Cuba - Day 4 - Pandejas and the Wacky Tabaccy

Woke up today with no real plan.  Fair warning - not many pictures today.  Our goal was to grab breakfast at the Casa and then head out early to Revolution Museum (round 2) to avoid the lines and then maybe hit up the rum factory and the cigar factory.  I turned on the tv while Damon was in the shower – and got a whopping 2 channels.  Cuban news & Animal Planet.  We understand there are 8 possible channels people can watch – 4 news, 1 Animal Planet, and 3 others. 

We headed out with all good intentions – we learned that the cigar factory only does tours from 9-1 and since it was out of the way from the other things we wanted to do, we decided to go there first.  We ended up back at the hospital street food driveway café for breakfast - $2 for both of us to eat a full breakfast with coffee and juice - and I'm pretty sure we were over charged by $.40 but we let it go. 

We went to the Poop Palace roundabout to hail a taxi.  The first taxi that stopped just couldn’t understand where we were trying to go and eventually gave up and left us.  A second car pulled over a minute later – an older man in a "classic" car.  He faked like he knew where we were going and for 5 CUC (a new low price), we just got in.  I'm pretty sure he wasn't even a taxi driver - but that's how we roll.  He eventually got us to the Partagas cigar factory using a combination of maps on Damon’s phone along with what we refer to as Cuban GPS, which involves rolling down the window and asking everyone we pass if they know how to get where we are going.  It look about 3-4 sets of directions, but eventually we found it.  The factory was in the neighborhood of Central Havana, which as we were learning is a more run down area – not very touristy, and not currently undergoing much re-hab.  The neighborhood was a little bit scary, but given that scary looking neighborhoods can be anywhere in Havana, we didn’t think twice – I think I’ve mentioned before that no matter how the neighborhood looks, we’ve never felt unsafe anywhere in Cuba – even while carrying all of our money with us.  We tried to buy tickets for the cigar tour but quickly realized that unbeknownst to us, 1) the tour times changed from 9-1 to 11-2 this day only.  Apparently they had a staff meeting and since there is no internet and no way to check time changes, well, we just had to go with it.  And 2) you have to buy tickets from a hotel concierge at any of several hotels, all of which are at least 2 miles away, and, ironically, in the exact location we planned to spend the rest of our day.  So off we went walking back to the hotels in Havana Vieja to go buy our tickets.

We ended up walking the same route from day one – the section that I called the depressing section - and felt like Cuba experts - we can frogger across the main streets like champs now and I have yet to trip over random piles of debris or fall into one of the many huge holes on the sidewalk.  There was one hole in the sidewalk that we passed several times over the course of our trip – it was a hole about 1 foot square – not sure how deep it was, but someone had just dragged this massive chunk of concrete about 4-5” thick and plopped it on top of the hole.  So I guess tripping over a giant chunk of concrete is better than falling in the hole.  I’m proud to say I did neither.

It took three hotels to find one where we could get cigar factory tickets and given that this was a “fancy” hotel, we decided to use the toilet since you never know where the next one might be. (Yes, I know, more commentary on the toilets).  The bathroom in the hotel was like hitting the jackpot - stall door with a lock, toilet seat, and, wait for it, double ply toilet paper!  You know I jammed like half the roll in my pocket for use later in the day!!!

Since we were closer to the Revolution Museum than the cigar factory, we went there first.  On the way, we were stopped and interviewed by at crew from ABC Miami doing local piece on Cuba - today they were interviewing people about the high hotel prices and other accommodations and they wanted to talk to Americans.  They said we would air in Miami that night.  We will link it if it actually aired (NOTE:  the piece did air, we were on tv for about 10 seconds – we each got a full sentence in.  I initially refused to link it because it was just an awful profile shot of me and I am that vain, but Damon is making me link it, so here you go – we are the last few seconds:   http://www.local10.com/news/cuba/tourists-seeking-affordable-hotel-rooms-in-cuba-face-tough-challenge- ). 

During the interview, we talked with the reporter guys for about 15-20 minutes and uncovered that they are living temporarily in Vedado just a few blocks from our Casa.  Small world story - as we were comparing notes and describing the Casa where we were staying (keep in mind there are literally thousands of Casas available to rent in Havana) one guy asks us if our building was green and then pulls up a picture of our Casa on his phone and said their friends had just stayed there the week before us.   What are the odds that we all stayed at the same place???  Crazy.

Moving on… we finally made our way to the Museo de Revolcion which was formerly the presidential palace pre-revolution.  As is the norm, the palace/museum was in significant disrepair.  Not sure if this was on purpose, but both the inside and the outside of the building was riddled with bullet holes from the day of the overthrow in 1959. 

