I´m here, now what?

As the last leg of my travels, the flight from Panama City to Guayaquil began it´s descent, I looked over the customs declaration form I was just handed. One box confused me. Address in Ecuador? The truth of the mater was I had no idea where I was staying that night or what I was going to do in Ecuador.

My sisters are going to meet me in Quito in two weeks and I was flying to Guayaquil. I don´t actually remember why I told them to meet me in Ecuador anymore. Originally just my sister Asma was going to come to Buenos Aires but with her school and all she wasn´t free until July and I wasn´t going to stay there that long. So I looked at a map and somehow came up with Ecuador. I think it might have had something to do with that crazy guy from Quito I met on Mt. Aconcagua who planted the idea in my head. But I heard about great beaches and islands and the Amazon river and active volcanos and it all sounded like fun.

The truth is I´ve actually kind of gotten to the point where I´m getting really really close to being done with this adventure. If it weren´t for the fact that my sisters are meeting me in Ecuador in a couple of weeks I might just have gone home. Well technically I don´t have a home, but back to the US. But as things are I´ll spend two weeks here waiting for my sisters and then another three weeks with my sister Asma. Samira will only be here for a week and after that...well actually I need to go to Medellin to collect the $200 that my buddy Bill owes me. And then I gotta see how somethings unfold, well just one things really. I might have one more stop to make before heading back to the states.

In my months of travelling I´ve learned just a couple of things. One is that it´s a really bad idea to show up to a new country late at night with no idea of where you´re going to stay. Last time this happen Joost and I came about 2 kms from sleeping on the beach. I was planning on doing a little research before I left Cuba but somehow that just didn´t work out.

Yanet and I spent the day before hanging out at the Playas del Este and it´s so hard to leave the beach even when you know you´ve got to go pack your bags. Everyone was waiting for us back at the casa for dinner since we were extremely late. But like always no one worried too much or if they did they didn´t complain.

Queque grilled me up some lobster, he knows it´s my favorite. The goodbyes were hard and take so long. Joost was awesome and presented me with his set of juggling balls he had just bought, I guess that answered my question of whether I was going to keep practicing. He gave me the 4th ball too and told me he wants to see evidence that I get that down. Be patient Joost, this might take a bit.

Somehow between all of this I never managed to get to the internet and find a hostel in Guayaquil. After I claimed by bags and made it through customs I looked around to see if there was a tourist booth open at the airport that could help me out. No such luck, especially not at 11 PM. So I did what I try to avoid doing as much as possible, I turned to my Footprints guide book and found a place to stay, flagged down a cab, negotiated a price and we took off. Luckily they had availability and it turned out to be clean and seemed relatively decent.

As I settled into Guayaquil I wondered again what I was doing here. I didn´t know a soul in this country, had no real idea of what to do and was already missing Cuba and everything it held. I suppose this is as good a time as any to figure out what the hell I´m doing. Oh yeah, that´s what I was supposed to be doing for the last 5 months.

Dropping Balls

Joost, the crazy Dutch guy, and I were hanging out on Playa Santa Maria, the closest beach to Havana. It was a wonderfully relaxing day, we finally got outside our comfort zone of Havana Centro and explored a little more of what Cuba had to offer. Joost has become famous around the casa for trying to teach everyone and anyone to juggle.

Last time we were in Cuba Alicia was complaining about how all of her oranges wound up crushed and Yanet said she didn’t want to smell like onions anymore. But this time Joost brought his own balls with him.

So while we were lying on the beach Joost asked me if I’d like to learn. Learning to juggle has been on my list of things to do for quite some time now, sure it’s something like number 35 at the moment, but what the heck I had an eager teacher, time to kill on the beach and a set of juggling balls nearby.

I’ve noticed myself kinda of getting antsy in the last couple two months or so. I haven’t done an honest days work since December and truth be told for several weeks (ok months) before that I had basically stopped being reasonably productive.

But I do think I’ve channeled some of that into a desire to do some other stuff that I’ve never found time for before. My Spanish has gotten pretty damn decent if I do say so myself, I learned to swim which was a big deal for me, I climbed a couple of mountains and done some trekking, met some fascinatingly wonderful people, sure my salsa skills are still barely existent but that’s next. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and pondering and imagining what could be and what shouldn’t be.

