's a lot of joking about the fact that these all-inclusive resorts include all your booze, but in reality, I have almost never seen anyone genuinely drunk at one of them. People, in general, are more responsible than that.

This person wasn't. She was so drunk that the bar staff had cut her off - never seen that before in Cuba - but she was sure she needed more alcohol. She argued with them - loudly. She begged them. And then she tried to *crawl over the bar* to access the liquor bottles stored there.

When all that failed, she started sitting at random tables, begging for a drink. By this time, there were three security staff from the resort standing inside the door, speaking quietly among themselves about how to deal with this. She was loud, and she was mobile. If they tried to physically remove her, it was going to be ugly. They spoke to her. She tossed her (voluminous) hair and went back to table-hopping. They spoke to her again. She ignored them. She finally sat at a table occupied by a single (Canadian, I think) male. They talked. And talked. The security staff talked to the male. He somehow convinced her it was a good idea to go somewhere else. (Back to her room, possibly?) The security staff escorted them both out. The remaining patrons breathed a great sigh of relief. Handled as well as it could have been.

But I swear think I saw them rutting in the hyacinths later.

There have been some sad ones.

Like the night, after the show at the resort, that one of the dancers in the troupe joined us at our table, where we were sitting with another couple. A young woman - early twenties at the most - strikingly beautiful and terribly sad. She told us about her dream, which was to emigrate to Canada and get a job with the Cirque de Soleil in Quebec (which is where their "farm team" for the Vegas and other shows is still based). She saw little future for herself in Cuba, she said. She watched the satellite tv at the resort and saw the amazing lifestyles people were living in other countries, with cellphones and such and such. Her long tale was essentially a barely-hidden plea for one of us to help her achieve her dream of emigration to Canada. The unspoken (and uncomfortable) question in the air was what she was willing to do to make that happen. We were polite and friendly to her, but nobody was offering any hope that we would assist her with her quest. She finally left, a long, long time later, smiling, but sadly. I keep wondering what would happen to her if she pitched that dream to someone who was much less benevolent and more predatory than she was hoping.

Or what did happen.

Whatever else Cuba brings, it always brings surprises.

ronnie

I'm goin' down to Cuba - Jackson Browne

 

Sometimes I get to feeling low  
Wish I could just pick up and go  
Somewhere new, I'd change my point of view  
Maybe somewhere I don't know
 
Toss the idea to and fro  
Not sure what makes it come and go  
There it is again, sweet music on the wind  
Over the Gulf of Mexico
 
I'm going down to Cuba, someday soon  
Following that Caribbean moon 
 It's been too long since I've been there 
I'm going down there to see my friends  
Down where the rhythm never ends  
Where women wear gardenias in their hair
 
People will tell you it's not easy  
You're not supposed to go, they say 
They say that Cuba is the enemy 
I'm going down there anyway
 
I'm going down to Cuba to see my friends 
Down where the rhythm never ends  
No problem is too difficult to solve  
Yeah, times are tough down there, it's true  
But you know they're going to make it through  
They make such continuous use of the verb to resolve
 
They've got to deal with that embargo  
Enough to drive any country insane  
They might not know the things you and I know  
They do know what to do in a hurricane
 
Maybe I'll go through Mexico  
And old Jesse Helms, don't have to know  
Anyway all the allies of the USA Travel to Cuba everyday
 
I'm going down to Cuba to see my friends  
Down where the rhythm never ends  
Where by comparison, my trouble will just unravel  
I'm North American, you know  
Don't like to hear where I can't go  
Free people, will insist on the freedom to travel
 
I'm going to drink the rum ojito, no, no the mojito  
And walk out on the Malecon, the Malecon  
In one hand a Monte Cristo  
And in the other an ice cream cone
 
I'm going down to Cuba with my band  
We're going to formulate a plan  
Whereby we obtain that cultural permission  
If I told you once, I told you thrice  
It'll put a smile on your face  
To see a Chevrolet with a Soviet transmission
 
