Two Australian (I found out later) girls got onto the Viazul bus at Camagüey. Cuba seems to like compound words for brands, e.g. Viazul (Blue Way) or Islazul (Blue Island). Furthermore the A in Viazul was an icon of a highway vanishing into the distance, becoming the apex of the A. The air-conditioning in the bus was cold, and I wished that I had taken out a T-shirt for my arms.
At sunrise we arrived in Santiago de Cuba. The de Cuba is to distinguish it from other Santiagos, such as Santiago de Compostela and Santiago de Chile; this is common practice with city names that are ambiguous, such as Salvador. I had not intended to stay in Santiago, even though it was Cuba's second largest city. It was said to be full of jineteros and its streets difficult to navigate. That, and the lack of something specific that I wanted to see, didn't make it attractive to me. However it is Cuba's most Caribbean city and has a strong, unique musical heritage. (Note from the future: At that time I didn't know as much about Cuban music. If I were doing the trip today, I would probably take in Santiago.) I got a forward ticket to Baracoa with no problems and never left the bus station.
We transited Guantánamo city, which looked small and underdeveloped. It gives its name to the song Guantánamera (Girl from Guantánamo), probably the best-known Cuban song in the world. The US has a naval base in a nearby bay, an anomaly of history. I didn't actually see it, but there is a vantage point on high ground outside the city for the curious. That name gained world notoreity after the events of 2001. The route got hilly as we crossed the range surrounding Baracoa, almost at the eastern edge of the island. Baracoa is therefore somewhat isolated. It is where Columbus made landfall in Cuba on his first journey.
D, the English tourist, was not feeling so well at breakfast so I gave him a couple of my Imodium tablets. They were heading out to Cayo Sabinal after lunch. The Dutchman had said that he might pop by to say hello in the morning, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps he was on his way to Bayamo already.
I had to relinquish my room of course but I left my backpack in the house. Needing to kill some time I decided to visit a Cuban cinema for 15 pesos. They were showing a B grade Chilean comedy called Sexo Con Amor, which was about couples having flings. There was a bit of nudity and lots of rough jokes. The audience roared at those. There were many rowdy kids in the cinema. Cubans are more relaxed about sex than Anglos, and indeed most Europeans. Perhaps it's the only pleasure left to them that the government hasn't regulated. The ventilation consisted of a couple of large extractor fans in the ceiling, and the film was projected from a video so the picture was poor and I couldn't make out a lot of the dialog. I was more worried about my daypack, containing my documents, which I had to leave in the guardabolsa (bag room). But I got it back safely.
I didn't like the menu at the Gran Hotel so I went to the Hotel Colón for lunch. There I bumped into D and C again, and had a ham and cheese sandwich, like them. On the way out I poked my head into the Internet room and saw that there was a free spot so I bought an hour for $3. I had to show my passport for this. As expected, response was slow. I could access my Yahoo mail, but my other webmail accounts were blocked. I spent the rest of the time checking the news on the ABC and BBC websites. Not much had changed in the world. It seemed like forever, but it had been just over 3 weeks since I set out on my odyssey. Travel time is compressed time.
The abuela's dinner cooking was great again. The architect was very proud of his historic house. He showed me an album of photos that he had taken of casas particulares in the region. When I visit another city for work reasons, I also visit casas I know. I go click, and add another photo to my collection, he declared. I gathered that he was trying to set up some kind of network of casa operators. So the entrepreneurial spirit wasn't dead in Cuba yet. He gave me some tips for Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa.
The architect's nephew took me to the station in a battered old car. After he had left, I realised that perhaps I was meant to give him a dollar or two for his fuel and trouble. I wasn't sure if his service was included in the casa's rate and he would be offended by the money. Probably not. Oh well, too late now. At the station, the cafeteria's prices were obviously in dollars, because the beer was listed as 0,90. Cuba should just price everything in dollars and be done with it, I thought in annoyance.
