Another long and interesting day. We had requested a taxi
pick up for 7:30 am for our 4-5 hour drive from Havana to Trinidad. Sure enough, our driver was already waiting
when we got down at 7:28 – we learned that he had left Trinidad at 3am to come
get us, and then had to make another trip back and forth after dropping us off.
Leaving the luxury of our “Red Room” was
sad since we had no idea what was waiting for us in Trinidad. One thing I kept saying to Damon whenever we
experienced something new and uncomfortable was “just give it some time and we
will figure it out”. Words to live by
when travelling the way we did in Cuba.
The car that showed up, thankfully, was relatively modern. Our Peugeot, circa 1985, was comfortable with
cushy cloth seats, headrests, and had enough leg room for Damon. It even had seat belts - possibly the first
we’ve seen since we’ve been here. Apparently
it is the law for people in the front seat to wear seat belts (assuming the car
has them) but no one seems to mind what goes on in the back.
The drive was uneventful but still lots to write about. The major highway is in pretty good shape and
generally had very few cars on it. It was three or four lanes in each
direction for the first half of the trip. In addition to cars, and here
is where it gets strange, you get bikers (not motorcycles), walkers (not
zombies, just regular people, for those of you who watch TWD) and hitchhikers in
and on the side of the road. There were hitchhikers scattered the entire
length of the highway – probably hundreds of people trying to catch a
ride. Now I slept on and off for the
bulk of the ride so I’m sure I missed a few things… but we did make one pit
stop at a gas station roughly halfway. I
think during the entire drive, I may have seen 2 gas stations – there are no
exits with restaurants and services like we are used to. There is a whole lot of nothing. Our gas station seemed to be a major stop as
it was packed with taxis and people stretching their legs. They had a little counter where we could get
a coffee for about $.40 and then hover over a toilet seat with the traditional
2 squares of toilet paper I paid 1 CUC to obtain from the lady out front. I
travel with my own stash at all times. Yes,
I am STILL obsessed with toilets.
Inside the gas station, there is almost nothing for sale - most
display cases in Cuba tend to be lightly stocked if at all; however, this gas
station had one display case and it was fully stocked with small bags of
olives. I suppose Cubans either love or hate olives, either of which
could explain the stock pile. But
olives? Pretty random.
As has become the norm, and for some reason that was never
explained to us, we pulled into a small town, Rodas, to pick up another guy who
rode the rest of the way to Trinidad with us.
We have no idea who he was or why he was with us, but that is just how
it works. Unfortunately, neither our driver nor the new guy spoke any
English and their Spanish was very difficult to understand, so we gave up and
rode (slept) mostly in silence.
Once we got off the main highway, things got more interesting. We dropped to a two lane highway – one in
each direction with no shoulder. The
modes of transportation on the road ranged from old and new cars to motorcycles
to bikes to, and this one is new, horse drawn carts. And lots of them. Imagine a sort of
mini-cart made of wood that was cobbled together with a seat in front - often
car seats - with big rubber tires – usually car or motorcycle tires - pulled by
a single horse. There were tons of these.
Now keep in mind that the typical drive to Trinidad takes 4-5 hours and
we clocked in at 3:45 with our gas station stop and picking up random guy. Our driver, clearly in a hurry to drop us
off, was weaving in and out around horses and bikers and trucks - there were a
few times I had to close my eyes, but he seemed to know what he was
doing. We would get within inches
of clipping the back of a horse cart, swerve around it, with a trucking coming
at us at full speed, and then swerve back in just missing the horse’s nose
&/or getting slammed head on by the truck.
It was a little unnerving.
On the small road, we were, once again, pulled over by the
police. Not sure if we just had an
unlucky run or if it is just that common.
I’d guess the latter. I was not so subtly trying to watch the
exchange to see if money changed hands while Damon was trying to be very
discrete. I couldn’t see if the cop was paid
off. This stop was a bit more intrusive – the policeman opened the trunk
and searched pretty much everything back there – interestingly, he seemed to
stay away from our luggage and focused on everything else in the trunk. There
were two policemen who just kept pulling cars over one after another. Later we asked one of our tour guides about
these stops and it seems there is no love lost between the police and everyone
else.
Closer to Trinidad, we saw a bunch of cars stopped and people just
standing around. We thought it was an
accident until Damon realized it was some sort of crab run.
Thousands of crabs trying to get across the road and most of them not making it
- there were hundreds and hundreds of squished crab gut piles on the road for
about mile. Apparently this run happens every morning for a few weeks.
Once we got ahead of the main section, you just saw crabs running back and
forth on the road - again, trying not to get hit – it was comical if you can
imagine fairly large crabs with their claws up just running in circles. I
think our driver may have been squishing them on purpose - hard to be sure. We agreed to stop and take pictures on the
way back (NOTE: we drove back in the
afternoon and missed them, so sad but I did find these pictures on-line fairly
accurately depicting what it looked like, minus the cars and people. Squished crabs and all. I’ve never seen anything quite like it).