Oh, that Mojito, Malecon, yes
I bet the country cast a spell  
And there are things I think of still 
 Like the beauty of that woman that spoke to me  
In the Hotel Nacional
 
I'm gonna book my flight today  
I'm definitely on my way  
Just hold my place and I'll get back in the race 
 And I'm back in the USA

Cayo Largo, April 2012

So I mentioned earlier that I had been on a trip; it was a return to Cayo Largo del Sur, one of our favourite places in Cuba. It's the small key off the coast of Cuba proper; most of it is a wildlife preserve with 5 small resorts on it. Compared to the main island it's very wild and undeveloped, and full of iguanas and pelicans and a myriad of other seabirds (some of which I am still trying to identify using my Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba. Which I forgot to take to Cuba).

I have (finally! So busy!) posted some photos to flikr. (I hope that link works.) They're not nearly as interesting as the trips when we visit Cuban cities and towns, but they're a small collection of some happy memories in a very special place.

ronnie

Cuba’s Fidel: The Most Well-Foretold Death

I want to share with you a very interesting article from Havanatimes.org, a very unbiased source (overall) publishing from within Cuba. It really explains a lot about the Cuban reality through a rumination on the never-ending rumours about Fidel Castro's death that eminate - usually - from Miami's anti-Castro Cuban expatriate community. The last spate came on New Year's Eve, if I recall correctly, and was all over Twitter. This particular piece does not originate with Havanatimes.org, but has been translated into English with authorization from a BBC Mundo article.

The Havanatimes.org site is required reading for anyone interested in Cuba. In their articles they are not afraid to either praise - or criticize - what is happening on the ground in Cuba today.

ronnie

Remedios, Santa Clara

I'm finally getting around to organizing some photos from our last trip to Cuba. In the meantime, here are a couple of videos I took on our tour of Remedios and Santa Clara.

This is a pan around the Remedios town square.The large yellow church is Iglesia Mayor of San Juan Bautista, which contains 13 stunning gold altars inside (no inside photography, unfortunately). It is a feast for the eyes inside, I will tell you. Constant pirate attacks in the colonial era meant that they painted the gold over with white paint; in the early 50s, the interior was restored to its original golden splendour.


And this is a view as we drove through the town of Santa Clara.* It's a bit chaotic, as things flash by quickly on video cam as opposed to watching with your own eyes. But I think it gives a good sense of the architecture, the people, and the incredible variety of vehicles you encounter on your drive through any of the Cuban towns we've visited.

Bonus points if you catch the classic Korda photo of Che Guevera painted on a building. You can't walk a couple of blocks in Cuba without seeing one.
More to come,
ronnie

*I initially thought this was video of Remedios as well, but a viewing by me and Husband together convinced us it is Santa Clara.

Cayo Ensenachos, Santa Clara, y Remedios

As some of you have surmised, we have been away for awhile (last week to be precise). This time we stayed on Cayo Ensenachos, part of the Jardins del Rey Archipelago which we have now visited three times. We noticed big, big changes to the region and the towns we visited and passed through on this visit.

We also hired a car and spent some quality time in Remedios and - finally! - two years after the sprained ankle fiasco, I made it to Santa Clara.

I'll be posting photos of those two bustling, amazing Cuban towns on flikr over the weekend but for now, this is a picture of a can of Cristal beer, my favourite beer in the world which tastes like Cuba and which I am drinking while writing this blog post.

I see I have a lot of catch-up reading of my favourite blogs to do!

Mojo stayed at The Cat Spa, where the owner is well-qualified to deal with his current health issues. Unfortunately, he had a bit of a bad spell on Monday night and she had to call the on-call vet, and take him to his own vet on Tuesday. The consensus is that he now needs sub-q fluid more than once a week, and that smaller doses several times a week will be better for him. That saw Husband and I trekking over to the vet this evening after work to learn how to administer them to him ourselves. If he is going to have to have this done three times a week, we are not stressing him out by putting him in a carrier and trucking him to a semi-strange and unpleasant environment to have it done. I won't lie. Neither of us wanted to learn to do this and both of us hate it and are enormously nervous about it. But there you have it. I know some of you have dealt with this already and your encouragement that it will become quite routine is much appreciated.