I was having weird dreams during this period, but I couldn't remember any details on waking. It seemed as if my dream life and real life would never intersect. Breakfast was unusual in that I got a slice of pork, not seen before in Cuban breakfasts.
I set out to see Camagüey's plazas and churches. Though I admit I was getting a bit tired of those. From the Casino Campestre, a pleasant park, I caught a horse cart to the bus station, but it took me in the opposite direction, to the train station. Oh well, at least I got to see the top end of Av. Republica. I decided to walk back to the centre along the avenue. There were consumer goods in the shops. I saw quite a few shops selling home hardware, hinges, door knobs, that sort of thing. Camagüey seemed better off than Havana. At the tourist information office nobody was at the counter. Maybe they were off working on their own businesses.
There was an Internet room at one of the hotels and it was quite busy. I made a note to come back later. Across the street, a Cubatur employee gave me the times for the Santiago de Cuba bus, and confirmed that I could connect to the Baracoa bus the same morning. I hoped so, I didn't want to stopover in Santiago de Cuba.
The tinajón (clay water jar) is the symbol of Camagüey. It is used to store water for dry times. Yes, they are usually found resting in this attitude.
This is the Plaza del Carmen that I visited the night before. It wasn't half as romantic as the evening before when there had been a dance class in progress and music streaming out of the windows, but I got to take pictures of the iron sculptures, one of a Cuban pushing a cart full of jars.
I went to a recommended restaurant in the Plaza San Juan for lunch. A couple of Italians and their chicas came in and took a nearby table. One Italian was grey haired, the other was younger. The girls were black Cubanas who didn't look a day over 20. One of them was obviously not wearing a bra. I wondered why Italians seemed to like Cuba for their sex holidays. Maybe it was because Italian and Spanish are related languages. The chicas were introducing their clients to Cuban food terms. My fish was undercooked so I sent it back to the kitchen. The service was underwhelming but for $6.50 plus tips, which also covered the beer, I couldn't complain.
This is a beautifully preserved façade.
Finally I reached Casino Campestre again. I made up my mind to go buy the bus ticket for the next evening, I would have seen enough of Camagüey by then. A buggy agreed to take me to the station for 10 pesos. The horse looked tired and I felt sorry for it. The ride was bumpy as the road was poor.
During my afternoon siesta, I heard somebody say Olanda (Holland in Spanish). I emerged from my room to see the Dutchman talking with the abuela, not looking for me, just happenstance. It turned out that he had moved next door because he didn't like the rules at the previous casa. Was he actually also a chica chaser, I wondered.
We went for a city walk together. At the 5th floor of the Gran Hotel which has views over the city, I took some photos. It was very quiet in the streets, even though it was light. Then we had mojitos and conversation at the Hotel Colón.
Over dinner in the casa, I chatted with the British couple from Geneva, D and C. They were jet-lagged and retired early. It had been a long day for me so I retired too. I made a note to tell the architect about my plans the next day, which involved hanging around until late at night to catch the overnight bus to Santiago de Cuba.
It seems that in Cuba black cats are lucky when they are in the house, but not on the street. Anyway, in the morning the one at the casa consented to be stroked. I got to the bus station with plenty of time to spare. There was another tourist there, a Dutchman. I saw that he was doing exercises on his Spanish textbook. He was a psychologist, from Den Haag, partly retired and going in the same direction as I was. We chatted in the bus station and on the bus, mostly about the future of Cuba. The time flew.
After dinner I walked to the cobblestoned Plaza del Carmen, which held some sculptures and was said to be pleasant. It was poorly lit but I was planning to come back the next day anyway. A hustler tried to talk me up. I ignored him. There were some kids playing there and they were quite curious about me, a tourist. I took some photos and gave them some sweets.
I had a half-day to pass before the bus to Sancti Spiritus which departed mid-afternoon. It was only a 70 km journey but the bus schedules did not allow me to proceed further. Anyway the guide book said that Sancti Spiritus was worth a stopover to look at the Yayabo bridge, and was mostly free of hustlers because it's an inland city with no beach front, just some interesting buildings and some history, so tourism there wasn't very developed.