This museum is not really up to American standards.  Many of the rooms were empty, some of the building was being re-habbed, and there were a few exhibits.  There was an elevator shaft with no doors under construction – just sort of open in the middle of the room. 

There was a fair amount of anti-American propaganda which was interesting to read since we usually only hear our side of the story. The "Wall of Cretins" made fun of some of our past presidents.

What few exhibits they had were almost all in Spanish - except the anti-American stuff, which usually had sub-titles.  We looked through the exhibits and visited some of the Warcraft in an outside exhibition (the Granma yacht that took Fidel and 81 other fighters to Cuba for the Revolution), some American plane debris from aircraft that Americans denied were ever in Cuba, and some tanks with bullet holes. 

Despite the crumbling and the bullet holes, I have to say that this must have been one heck of an amazing palace in its heyday.

After the museum, we went to find lunch and found a little Paladar with outdoor seating at a good people watching corner.   We had an older waiter - one who had no interest in trying to speak English, so in a rather humorous exchange, Damon once again attempted to speak Spanish.  Now most of it was pretty good – we each ordered food and ultimately got what we wanted; but at one point, Damon wanted to add a glass of juice, which he asked for in Spanish.  The waiter looked at him strangely and brought him an ashtray.  Juice is “jugo”, Damon said “juego”, the word for fire is “fuego”; that’s as close as we can come to figuring out the ashtray.  Damon’s Spanish is a source of constant amusement to me.  I think most of the time he thinks he is saying something in perfect Spanish like, "how much to take us to the museum" but what the person on the other end hears is something closer to "how foot chair yes dirt". Or something like that.  But kudos that he keeps trying!

Now, back to the cigar factory.  We had been walking for hours already, so we experimented with yet another mode of transportation - the Pedi cab.  This particular fare negotiation truly marks my shining moment in fare negotiations.  I got the guy down from 10 CUC to 4 CUC pretty quickly.  He muttered a word (“pandejo”) under his breath and I knew it was a bad word.  I later looked up to mean "asshole", so I think we got a good deal.  Now, before you go and agree that I’m a cheap asshole and that we can afford more and what is a few dollars, and I was in fact driving too hard of a bargain, keep in mind that we learned a few things from Debra (our Casa host the night before) that drove the negotiation. 

Debra told us specifically that when tourists pay more for cab rides, it jacks up the prices for the locals and makes it harder for them to buy food, get taxis, etc.  Our host actually said that our freedom with money does make it harder for Cubans even though here is more money flowing to individuals.  10 CUC may not be much to a tourist, but when taxi drivers get used to 10 CUC for a ride, 10 CUC becomes the new rate, thus eliminating locals from being able to use taxis.  I was, in fact, doing the community a service.

Also, let us not forget that we have limited money.  Remember, there is no easy way to get money here and there is no way to use a credit card.  If/when we run out of cash, well, not something we want to experience.  It took us a few days to figure out how to not get ripped off, so we are in better budget mode now.  We are trying to find the balance…

So – Pedi cab back to the cigar factory.  The Pedi cabs are pretty much all homemade – built from any spare metal like bits of rebar or pipes, held together with wood planks.  They generally have umbrellas or awnings to keep the sun out, and the passenger seats can be airplane seats, old car seats, and plastic seats - pretty much anything you can plant your butt on.  And the bikes old and all only have one gear.  Our guy’s chain kept skipping on the uphills.  I was so nervous that we were going to break his bike for 4 CUC.  I just didn't want it to break while we were in it.  It didn’t.

The Partagas cigar factory is an OSHA nightmare - but a pretty cool building and really interesting tour.  We ended up on a private tour with a woman who was puffing on a Cohiba the entire time.  Every cigar is rolled by hand and the whole process was really interesting.  The only part we were not allowed to see is where they mixed the leaves to make the specific recipes for each cigar brand.  I believe they made 7 different cigar brands at this factory, including Cohibas.  She encouraged us to go onto the factory floor where we could stand and watch everyone roll – I think she said 150-200 per person per day completed.  Not one machine in the entire place - everything by hand.  Of course I couldn’t help but think that every Cuban cigar ever smoked has been touched by a good 5-10 people (without gloves).  Slight ick factor, but I don’t smoke cigars so not really a big deal.