As we hung out on the beach Joost took about 10 minutes to explain the basic concept. I struggled dropping the balls for a while and a couple people looked on. A Cuban guy walked up, asked for the balls and took off without a hitch. A Mexican guy picked out three oddly shaped rocks out of the sand and started throwing them up with frustrating ease.

The more I watched everyone succeed at something that I just couldn’t seem to grasp the more obsessed with the idea of juggling I became. I spent another hour or two that night throwing balls on the floor and picking them up. At some point Joost just looked at me and said “dude, you’re just trying too hard.” I don’t think he used the word “dude” because that doesn’t sound very Dutch, but the point was the same.

And that made sense. And I’ve noticed that sometimes when I really want something the OCD part of my personality kicks in. I just can’t let some things go, I obsess over them, even when there’s something else I’m focusing the majority of my attention on my mind is working on the background handling this latest preoccupation.

And it’s true. Sometimes when you try too hard you just set yourself up for failure. You forget about the patience you need to let something just click. You try to fast forward through the rough, awkward phase where everything is a little strange and not quite comfortable because you already know the end result you’re shooting for. The second time to Cuba has been like that for me.

There’s some middle ground, I’m sure, between persistence and obsession. I doubt you can achieve and thing that’s difficult and worthwhile unless you’re willing to invest the time and effort required to pursue it. But if you obsess about it, if you don’t let yourself relax and take some space, if you refuse to wait for whatever will happen to happen it seems you’ve also got a pretty good chance of failing.

At this point I can kinda sorta juggle. Well enough to fake it at least. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it or not, it seems like a reasonable way to kill time but I don’t think it really impresses chicks and thus it’s coolness factor drops. And I didn’t really come to Cuba to learn to juggle, I’m still working on number one on my list.

You gotta be tough if you’re gonna be dumb

I had been in Havana for 12 days straight. This was extremely disappointing because Havana is officially one of my least favorite cities in the world. It’s dirty, it’s smelly, everything is broken and as a tourist you’re constantly being hounded. There are nice things in Havana but they are mostly off-limits to Cubans, strictly for tourists only. And I find that lack of freedom and liberty amazingly sad. Of course there are some things about Havana that I'm really enjoying, and that explains why I hadn’t as of yet managed to escape the city.

Before I came here Joost and I traded e-mails with the idea of doing a little traveling in Cuba and exploring this island. Everyone needs a plan B you know. My priority, like always was finding a beach and doing some snorkeling. Joost is from Holland or the Netherlands, I forget which but I think they might be the same place, go figure. And apparently they bike a lot in Holland or the Netherlands or where ever.

So as we were talking about heading to Varadero, the most touristy resort in all of Cuba, Joost suggested biking there. Varadero didn’t really appeal that much too me, mostly because I’ve decided I hate tourist and hate acknowledging that I am one, but Joost is a ceritified dive master and assured me that Varardero is world famous for it’s diving and I would love it. Varadero is also something like a 140 kilometers from Havana and the mid-day sun in Cuba during June is deadly hot.

As we started telling our plan to people around the house they looked at us with the same look I’ve come to know and love over my 5 months of traveling…”silly gringo, what are you thinking?” After the 10th Cuban we told this lovely idea to told us we were nuts I decided I really really liked this plan and I think Joost started having second thoughts.

We changed things up a bit and decided instead of taking two days to head to Varadero we’d only go half the distance (about 65 kms) to Playa Jibacoa and wait an extra day. Sunday night we got a group together and closed down a salsa club. Fun was had by all. Monday night the Irish girls wanted to go out again, and I said I was going to bed early. Joost decided he would go out for just a little bit and we were meeting up bright and early in the morning to head out on our journey. I understood, it's awfully hard to say no to Irish girls.

Before I took off Yanet asked me if I was sure I was going to do this. I’ve noticed that every time in my life that I’ve done something stupid that’s gotten me into trouble there was always a moment where a little voice inside of my head said “are you sure?” It’s usually not external but I wondered if this was an exception. Regardless I headed to the casa for breakfast and found out that Joost hadn’t woken up yet. Then I ran into Xiomara who told me they were out till 6 in the morning partying the night before. I warned him was going to happen.