Esther, the landlady of the casa that Berta had recommended, was waiting for me at the bus station at Sancti Spiritus. It was just a short walk to the casa. This was fortunate because the bus station was some ways out of the city, and it would be easier to leave the next day. The casa was not as congenial as Berta's but on the other hand the room had air-conditioning. An intriguing feature of the room was the mirror on the ceiling. I guessed that would be for the sex tourists who brought chicas back to the casa.
I chatted to my hosts before and after dinner. Esther and her husband had been mechanical professionals, but had turned to renting rooms because it earned better. They discouraged me from my plan to go to a hotel in Camagüey, my next stop. They recommended that I go to a casa again. Clearly they did not like to see money go to the state but preferred that some of it go to casa owners.
After dinner I took a walk to the city centre. It took me about 20 minutes to get there along poorly lit streets. I wasn't worried. Crime isn't really a problem for tourists in Cuba; the authorities have a lid on pretty much everything. Cuban malefactors prefer to trick rather than steal money from you. There was some kind of modern street theatre going on in the plaza, none of which made any sense to me. I took a blurry shot of another plaza by available light and called it a night.
What went wrong? I'm not going to rehash the whole history; tons of ink have already been spilt on this and you can spend years studying the history.
Firstly I believe that the Cuban Revolution of 1958/9 was necessary to get rid of the dictator Batista, who was turning Cuba into the gambling den and whorehouse of the US. After that, the actions of the US pushed Cuba into the arms of the Russians, where they stayed until the fall of the Soviet Union. The US maintains a trade embargo with Cuba and also imposes secondary sanctions on third parties who trade with Cuba. For example, there are no direct flights to Cuba from the US for people unconnected with Cuba, e.g. relatives of Cubans, tourists have to transit places like Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, or European countries. In the US the embargo is supported by the Cuban exiles who lost their homeland and properties in the revolution or are otherwise opposed to Castro. Like the fable of the wind, the sun and the man with a hat, this embargo has simply made the Cubans more intransigent and strengthened Castro's hand.
The wretchedness of the Cuban economy cannot be blamed solely on the embargo. The system is inefficient and during the Cold War years, was propped up by the Soviet Union, who traded oil and consumer goods for sugar. Cuba was far too dependent on too few products. And incentives to advance are non-existent. I remember an anecdote where an Eastern European goes to work in Cuba. One day he was taken aside and told that he's working too hard and making his comrades look bad. So he slacked off and life was good again. Until the fall of the Wall. Without their major sponsor, the Cuban economy plunged into a Special Period.
The Revolution did bring benefits such as improvements in living standards, literacy and health to Cubans. But along the way it turned into another kind of dictatorship, rule by central planning. Perhaps the system could have changed and adapted, perhaps it was doomed to fail because of one stubborn man; I'll leave that for others to argue.
What would become of Cuba when Fidel Castro dies, everyone asks? Some say another revolution, some say anarchy, some say Raul Castro would take over. Fidel's certainly a colourful figure, a great survivor of many assassination attempts by the CIA. The party officials who sleep through his hours long monologues on speech days are also survivors. Remember, Fidel's the man who delivered a four hour long speech prior to sentencing for leading an attack on Moncada Barracks in 1953, which concludes with the famous line La historia me absolverá (History will absolve me). It's sold as a small paperback in Cuba, and actually a reconstruction by Fidel later, since no record was kept of his speech. On a humourous note, I think that he should give a speech to the US Congress. After a couple of hours the members would say enough enough, end the embargo, anything to shut this man up.
It's interesting that Che Guevara figures more prominently on billboards than Castro. Che is safely martyred and beatified by Cuba; schoolchildren sing of their desire to be like Che. His legend lends authority to Fidel. But apparently when he was a minister for industry he wasn't so hot. He was the type looking for action.
