Hemingway once said, “The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.” And the sea is angry this morning.
We depart Havana on a blustery day for the far western Province of Viñales. A strong wind sends waves crashing over the city’s famous Malecón, and a few of the residents are enjoying the salty spray. That’s life along the Florida Strait, as Hemingway knew it well.
We pass modern buildings and hotels, near others that would not look out of place in beachside Florida, and a gas station that looks like one of the cheaper off-brand fill-ups I remember from back in the 1950s – complete with cars of the era. Nice looking parkways appear outside our windows, along with a drab Supermercado that could use a new paint job.
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So far we’ve heard little about the dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the 1952 deal he cut with the American Mafia and Meyer Lansky in Daytona Beach Florida. But that’s not really what this Intrepid cultural tour is about. There’s no reason they should focus attention on that stuff when Americans can stream all the faux-Mafia movies they want back home. Interestingly, the words ‘Batista,’ ‘Mafia,’ and ‘Lansky’ don’t even appear in the Index of my 2015 Lonely Planet Cuba guidebook, although that period is discussed in the History section. How quickly the past recedes from memory, and we’ll all soon do the same. Even Hemingway is no longer the towering literary figure that he was in my youth. But the Cubans continue to flog his memory, and so shall we as long as we encounter his ghost here in Cuba.
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And at the bow of our fine ship, er bus, is Yanet, our hearty guide from IntrepidTravel who will lead us onward for the next eight days through the culture, and help us avoid the pitfalls, of Cuba. He will refer often to that map of the island hanging just over his shoulder as we navigate the terrain. And we’ve acquired a 5-gallon garafón of purified water, which is now lashed securely onto a back seat. It has a nifty battery-powered pump in the cap to keep us hydrated as we head to a part of western Havana for our first stop of the day, to something called “Fusterlandia.”
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“Cuba may be the only place in the world where you can be yourself, and more than yourself at the same time.”
– Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway may have been referring to the bold artistic spirit evidenced by José Fuster, who began his strange project, often called ‘Gaudí-esque,’ around 30 years ago, and long after Hemingway’s death in 1968. ‘Fusterlandia’ is a candy-like, and bizarre, explosion of color that we have wandered into. Fuster’s vision has involved most of the neighborhood by now and is reminiscent of Gaudí’s Park Güell, built in 1900-1914 in Barcelona. Or the tile-crusted Watts Towers (1921-54) by Simon Rodia in LA. Or the mind-stretching architecture of Friedensreich Hundertwasser on an otherwise quiet street in Vienna. Or maybe even that crazy thing, now long demolished, that your doper ex-brother in law built in his backyard in 1972, and is one of many reasons he’s now your ex-brother in law.
Whether it’s actually art, or a sprawling version of over-exuberance, Fusterlandia is an attention-getter. And it’s certainly another bold expression of Cuba’s great love of color.
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After we pile back into the bus, Yanet shares a look into the normal daily reality that his family and others deal with. His ration book (La Libreta) is duly noted and signed to acknowledge his family’s receipt of their basic commodities. To my surprise and relief there seem to be very few topics that are off-limits during our stay on the island, and we’ll happen across a ration store in action in a few days.
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We’re soon out of Havana and traveling westward on a divided and toll-free 4-lane Autopista through the largely agricultural Province of Artemisa, and past the occasional gas station.
The roadway is in moderately good condition, better than some I’ve seen in Mexico and other places, and not unlike sections of heavily-traveled US I-10 east of Tucson. The prolific and elegant royal palms, that we’ll see often on this trip, bring to mind the opening stanza of the famous long poem by José Martí that inspired the song “Guantanamera.”
”Yo soy un hombre sincero
de donde crece la palma,
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma”
And in English:
“I am an honest man
From where the palm tree grows
And before I die I want
To write my soulful verses”
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It’s going to be a busy day, and our next stop is Las Terrazas. Once the site of pre-revolutionary French coffee plantations, this 50 sq km tract of degraded and eroded land was terraced and reforested beginning in 1968. And today, as part of the Sierra del Rosario, Cuba’s first Unesco Biosphere Reserve, it is an inspiring eco-village that Cubans are rightly proud of showing to visitors.
We enjoy a fine lunch and music in the lodge, with its dramatic setting looking over vast forested lands, and a northeasterly view toward Mariel harbor, where the famous 1980 boatlift, the Éxodo del Mariel, launched during a drastic economic downturn on the island. Over the course of 6 1/2 months, about 125,000 Cubans left for Florida from that port barely visible in the distance.