Our guide told us to take pictures of anything we wanted.  So we did.  Each worker is allowed to take 5 cigars per day as a bonus - they can do whatever they want with them.  Given that some cigars go for more than 20 CUC each, they can make some sweet extra cash on the side, or develop a very expensive cigar habit.  Not surprisingly, our tour guide took us into a little back room at the end of our tour and sold us some of her and probably her co-workers secret stash of cigars.  We checked later and we got pretty good cigars (“Cuaba”) for a decent price.  And for anyone asking, Cohibas are much harder to find since everyone wants them, and really expensive, so we did not bring any of those back.

After cigars, we walked home and crashed hard for a few hours.  Eventually went out for dinner at a Paladar around the corner that served delicious Iranian food, delicious dessert, and they had a belly dancer.  When in Cuba…

Final thoughts – we didn’t have as much “people to people” interaction today, but it was still a good day.  We’ve been running on full steam for four days and needed a little break.

Tomorrow we head to Trinidad bright and early.  And here is a picture of a dog in the street.  Just because.

Cuba - Day 3 - Ridin' Dirty

There is so much I want to write about that it is becoming hard to keep up – I’ve taken to jotting notes all day so I can remember what to write.  Every day we get a little bit better at "doing Cuba". We get places faster, negotiate better, and figure out where to go and what to see.  Each day we walk with more confidence and speak more with locals, and each day just keeps getting better.

Today, we woke up after about 9 glorious hours of sleep – it seems that people in Cuba do not generally start moving before 9.  We have to ask nicely if we want breakfast before that.  I love my dog but damn in it is nice to sleep past 6:30!  I probably don’t need to comment on sleep and shower today since I already posted pictures of our room, but both were awesome.  We had an amazing breakfast brought to our room - eggs, toast, tons of fruit and coffee – that is pretty much the standard breakfast around here. 

We had an added bonus this morning – butter! Which has not been standard fare with bread.  At 9:30 we went outside to wait for our guide to show and he was already there.  Have I mentioned that everyone here is prompt?

Our guide, Yasiel, picked us up in a well maintained '51. Chevy Bel Air convertible - turquoise and white - it was a sweet ride.  

Yasiel spoke almost no English, which initially was a deal breaker for us, but turned out to make for a most entertaining day.  If you can believe it, Damon & my combined high school Spanish, with a little help from Google translator, got us through the day with a lot of head scratching and laughing not to mention some horrific pronunciations.

Today’s blog can be broken into two sections – the stuff we saw, and the stuff we learned.  I’ll start with the stuff we saw.  Yasiel, as it turned out, was actually a tour operator and had a standard set of places he took tourists, which was perfect.  I’m probably forgetting a few things, but the main places we hit were:

1) Revolution Square – we had already seen the monument, but this was our first stop and we were able to take some better pictures from across the street.  Plus I got to fake drive the car.

2) Havana Park.  Now this park has the potential to be beautiful with gorgeous trees that are draped with some vine that I haven’t seen in the US.  Plus there is a river that runs through it.  The problem is that, sadly, there is garbage everywhere.  You cannot take two steps, at least near the entrance of the park, without stepping on trash.  But the other problem is a little bit worse.  As it turns out, the park is regularly used for Santeria worship.  Now I’m not going to try to understand the Santeria religion, or its practices, but apparently it does involve some level of sacrifice.  So, there are piles of bloody chicken feathers everywhere as chickens are sacrificed in the woods and on the river on a regular basis.  Yes, pretty much everywhere you see chicken feathers and little skulls.  It is a strange thing.

 3) We drove through all of the neighborhoods surrounding Havana – Mirimar, Vedado, I think one called Playa.  In Mirimar, we stopped at the Hemingway Marina where there are yachts galore.  Yasiel laughed when we asked if they belong to the Cubans.  He told us “caro” (expensive) - everything is too expensive for Cubans.  Los barcos all come from somewhere else.

4) Fusterland.  How to describe Fusterland… Imagine if Dr. Seuss built a house and then tiled every square inch of it in colorful designs, while he was tripping on acid.  Then he moved around the neighborhood and did the same thing.  I asked Damon if the artist was a genius or a lunatic, and he said, looking around, that's it was probably a fine line.  Apparently the artist lives somewhere on the property.  Oh, and he has two public toilets with a lady sitting out front with a key and won’t let you into the toilet until you give her money.  When in Cuba, ALWAYS have small change or you end up paying 1 CUC every time you have to go.  You can imagine that I monitored my water and was pretty well dehydrated our entire trip.

