Saturday 10 March - Trinidad to Cienfuegos

The early bird not only catches the worm, it also gets to access the full fruit juice jugs in the buffet and checks out the fried food section before the Germans have ravaged it. There’s lots of food available, lots - including ‘goat’. Well, the label said goat but it was below a picture of a sheep. The idea of mutton for breakfast did not appeal, although I quite liked the notion of goat. I settled for eggs.

Ten minutes of fun and games in the shop trying to get a tee shirt changed because it was too small ended without success and with my reading in my guide book that exchanges don’t happen in Cuba. Good thing I didn’t ask for a refund, they would probably have shot me. So I’m stuck with a tight tee shirt with ‘Cuba’ written on it. Actually it’s such a cool tee shirt that I don’t mind, it just means that I shall have to avoid third helpings of pie if I want to look good in it.

Everyone is putting on weight. Normally in hot weather I just stop eating but the places we are visiting are on the coast, cooled by sea breezes and with beer that is either cheap or free. In addition, you feel obliged to finish your dinner, as you’re acutely aware that you are accessing a luxury the locals cannot.

Off on the road again, stopping briefly at a petrol station for a drink and a pee.

Off for a pee in Cuba? Make sure you have your pee pee paso. For blokes, this is just courtesy. Normally a young woman sits outside the loo and you tip her on the way out because she keeps the loos clean and attractive in a tropical climate - not easy. This can be through placing orchids on the wash hand basins of you’re in a modern loo, or sluicing the toilets out if the facilities are a little more basic. For ladies, you need to tip the loo keepers to get your toilet paper. Either that or have a hell of a lot of handi-wipes with you. (I travel with tissues, moist wipes and lemon scented wipes…and I’m a bloke!).

The petrol station had classic cars and Russian trucks and with the hard, flat light beating down on the dust and concrete it looked like a scene straight out of an Edward Hopper painting.

Back on the road. Long, straight ribbons of concrete, a real socialist road that doesn’t bend but follows the Roman principal that the quickest way from A to B is a straight line. We pass a man on a push bike but very little else. We also pass more stubble fires, the sky punctuated by columns of black smoke. Here in the countryside every home is set back from the road and is surrounded by a kitchen garden, little farm after little farm.

The other thing they have is negative billboards, one of only three I saw in the whole country. Normally billboards or murals are pictures of Che or sayings of Fidel, extorting the benefits of being a good Cuban. This billboard was a straightforward picture of Dubya with a Hitler moustache and a pretty uncompromising message about fascism.

The Cubans have taken an interesting approach to their public transport problems. At every town and village there is what I took to be a bus stop, attended by a chap dressed in a yellow jacket and trousers (known as ‘yellows’). There’s not a lot of private car ownership in Cuba, a lot of the cars actually belong to the State and you get one because your job requires it. All these cars have blue license plates. If you are driving along in your enormous Buick, the yellow will flag you down, see if you have any spare seats and ask you where you are going. If anyone at the stop is going your way - in they get. Fail to stop and you’re in big trouble.

I thought of all of those cars I see every morning on our roads, huge cars with one driver sitting in it, all going the same way and realised that the only thing that is ever going to get people to share their cars is real need. Save the planet? Not if it means sharing my car with a stranger. So, once again, a policy of sustainability, or common sense? Maybe, but in reality it’s a policy driven by necessity.

Into Santa Clara to visit the Monument of the Armoured Train. This was a turning point in the revolution. Che derailed this armoured train carrying lots of troops and lots of guns. Once the corrupt president Batista (boo, hiss) heard that the train armoury had been captured, he knew it was all up and fled the country and the rebels won the day (hooray!). In many ways it was like blowing up the Death Star.

Santa Clara is a lovely little town. We wandered into the town square where we encountered a uniquely Cuban phenomenon, beggers who give you change! This lady asked for some pens, so we handed her some and some money too. She rooted in her bag and produced a three paso piece, but not the convertible pasos we had used, this was the local stuff that the locals use and the tourists can’t get - it had Che’s face on it. She was actually giving us money! Okay, so the convertible paso is worth 27 local pasos, but I was gobsmacked - you don’t get that sort of thing in the UK.

The square was full, it was a Saturday. We looked at the hotel, where you can still see the bullet holes from where Che rooted out the last of the soldiers he had turfed off of the train. Then we watched the goat pimp. This guy was either pimping goats, or children, or was some sort of child catcher. He had a little carriage pulled by a goat. Obviously he’s saving up for a donkey. I’m not sure if the kids pay for the ride or the tourists pay for the pictures but if a goat-drawn wagon is not a Kodak moment, I don’t know what is.

We shuffled off to lunch and shared a restaurant with a band (of course) the Cuban middle classes. In Cuba you don’t fall below a certain poverty line and you can’t rise above a certain wealth line, but there are people who go to restaurants on a Saturday and take their kids. We sat there drinking our Crystal beer, they had the Buccanaro (stronger, has a picture of a pirate on it! Or Buccanaro max! Even stronger, probably not a good driving beer).