After a hike through the old cafetales, we’re given a lesson in milling and de-husking the coffee beans – the magical beans that power our daily lives, and that they brew so richly and well here on the island. The mill is well-designed so that the heavy stone wheel is surprisingly easy to move.
And then we’re off to a nice little cafeteria in the open air for a welcome boost, and a fine view across the grassy valley and the village that were created as part of that larger reforestation project. We’re joined at small cafe tables by a traveling group of Germans, and we make room for everyone, while the counterman keeps us well-supplied with dark liquid fuel. And a cookie or two.
There are studios for the residents where a man recycles scrap paper for casting fine art papers and other projects. Most of us find worthy purchases in the gallery and we each wish we had more space available in our suitcases. And more room on our walls at home.
There’s a sparkling reservoir with lakeside walkways to enjoy those quiet moments in life. And there’s a boathouse, with boats, to enjoy after the work is over.
So as we leave the peaceful village and lands of Las Terrazas, questions arise in a curious mind. Is this just a showpiece, a Cuban-style ‘Potemkin village,’ created for propaganda purposes, as Field Marshall Grigory Potemkin supposedly did to impress Catherine the Great when she visited the newly annexed Crimea in 1787?
I don’t know about that. It all looks more like an excellent example of cooperative effort. I’d really like to think so anyway, and the Cuban Revolution was certainly powered by idealists eager to throw off a half-century of US meddling that we never read much about in our approved history textbooks. Such as the 1901 Platt Amendment where the US Congress granted itself the right to interfere in Cuban affairs. And yes, Cuban politics went through a messy stage after their Independence following hundreds of years of Spanish rule, but many Cubans felt that the US rarely acted in the best interests of the average Cuban, instead of maintaining just another corrupt ‘banana republic’ for the benefit of wealthy investors in the Caribbean.
I tend to be skeptical and don’t want to be naive, but throughout our trip there seems to be a sincere effort to expose us to the everyday realities of Cuban life. Both the good side and the not so good side. And getting deeper into the culture is why we signed on to an IntrepidTravel gig. While we can easily see that everything in Cuba is not peaches and, uh, cane sugar, wouldn’t you steer your guests to some of the nicer parts and better accomplishments of your own country?
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And so we roll further westward, past more crops on fertile lands, heavy old Russian trucks, rice paddies, and unfinished overpasses, all framed by the peaks of the Sierra de Rosario in the distance. Those tough old trucks can be kinda beautiful, in their own way, as they do the important heavy lifting for the rest of us. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot (I think) once said, “There’s Nothin’ Pretty About a Truck, ‘cept the radiator, the tires, that heavy bumper, etc, etc....” And you know, I think he’s right.
At some point we’re off the freeway and onto a winding mountain road that takes us over a ridge and down into the beautiful Valle de Viñales. I suspect we’ll never get quite enough of the statuesque white trunks of so many royal palms, that stand in this valley like lost Ancient Greek columns.
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We’ll be staying in a simple and well-kept place run by a nice Doctor and her husband, who put out far more delicious food at breakfast than we can manage. That becomes something of the norm for our trip, and we have to ask for less food, smaller portions. Too much food has become a thing in recent decades for over-eating, overweight Americans, but surely the people here can put that good food to better use than we can.
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Rocking chairs. Literally almost every house has several on the porch, and it’s about the first local characteristic mentioned as we begin to explore the area. Apparently it’s considered a good thing here to enjoy some time in your sillón in the late afternoon as neighbors walk by and stop to chat. Sounds like a good idea to me.
We’re in a quiet town, with people walking to work, walking the kids to school, chatting on cell phones. It’s a lot like anyplace else these days, at least where they don’t lock up inside the house and watch some inane TV show. Some folks have turned that wasted area out front into a nice garden filled with useful crops for the household. There are taxis, a produce seller, some modest dwellings, and a home that shows considerable extra creative effort – complete with a pink flamingo in the yard.
We're off to explore, and our first stop will be an organic farm at the edge of town. We enter a little gateway into a wonderland of beautiful vegetables, where a young agronomist explains the cropping system, with the use of corn stalks and geraniums to deter insect pests, and maybe birds, from the crops. A bouquet of bright red flowers attract a busy hummingbird. Common sense planting, it appears, may be required when cheap agro-chemicals are not available. And it’s not unreasonable to imagine that much of the food we’re eating while in Cuba may come from innovative organic operations such as this. Most of us could probably learn quite a bit from these folks.
