Cuba
A place I’m glad I visited when I did
Cuba is a place that many people know about, or think they know about. What they actually think will be informed to a greater or lesser extent on their age (were they around during the Cuban missile crisis, for example), their family history (did their family leave the island in a hurry for different reasons after the arrival of Communism) or their politics (Cuban politics is anathema to some).
It’s clearly a place which is defined by its political affairs, and in opposition to its northern neighbour and, at the time I’m writing this, it does appear that its days, at least in its current form, may be numbered since the current government of the larger neighbour in question is rattling sabres and implying that things might change.
This isn’t a political post. I’m not expert enough in that area to be able to make any intelligent judgments about what’s happening at the moment, although I’m not keen on bullies and like to think that in any David v Goliath type contest, I’d support the underdog.
Anyway, seeing so much talk about the place in the news got me thinking about a holiday we had there back in 2013. At the time, relations between the country and its closest neighbour were, while not exactly warm, slightly less glacial and, perhaps more comfortable with a tourist industry that was developing nicely thanks to contributions from their northern neighbour’s northern neighbour, as Canadians flocked south to enjoy a dose of sunshine during the winter months when the sun hardly showed its face in their beautiful, but rather chilly, country.
Our visit to the country began, as I suspect they all do, in Havana, where we stayed in a hotel that had once, apparently, been graced by Hemmingway and others of his ilk. Certainly the furniture was the right vintage, as was the plumbing. We spent a bit of time there, learning how to roll cigars and visiting open-air book markets, and cruising around in a succession of old American cars before, after we’d recovered from jetlag, heading east, stopping at a couple of places before ending up at some sort of resort called Las Terrezas built, apparently, for Cuban worthies to live the dream for a while. When it rained, the water came through the roof in floods, but it was very attractive nonetheless.
We continued to bumble around the island, being pulled along by a rickety old steam locomotive along very uneven tracks at one point, and visiting places where you could see vestiges of the means used to control slaves (tall towers so that there was no way they could escape without being spotted). We swam in the sea at different places, and had some surprisingly good meals, especially where we went into people’s houses, giving them an opportunity to make a bit of cash while serving us something they had nourished in their back gardens (it looked like every house outside the most built-up urban areas kept chickens, the better to feed hungry tourists with ready money to spend).
One of the things Cuba is known for is its old American cars. Often, it turned out that the big thirsty American engines had been replaced by more efficient Japanese ones at some point, but necessity had kept the cars running and, they were clearly something their owners were proud of. It was also good to see European cars of similar vintages popping up, things like Triumphs and Hillmans, and even a couple of Renault Dauphines, along with some of their Soviet cousins, with Ladas being a reasonably regular sight too.
Having been inspired to write this, I decided that I should illustrate it with ten photos from my time there which I have liberally sprinkled through the text. Why ten I have no idea, other than the fact that it’s a nice number and one that means I don’t just turn this into a post with dozens and dozens of pictures of old cars. Obviously I could just have used photos of them, since I took loads, but I did remember to snap other things too, which I think I’ve reflected with my choices, although, scrolling through this again before I upload it, maybe not.
One thing I was expecting to see was plenty of ghost signs, but in fact there were very few, since any signs of the capitalist world were exorcised completely after the revolution. They didn’t manage to hide them all though, so I spotted a few which, obviously, made me very happy.
One final thing of note is that it was almost certainly the last time that I was somewhere where I couldn’t access the Internet, except for a couple of places where you could book access to a computer lurking in a hotel lobby, and then get onto the internet (very slowly) but not access American sites (little things like Gmail, for example). That was fun for somebody running a business, but nothing went wrong while we weren’t connected, which is a lesson of some sort. Probably.
On which note, it’s time to end – thank you so much, as ever, for reading.
If, quite understandably, the thought of subscribing is too much to contemplate, but you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written, then you also have the option to help my work towards buying an old American car (contributions may in fact be used to buy petrol for the non-American car I’ve already got, but I won’t tell if you don’t ask).
Your ability to as-literally-as-a-metaphor-can-get to take me places with your writing is seriously unmatched. I feel like I've just come back from a holiday in Cuba after reading... For which I am grateful as it saddens me greatly to think that I will have never had the opportunity to see Cuba before the northern neighbour puts its ugly, heavy, grey stamp on the beautiful, colourful, music-playing Cuba :(
Great read! I was in Cuba in November 2005 and enjoyed every moment of it. No resorts for me – I was with the average folk the whole time. I was telling the Cubans that they and their country were in better shape at the time than most of the Balkans.