I woke Joost up and waited for him to tell me the words I was expecting, “dude, I’m sorry but I’m gonna bail” I know if I was in the same situation that’s what I would be saying. But I must say, Joost is a trooper. He looked like death and wasn’t anywhere close to being ready, but he said give him 5 minutes and he’d be game. 5 minutes turned into almost an hour but Joost was not going to drop. He let me know that if I wanted to cancel plans he wouldn’t be offended. But I had no sympathy for the devil and we were heading to Playa Jibacoa today.

We eventually managed to rent our bikes which turned out to be in a woeful state of disrepair. Such is life in Cuba. As we headed to our first destination, the ciclobus stop which we needed to take to get around Havana Bay we saw our bus pull out. Joost and I looked at each other and decided we could still catch it and we took off, fast. I don’t know exactly what happened next but I saw Joost go down, hard, in the middle of Havana traffic. I will say this for him, he got up real fast but the bailing wire and duct tape that was holding together his bike needed some attention so we forgot about taking the bus. Instead we headed for the ferry terminal.

After getting off the ferry we learned why everyone told us to take the bus. It turned out our journey was going to start by climbing a series of hills for the next 5 kms go get ourselves up to Via Blanca, and the bus avoids all of this. Such is life and we troopered on gallantly, every Cuban we talked to pointed us in a different direction but somehow we found our path.

The ride to Jibacoa was damned hard. Harder than Mount Aconcagua, harder than Machu Piccu. It the middle of the day and ridiculously hot. Something was obviously lost in the translation that told me the trip was “mostly flat” because we just saw slopping hills the entire way. We stopped plenty of times to re-hydrate and ask ourselves who came up with this brilliant idea. We tossed the idea of stopping around but neither one of us was going to be the guy that bowed out first.

I started out feeling great but ran out of gas as the day wore on. Joost started out really slow recovering from his hang-over but by the end of the day I could barely keep up with him. I guess he was right about the Dutch and their biking skills, although I always caught up to him on the hills. I guess you never go up much when you’re country is mostly under water.

Both are bikes were barely holding together but we actually had to make 3 seperate repair stops for Joost's winner of a bike. The bolt that held the baggage carrier in place got lost along the journey somewhere and we almost decided to quit right there and then. But we decided to stop by a nearby farm and ask for help and it's true, Cubans are lovely people. Not only did they find us a bolt that fit but they gave us cold water and refused any offer of payment.

As we passed by a beautiful beach with corals right off the shore. Joost looked at me and said how about a dip? I said let’s wait for the next one. We spent the next 30 kms riding past ugly refineries spewing out smoke. And then at about 8:30 PM we pulled into Jibocoa Playa. I thought about the nice lady at the bike store and how she told us not to ride our bikes on the sand and I sailed on off the road and dumped my bike on the beach as we watched the sun dip down.

I still have no idea why we went on this ridiculous trip, the bus takes an hour and costs $0.40. But sometimes it’s about the journey and not the destination. And it felt damned good to be able to say we were able to do this, when everyone told us it was a crazy idea. Go ahead, tell me what else I can’t do and watch as I prove you wrong.

Just like I knew it wouldn’t be

Expectations are deadly things. The world we live in is seldom as perfect as we dream and imagine it to be. And when we plan and chart out how something is going to go, a trip, a reuinion, a new beginning, the fact is we are almost guaranteed that what will actually happen will have little to no resemblance to the picture in our heads.

The real world isn’t perfect, it doesn’t consist of fairy tales. Life is complicated and full of nuance. The highs can be high and the lows can be low. And I suppose we’re all just trying to hang on and enjoy the ride as long as possible.

The real problem with those expectations of ours is they set us up for disappointment. We play out how the act is going to progress before the curtain even rises. And when, invariably, things do not follow their laid out script we set ourselves up for a crisis of epic proportions. The more time we spend dreaming about the future the more likely we are to consider those dreams real and be shocked and surprised when we are faced with the world as it is and all the complications it brings.

Fairy tales are nice and simple. Everyone always lives happily ever after. Throughout the whole story you always have a sense of calm because you know in the end things are going to work out just as they’re supposed to. The real world is made up of the full of fear and loathing that comes from the not knowing.