After breakfast, Berta's husband brought around the rented bike. It cost me $3 for the day, cheap even in hard currency. However I made a serious mistake. The saddle was too low and kept tilting back, yet I did not think to get that fixed. I have since understood that a bike not adjusted to suit the rider will waste a lot of leg power.
Playa Ancón is about 12 km out of Trinidad. There are two ways there, the direct route heads south and reaches the coast quickly but then you have to cycle westward along the bay to the base of the peninsula, which dangles like a cashew nut from the mainland. The other way goes west to the coast and hugs the coast all the way. Naturally I intended to use one road going and the other returning, for variety.
The town petered out quickly and soon I was in open country with fields on both sides of the road and a rail line next to it. Presumably this used to be the sugar line. Not much to see. I reached the port of Casilda, but the harbour was not open to visitors so I pressed on. I stopped several times, to catch my breath, or to take a picture. This is a brightly coloured crab I spotted on a patch of sand.
Eventually I reached Hotel Ancón. It had the usual palm frond parasols on the strand. The hotel looked a bit worn, though serviceable. I supposed that richer Cubans or party officials went there. There were also some foreign tourists. The pool was free for visitors to use, so I changed into my cossie and had a welcome cool dip. I ordered a cold beer afterwards to placate the waiter. I rested in a pool chair until my fatigue wore off.
Cycling back was very tiring. There was no shade and the terrain was undulating. I stopped at a dollar restaurant to quaff a can of beer. Towards the end I was walking the bike. Suddenly Trinidad town hove into view and I was relieved. Alas, the guarapo stand wasn't running. With legs of jelly I reached the casa, showered and rested. When I told Berta about my adventures she said why didn't you tell us about the saddle height? We could have got it adjusted for you. Lesson learnt.
We chatted while walking back to the casa in the cool night air. I offered to buy them beers but the only place open at that hour sold cans of soft drink, which they accepted. On the way Berta looked at an appliance in a shop window and spoke of her hope to save up enough to buy it. I don't even remember exactly what it was, an iron perhaps, something I would not think twice about buying if needed. And yet I never detected any envy towards richer countries amongst the Cubans. They have only their immediate neighbourhood for comparison. Which was why Miriam thought tourism for rich foreigners could be damaging. You don't know how fortunate you are if you live in a developed country, until you have seen how people in poorer countries make do with so much less. I once read an opinion that made sense. The writer said that the reason Westerners are drawn to Cuba and other Latin American countries is because they present the image of the "happy savage"; people who are vivacious inspite of poverty. We think that perhaps we can learn something from them about happiness and still have our cake to eat. But you know, once you have eaten of the fruit of materialism, you can never go back, you will not be able to stop comparing your life with the advertising fables we are all bombarded with. Unless you change your attitude.
Trinidad used to be an important centre of sugar production and a steam train ride away is the Valle de los Ingenios (Valley of the Sugar Mills) where the ruins of mills can be seen. Along with half a dozen other travellers, 4 of whom appeared to be British, I waited at the train platform just outside of town. The guide book said that the departure was 0930 and the trip would take 2-½ hours. We waited until 0935 but no sign of the locomotive. Some Cubans told us that it wasn't running because there was no water yesterday. Scratch that day trip then.
I walked back to explore the old town in depth. There was an artisan market in the plaza. These vendors were selling straw animals.
This is the church near the plaza where I had taken the last night's photo. All of the old town had cobblestone streets like what you see.
Nearby streets have walls painted in bright colours.
This was an art gallery at one corner of the plaza.
I went up to the top of the mirador (viewing place) in the yellow tower a couple of pictures back to get an aerial view of the old town. In the same building is a Revolutionary Museum with pictures from the bad old days of Batista. I discovered that Capitán Descalzas (Captain Barefoot) was a real person and not just a fictional character in Norberto Fuentes' stories, one of which I had read in the Spanish Short Stories paperback that I had given away.