5)      Two Forts.  We went to one of the forts guarding the harbor.  Actually, we later learned that what appears to be one giant fort is actually two forts.  One is called Castillo de Los Tres Reyes Del Morro and the other is Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana.  The Castillo was extremely run down – after all, these forts are probably at least 500 years old… but they are also open to the public for no charge.  People can just walk wherever they want at their own risk.  Now don’t take this risk thing lightly.  If you think the streets and sidewalks in Havana are bad, try a 500 year old fort guarding the ocean.  There are no guardrails or walkways – it is very easy to fall off a wall into the ocean or off a wall to a different level of the castle, or fall into a hole (they were everywhere) or into an unguarded stairway, or fall down a crumbling stairway…  But hey, medical care is free here!  And again, sadly, garbage everywhere.  At the Fortaleza, we saw at least half a dozen feral dogs running around in the garbage that surrounded the fort wall.

6)      We drove the full length of the Malecon (think lake shore drive) where the waves - seaweed and all - were crashing over the sea well into the road.  Super fun in a convertible.  Yasiel pointed out all of the famous hotels, like the Nacionale – apparently super expensive and not that great;

we saw all of the embassies including the US

and Russia. 

I point out Russia because it was the strangest building I’ve ever seen.  We never did get to walk the Malecon due to the waves, but we did stand and watch the waves for a while.

7)      We went to a famous artist block (Hamel’s Alley) where an artist covered every inch of a two block area with art.  Some guy grabbed us and gave us a tour and explained the meaning behind all of the art – I think a lot of it had to do with Santeria again – a lot of red

 and weirdly, a lot of bathtubs built into the art. 

We met up with a few Americans and shared mojitos.

I believe the artist is fairly famous, but again, I just saw a lot of bathtubs, but no chickens!

While the sites were all interesting in their own right, this trip was about education – at least that is what our Visa said… so we wanted to learn about people.  Yasiel was very chatty to the extent we could all understand each other.  We spent quite a bit of time driving on major roads at about 10 mph while Yasiel was completely turned around trying to talk to us. 

So here is what we learned.  At least this is what I think we learned.  My best guess is that Yasiel was in his mid to late 20’s.  He told us that his mom and dad are a nurse and a policeman.  Both of those are government jobs and thus they make about 15 CUC & 20 CUC per MONTH respectively.  Cubans do get a food stipend (apparently only enough for about half a month of food), a place to leave, healthcare and education.  As you can imagine, that is just not much to do anything.  As a driver in the tourism industry, Yasiel makes 25 CUC per DAY.  I’m guessing (and hoping) that does not include tips, which I hope he can keep. 

At one point when we were driving, we were pulled over by the police.  For no apparent reason.  Yasiel got out and was talking to the policeman for a while.  I was watching in the mirror and it appeared to not be a huge deal.  When he eventually came back, we could basically make out from Yasiel that the police pull over tour drivers regularly for bribes since they make so much more money.  The bribes could be big or small depending on whether the tour or taxi driver has a legitimate license; and the police call the companies to confirm they are operating with a valid license.  It seems to just be a fact of life that they deal with.  Kind of pissed me off.  I never did get a warm fuzzy from the police and I did not get them impression that they are around to help tourists in distress. 

We talked a lot about restaurants - most Cubans cannot afford to eat in the same restaurants as tourists because they just don't make enough money.  Yasiel works 7 days a week and 365 days a year - they do not appear to have any national holidays.  Yasiel’s goal is to make enough money to get to Miami and then to Mississippi where he has an aunt.  We invited him to lunch but he said he had to work to keep making money.  We kept asking where a typical Cuban would eat and he said not in the city!

Communicating with Yasiel all day was definitely challenging, but we used the Google app a lot – we did have some interesting moments when things were clearly lost in translation.  We asked Yasiel if he minded that we asked him so many questions and after about 10 tries in the translator (we actually had to pull over for this one), he said that he preferred people like us so he didn’t feel like he was robbing us.  I’m guessing a better translation would be that we were getting our money’s worth.

If there is one thing that we picked up, which we heard much more later in the trip, it is that the average Cuban just wants to get out and they do whatever they can to make enough money to give them the opportunity, if it ever presents itself, to get out.  There was a common hand signal that we saw which was, take your right hand/arm and make a forward arc with it while letting out a slight whistle – that seemed to be the lingo for a flight to get the heck out of Dodge.

We were dropped off around 1 or 2, and when we got back to our Casa, we wanted to find some cheap food – we had been blowing through money and given the limitations on getting more money, I was starting to get a little bit worried.  Our casa was in a predominantly Cuban area (albeit a nicer area than the first night) and people were selling stuff out of their driveways on almost every block.  We wandered up and down a few blocks until we were in front of a hospital where several houses had food set up in their driveways across the street.  We were the only non-Cubans, but being in the swing of things as we were, we ordered, in Spanish, and had correct CUC ready to go (prices were all in CUP). 