He also had more bloodwork done when he visited his vet last week and we consulted with the vet on the results today. She says his kidney functions have mostly stabilized but she feels something else is causing his recent weight-loss and vomiting. So after laying out a number of options, from doing nothing to sending him to the veterinary school on Prince Edward Island for a complete work-up, we settled on having an ultrasound done here in town, which might show nothing or which might reveal some source of trouble which we can work on alleviating. It's worth a shot.

ronnie

Cuba is changing.

Thanks to Mike of The Nellie Blog for passing along a link to this excellent article and short film about the changes to Cuba's economy from Al Jazeera, of all places.

Couple of observations:

Everybody - and I mean everybody, including kids - always had some kind of a sideline going. I don't think I've ever met a Cuban who wasn't giving informal tours, running an illegal taxi service, selling something out of their house, etc. All the reforms are doing is bringing the black market economy above-ground (and creating some new businesses, like cafeterias, which couldn't operate on the black market because they were too visible). I always found it ironic that Cubans are by far the most entrepreneurial people I'd ever met.

Secondly, the film nails what is going to possibly kill this reform unless they fix it - the ponderous Cuban bureaucracy. That hasn't been updated to support the needs of the new entrepreneurs. The bureaucracy is the bane of every Cubans' existence, and the few brushes I've had with it show it to be maddening. A phrase you hear frequently along with a shrug is, "Es Cuba". Fatalistic. If they don't break that culture the reforms are doomed to fail.

I was amused at the lady's repaired bathroom. That's one of the nicest private bathrooms I've ever seen in Cuba. Note no toilet seat. Outside of the resorts, they don't seem to exist. I hope she gets her habitation paperwork sorted. The tv show featuring letters of complaint amazed me. I couldn't have imagined the regime tolerating that when we first started going there. But everyone agrees that Raul has to do something extreme.

These reforms - at least, the beginnings of them - had already been announced the last time we were there. Cubans we spoke to were remarkably upbeat about them. (A couple of them noted that they had already been offering services illegally - now they could do it above-board.) However, a lot of civil servants are being let go. They all have to figure out some kind of business or trade.

The times, they are a-changing.

ronnie

Is that...? In CUBA?

Sherwood? Sherwood Harrington, is that YOU in the Daquiri Bar at the Gran Caribe Playa Blanca hotel in Cuba?

Tricksy thing! You trimmed your beard but I still recognized you!



I've posted a few more photos from the trip to flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronniecat/sets/72157626971251724/

Photos of this trip seem to be dripping out like a leaky faucet but I guess we've posted about all that's new or interesting. I included a link in one of the flickr descriptions to my blog post on our last trip to Cayo Largo, when we posted a lot of pictures of the workers' town and marina and so on. You can only take so many pictures of beaches :)

ronnie

Random iguanas and Vestigial Tails.

Photographed and explained better than I ever could, the awesome iguanas of Cayo Largo.

Iguanas are adorable, except when they're not, and they hiss! at you.

I always defer to them. Just like the cucarachas and the snakes, they were there first.

ronnie

Cayo Largo del Sur

Flew in last night via Montréal - the First Officer came on over the intercom to tell us that the Canadiens had beaten the rival Bruins in their second playoff game, to general applause - and on to Fredericton this morning. How can two weeks of doing nothing leave you so tired? If I was any tireder, I'd have to be twins.

Sleep now, details later (now! with more iguanas!)

ronnie

More Jibacoa

Yup. No American investment in Cuba. Verboten!

This photo was taken at the duty-free store at the airport in Varadero.

We also saw Red Bull everywhere this time. "Heche en Austria" of all places!

