I now considered myself fully
retired. Diane joined me in that feeling
after she received her first Social Security payment in January 2012. We were ready to travel, and this year our
first destination was Cuba. We were able
to go there since President Obama relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba from
the US in January 2011. However, the
customs and immigration service was not happy about US citizens traveling to
Cuba. It insisted that travelers have documentation
showing that their visits there fell within one of the following categories: 1)
family visit, 2) official business for a government or related organization, 3)
journalism, 4) professional research or meetings, 5) educational activities,
6)religious activities, 7) public performances, clinics, workshops, athletic
and other competitions, and exhibitions, 8) support for the Cuban People 9) exportation,
importation or transmission of information or informational materials, 10) humanitarian
project, 11) activities of private foundations or research or educational
institute and 12) certain export transactions.
Road Scholar took care of this paperwork for
people traveling to Cuba with them and flew the tour group there from Miami. However, our trip was arranged by the
ecotourism company. After we flew to Cancun,
Mexico, our tour included tickets for the flight to Havana on a Cuban airline
where we would be met. We also had to provide
our own documentation for the reason we were going. Although there were a lot of categories, it
wasn’t obvious which one we could use. Doing
some internet research, I found a website that would allow us to declare our
practice of Tai Chi as falling under the religious activity category. There are Tai Chi practitioners in Havana. We could actually complete a form online,
print it out and use it as proof. Cuba
didn’t care about the categories, but the US did, as one of the five of us found
out. When she was going through US
immigration on the way home, she was challenged to show her form before being
allowed back in the US.
When our old Soviet era airplane landed in
Havana, we were surprised to see airlines there from many countries. We discovered there had always been a lot of
tourism in Cuba, just not from the US since the communists took over. Passport control was easy. They made a copy of our passports and took a
picture, but the agents did not stamp the passports. They would not show that we were ever in
Cuba. Our US tour company had an
agreement with a Cuban tour company, Cuba Education Tours, which met us at the
airport and took us to our hotel, Hotel Los Frailes. It was in the old city of Havana. We then had
a group dinner with our guide. We assumed
that the tour company was state owned.
He was quite friendly, straight-forward and probably a state employee.
The next morning, we could see the sunlight
coming through the hotel’s central atrium into a courtyard surrounded by plant
vines hanging down from the second floor where our rooms were located. The decorations and the statue by the outside
door to the hotel told us the name of the hotel meant friar or monk. A simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and
toast was served in the small restaurant in the front of the hotel.
Lobby of our hotel
Central Atrium
Cozy breakfast with our three traveling
companions
We started with a walking tour of Old
Havana, first going to Plaza Vieja. We
quickly discovered it housed a coffee shop that had a delicious cup of coffee
made with a dollop of rum, topped with whipped cream and bits of chocolate.
Plaza Vieja
Coffee Shop
We absorbed the atmosphere taking our time
walking down the narrow city streets. We
went inside the Hotel Raquel and were told about its Jewish history. It was beautiful with stained glass,
statuary, and murals. As we walked on,
we enjoyed the little pocket parks and the colorful murals on the walls of
buildings before we made an important stop at the chocolate museum. The streets were getting busier, enabling more
people-watching. I could spot the
occasional person charging to have a picture taken of them.
Hotel Raquel lobby
Pocket park with mural
Chocolates for sale
Get your picture taken here
We spotted our first water tank truck and
were told the underground water pipes leaked badly, requiring the tanks for
hotels and restaurants to be replenished by these trucks. We met our van and driver parked outside the
old city and were taken to a welcome lunch at a bayside fish restaurant,
followed by a guided tour of the National Museum of Fine Arts. It exhibits Cuban art collections from the
colonial times (1492-1898) up to contemporary generations. I was bored by the art from the colonial era,
but enjoyed the art from the contemporary times. Artists always find a way to communicate
observations of society, even though there is state censorship. The Cuban artists were no exception.
Water tank truck
That evening we drove over the bridge
spanning the Havana Bay for dinner at the Restaurante La Divina located below
the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabana, built by the Spanish and completed in
1774. After the short Spanish American
War, representatives of Spain and the United States signed a peace treaty in
Paris on December 10, 1898, which established the independence of Cuba. U.S. forces occupied Cuba until 1902 before
turning over control to a Cuban government.