This is no joke - we literally got a pizza (a thick pita sized piece of delicious bread with a thin layer of tomato sauce and a little cheese), a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of guava juice for 1 CUC.  Yes, all of that for about one dollar. Then we went next door and got two ice cream cones for a total of forty cents.  This is where the local Cubans eat and given our depleting finances, we thought we had hit the jackpot of cheap food!    Across the street from our Casa we found a house selling churros out of their driveway (Damon is obsessed with churros).  We figured it must be good because there was a line of school kids waiting.  $.25 for a large bag of churros!  We are learning that wherever you see a line, there is probably some good food there. 

We wandered around our neighborhood for a few more hours logging a few more miles.  We walked to the famous Lennon Park - apparently Cubans really like the Beatles. 

Again, we must have seen a dozen dogs just roaming around in the park, not to mention the many wandering the neighborhood.  We walked to the Malecon and just watched the waves break onto the street for a few minutes, and then we walked into a building that Yasiel had told us was one if their nicer shopping malls. 

It was sort of an indoor/outdoor thing several stories high with a circular ramp that went to the top.  We made it to the second floor but the stores were mostly empty and there was garbage piled all over so we left.  After a few hours of walking, we headed toward home to grab dinner.

On the way home, we made a reservation at a Paladar to have dinner and then came back to our Casa exhausted.  I don’t think I’ve described a Paladar yet.  Until recently, in addition to controlling all hotels in Cuba, the government also controlled all restaurants.  Several years ago, the government started to grant licenses to Cubans to operate private restaurants out of their homes.  This grew and you can’t always tell what is a Paladar and what is a government owned restaurant as some of these Paladars are really nice and fairly large.  We tried to ask and only dine in Paladars, again, to get the money to the people.

We realized that the hostess spoke perfect English and we talked to her for more education (hello US government).  Her story – she earned a language degree in college and spoke fluent Spanish, English, Italian and French.  When Paladars became a thing, she worked with the owner of the house (a huge Colonial) to build an outdoor restaurant on the ground floor.  She said it had been a fantastic Italian restaurant.  She owned the restaurant outright, but after a few years, the government taxes were too stiff and she was forced to sell, but she still worked in the new restaurant.  She also mentioned that she had a room for rent in her house if we knew anyone looking.  Everyone is always out to earn money in any way they can – she even had a business card with the address to hand out.  And by the way, we had beef, per our non-English speaking waiter’s recommendation (which turned out to be lamb shank), sides, dessert and a bottle of wine all for 40 CUC.  Including tip.

Some things that I'm still obsessed with three days in.  The dogs and cats that are everywhere.  I'd say we easily saw 100 feral dogs while we toured today.  They are absolutely everywhere.  I may have mentioned that many are female and have clearly had babies recently. It is sad to see but also just seems to be how things are.  The garbage is another thing that I’m having a hard time getting used to.  We don't know if it is because there is nowhere to put it or if people don't care - but that, too, is so sad because there is no open space without garbage.  

The disrepair.  This is a hard one to get across.  In the neighborhood we are in now, Vedado, the houses are all what I would consider mansions.  They are these enormous beautifully detailed and ornate houses.  In their prime, it had to be spectacular.  Some houses are restored beautifully, some are in the process of being restored, some are just partially restored - where there is literally a line halfway across the house where the paint just stops, and are some just left to wither away.  While yes, it is sad to see these amazing houses in such disrepair, there is something really cool about it.  Maybe it is hope that they have so much potential one day???  You can see the changes happening and hopefully as more and more foreign money is let in, people will invest in and repair these houses.  Damon has not stopped talking about how we are going to buy one and move to Cuba to run a Casa.  a few examples of the houses in our neighborhood:

And my biggest obsession, of course, would be the toilet facilities. Public facilities are few and far between unless you are at a restaurant, even then, expect to pay for a lady to glower at you when you walk in if you don't pay her immediately and to maybe give you two squares of single ply toilet paper.  And most places have no toilet seats, but I’m pretty used to that now.  

But beyond anything else, what people hear about but cannot fully grasp, is the cars.  I was expecting to see a few old cars.  But they are just everywhere.  It is absolutely amazing to see.  Bright colors, hard tops, convertibles, some in excellent shape, some in horrible shape - but they are everywhere!  Three days in and I'm still in awe of everything and just love to look around.  A few more cars for your viewing pleasure:

We got home and were heading up to our room and we finally bumped into the host of our Casa (Debra).  Unbeknownst to us, until now we had only met the housekeeper who spoke no English.  Our host and her brother-in-law spent about an hour talking with us in perfect English on the front porch.  We learned about how after the revolution, these huge houses were taken from the rich and distributed to everyone - apparently, wherever you were living at the time, you became owner of that house.  Eventually the government allowed people to start selling houses, so some people traded houses and bought houses and some had money to restore.  

