Have at it!

I heard some of you were having problems posting comments on my blog. But that should be fixed now. If not, let me know. I was wondering why I didn't have any comments, but I just figured it was because no one was actually reading this thing! So if you are reading, you can post a comment now if you'd like, and if you're not reading, you can't.

Vinales!

Havana is a toilet. A dirty, smelly, barely-functioning toilet at that. So when Bill was finally feeling better we decided to get out of town for a couple of days and make that trip to Vinales that we’d been putting off. Vinales is a little two-horse town about 3 hours outside of Havana. Its claim to fame is the dramatic mountains that jut out towards the sky. And we didn’t have much planned except going hiking up in those peaks.

Our original plan was for Bill to take Junia and me to take Yanet and make a couple days out of it. Unfortunately the local communist party of Vinales decided a couple months back that it didn’t want the foreigners mixing with the good Cuban folk. No it was now illegal for a Cuban to stay with a foreigner in Vinales. And if any house was found violating this law they were closed down immediately and blacklisted, which basically meant their livelihood was gone. No there is no appeal process in Cuba, there is no jury of your peers, welcome to Cuba.

So we decided to leave the girls at home and just head out by ourselves. Traveling with Bill is like nothing else. We got of the bus and Vinales and were accosted by a sea of would-be capitalists offering rooms for rent. We avoided the hecklers when one of them stepped in front of Bill and said (in Spanish) “you don’t remember me?” Turns out this was Maria, half of Casa de Jesus and Maria where Bill had stayed last two times he was in Vinales. Bill had told me stories of how great there house was, I just didn’t expect to be recognized and offered room and board within seconds of stepping off the bus.

We struck a deal quickly and walked over to the house. Within a few minutes I knew I was going to like Vinales. The streets were clean, the air was fresh, the views spectacular. If this was what communism (drat I keep doing that, I mean socialism) had to offer I guess I could live with that. No we were not in Havana any longer.

After settling in for a bit we decided to go exploring. We rented some scooters and started venturing out. First we went and checked out the Cuban excuse for a National Park. The famous caves of Vinales which have a river running through them was our destination. Sure enough, look up and you see a stalactite. Look down and you see a stalagmite. Or is that the other way around? Whatever we got out of there fast and went on our own way.

As we rode towards the mountain range Bill spotted a small tobacco farm. Have I mentioned Bill is kind of a cigar nut? We stopped in their front yard and the locals looked at us like we were Martians. Two gringo’s pulling up on scooters and the most complicated machinery they owned was a bicycle. But we made friends fast. They offered us coffee (you can’t go anywhere in Cuba without being offered coffee) and rolled us a half-dozen cigars. Watching Cubans roll cigars is like watching Picasso paint, or so I would imagine if I’d ever seen Picasso paint. My mind immediately turned to more nefarious thoughts.

Michael one of the farm hands agreed to guide us through a hike early the next morning. We had been debating going up by ourselves, but after we heard about the Germans who were stranded for 3 days in those hills a month back, we decided a guide was in order. I mean, sure they were only Germans, but why chance it.

Hot Hot Jazz

Bill hasn’t been feeling so great lately. I don’t know, it could have something to do with the open sewer lines throughout the city. And that means Junia, his girlfriend, is staying at home taking care of him. Kay and Pavani (the Australian doctor tandem) along with Yorst (the Dutch improv comedian) decided to take a trip out of Havana. That left me alone among the Yuma’s (rich tourists) that I knew. That mean the only person around to accompany me out was Yanet.

We decided to get together and decided to go to a little jazz café I’d heard good things about. It wasn’t quite the Buena Vista Social Club but it was bad, and by bad I mean really fucking good. Say what you want about Cuba but I haven’t heard a single bad note while I’ve been down here. These people got rhythm.

The weird thing about Cuban night life is that no Cuban can afford to enjoy it. That is unless of course some Yuma comes along and decided to treat them. Yanet is a musician herself and lives a very cush life by Cuban standards (she even has an iPod), but even she had never been inside this place. The music was hot as expected. Two great bands and a Lenny Kravitz look-alike and it all sounded soooo good. But after 2 hours and several mojitos we’d had enough.

We decided to take a walk down the Malcon (the seawall that protects Havana). It was a perfect Caribbean night. The Florida Strait was at peace, Orion’s belt hung directly over us, and Key West was a short 90 mile rickety raft ride to the north. But really we might have just as well been on another planet for all the difference it made.

She asked me what the heck I was doing in Cuba. Well I tried to explain to her that I just needed some time away from life to figure some stuff out. Work stopped being exciting for me and I was hoping bumming around for a while would help me figure out what was next. But it wasn’t just work, it was everything. Life was just…blech.

She told me about all the different ideas running through her head. Finding another band to join or maybe starting a hair salon or there was that idea about a selling designer clothes. But she lived in Cuba and none of that was possible without leaving her home.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had all the opportunity in the world and no passion to take advantage of it. She was full of passion, but as a Cuban had no hope. As we sat and watched the waves crash on the shore I told her that when I left the US I was really just hoping to have a couple nights like this.