In January 1959, the revolutionary group led by Fidel Castro seized La
Cabaña from the defending Cuban Army.
We were at the fort to watch the cannon
blasting ceremony, a Havana tradition that dated back to the colonial era. For centuries, every evening at 9 p.m., army
soldiers fired a cannon to inform Havana's residents of the nightly closure of
the gates in the city wall. Considering
that the current Cuban soldiers support a communist government, I was surprised
to see that the soldiers were dressed in colonial style. However, I then remembered that the ceremony was
meant to reflect the colonial period.
The next morning, we walked to the Square
of St. Francis of Assisi and briefly entered the old church which is now used
for concerts and a museum. We then boarded
our van for the drive to Finca Vigía, or “Lookout Farm,” once the home of
Ernest Hemingway. Like his home in Key
West (which we visited in 1992), it is now a museum. The interior of many of the furnished rooms
can be viewed through windows. The house sits on a large hill with sweeping
views of the Cuban capital. The property is lush with palms and bamboo trees. It has a look-out tower (which we climbed), a
guest house, an in-ground swimming pool that the writer used every day and his
now dry-docked boat, The Pilar. Hemingway bought the property in December 1940
after he married Martha Gellhorn, his third wife. Gellhorn, who had come to
Cuba to be with Hemingway, decided that she did not want to live in the small
room he rented at the Hotel Ambos Mundos where we would stay on our last
night. After Hemingway and Gellhorn
divorced in 1945, Hemingway kept Finca Vigia and lived there during the winters
with Mary Welsh Hemingway, his last wife.
At Finca Vigía, Hemingway also wrote The Old Man and the Sea
(1951) about a fisherman who lived in the nearby town of Cojimar and worked the
waters off Havana.
St. Francis Square
Finca Vigía interior
View of Havana from observation tower
Hemingway boat, The Pilar
From there we drove to an area of
cooperative housing and the location of an organic farm, Organoponico Vivero
Alamar. It was quite impressive. With little use of fertilizer, herbicide or
pesticide, there were large plots of both vegetables and flowers as well as a
nursery and greenhouse. There were
plants at the beginning and end of rows intended to attract harmful insects
away from the growing vegetables. We
were shown earthworms hard at work breaking down soil. An unexpected sighting was the voodoo shrine which
contained a cow’s skull with large horns among other items.
View of the organic farm (and sleeping worker)
Voodoo shrine
Earthworms
Diane and I at organic farm
Then it was time for lunch at a restaurant
in the fishing village of Cojimar, La Terraza.
Hemingway frequented the restaurant’s bar. Every lunch and dinner we ate while in Cuba
was accompanied by music. The standard
song we heard over and over was Guantanamera, a Spanish word meaning a woman
from Guantanamo, a city on the southeast tip of Cuba. The lyrics were based on a poem that was
written from the point of view of a Cuban revolutionary.
Hemingway’s bar
After lunch, we drove by the fort. We were on the land side where vendors had
set up tables with wares to sell. Then
we crossed the bridge over the bay and drove along the Malecon waterfront
boulevard and by the location of the US embassy, before heading towards
Revolution Square. Many political
rallies have taken place there, with Fidel Castro and other political figures speaking
to the Cuban citizens. The José Martí
Memorial was in the center of the square.
Behind it were the Government offices housing the heavily guarded
Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.
The concrete building in the north of the square was the Ministry of the
Interior, famous for the sculpture of Che Guevara made of steel and weighing 16
tons. It was made by Cuban artist
Enrique Avila from the celebrated portrait of Che taken by Korda in 1960. Just below the picture of Che is the sentence
“Forever onward to victory!” Driving
back to our hotel, we passed the outdoor steam engine museum in the Historic
District of Havana and El Capitolio, the capital of Cuba. Our last stop of the afternoon was at a large
warehouse-sized building that was full of paintings and posters for sale. As we drove around, we occasionally saw one of
the old classic cars that reminded us that after the Cuban Revolution, the U.S.
embargo was erected and Castro banned the importation of American cars and
mechanical parts.