Our casa is owned/run by an extended family and they all live in the main part of the house.  They have about 5 or 6 rooms that they rent out – the rooms are accessed from a completely different stairway, and each individual room has its own door & lock – much like a hotel.  This family spent several years restoring the house and it is beautiful – at least the parts we were able to see.  Debra’s parents are or were diplomats so she is well traveled and lived in NY for a few years.  Relative to many Cubans, she had a good life, but she confirmed that basically Cubans do whatever it takes to earn money - mostly from tourists - but they scrimp and save and keep working their way up - at least the ones who want to.  The family also has two awesome dogs - a golden retriever name Leo who only wanted love and to stick his nose everywhere, and a little dog named Stuart - actually named for Stuart Little.  We are truly loving this experience and can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

More on wifi later, but our Casa let us "steal" their wifi while someone else was on it, so I did get a handful of texts out and then had withdrawal symptoms when it was taken away.  Scary how addicted we are to phones and wifi.  I vowed not to use it for the rest of the trip - truly liberating.  Zoom in on the picture on the wall if it is hard to read...

Cuba - Day 2 - The Tide has Turned

After a good night of sleep, I was the first into the shower.  I was mentally prepared that it would probably be a cold trickle.  Wasn't I surprised to have a fairly well pressurized hot shower!!!  Of course in the middle of it, the power went out and I stood there in the pitch black yelling for Damon to get a flashlight, which thank goodness we brought.   Power was back within 5-10 minutes and all was good.  We were provided with a grand total of two towels, each only slightly larger than a hand towel – but they got the job done.

We had asked to include breakfast, so at the designated time, our host and his mother came over to cook us breakfast for 10 CUC.  The mother had two bags of stuff from which she was able to whip up the most amazing breakfast.  In one tiny little frying pan, she made fried eggs, fried plantains, fried tomatoes, and toast. 

Yes, she made toast in a frying pan.  Plus amazing Cuban coffee, fresh squeezed papaya juice, sliced cheese and fresh pineapple.

Again, they took huge pride in being able to put on such a nice spread – we couldn’t come close to finishing it all.  Our host chatted with us in moderately decent English - he said they all had heard of Chicago as the Windy City!

I said to Damon this morning that having been here for only 24 hours, I already feel guilty about the level of waste we as typical Americans tend to generate.  Here, there isn't much so you don't use much.  Again, the toilet paper.  I needed to blow my nose last night but didn't want to waste the toilet paper.  I also realized just how much I rely on paper towels and napkins - they just don't have access here.  So many times I went to reach for a napkin or toilet paper or a paper towel and realized that I couldn’t.  We definitely made good use of our little bath towels.  Maybe the only exception to waste is bottled water, which there is in abundance.  We cannot drink the water so we are always on the lookout for bottled water.  Luckily I brought a camelback and filled in in the airport so we have a decent supply of cheap teeth brushing water which we ration in little cups.

After breakfast, we needed a taxi to get to our next Casa.  Our host said he would call his friend who had a taxi - everyone in Havana has a friend who does something to make money!  So the friend shows up in a "car" - and I use the word car lightly because it was more of a prehistoric shell of what may have once been a car.  The car doors had no internal panels - basically just the outside metal - you could see the entire window go up and down.  Somehow the window roller survived. 

The floor of the car had some holes - small - but you could see the ground.   Our host asked if we would mind if he came, too - of course not!  It seems as though the locals take advantage of taxi rides when they can get them as there always seems to be extra people in the cars with us.  And off we went in the Flintstone mobile.  We dropped off our host a few minutes later and kept going.

When we got to our second Casa in the neighborhood of Vedado, we found a beautifully restored Colonial house that was absolutely HUGE; of course, we were greeted by a locked gate. We forgot to take a picture, so I found this stock photo.

We were a few hours early and no one was expecting us.  We basically stood there looking like idiots until the housekeeper finally noticed and let us in.  Our room “the Red Room” was fantastic!  It had a tiny little living room and kitchen with a mini fridge, bar and bar stools, bottled water (yay)

and then a staircase up to a bedroom with a giant bed and full bathroom – unfortunately for Damon, the bathroom ceiling height was only about 6’2.  Damon is 6’4”. 

Everything was new, clean and comfortable and we had normal sized bath towels, a FULL roll of toilet paper (but no obvious spares), shampoo, soap and a hand towel.  What???  It's the freaking Four Seasons!  All of this for $40 per night.