Viva la Revolucion!

US – Cuban relations have been worsening lately. The war of words has been escalating. A Cuban terrorist escaped from prison in Venezuela and fled to the US seeking asylum, the US has been turning up pressure on Castro to release the political prisoners he’s holding and Castro is lambasting the US for incarcerating 5 Cuban heroes / spies depending on whose propaganda machine you believe.

But the hyperbole went into overdrive yesterday. Castro came on Cuban TV and announced a national day of protest. The US Intersection (we don’t have an embassy in Cuba, so instead we call our presence an intersection? Don’t ask me, I didn’t think it up) installed a 10 foot tall scrolling red-neon marque broadcasting messages of hope / propaganda (again depending on which perspective you decide to listen to).

Havana shut down for the day, Cubans from all the neighboring regions were brought in to participate in the march, at 5:00 AM the speakers started waking up everyone and calling them out to participate in denouncing this travesty. All this happened with 2 days of notice. I guess these communists are pretty damned organized.

I’d never been to an anti-US rally and I sure wasn’t going to pass on the chance. So Bill and I decided to head out and check out what was going on. I put on my Brazil soccer jersey (thanks Patrick!) and decided not to speak another word for the rest of the day. Hanging out with the 6-foot gringo probably didn’t help, but he’s still getting over his ailments so I knew he wasn’t going to last all day. Within an hour, Bill headed back home, but I trudged onward.

The crowd seemed mainly made up of students and die-hard communists. Plus anyone with a government job was required to attend. The Cuban news announced 1.4 million demonstrators showed up, but I lost count after about 375,000. Most of the Cubans I told afterwards that I went to the march looked at me like I was crazy. I guess they’ve seen enough marches and don’t really get excited by them anymore.

We marched about 5 km down the Malcon, the seawall that protects Havana, to the US Intersection. The crowd was at times lively and chanting, and other times just sitting around and waiting. I think that’s a popular pastime in Cuba. Everyone wanted their picture taken, Cubans sure do love cameras. Fidel made a speech and called George W. Bush a cockroach, even Elian Gonzalez was there (remember him?)

To me the strangest part of the whole thing was the fact that in order to protest the presence of the 10 foot-tall scrolling marque broadcasting messages that offended the Cuban sensibility, Castro decided to march the entire city by the building and show them exactly what he was talking about. The next day the biggest news in the city wasn’t the march, but what the marque at the US Intersection said…and for the days that followed, the propaganda spread like wild-fire.

Quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi were the talk of the town. The select parts of the Declaration of Human Rights (of which Cuba is a signatory) were broadcast. I think I’m starting to see the first signs of the crack in the wall, although it’s hard to know what the heck is going on here. But don’t let anyone say the US doesn’t know how to spread propaganda, maybe this whole exporting democracy thing isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Damn Steelers

The worst part of being in Havana, aside from the lack of personal freedoms, the decrepit state of the city, the moral decay and abject poverty was that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to watch the AFC Championship game. Unlike Colombia there is no concept of a sports bar in Cuba. I asked Bill three times if there was any way we could catch the game and each time he gave me the same answer, not bloody likely. Actually Bill didn’t say those words, and I couldn’t imagine them coming out of his mouth, but that’s beside the point.

But one of the times I was asking Bill was while a group of us was sitting around Queque’s living room. “I get all the channels, you can watch the game at my place” Yanet (pronounced Janet) said. Well I certainly wasn’t going to turn down such an offer from a young attractive blonde Cuban woman. Did I mention she speaks fluent English and has traveled all over the world performing as a singer / dancer in a well known Cuban salsa band?

That night I insisted Yanet join our little group of two Australian female doctors, the Dutch improv comedian, and Bill’s Cuban girlfriend for our nightly adventure out to the salsa clubs. We drank and laughed as usual and Yanet risked personal ridicule teaching me a couple steps on the dance floor. And at the end of the night she gave me her number and reminded me to call her tomorrow for the game. So far so good.

The next day Yanet went to what can only be described as inordinate lengths to satiate my desire for Futbol Americano. The setup was unreal, and another testament to the ingenuity of the human race. A satellite dish led to a rat’s nest of cables, which led into a pirated cable box, which led to a laptop with an impressive array of applications running in parallel, which led to the TV. She searched through 300 channels and had to reposition the dish (the sky is a pretty big place you know) to satisfy my craving. And more amazingly she sat and watched the entire game with me. I did my best to try to explain what was going on, but it wasn’t easy. You never appreciate what a crazy game football is until you try to explain it to someone who’s only ever heard of it before.

And in the end the Steelers beat the crap out of the Broncos. But for me, the game stopped being interesting around the middle of the 2nd quarter. She told me if there were anymore games I wanted to see to feel free to come over. I told her to be careful because I’d make up an excuse to come see her. Yes it’s true, I fall in love far too easily. I’ve always had that problem.