View of Havana from the fort across the bay
Che Guevara sculpture
Art for sale
We started our special evening out at the
Hotel Nacional. Located on the seafront
of the Vedado district, it stands on Taganana Hill. The lobby was beautiful with special
materials like teak wood, coral stone and chandeliers. We walked outside to a covered pavilion where
our tasty dinner of pulled pork, beans and rice was served at the Restaurante
La Barraca. The special event of the evening
was the musical revue at the Cabaret Parisien where
the five of us from Columbia were seated at a round table right in front of the
stage. We were entertained by women in
colorful and revealing costumes doing acrobatics and dancing, while the men
played musical instruments and also did some dancing. The most fun part of it for me was when they
were enacting some skit and a man tossed me one of the rattles he had been
shaking. I gave it a couple of shakes
and threw it back up to him. What fun!
Lobby of Hotel Nacional
Cabaret Parisien performers
The next morning, we boarded the van and
made the three-hour drive to Vinales Valley, a UNESCO Centre. Once we left the populated area around
Havana, the scenery was very picturesque, mainly passing through agricultural
areas. The highway was very wide and
looked like it could double as a runway, although it was built in the 1920s,
and that would not have been a consideration.
There was not much traffic, but there was every kind of transportation: bus,
bicycle, motorcycle, tractor, horse-drawn cart, horse, walking or
hitchhiking. When we reached the valley,
we could see that it was encircled by mountains and its landscape was dotted
with dramatic rocky outcrops, known as the "mogote" hills. These are
natural karst (limestone) rock formations originally formed around 160 million
years ago by Jurassic-era erosion. They have a surreal look standing isolated
surrounded by the flat land.
Highway traffic
Mogote Hills
What was even more interesting to me, as a
supporter of the theory of evolution, was the "Mural of Prehistory,"
a gigantic work of art painted on the side of one of the mogote hills in the
1960s. It was designed by Leovigildo
González Morillo following an idea hatched by Celia Sánchez Manduley, a Cuban
revolutionary, politician, researcher and archivist who was a close colleague
of Fidel Castro. It took eighteen people
a total of four years to complete. As
the name suggests, it depicts prehistory up to the ascent of humanity. It
chronicles the history of life from ancient sea organisms, a huge snail,
dinosaurs, to humans in brightly painted colors on the face of the cliff. The mural was maintained to prevent erosion
from the environment.
Mural of Prehistory
After viewing the mural, we drove to the
"Indian Cave," named for the Indian remains that were found within it.
The Guanajatabey Amerindians, an indigenous group native to the region, once
used the cave for shelter. It was easy
to enter, and it had a well-maintained, well-lit path. It led beneath soaring
ceilings and tight rock outcroppings, making it a fun and fascinating walk. The
whole cave is about 2.5 miles long, but at most we only walked through a
quarter of it. The path stopped at a pier where we boarded a motorboat to
explore the subterranean river. The
guide called out the names of various rock formations that appeared along the
cave’s walls and told us about the blind crabs and see-through fish that
inhabited the water. After we exited the
cave, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant.
We sat outside at a picnic table and were serenaded with Afro Cuban music
and dance. There was also a
demonstration of runaway slaves hiding in the cave, somehow involving a
fire-eating performance.
Afro Cuban musicians
Fire-eating performance at mouth of cave
We spent some time at the town square in
Vinales. On our way back to Havana, we
stopped at a tobacco farm. In the barn,
we were shown how they hung up the leaves to dry. The farmer then took some dry leaves and
rolled a couple of cigars for two of our brave companions to try out. They didn’t choke and seemed to find them
agreeable.
Demonstration of rolling a Cuban cigar
Our travel companion tries out the cigar
That night, we had dinner on our own. We had seen what looked like a nice
restaurant on the Plaza Vieja near the hotel, so we all went there. Unfortunately, I had grilled shrimp on
skewers that didn’t look completely cooked, but I ate them anyway. I paid the price. During the night, I sat on the toilet having
projectile diarrhea, and simultaneously leaning over to throw up in the
adjacent bathtub. With that over, I
could go back to sleep on this our last night at the Hotel Frailes.