After settling in, we left to check out the neighborhood - it was raining.  Oh well.  We just got wet.  We found a giant marble monument in the middle of a huge roundabout that looked interesting so we climbed up a bunch of steps it to check it out and get some shelter. 

I have no idea what it was as nothing is really marked with informational plaques.  Damon got up the stairs first and warned me not to come up, but it was raining and I wanted a shelter.  Sadly, upon further exploration this massive marble monument seemed to be some sort of  makeshift toilet and had human poop all over, I have dubbed it the Poop Palace.  It does make a great reference point since it is easy to find our Casa once we find the Palace.  Yes, a little gross, but we are just taking it all in in stride.  We left the Poop Palace to find a taxi to take us to "Havana Vieja" or, Old Havana – this is the main tourist area that we had discovered last night (albeit we had just hit the edge of it).  We hailed a taxi, which, not surprisingly had a random person along for the ride. This time we only paid 10 CUC for the ride.  We are getting better as the Coco cab set us back 12 CUC the night before – but since it was raining, I opted not to further hone my negotiation skills.  We headed for the Museo de Revolucion (Revolution Museum), and waited in line for a few minutes but eventually gave up since nothing was moving (NOTE:  don’t go to museums on Tuesdays when the cruise ships arrive).  We started wandering and found a place for lunch - it had motorcycles lined up in front and Damon got all excited, so we had to go in.

We ate a great (huge) lunch - lobster for 14 CUC and an awesome grilled chicken sandwich for 3 CUC.  And an enormous strawberry mojito that made me stagger a bit on the way out.

And here is where things started to turn around in a big way.  Old Havana is absolutely amazing.  Tiny tiny streets - maybe the width of one car.  Most streets are cobblestone.  If you've ever been to the French quarter in New Orleans, just squish it even closer together and that is old Havana. In searching our pictures, I cannot find any good pictures of the streets - at least ones where I'm not walking through the middle with a goofy look on my face, so you'll have to take my word for how awesome it was.

Every now and then the streets will open to a giant square or park with monuments or churches or hotels or cafes. 

Our favorite plaza had a giant bronze statue of a naked lady in high heels riding a chicken while holding a giant fork.  The only explanation we got was that it was a famous Cuban artist who always does something with chickens.

We just walked the streets for several hours with no plan - if something looked interesting, we just went there, definitely my favorite place so far. 

The buildings lining the streets are wall to wall with no space between and so many of them are painted in bright and pastel colors.  It is hard to tell if they are occupied or not but many seem to be residences.  Many of the doorways are open and people stand at the base of the stairway and sell souvenirs that are hung up and down the staircase.  Some have pizza or other food, or water, or ice cream or computer repair or haircuts. 

Everyone is trying to sell something from the bottom of their staircases.  You look in some buildings and there is just debris and the next one has someone watching tv.  Very hard to visualize without seeing it.  While many of the buildings in Old Havana are being renovated or have been renovated, there is still a huge number of buildings falling down in disrepair and it changes from one block to the next.  The “main” drag (Obispo Street) is the most rehabbed and most buildings are rehabbed.  The farther you get from where the tourists frequent, and the more residential a street might be, the more run down it is likely to be.  Amazingly, whether it was day or night, or whether the streets were crowded or empty, there was never a moment that we felt unsafe – despite how run down an area looked.

We did walk in and out of a cafes and restaurants, usually because I had to go to the bathroom; plus, we drank coffee like 5x a day since they are mainly just little shots. 

Damon was especially taken with a place called O’Reilly’s Café on O’Reilly Street. 

I would love to have seen the owner – a red-headed Cuban?  It was a cute coffee shop/restaurant with a nice bathroom upstairs (lady out front, no toilet paper).  Oh, and another funny thing about the restaurants – while mojitos and beer are common, it is also possible to get pop – occasionally you see Coke or Pepsi, but mainly they have two types of pop – “TuKola” (Coke) and a green can (I never caught the name) that is “7-up”.  And, get this – they have Red Bull.  Red Bull was stocked in every refrigerated case I saw.  How strange is that??  We found this little bread shop/bakery and went to check it out – as was typical, the cases were about 80% empty, but we saw frosted brownies.  For $.40 each.  They were delicious.

There are four forts lining the entry into Havana’s harbor that were built to protect the city, which was a major port for pretty much everything coming and going anywhere.  Damon and I consider ourselves experts as we have been watching Black Sails about pirates in Nassau & Cuba around this time.  We did tour one of the forts which was back a bit from the mouth of the ocean – they had some pirate history and some fake treasure; but since everything is typically written in Spanish, we couldn’t really figure much out.