The work-around is always that the product is actually manufactured in a third country. Coca-cola is "heche en Mexico". Jesse Helms is dead. Does Dan Burton know about this?

Because Blogger makes posting photos with commentary ridiculously difficult, I've posted some more photos from Jibacoa, including a few more pictures of our visit to Santa Cruz del Norte, to my Flickr stream. You can access it here (I hope).

Two notes about this trip: first, we spoke with a Cuban about the government's plan to lay off half a million government workers and have them move to entrepreneurial pursuits. The Cuban (being a bit of a black market entrepreneur already) thought it was a fine idea!

The second note is about our fellow-travelers at the resort. Very interesting and new companions this time - a large contingent of Caribbean expats living in the UK who came on a group junket. Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians... you get the idea. From the group matriarch who seemed to be everywhere in an admirable collection of headgear, to a very well-behaved and sweet gang of little ones, a more pleasant group of fellow occupants we couldn't have hoped for. The rest were non-Caribbean Brits (Euro-Brits? White British people? What's the appropriate term in this context?), Canadians, and a few Germans.

Endlessly fascinating. Cuba, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We're waiting with curiosity to see what the Wikileaks cables serve up about this complicated country which has gone through so much change lately.

ronnie

Santa Cruz del Norte

We took a scooter tour of Santa Cruz del Norte, a town about 1/2 hour from the resort. There were five or six of us plus our guide.

Santa Cruz del Norte is a fishing community situated on a river; it's also home to the country's largest rum distillery, about which more later.



This is the monument to Cuba's greatest cultural, social and political hero, José Martí.

He was critical to shaping Fidel Castro's politics, and you're gonna find monuments to him in every town and city in Cuba.








We went down to the docks; as someone who comes from a fishing community I was really interested in seeing the types of boats and gear they use here as compared to home.








Some graffiti near the wharves. Definitely not state-sanctioned, I don't think. Note the DJing fish.










The ubiquitous Ché.
















Part of the main street.










The Habana Club factory as seen from across the river. We'd also stopped right beside it on the road into town but I didn't get a snap. Like most industrial works in Cuba, it looked completely run-down, decrepit, and derelict, and if we had just passed it on the road we would have assumed it was entirely shut down and decaying. Instead, we are informed, it is the largest and most productive rum distillery in the country. So it goes here where there is no access to resources or tools for repair and maintenance. Viva Cuba indeed.



The ice-cream shop in town. Believe me, the Cubans love their ice-cream. There's one of these shops in every little town you pass through. A local boy waits patiently, Cuban pesos in hand, while the server gets his fix.










Part of the downtown shopping district.








One of the main local stores.

The signs translate to "Victory of the resolve, the justice and the hope"

"All for the revolution"











Buying vegetables from the back of a truck...














...and rice and beans on the sidewalk.

These stores I've photographed are stores that tourists rarely venture into. This isn't a tourist destination; it's a working Cuban community. These stores trade in Cuban Pesos - not Cuban Convertible Pesos ("tourist money").

We've seen these stores before but never went inside - it felt very voyeuristic to think of going in to gawk at what the locals can - or can't - buy. But this time, with a Cuban guide, we got a good look inside them. We visited four or five of them, the first time we've really gotten a look at how Cubans are able to shop. And what we saw was really eye-opening. We'd read about it, dozens of times. But we'd never actually seen it.

We were asked not to take photos inside, and we respected that. The stores look very much like North American "five and dime" or dry goods stores from the 1920s to the 60s - rows of shelves from floor to ceiling behind banks of glass cabinets. The first one we visited had the oddest collection of items on display - switchplates and outlet covers; automotive parts; underwear. Hanging on the walls were odd assortments of clothing - sports jerseys, spandex tights (well, that explains why everyone on the streets seems to wear them), sequined clubwear. Another we visited had furniture and appliances - all very modern. A full-sized refrigerator will set you back $780 Cuban Pesos; a television, about $300. (To put this into perspective, our guide told us that his salary converts to about $140 Cuban Convertible Pesos a year; that is about $3500 Cuban Pesos.) There were cheap glass-topped dining room and coffee tables and electric fans and a remarkably snazzy gas range.