Finally, we arrived at our new Casa around noon and met our host/guide
for the next few days, Marcus. (NOTE:
Our guy’s name was not Marcus, but he did have some very strong opinions
on Cuba. On the very slim chance this
blog goes beyond entertaining my friends and family, I wouldn’t want his
identity confirmed). We are staying in Marcus’ house that he recently
renovated and we were the second guests to rent the room. Actually it is
two rooms - one room with two double beds and one room with a partially
finished kitchen and full bathroom - and no toilet seat. During our stay, I asked what the deal was with the lack of toilet seats in Cuba and the
answer was not that people didn’t have the money to buy them, but rather there
just aren’t any available to buy. Marcus
built the house from the ground up over the last ten years and improves it whenever
he has the money. It was sparse, but clean. Our room was on the
second floor and to access it, you had to climb up this super skinny little
spiral staircase – the staircase was too narrow for us to bring up our
overnight bags so they were brought up the back stairs. Marcus looked at Damon
(6’4”, 220 and me – 5’10”, not telling), then looked at the stairs and said - I
made this for me and I am very skinny. Every single time we go up he says
"try not to hit your head". It
became a mantra.
We took a few minutes to unpack and then headed out for our first
“educational” activity - taking a taxi to Playa Ancon to go snorkeling. Our taxi was a moderately beat up ’57 Chevy
Catalina with the Mercedes iconic emblem attached to the trunk.
We taxi’d back to the Casa, “showered” and then went off to our salsa
lessons. Our shower had no pump; so while there was hot water, the water
literally fell by sheer force of gravity out of the shower head one droplet at
a time.
Our salsa lessons were in a theater – I believe the only one in
town. It had an auditorium feel and the
screen up front was sort of torn up. Seems like everything "theatrical" from moves to dances, etc. happens in this theater.
We had a private lesson for an hour and learned basic salsa steps. It was fun but salsa experts we are not. Damon was a counting machine “1-2-3 5-6-7… 1-2-3 5-6-7” My problem was getting reprimanded regularly - "LADY no lead. LADY no lead!" Apparently I have challenges following my dance partner. After the lesson, we were left to explore and went in search of ice cream and coffee which are never hard to find and always delicious.
While we haven't done our full exploration of Trinidad yet, it
does require some description. The streets are mainly cobblestone - not
brick evenly laid out, but ocean rocks that are just placed in the road. Some roads seemed to have a filler to smooth
it out a little bit. High heels would be
an impossibility – the roads are very pretty, but not easy to walk on.
The streets are narrow with low 1-2 story houses lining each side of the street
with no space between. Many of the houses are painted in bright colors or
pastels so it is quite charming to look at. Trinidad is much cleaner than
Havana and while there is some disrepair, it is definitely in better
shape. Trinidad is sustained primarily
by tourist money, and apparently they get 10,000 tourists a day to their 50,000
permanent residents, so it is thriving, relatively speaking.
In these super narrow streets, there is a mix of cars, bikes,
motorcycles, fairly large tour buses (how they maneuver is beyond me), horse
drawn carts, pedi cabs, plus kids regularly playing soccer barefoot (in the
dirt and horse poop), and domino tables just plopped in the middle of the street.
Cars just have to go around the tables everything else. Dominos are big
here. And if you are wondering if the
feral dogs and cats inhabit the streets of Trinidad? The answer is yes. There are definitely dogs roaming the
streets.
These were just some cool extra pictures that don't naturally fit into my story - but good example of the horse carts we saw everywhere.
We headed out for dinner to "the best Paladar in
Trinidad" (San Jose Paladar – HIGHLY recommended) and waited - with modern
hand held buzzers - for our table to be ready.
And we drank mojitos in the street. I struck up a conversation
with a British couple while we were waiting and we ended up getting a table
with them. It was interesting to hear about their Cuba experience as they
were on a three week vacation and had rented a car, which we found insane but
they thought was not too bad. They made
fun of our President and we made fun of Brexit – fair is fair! It was great
conversation and the food was fantastic - for $36 including drinks,
At 9:30, we met up with Marcus to go on a nightlife tour of
all of Trinidad's hot spots. The city is open 24 hours a day and has a
very “alive” type of vibe – especially at night. One of the main squares in town, Plaza Mayor,
has music and dancing outdoors every night for a small cover fee (1 CUC) – it
was packed. Marcus made us hit the dance
floor to practice our new salsa dancing skills and we failed miserably –
stepping on each other and forgetting the steps. Luckily it was so crowded that I’m sure no
one noticed. Without slow music and someone counting out the beat for us,
we were done for. The music and mojitos
were flowing and people just came out of the woodwork. We stopped by a
few places (Beatles bar, bar built into a cave, but as there were lines
everywhere and we are old and tired, we eventually went to a café and just ordered
coffee and talked with Marcus since we really did want to learn more about
Cuban culture.