We cruise onward through the village, past a small roadside bar, and a well-protected motorcycle-sidecar combo (maybe an old Ural) is tucked under a sheet of tin. It reminds me of the ‘garage’ my Uncle Floyd kept his ancient John Deere tractor under, a piece of corrugated metal over the engine and a big old coffee can over the vertical exhaust pipe to keep the Indiana rain out. The proud owner of the ‘moto’ is currently occupied giving a haircut under the covered entryway.
There’s a variety of other everyday scenes, including a street market and a sign for a “Juanito Mojito.” Get one for a Euro.
And so the Intrepid throng heads onward past more fertile fields, towards the embracing mountains and a local cigar operation.
A well-spoken young tobaconista leads us through the finer points of leaf structure, content, color, and size. He then lays the essential components on the table and demonstrates a hand-roll on the table, and one on his knee. Afterward, he proudly exhibits the result of this fine old skill.
And by then many of our happy throng are more than ready to partake in the ancient ritual of smoking this fine Cuban product and the perfume of well-crafted tobacco wafts through the air. A few of us peruse the wares available for purchase, as others caution that Cuban cigars can’t be brought through US Customs. But that, of course, only pertains to those traveling to the US, and not those with less-fraught destinations. The US-bound are sadly limited to buying colorfully-painted, but empty, cigar boxes and the like.
Back in town, we enjoy a good lunch at El Barrio. I pass a well-tended, and bright red, little Lada with an “I love my Lada 1600” decal in the side window. And I think that’s easy to understand about this cute little ’tin box on wheels’ that is so simple and easy to fix. While many of us cherish our large and option-laden vehicles – that so few of us can actually fix anymore – these little Ladas are probably under appreciated. OK, yeah I can get obsessed with Ladas. Please forgive me.
After a good rest-up back in the room, we’re off again (Intrepid keeps us busy!) to a cooking class at a place called “Balcón del Valle.” And, by the way, it has an absolutely fabulous view over the Valle de Viñales, this special piece of the world. When Cuba's first settlers, the Guanahatabeys, arrived on the island 4000 years ago, it must have seemed a literal paradise on earth. The Siboneys and the Taínos appeared several thousand years later and pushed the Guanahatabeys westward to this peaceful valley, before the arrival of the Spanish in 1492.
It takes us more than a few moments to break ourselves away from the balcony and focus on the actual reason we’re here: a cooking lesson in the local cuisine. And very quickly our diminutive host has just about everybody heavily involved in preparing, and tasting, the dinner to come. And then I was so well-involved in the dinner that resulted, I forgot to get any pictures of the food. But we dined well indeed.
And much later, after another memorable experience, we depart into the night, past the brightly-lit sign of, “Balcón del Valle, Viñales, Cuba.”
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The Idea of Sticking Around
After the ’Shangri-La’ experience of organic crops, cheap rum, and good fresh cigars in the beautiful Valle de Viñales, a person on a fixed income (or maybe not…) might wonder about the possibilities of just staying in such a magical place – the occasional hurricanes be damned. And your Social Security would go a long way in Cuba.
So yes, I did look into it. And it may be possible, at least on the Cuban side of the legal ledger, as it seems there’s a ’snowbird visa’ available that lasts 6 months. Various online ‘Ex-pat in Cuba’ sites have different takes on it.
But keeping enough cash on hand for six months may be a problem – for US Citizens anyway – as US credit and debit cards don’t work in Cuba these days. So you may need to bring a large and uncomfortably conspicuous bag of money with you. Or you might be able to open a Mexican, or Canadian, or European, bank account and get a debit card through them. And there may be another kind of work-around, since the Cubans have gotten good at coping creatively with such problems.
We had to bring sufficient extra cash to make it through our 10-day trip, allowing for about US$75 per day per person. And it all has to be in presentable condition, with none of those tiny almost-tears that most folded and well-used US bills have in the middle and on the fringes. Nobody will accept damaged bills in Cuba because the banks won’t accept them. And they’re looked over carefully by every shopkeeper. A pre-trip stop off at your local bank before departure to get a fistful of fresh US Dollars, Euros, or Pounds Sterling (the smaller bills are the most useful) could be a good use of your prep time.
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Anyway, we can skip the dreaming for now and move on. Tomorrow we’ll be on our way eastward, to The Bay of Pigs and the city of Cienfuegos. — PRW