The oddity and randomness of the items available for purchase explains a lot about the reality of purchasing power in Cuba. You may need a box of nails; but when you go to the store, the store has light switches and outlet covers, and that's about it for building materials. Come back next month to see if there are any nails. Or the month after that.

On the way back to the resort we stopped at a gen-u-wine Cuban truckstop. There was a bar, a restaurant, a shop, and three big, battered, Cuban transport trucks parked out front whose drivers were taking a break on the drive to La Habana, about another hour away. The bar claims to make "the best Piña Coladas in Cuba", and we were invited to try one - JUST ONE, the guide noted. (I'm sure he had no interest in trying to shepherd a bunch of drunk tourists back to our resort on two wheels.)

A fascinating trip and a glimpse into a bit of Cuba we hadn't seen before.

ronnie

El regreso

Our seventh trip.



This photo was taken in Santa Cruz del Norte. Yes, this was our seventh trip, but this time we saw things we had never seen before, and really got a glimpse of the real lives of Cubans. Unfortunately I came back to a very intense work situation that will eat up pretty much all of my time, including evenings, for the next several days - but much more to come later.

ronnie

Reflexiones de Fidel

Ever since leaving power, Fidel Castro has been occasionally - but pretty regularly - drafting lengthy essays which are faithfully published in Granma, the official state newspaper, under the title Reflexiones de Fidel (Reflections of Fidel).

CNN and other American media sometimes report breathlessly on these statements - for, indeed, they often pontificate on US policies or practices (he thought Obama was a lovely young man during the election campaign, for what it's worth) - which they always vaguely refer to as being "published in state media". It always amuses me because it sounds so mysterious and "here we are reporting from behind the mysterious Cuban curtain for you", when if they wanted to, they could actually provide their readers a direct link to the document in Granma online - in English, yet.

Anyway, when in Cuba we watch the local tv channels as much as possible and always watch the evening news, a fascinating window into the way the state communicates and propagandizes to the people.


This time we had the slightly surreal experience of watching the young anchor read the latest Reflection - in its entirety - for a good seven to ten minutes of the broadcast. It was about five printed pages long. But everyone must take the time to listen to the very, very important reflections of the Commandante.

Over the anchor's shoulder played a rotating montage of stirring photos, including the Cuban flag and an image of the Commandante himself, presumably writing one of his Reflections or something equally ponderous.

One can only imagine what it is like to be a journalist in a country like this.

We happened to be there for the island-wide municipal elections and were treated to tv coverage of that, too. Incredibly, each polling station (they showed footage from stations around the country) were manned by two Cuban youth - a girl and a boy - in their little José Martí Pioneer Organization uniforms who saluted - adorably saluted - each voter after he or she put the ballot in the box.

The voter turnout was 96%, unsurprising in a country where voting isn't mandatory-mandatory, but is mandatory.

We were also there for May Day. May Day ain't big here but you know, very big with the socialists.

And how do you get turnouts like this for the demonstrations of support for the workers?

Like this.

I'm guessing that's mandatory, too.

All of Cuba has the sense right now of being right on the cusp of... something. Something is going to change. People just aren't sure what, and how, and exactly when.

They seem more optimistic than anxious, though.

Let's keep fingers crossed.

ronnie

Regresar a Cayo Santa Maria

Guess where I've been for two weeks?

While I rest up from my extended, incredibly relaxing vacation which has left me utterly exhausted, enjoy this very interesting and related blog post over at Vestigial Tails. Little modern day update on some cold war nostalgia (or should that be notstalgia?) for all y'all.






I'll be back with more about the latest foray into the peculiar otherworld that is Cuba later, but before I go, Basement Cat vacations in Cuba. Who knew?

Sleepily,

ronnie