You can just make out the Caribbean in the far distance in this shot.
The day was starting to get uncomfortably hot so I retreated to the casa for a siesta.
Berta's husband asked me to come take my dinner upstairs and I soon saw why. The skies opened up and it rained and thundered. The dining area downstairs would have been flooded. The dinner was prawns in a tomato sauce and the usual fixings, rice and beans.
Berta got home late because of the rain and the three of us conversed some more in their living room cum bedroom. Tomorrow they would arrange the hire of a bicycle for me so that I could cycle to Playa Ancón, by the sea.
At breakfast I got an ear bashing by Miriam about how the tourist industry in Cuba was corrupting values. I assume she meant that she and her siblings were reluctant participants in it. She believed that some kind of capitalism was needed but values must remain socialist. Privately I was of the view that the problem with communism is that it inevitably ends up as a kind of religion and loyalties to any kind of religion, godless or not, will always be weaker than human emotions. It's better that people help the less fortunate from their own hearts than for it to be dictated by any religion. However the state should set a safety net.
Before I left I gave my read copy of The Odyssey to the family. Good, one less object to carry. They gave an introduction to a woman in Trinidad renting a room, Berta. This was the first of a chain of links of introductions I would follow for a while.
I needn't have worried about buying the ticket early in the morning; as it turned out there were quite a few empty seats in the bus for the 2 hour run (about 100km) to Trinidad, also on the south coast of Cuba. I was skipping Santa Clara, which has a monument to Che Guevara and not much else, it seemed. The other passengers were mostly backpackers and couples. I dozed off in the heat and missed the coastal scenery, but what little I saw wasn't spectacular. Cubans sing superlatives about their scenery, but it's no better than what you'd expect of a Caribbean island. Then again they have little chance to view other places for comparison.
On arrival I dodged the touts waiting for the bus and walked through cobblestone streets to reach Berta's house. On the way I stopped at a roadside stall to have a drink of guarapo (sugar cane juice) to cool off. The "glass" was cut from the bottom of a bottle. Trinidad is also a World Heritage listed city. Its position on the south coast meant that unlike the north coast, it didn't receive cooling onshore winds from the north and was noticeably warmer. So I didn't feel hungry even though I had only some müsli for lunch. The room was small, without any air-conditioning, only a fan, which made it stifling. But dinner and breakfast were cheaper, leaving me with a larger margin.
After dinner I walked to the old city nearby. Lighting was poor and this dim shot of Plaza Mayor buildings was the only photo I took that day. I preferred the Parque Cespedes where I had a 10 peso (40c) beer and conversed a bit with the pub owner.
Berta taught geography in the evenings and her husband was a bus driver, which meant that they were still up when I got back late in the evening. I chatted with them until midnight in their room upstairs and gave them some small gifts, including a pair of fold-up reading glasses. She was quite enchanted with it. I gave their son, a university student, a scientific calculator that I had bought in a variety store, and donated a bunch of ball point pens and a pocket chess set to the kids at the school they worked at.
One thing I had noticed was that Cubans tack on mi amor (my love) or mi vida (my life) to conversational sentences. Really no different from people tacking on love in English conversations. Just a way of bonding between the conversationalists.
I arranged the doors for maximum air flow and with that the temperature was bearable during the night. Unfortunately there was a cicada chirping away outside. Time to get out the ear plugs.
I got a filling breakfast with more of those succulent home-grown mangos again. Time to go sightseeing. I walked to the parque and took pictures of the surrounding buildings. Cienfuegos has some beautiful neoclassical buildings from the Spanish colonial period. It is on the UNESCO heritage list. Incidentally although the word literally means hundred fires, it was so named because a Capitan-General of the same name lived on Cuba.
One building in particular reminded me of the railway station in Kuala Lumpur because of the Moorish towers, domes and arches. It's interesting that the Arab influence went both ways, via the Moors to Spain, and thence to the New World, and via Arab traders to South-East Asia.