The next day was another long day of
driving, about four hours. Our first
stop was at the Finca Fiesta Campesina, a mix of hotel, farm and museum where
samples of typical flora and fauna were displayed, like the Cuban gar and
Hutias. The Cuban gar is the oldest aquatic animal in the island, and the Hutia
is a tree rat similar to weasels. Deer,
peacocks, rabbits, ducks and guinea fowl were scattered around the farm yard. It was an unusual place.
We then visited an island, La Aldea Taína,
located in the Laguna del Tesoro. We
went on speed boats to get to the island.
On the way we observed many birds perched in the trees and on the water’s
edge, for example red-eyed duck, anhinga, egret, pelican, cormorant and Cuban
black hawk. The island itself was
another project by Castro’s friend, Celia Sánchez Manduley. It was created to represent the life of the aboriginal
community of the island as closely as possible, thus promoting Cuban culture. There were many sculptures of men, women and
children with English signage describing the activity they were performing.
Island sculpture of boy fishing and woman
with baby on hip
Cuban black hawk
After our boat ride back, we visited the
nearby crocodile farm at Boca de Guamá. They
bred both the American and Cuban crocodiles and grouped them by age and size. Crocodile skins are used for commercial
purposes and are in high demand on the world market for making purses, shoes
and other costly items. The reptiles’ meat, bones, teeth and fat also are used
for a variety of purposes. After lunch,
we drove to Cienfuegos where we had a coach tour and then on to Trinidad and our
hotel.
Diane playing with crocodile
Crocodile chow time
Hotel Ancon had the Soviet look of having
been constructed by stacking rectangular units on top of each other. When we got there, the elevators were not
working, and our room was on the third floor.
Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we hauled our big pieces
of luggage up to our room. Then dinner
was an experience. There were food and
drink stations, lots of guests waiting at each, so you just hoped there was
still the food you wanted when you got to the front of the line. You could eventually get as much food as you
wanted. We had considered calling a taxi
and going into Trinidad for live music on the steps of Casa de la Musica, but
were just exhausted from the day’s activities and retired.
View from our hotel window of sandy beach
on the Caribbean
Revived after having a good breakfast, we
took the van into the Gran parque natural Topes de Collantes, reaching a
parking area where we would board trucks for the rest of our trip. Within view was the Kurhotel Escambray, built
by Batista and opened in the 50's as a TB hospital for his special friends and
families. The Castro revolutionaries
used it as an R&R facility for their military officers. In the 1970s it was converted to serve as a
health tourism facility, a function it still serves, while also accepting
independent travelers. There was a big
sundial in front of the Information Center where we met our guide for the rest
of the day. We rode in the back of an old
Soviet era truck further up the mountains and stopped at a coffee plantation
where our guide gave us a lecture on coffee beans and the different
varieties. But, no worry, after showing
how the beans were roasted, we were served fresh cups of coffee. One of his
suggestions was that the best cup of coffee comes from a blend of coffee beans.
Sundial
Guides (our travel guide in red and today’s
guide pointing to the map)
Our transportation
Coffee beans
When we reached our destination, our
naturalist guide took us on a long walk pointing out the medicinal use of all
the shrubs, trees, fruits, nuts and other vegetation we passed. For me, I was most thrilled to see the Cuban
Trogon, the national bird in the red, white and blue colors of their national
flag. We eventually made our way to the
place where a large pig with a branch running through it was roasting over a
fire. It was ready for our lunch, so the
men just balanced the branch on their shoulders and carried the pig up to the
kitchen of the restaurant where we were going to eat. Of course, instead of going to sit in the
dining area with the rest of us, Diane was taking pictures of the cook
preparing the pig. She shot a lovely
picture of him proudly holding up the pig’s cooked penis.
The Cuban Trogon
Pig roast
Cook showing off
After we returned to our vans, we stopped
at a family pottery shop. We watched them making the pottery, using their
kilns, and painting the pots. They had a
large display room for their products.
Making a ceramic vase
We finally got back to the hotel where we
had the rest of the afternoon off to enjoy the beach and sip some rum. I haven’t talked about rum. The first thing that usually happened when we
arrived at a new destination was an offer of some type of rum drink, usually
too sweet for my taste. On our way back
from Vinales, we had stopped at a service area and our guide had noticed we had
an interest in a bottle of rum for sale.