By now, I was greatly enjoying the taste of kidney bean soup and was disappointed when the restaurant served up European fare first, then followed up with Cuban, if I’d have known there was going to be Cuban food, I wouldn’t have eaten all that pizza…which I did, a lot.

Onto the Che memorial. This was serious stuff. All bags and cameras to be left on the coach. A good idea I think, as we walked toward the Che museum and memorial. With your camera in your hand there’s a temptation that this is going to be just another photo opportunity, just another stop on the revolution heritage trail. Without this, without bags, you have time to think.

Into the museum first. This might be serious stuff but the Cubans obviously loved Che and there are loads of pictures of him laughing, eating and smiling. This are not the sort of images one associated with the grim-faced dictatorial regimes of socialism. Maybe socialism only works well in sunny countries.

Hats off, into the memorial. This is where Che and other heroes of the revolution are actually interred and you keep a respectful silence and keep moving at all times. An interesting place, low ceilings with a water feature in the corner, it’s supposed to be like the caves where the revolutionaries spent much of their time hiding. Very moving.

Out into bright, bright sunlight and back to get cameras to take pictures of Memorial Square and the huge memorial itself. A stunning piece of work, all concrete towers with a huge statue of Che himself atop it, another with the last letter from Che to Fidel reproduced on it.

In front of the statue, a huge square for rallies and so on and sweeping that square, a lone woman with a broom and her small daughter trailing along behind.

We’d brought pads, crayons and pens to give away and this is just what we did. Well, just what my wife did. I of course was paralysed by embarrassment but the little girl was pleased and her mother very gracious and, hey, who wouldn’t be pleased to get some crayons and drawing paper? I might be an idiot tourist, but I was learning fast and I didn’t drag two kilos of paper half-way round the planet to take it all home again.

Pulled into the main square at Cienfuegos and the first thing we saw was a group of tourists with cameras on tripods taking pictures of a Che billboard. Later found out they were English (they were staying at our hotel) and I guess they were on some sort of photographic tour of the island. The problem is that you’d have to stop every ten yards or so to take a picture, there really is that much to see and everything is photogenic.

A quick tour of a theatre, preserved as it was in the last century, where the patrons went there as much to be seen as to see a play and which was paid for by money from a slaver (well, it was either going to be that, rum, tobacco or sugar). Then on to our hotel - the best one we stayed in in Cuba.

The La Union is a boutique hotel and what I can’t understand is, if the State own all the hotels, how come they are not all like this? I guess it comes down to having different brands, like supermarket have value and premium ranges. This place was fantastic.

Cienfuegos itself was, er, interesting. Walked down to the harbour front, past a run down section (I mean more run down than normal) and through what I can cheerfully describe as one of the worst smells I have ever encountered. I think a sewer had gone up and, by the time I got through the cloud of miasma, my eyes were watering and it was an even chance whether my lunch was going to stay put. Still, at least action was being taken. There was a bloke with a shovel in a hole digging. I suspect that he was chosen because he has no sense of smell, or possibly no friends.

Our hotel was in a posh part of the city, across from a car rental where, in typical Cuban fashion, they had solved the problem of the car-lot not having enough space for their fleet of cars by simply knocking through to the building next door. No RSJ or prop, just a bloody big hole in the wall.

At the harbour some were fishing while others were piling into a small boat with lots of beer and puttering into the sunset. Wandered a little way into town, snapping away with the camera. This included a shot of two chaps obviously making their way home from work (via a bar I suspect) who asked us to take their photo. They seemed pleased with the click but amazed when I spun the camera and showed them the picture - this was the first time they had seen a digital camera.
I felt like some sort of explorer bringing mirrors to the New World. It was a refreshing reaction and shows us how comfortable we’ve become in seeing our own images recorded. Remember telly from years ago, before everyone had video cameras (now you have your video on your ‘phone!) and people being interviewed in the street put on posh telephone voices and spoke like they had a pole up their arse? This is what that society is like and I hope to god that care is taken with the introduction of some of the toys we use and abuse here in the pampered world.

Finished the evening with the best cocktails in the world. Previously, the best cocktails in the world were mixed in la Perla in London. The mohito there was the best I had ever tasted. Until that night in the bar at la Union. The barman was a genius. We put ourselves in his hands and asked him to mix us whatever he would like us to try. So he did, repeatedly, and we crawled off to bed rather late, more respectful of the barman’s art than ever and vowing to get ourselves a cocktail shaker.

We also vowed not to try cocktails in any bar or pub in the Uk for at least six months. It would be heartbreaking to see the UK barstaff mix in their piddling amounts if spirits. The official amount of rum you must use in a cocktail is ‘a river’.

We were ready for bed, Cienfuegos was not. From the bar across the street came singing, from the disco down the road came a thump thump thump of music. How, we thought, would we ever get to sleep? The answer is - be at least 30% rum.