The cemetery with the tomb of La Bella Durmiente (Sleeping Beauty) was close by so I thought why not have a look? The guard there was kind enough to show me the tomb with a statue of a languishing woman over it. The beautiful statue has given rise to many legends (page in Spanish), but nobody is sure what the real story is. Most stories revolve around a woman dying young at 23, of some melancholy reason, a broken heart, excessive medication and so on.
There were some preparations in progress at the Malecón (sea wall). Later Gladys told me that the next day would be Foundation Day. I decided to walk to the promontory, Punta Gorda. Cienfuegos lies at the head of a large bay so it wasn't open sea.
Along the way I stopped at a dilapidated boat landing to check the view and take some pictures. A woman in her late 20s or early 30s in a green bikini at the water's edge came over and greeted me, and shook hands. We started conversing, then a policeman on a motorcycle came around and she fell silent. The policeman took out his bocadillo (sandwich) lunch and started eating.
After a moment I decided to move on and reached Punta Gorda. There was a gazebo at the tip but not much to see except the view across the large Cienfuegos bay. I took some pictures of the point and nearby architecture and walked back. On the way a pitiful old woman asked me for alms so I gave her a dollar.
When I returned to the landing, the young woman was still there but the policeman had left. We resumed our conversation where we had left off. She was having a day out with her father and two kids, 2 and 4, who were swimming nearby. She had a common-law husband but was separated now. She worked as a social worker of sorts, looking after old people. She said that her casa was near the parque. Then she asked: What are you doing tonight?
Ah.
I should have seen that coming. I instantly decided that one big lie would be easier to sustain than a series of excuses: Tengo novia.
But she wasn't convinced and asked, So how come she's not travelling with you?
Well, I said, she has to work and I was visiting my friends in Europe who are not her friends.
She persisted, You love her very much then?
Sorry, yes, I lied.
She couldn't gainsay that so we talked about other topics. Before we parted she asked me for a quarter. I readily gave her two.
Well, that was an interesting experience, I thought. That explained the policeman, he was trying to curtail contact between a Cubana and a foreigner. Turning the incident over in my mind, I was curious how it might even pan out. Since I wasn't allowed to take chicas back to my casa, I imagined that I would have to turn up at her casa with a bottle of rum, money and prophylactics. The scenario seemed so tawdry. I realised that I had forgotten to compliment her a bit on her looks at the beginning of the conversation; I always forget little courtesies like that. She was somewhat attractive, though she had let herself go a bit at the waist, perhaps after having had two kids. Or maybe it was the starch in the Cuban diet. I believe too that like the tout who took me to the criolla restaurant in Havana, she was an opportunistic rather than a habitual operator.
I went back to my casa to shower and wash my clothes. There was a clothes line in the courtyard. I hoped that they would dry in time for tomorrow. While the sunshine was doing its work, I walked around the corner to the bus station to buy my departure ticket for the next day, but the counter was already closed. Never mind, I could do it before breakfast then.
Here are two forms of transportation in Cienfuegos. This old technology works.
This newer one hasn't for a while.
A doctor neighbour of my hosts who had some stomach ailment came around, so I gave him some of the medication I was carrying. Dinner was filling again.
I was hoping for a spectacular sunset but the sun was obscured by clouds and the industries at the edge of the bay contributed to an insipid picture.
I finished my paperback copy of The Odyssey. It was sort of disconcerting to be in a parallel odyssey of my own, complete with sirens. No wine-dark seas in mine that's for sure. I told myself to be always in the present no matter how tiring and irritating Cuba was.
Time to hit the road. I had decided in advance to omit the Pinar del Rio province from my Cuban itinerary, essentially all of Cuba to the west of Havana, about 100 km of the 1250 km long island. Geographically, Cuba is like an east-west crocodile, long and stretched, only about 100 km north-south. It was regrettable, but I couldn't visit every place and had to leave something out. In fact I would even skip one province between Havana and Cienfuegos in its eponymous province, Matanzas province, containing Varadero, the package tourist enclave on a long spit of sand.