We wanted to hire a convertible “classic car” for the next day but didn’t know how to go about it.  As we were walking, I happened to catch the eye of a guy driving a turquoise and white convertible ’51 Chevy.  He saw me looking and stopped in the middle of the street and waited for us to walk over – and that was how we met Yasiel.  Our only requirements had been – convertible, old car, and speaks English.  I swapped out English for “he was really cute”.  In broken Spanglish, we gave him our address and the time to pick us up the next day and I was pretty sure we negotiated a price for 4 hours of taking us to all of the popular sites.  Only time would tell.

Thoroughly pleased with ourselves for making plans for the following day, we made our way to a restaurant for dinner and in another interesting bathroom experience, the hand soap there was from Bath & Body Works “Dark Kiss” – I wondered whether they have black market foaming hand soap, or if tourists just leave things and they use what they can find.  Given that this restaurant had a famous chef, I’m guessing it was black market.  One other quirky thing we noticed in restaurants – they may not provide napkins, but we regularly got a little shaker of toothpicks.  Sort of like a round tic-tac container where you turn it over and shake until one toothpick falls out of a little hole.  What they have in abundance can be strange.  We left the restaurant in search of more dessert.  People warned us that the food was mediocre at best.  We have been really enjoyed every restaurant and bakery we have found so far.  Old Havana at night is a lot of live music both in restaurants and on the street.  We found our dulces and eventually headed home exhausted.  Note – taxi negotiation skills improving… only paid $8 to get home vs $12 from the same taxi stand the night before!!!

A few post scripts from the day…

We weren’t sure how easy it would be to find people who speak English.  I would say most people spoke as much English as we spoke Spanish – which was not much.  Luckily, we had downloaded a translator before leaving which saved us regularly, to the extent we could piece together a sentence that did not lose anything in the translation, we regularly tried to engage people in conversations.  Usually they looked at us like – what the #)$@ are these two morons trying to say.  But it was fun.  Most of the time we all just nodded our heads, smiled, laughed and said “yes”.  Plus, we knew the basics – taxi, chicken, bathroom, mojito and numbers to get us home.  That was enough.

I would be remiss in not spending some time talking about cars and animals.  Everyone has heard about the old cars in Cuba.  You think you can visualize what people are talking about but I assure you, nothing is like being there.  I had heard things like “time warp”; “It is like time stopped in the 50’s”.  That just doesn’t cut it.  The old cars – they are everywhere.  It is not just a few of them – there are thousands.  My best guess is that cars from the 50’s make up roughly half or more than half of the cars on the road.  Some are kept in good shape and some are barely hanging on.  One might assume that they are held together with band aids and duct tape, but I can assure you that the Cubans have access to neither of those things.  The cars are fantastic regardless of their level of repair.  They come in every color imaginable, no dents, always clean on the inside (we’ve noticed that Cubans take tremendous pride in everything and see people washing cars all the time).  Every make and model imaginable is on the road and the drivers always proudly say the make and year of the car.  Many of the cars have parts from other make/models – they use whatever they can get.  A Ford with a Fiat or Mercedes steering wheel, a Hyundai engine (all engines are swapped out for diesel), a Chevy gear shift.  Seeing them all on the road is pretty cool.  In addition to the “classic cars”, there is a whole other set of cars from the 70’s – these are pretty ugly as was most stuff from the 70’s.  Very boxy – mostly Fiat Lado (I think that is right).  They make up many of the government taxi’s and people don’t seem to care as much about these but they do charge less to drive you around than a classic car.  The smallest percentage of cars would be the modern cars – yes, they have modern cars – we think mostly from china.  But they are there – maybe 25% of the cars on the road.  Mainly taxis and mainly government own.  And mainly boring.  You want to see the cars - here is just a sampling from this one day... and yes, there is an actual Edsel towards the bottom.

Now for the animals – one thing I was completely unprepared for was the feral animals.  Dogs and cats roam the streets freely and you cannot walk down a street anywhere without seeing the dogs; cats hide more, but they are there.  The dogs are not aggressive, they don’t beg, they just wander around everywhere.  As a crazy dog lover, it was really hard for me to see – the dogs were dirty and probably had bugs so I couldn’t bring myself to touch any of them – but it did break my heart to see them.  And any female we saw very obviously had puppies somewhere so they were always out looking for food.  I’m not talking about seeing 3 or 4 dogs a day – I think we would easily saw over 100 feral dogs on any given day.

Teaser:  Day 3 is where we really start engaging with the locals and learning more about the people.  And what incredible stories they have.