Everything in Cuba seems to have some focus on the revolution as
that is really the turning point for them in modern history, and we were very
curious to learn whether the average Cuban thinks socialism is a positive or a
negative. Let’s assume that we spoke
with a number of different Cubans and here is a summary of some of the stories
we heard. As strange as it sounds, I
don’t want to attribute any story to any one individual as I have no idea what
could happen to that person if any individual views or stories were made
public.
One person we met told us told us that his family had been
one of richest families in a small town we visited – 8th generation -
he even showed us the (currently in ruins) palace his grandfather had once lived
in. After the revolution, basically wealthy people were completely screwed
over - everything they had was taken practically overnight so his
family lost everything - homes, money, and the family business. Let’s
assume that my knowledge of Cuban/American history is pretty bad and I’m
interpreting what this person told us, so if historically inaccurate, blame it
on his telling, my understanding, my re-telling, or something lost in
translation.
In any case… from what I gathered, his grandfather was part of the
Cuban resistance and tried to help the Americans at the Bay of Pigs along with
a number of other Cuban resistance fighters, but the Cuban resistance thought
the Americans were landing somewhere else and basically they all missed
each other. Imagine what the result could have been if the two groups had
just met up – maybe Castro would never have taken power? I know this person wonders that… you could
always feel a current of underlying resentment about the whole situation. An incredibly wealthy family reduced to
scraping together money from tourists just to buy the basics.
Back to the story… his grandfather was captured and imprisoned for
20 years in Cuba and eventually was released to the US during a prisoner dump –
Castro allowed tens of thousands of people to leave Cuba, but only the “bad”
ones – prisoners, mentally ill, drug addicts and such. The grandfather landed in a southern state
and the US government allowed him to bring two children to the US - he had
three sons and one daughter. He brought one son and one daughter. The rest of the family had to stay, and still
remains, in Cuba. It was our impression
that they were all doing whatever they could to make enough money to join the
rest of their family or otherwise get out.
Some of the people we spoke with were fairly outspoken about
their dislike of the socialist government – when I asked if they ever feared
retribution if they were caught, we were told that a small percentage of people
in Cuba speak fluent English, so they would only state their views in English,
and they would look around before speaking.
In the smaller villages, it seems that everyone knows everyone and they
can spot the military & police. The
most positive thing we heard about the revolution was that it worked for the
less privileged people for the first 10 years.
But after that, pretty much everything went to shit and everyone rich or
poor, was suffering.
I was also curious about how Cubans feel about Americans. While we never felt anything other than
warmth and friendliness, I think that American is so intertwined in Cuba
history (although not the other way around), that they do have mixed feelings. It is obvious that America represents an
incredible opportunity for tourism and getting more money into the country, so
sometimes it was hard to tell if they liked us or our money. The embargo has made their lives very
difficult, but they also realize the fault lies with their government as much
as ours. As to how they feel about the
future – things have been changing over the past few years, but VERY
slowly. I think they recognize that
things are moving forward, but they see it as decades before any significant
progress is made – and this is really sad for people in their 20s and 30s
because they will likely never know anything other than the lives they have
now.
We asked about travel and who had ever been out of the
country. We learned that until recently,
Cubans were not allowed to have passports. Even now, they are very expensive to get and
they don’t last very long before requiring a renewal. Also, even for those few people who can get a
passport, and the even fewer number who would have enough money to buy a plane
ticket somewhere, they can’t get visas to enter other countries because
everyone knows that there is high likelihood they will never go back to Cuba,
and therefore will not grant entry visas.
The whole situation was just very sad – especially for someone like me
who loves to travel. They are literally
stuck on this island with no way out.
Now to end on a higher note – education in Cuba is free. It is required that people go through high
school, and we understood that college entry is based on test scores, so people
who test well can get college degrees as well as masters degrees. Most of the people we met were very well
educated – doctors, computer science majors, language majors, etc. In many respects, I think that overall, they
are better educated than the average American.
We heard, and I still have to confirm this, that (one of) the biggest
export of Cuba is not sugar or tobacco or rum, it is doctors. Cubans are required to “give” 3 years to the
government after schooling – it seems that doctors can leave the country and
are paid by other countries to serve their time in underserved parts of other
countries. Another thing that was
interesting about Cubans – to the extent we were able to see (or not see) it,
there was little if any racial or gender discrimination. When it came to doctors, I swear – everyone
and their mother, sister, or female cousin was a doctor! (NOTE:
I just googled it, and apparently the Cuban government earns $8 billion
a year from exporting doctors – in 2015 there were 37,000 Cuban doctors in 77
different countries). Doctors in Cuba
get paid almost nothing and of course I was curious as to why they do it. The reasons were simple – because they want
to help people.
Hey US Government – how is that for “person to person”
interactions! We are definitely earning
our Visas J
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