This is the José Martí Memorial. It is possible to get an aerial view from the top, but it cost money and I was in budget mode.
And this is a wire-frame outline of Che Guevara on the front of the Ministry of Interior Defense. This iconic image has been reproduced on uncountable T-shirts. The original photo was taken in 1960 by Alberto Korda at a march. In 1967 Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the Italian publisher of Guevara's captured Bolivian Diary, obtained a copy from Korda to accompany the diary to draw attention to Guevara's plight as CIA backed Bolivian forces closed in on the guerrillas. After Guevara's capture and summary execution, there was no stopping the image from spreading to worldwide recognition. Korda got nothing out of it but forgave Feltrinelli because he had drawn attention to Guevara.
Here is a view of the parade ground, seen from the base of the José Martí Memorial. I had to snap the photo and leave quickly before the guardians of the memorial might declare that I was inside the memorial grounds and would need to pay an entrance fee.
At departure time, I was taken, along with a couple of other tourists, to the bus via a different entrance, bypassing the Cuban crowds. It was warm in the bus, but the breeze from the open windows helped. I had to fasten a flapping curtain by wedging it against the window pane.
As the bus headed out of Havana, I saw people gathered at stops and junctions hoping for a seat on the bus. Some of them waved clutched dollar bills to highlight their willingness to pay in hard cash. But to no avail, because the bus was full. Once in a while, a passenger would alight, and a lucky Cuban would get the freed up place.
The Autopista Nacional (National Highway) was actually in good condition. Built before the economic crisis, it got little use and thus little wear.The constant onshore winds were evinced by the tilt of coconut palms. Agricultural land in Cuba looked dismal. Because of shortages of transport fuel, horseback riders could be seen. A large bush blaze generated smoke visible for kilometres around, but nobody did anything about it, probably due to lack of fire engines and water. It would have to burn out by itself.
Reception on my FM radio faded out as we distanced ourselves from Havana. Progress was slow. It took 5 hours to cover 184 km. At Cienfuegos, I walked a couple of blocks to a casa that I had picked out of the guide book. The house was shared between two sisters and a brother, all retired. I was a lodger out of the blue as opposed to coming from a recommendation, and my welcome was probably warmer for that. Miriam was the outgoing sister. She had been a schoolteacher and true to her training, she could not resist correcting my conjugation of the irregular verb poner (to put). Then there was calmer Gladys who was also a former teacher. The brother's name I had forgotten to note. They made a point of telling me: no chicas. The idea hadn't even crossed my mind.
The room was spacious and comfy, with two beds and a noisy but working air-conditioner. As I knew ahead of time, there was no reduction for being a single lodger. Casas pay the same amount of tax whether one or two people stay.
Before dinner I showed Australian postcards to an enthusiastic Miriam. As with each place I stayed at, I left one or two postcards behind. The ones of Australian fauna were the most popular. The dinner portion was large and I felt guilty not being able to eat everything; I left some salad on my plate. I got to taste mangos from the tree in their courtyard for desert.
After dinner I walked down to the Parque José Martí. It was more like a town square than a park. Perhaps in Cuba a plaza is something larger, like the one in Havana. There were people looking out doorways, savouring the evening breeze. Streets were clean and not so worn, a marked contrast to Havana. I saw a shop with sound equipment and whitegoods. Prices were about twice what they would be in Europe. The brands appeared to be mostly Korean, probably evading the US secondary sanctions through some complicated selling chain.
Earlier that day, an old lady had chatted me up while I was waiting in Havana bus station. I think she just wanted to talk to a foreigner. Nothing political I should add, but mostly about religion. When I had to go she had scribbled her postal address on a slip of paper asking me to write. But I didn't expect to use it. What could I write that would not remind Cubans that they were not free to visit the outside world?