But I’m starting to realize that the real world is a pretty wonderful place. No things don’t unfold quite as wonderfully as they do in the movies. Life is far more complicated than that. And there is great beauty in that subtlety and detail. And there is also anxiety and longing, and I suppose one set cannot exist without the other.

And when you allow yourself to actually capture the moment you’re in, you realize that those images in your head really don’t add up to anything other than what you think you might want. And then you realize what you actually need is something entirely different and it consists of being and not dreaming.

Cuba is great. The city is still falling apart and Havana still resembles a barely functioning toilet. But after spending most of a month traveling from town to town, taking planes trains and busses across 4 international borders, sleeping in a different bed or bus every night, and just passing casually by all the faces I saw, it was a refreshing to be greeted with open arms.

Change isn’t always for the better

Queque and his brother Nelson are completely un alike. The two of them are only separated by a few years and grew up in the same crib, but you couldn’t imagine two more completely different brothers. Queque embodies the typical MacGyver-esque attitude of the Cuban people. There seems to be nothing he can’t put back together, lately he’s been trying to figure out how to jump the meter on the electricity that the house uses to avoid the escalating costs of energy in Cuba. But the only time you see a book lying around is if a passing tourist left it behind.

Nelson on the other hand is a language professor at a nearby university and not only speaks English fluently but seems to be the only one on the island who doesn’t have the Scarface-like accent. He seems to be interested in just about everything, full of questions about abstract ideas.

This works out great for me because Nelson supplements his typical paltry Cuban government salary by teaching Spanish to foreigners. In 4 short lessons with Nelson I got a far better understanding of the subjunctive tenses in Spanish than I did in two months of class in Buenos Aires. Of course we never covered the subjunctive in our class in Buenos Aires but that’s beside the point.

But the other day Nelson, Joost and I were sitting around in-between our lessons. Lessons might be too formal a description for what typically happens, which is that we shoot the shit for a couple hours in between refreshing beverages and intersperse a good amount of learning randomly throughout our meandering conversations.

We started talking about what was going to happen to Cuba after Fidel finally dies. And the truth is, no one has any damn clue, but everyone expects chaos. 47 years have passed by since the Triumph of the Revolution and I think at this point Castro has outlasted 11 US Presidents.

But we all could agree on one thing, it’s pretty likely that the US Marines will be involved. That saddens me deeply because I’m pretty sure that’s the worst possible outcome for just about everyone involved. If you think Iraq is bad just wait until the US forces head 90 miles south of Key West, Nelson assured me. Cubans don’t particularly seem to hate the US, and they certainly, on average, seem to have no love lost for Fidel. But I’ll be god-damned if I can imagine any Cuban who wants the US to invade except for about 1.5 million zealots in southern Florida.

Cubans, while generally brainwashed by their governments’ propaganda, know full well the history of US – Cuban relations. And it’s fairly true that nothing the US has ever done has helped the Cuban people. After Cuba finally gained it’s “independence” and the Spanish were vanquished, a series of successive regimes in Cuba were subservient to the power of the US. And of course we treated it like a tiny little island to be taken advantage of which also happened to make a great vacation destination until Castro and Che finally triumphed.

Yeah if they had just played nice they probably would have wound up like Puerto Rico, second, make that third, class citizens but still enjoying the highest living standard in all of the Caribbean. Instead their national psyche seems to be embodied by that guy on the street corner heckling “my friend, cigars, girls, casa particular?” to all the passing tourists.

Really the US trade embargo is the best thing that ever happened to Fidel Castro. The blame for all the problems that Cuba is facing right now can easily be deflected from their own government. Castro has never faced a hint of a real threat of an uprising from his own people. He controls everything that comes in and goes out of this island and points the finger for all its problems squarely at the White House. And most people seem to agree.

Since you hardly ever see any Americans in the streets of Havana it’s impossible for Cubans to cut through the propaganda they’re fed and understand what the reality of the country that they’re taught to hate and despise. Nelson told me that if only Cuban people could talk to Americans and see that their not the 3 headed monsters that we’re taught to believe maybe we would start to question everything else our government tells us and wonder why we don’t have the same standard of living.

The rest of the lesson didn’t go over so much politics, but I did learn about how to convert the passive voice in English to the 3rd person in Spanish. Now if someone would just teach me to dance salsa I’d be all set.