He told us he had an offer to make us.
He explained that his boss had given him a bottle of rum for his
Christmas present, but that he would sell it to us for less than the bottle we
were looking at, in US dollars. US
dollars can’t be used for much in Cuba except to exchange for cucs, the local
currency. In Havana, there were
locations for these exchanges, heavily penalized of course in the
exchange. We paid cucs to buy a cup of
coffee or chocolates in Havana. We paid
dollars for our guide’s rum, and it was consumed, largely by our friends with a
little of Diane’s help and very little of mine.
Rum drinkers
We packed our bags, loaded the van and
drove to Trinidad for a walking tour. As
we walked along, we viewed the residents in the activities of their daily life:
kids playing in the street, men painting a wall, a couple getting married in a
church, children in a school room, women walking to the ration store. Cuba's food rationing system has been in
place since 1962, when American sanctions placed a sudden burden on the
population. Although the prices of rationed items are low, most Cubans had to
supplement their supplies at higher-priced stores. Each Cuban received a monthly ration of seven
pounds of rice, a pound of beans, half a bottle of cooking oil, one bread roll
per day, plus small quantities of eggs, chicken or fish, spaghetti and sugar.
Boy trying to fly a plastic bag kite
Children in classroom
Wedded couple
We then drove to the Valle de los Ingenios
or the Valley of the Sugar Mills, a renowned location in Cuba for its sugar
cane plantations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was actually a group of
three connected valleys in which over 50 sugar mills were active during the
period of peak production. Due to its importance in Cuban history, it was
recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thousands of slaves worked on the
plantations. When slavery was abolished, sugar production declined and most of
the sugar mills turned into ruins, although there are a few well-preserved
sites. We stopped at one, Manaca Iznaga,
whose bell tower was seven-stories high.
The bells were rung to control the activities of the enslaved people
including regulating prayer time, meal times and to warn other plantations of
slave rebellions. It almost seemed anathema
to have lunch at the former colonial mansion turned restaurant.
Painting
at sugar plantation
Our last night in Cuba, we stayed in Havana
at the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway lived for seven years before moving
to his farm, Finca Vigia. Of course, we were taken on a tour of the hotel by a
hotel employee who pointed out all of the Hemingway-related places and let us tour
the Hemingway Room where he lived, which is now a museum. In the evening, we had a very nice farewell
group dinner at the Restaurante El Patio.
We were thrilled that the music was finally jazz, no Guantanamera. The female vocalist was great, so we
purchased some of the CDs. Unfortunately, when we got home, we found that
however they were making their CDs, they did not play well on US CD players.
The restaurant on the patio at the top of
the hotel had a complete and wonderful breakfast buffet. The view over the city and bay was
clear. Havana is a real mixture of colorfully
restored plazas and old and dismal buildings with wires going everywhere. Then we went to the airport for a day of
travel, first to Cancun on the old Cuban airplane and then on an American
Airlines flight to Dallas.
Diane and I on roof of the Hotel Ambos Mundos
At the Havana airport, I looked at the
small art pieces in the gift shop and found one that I felt contained symbols
of Cuba. The rooster is a symbol of
Cuban culture, associated with resilience, pride and the spirit of resistance. Dominoes are a popular pastime in Cuba. Falling dominoes represents cause and effect
and the artist might be asking about the effect caused by the revolution. Some say the island is shaped like a
crocodile.
Drawing from the Havana airport
In the US, we had no problem getting
through immigration. We did not volunteer
that we had been in Cuba since we arrived from Mexico, and we were not asked to
produce our letter saying we had been there on a religious mission. However, by the time we got through customs
and immigration and made it to our gate, we found that the last plane to
Columbia that day had already left. They
sent us to a hotel where we had a meal and went to bed. We were able to get on the first flight to
Columbia the next morning.
We were so glad we had been able to visit
Cuba, especially with a small group of Columbia friends. We were shown the typical tourist places in
and around Havana, but also places that most visitors on other tours miss, like
the Vinales Valley and the nature tour in the Topes de Collantes in the
Escambray Mountains where we saw the national bird. We returned home in late January and looked
forward to even more travel in 2012.