All Along the Malecon
My class today has been moved to the morning so I can join an excursion planned to Playa Del Esta – the beaches along the coast that start just outside Havana and run for over 30 kilometres. The beach is pretty, with very white sand and light aqua water, although there is a little bit of rubbish around and a lot of people for a weekday. Still, the water is a pleasant temperature, even though you heat up quickly back on the sand. There is also a shallow sandbank, so you get battered by surf until you can get past that section into the deeper water.
I make plans with one of the girls, Hapke, to meet for dinner and it turns into a group. This is about the time I realise I’m a double minority – I don’t speak Spanish and I’m not European. Most of the others are studying Spanish and the majority are from German-speaking countries. It’s quite a challenge working out what’s going on with three languages in the mix.
We end up at an open-air salsa club, which is a great plan. I’m happy to practice with other beginners. But, as soon as I walk in, a Cuban guy holds his hand out for me to go and dance with him. I may not have done a spectacular job of it, but I survived. I then stuck with other members of the group to repair my confidence.
The legal clubs close early – this one shut shop at 11pm, so we head to the Malecon. We split into two taxis and somehow the three non-Spanish speakers, Christian (German), Gabriel (English) and I end up in one. Not the best planning. We lose the others, but Christian was with them at the Malecon last night, so we head to the same spot. We buy some drinks at the convenience store (a tetra pack of rum costs about $1.50 and it tastes okay, but I wouldn’t recommend the tetra-pack daiquiri) and go and sit on the wall, watching Cuban life pass by. The others find us there and we sit, sip and chat for a few hours.
Serenaded on the Malecon
I have class in the morning again today and have organised to meet Christian after that to go exploring. As I arrive back at the hotel, the skies darken and there is a torrential storm – rain, thunder, lightning, the lot. It’s hammering down. There is so much force in the rain that it’s horizontal. I meet Christian and we have a coffee in the lobby while we decide what to do. Twenty minutes later the rain stops like it never happened. We catch the bus into central Havana. The bus is extremely crowded and very sweaty, but it adds to the local flavour of the experience.
We stop at Capitolio, but it has just closed. The guard lets us peek in from the doorway though, which is even better, as usually you pay to enter and I’m trying to keep a lid on my finances. The Capitolio houses the third-largest bronze statue in the world, a female representing Cuba. In the centre, there is a diamond replica of the statue embedded in the floor and this is the point that all highway distances are measured from.
We wander the streets, stopping whenever something catches our eye – we walk down Prado, a marble pedestrian avenue lined with trees, and round to the Museo De Revolucion. From the outside, you can see the glass enclosure that holds the yacht Fidel Castro sailed on from Mexico. There are also planes, tanks and missiles, all heavily guarded. You see propaganda about the Revolution all over Cuba – on billboards by the highway, as murals, on posters and on signs on balconies. It is a constant reminder that Cuba is a communist country, struggling to maintain its structure and independence.
Christian hasn’t been in to old Havana, so I show him round some of the sites from the tour before we start searching for a restaurant. We’re looking for something authentic. Eventually, we find a little Vietnamese restaurant hidden down a side alley. None of the food is actually Vietnamese, nor is the décor – only the name. The food is reasonable, although I will admit that my Cuban food experiences have not been overwhelming. I do like the black bean soup. There is a fantastic four-piece Cuban band that plays while we eat.
We decide we don’t have the energy to go back to the hotel, change and go and find the others, who are supposed to be hitting a salsa club again, so instead we wander back to Malecon, which is much further away than we thought, and engage in some people-watching. At one stage, we are serenaded as we look out at the fort at the mouth of the bay. It’s so heartfelt we tip the musician for his efforts.
The Economy of Alcohol
This is the last day of salsa for me and the end of the week, so they have an excursion planned to Casa De La Musica. I have a morning class again, then meet Christian for a swim at the hotel pool. It’s spitting with rain, but I’m determined to use the pool at least once.
The bus collects us at 5pm and takes us into Havana. The club is so popular there is a huge queue and it has two sessions. The early session is cheaper and runs until 9pm, then they clear the place and charge double for the night crowd. They have a live band, plus pre-recorded music in-between. The drink pricing is bizarre. It is 2.50 CUC for a Cuba Libre, served in a plastic cup, or 6CUC for an entire bottle of rum, plus 1 CUC per can of cola, with which you can make 15 or so Cuba Libres.
By 9pm we’re hungry, so we head into Chinatown for food. Again it is not really Chinese, apart from the décor. I have chicken and rice, and try the fried plantain with bacon and cheese, which is a more traditional Cuban dish. Plantain tastes kind of like a dry banana. Unfortunately the meal ends badly when the bill is presented. The restaurant has added 30% tax, despite the line in the menu that clearly states 10%. I also notice one of the Cuban guys doesn’t put any money in, so we’re short and chaos breaks out until we all agree to throw in some extra CUC to cover the shortfall and the restaurant settles for 10% tax.
Cubana Connections
I’m a little nervous about today’s flights as I only have three hours in Cancun to transfer from one flight to another and Cubana Aviacion is not the most reputable airline. I’m right. I arrive at the airport to find the Cubana flight has been delayed by an hour and a half. The check-in assistant assures me I will still have plenty of time to pass through immigration, collect my bags, and check in for my next flight, but I’m not convinced. I’m even less convinced when the plane has still not boarded at the scheduled departure time. After takeoff, there is a patch of turbulence so rough I’m not convinced I’m going to make it at all. I arrive in Cancun with less than an hour until my next flight. Immigration goes smoothly, but I then have to wait for my bag. With 40 minutes to go, I run to the next terminal. There is no-one at the designated check-in counter. A staff member tells me I’ve missed the flight and I need to go to the Jet Blue offices upstairs. There are hundreds of airline offices upstairs, and very few people. Eventually I find the right one. With less than half an hour to go and boarding about to close, they print a boarding pass, run off with my bag and sprint me through the airport. To their credit, and to my surprise, I make the flight.
The flight arrives in New York at the same time as a few others, so the immigration queue is horrendous. It takes two hours to get to the front of the line, but only one minute to pass through. It’s now close to midnight, so I give up on the idea of public transport and fork out big bucks for a cab to Laura’s place.
I know Laura from my time living in Hokkaido, Japan. We always got on well, but didn’t spend as much time together as we would have liked as she was over the other side of the island, about eight hours’ drive away. I haven’t seen her for 14 years or so, so we have a lot of catching up to do. She is very generously staying with her boyfriend so I can have her studio apartment, complete with two affectionate Persian cats. She familiarises me with the apartment and I pass out.
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