Sunday 11 March – Cienfuegos to Havana
Out of bed feeling much better than I deserve. Maybe rum is the perfect drink – great to drink all evening and no hangover. Or, maybe I’ve just sweated it all out. Or, maybe the mosquitoes in Havana only drink the alcohol in your bloodstream while you sleep, that would be appropriate, as everyone and everything drinks on the island, why should the insects be any different?
Early morning and it’s already hot - even though we lost an hour last night as the clocks went forward - I must write to my holiday company demanding a voucher for an hour of tropical time in lieu (I think I’ll use it one rainy lunchtime). Board coach and make for an Indian village. The indigenous Cubans, Indians, were wiped out by the Spanish hundreds of years ago, I guess the Spanish conquistadors were doing the whole of South America’s population as a job lot. But apparently there’s this little mock-up village that shows how they used to live.
What they didn’t say was that it’s on an island. Reached by boats. Speed boats. So we split up and board our speed boats. I sit by the engine, worrying a bit about sitting in a cloud of fumes if we put-put-putter all the slow way to the island. The instant the boat clears the boarding pontoon – the driver opens up the throttle and we shoot off. No fumes then, just a flume of spray and a ‘weeeeeeeeeeeeeee’ sensation in my stomach. We power along the river. Then we hit the lagoon and he REALLY opens up the throttle.
I barely have time to say ‘looks like the wind has stirred up a little chop’ before we hit the waves and my bollocks are batted into my backside. This is, I have to admit, great fun.
The island itself is a bit of a damp squib. You get lead along a boardwalk past recreations of what the Indians used to do. Basically they would fish, make fishing nets and cook fish. This was very much a fish based economy. There was even a little tepee where you wandered into the dark and a couple of Indian looking fellas in loincloths over their Y fronts banged on a drum before some Indian girl smeared your face with a couple of Nike swooshes on your cheeks. These were, I sincerely hope, not made from mud and crocodile shit, because that what it smelled like.
Obviously it was time for a rum cocktail. On the island the cocktail kit was a bottle of rum, a machete and a coconut. Get coconut, lop top, fill with rum, serve. It was served with a plate of crocodile meat (ordered because it gave me a chance to say ‘get me a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy!’). I assume it was crocodile meat, could have been chicken. Thinking about it, it probably was crocodile meat, maybe it was chicken-fed crocodile?
Back across the lagoon, even faster this time, racing the other boats, bouncing over their wash and then dodging the river by going back via the narrows, the boat powering along regardless of wash as we shot through the mangrove swamp, passing termite nests, passing ospreys, slowing down for long enough for the driver to swoop and scoop the lilies from the water to present to the ladies on the boat (smooth!) and then off again, blasting along, the boat almost on its side and a fair amount of squealing in terror and pleasure going on amidships.
Then we disembark for the crocodile farm. Jesus Christ! Knowing just how important health and safety is on the island, I was frankly terrified. The farm was basically a large lagoon surrounded by a perilously thin and inadequate looking fence, the sort of thing you use to keep out foxes, surrounded in turn by a boardwalk and viewing platforms.
Before we met the big crocs, there was a chance to get your photograph taken with a little one. He may have been little, but they had some thick old rope over his jaws. One of our group was first up. Ironically, it was the chap I had been calling ‘Rolf’ for the last few days because of his resemblance to Rolf Harris. I wanted him to say something about little nipper making it through the night. Next up was another guy on the tour, who was smiling right up to the point when the croc buckled and bucked like, well, like three foot of pure prehistoric muscle. I don’t know about the memory centres of crocs, but I could see it thinking ‘I will not forget this indignity! One day mate, you’re going to be sat on the loo and then SNAP!’.
The big crocs lie, submerged to the eyeballs in the water, oozing prehistoric menace. The ones that are basking on the bank just lie there, camouflaged, before they appear out of the sand and undergrowth, like one of those Magic Eye drawings, then you realise you are standing three feet from snarling death.
The fence did not look like it would put up with a concerted attempt by a three tonne monster who fancied chewing on tourists.
Lie and bask was all they did, until catfish-gut guy stepped up. This bloke appeared with a bucket of catfish and started hurling them over the fence. After stepping back smartish to make sure I was not splattered by an arc of catfish guts (and so marked as ‘lunch’ for the crocs), I stepped closer. Wow it was ugly. Those brutes went from looking dead to running like a fat kid runs past a salad bar to get at those catfish. Then the sound of those huge jaws cracking down and crunching the skulls of the catfish – that’ll stay with me for a while.
It does give you a respect for nature, and toilet facilities. They may have looked like shoes, boots and handbags in motion but they made short work of the food. The catfish gut guy obviously tosses the fish to make the crocs move about when the tourists turn up. I wonder if it’s really a good thing to start this kind of association, are the crocs not going to start associating baseball caps, cameras, shorts and sunburn with dinner-time? As long as they don’t run out of catfish I guess the tourists are okay.
This tourist got himself a Che beret from the gift-shop. Makes me feel like a revolutionary but look like a sex offender.
Lunch. More bean soup (I’m really starting to like it, I suspect they put rum in it) more music.
Hit the road in the afternoon for the long trip to Havana - so the driver sticks a cassette of western pop music on. ‘Now’ style compilation tape and the first track up is Phil Collins (hope it doesn’t encourage the driver towards the middle of the road) with ‘another day in paradise’ - I’m pretty sure this is an accident rather than a conscious attempt to direct our attention to our situation by playing a track about rich western people ignoring poor people. I love the Cuban countryside. You look out of the window and watch the green fields roll buy, the guys harvesting sugar, the burning of the stubble, the black fields. As we rolled towards Havana the traffic got heavier, less bicycles, more cars, more police. The police sit underneath bridges, in the shade, occasionally pulling people over. Then I saw my first traffic light and I knew that we had reached a metropolis.
Didn’t really have time to see Havana on the first night. Did see one interesting thing though. The Americans don’t have an embassy on the island, they have a ‘presence’. This is a big f**k off building in the middle of Havana which is basically ready to be turned into an Embassy at a moment’s notice. Outside it is a purpose-built protest square where the Cubans have organised protests about things like Guantamo Bay. This is a great idea. The American Embassy in London is a fortress these days, they’ve pulled concrete barriers across the roads and look at you funny as you wander up the street, a bit pissed, at ten in the evening. This is their own bloody fault for placing the Embassy on the route of one of my pub crawl routes.
Hotel and shower. It’s cold. Wow! Ah, I know this trick, turn on blue tap. It’s colder. Ahhhh, shit, shit, fiddle with taps! Do the little dance of the cold shower when you try to shield different parts of your body from a cold spray. Give up. Have cold shower. Debate whether to ask management to fix cold shower. Look at city out of window. Decide that they have quite a lot of stuff to fix before they get to our shower…like the rest of the city.
The majority of the hotels date from the 1950s and were all built by the mob. Rival mobs all had different hotels. When prohibition bit in the states, they went 90 miles offshore and indulged in drink, gambling and whores. This was how it stayed until Fidel booted their arses out in the 50s.
Tonight is a big night…tonight is Tropicana night! We arrive and here, at last, is some glitz and glamour. We’re standing in a marble and mirror lobby, it looks unaltered since the 1950s and looks the very height of mobster chic. Then we walk through the doors into the Tropicana…
…which is open air! Of course it is. We’re in the tropics. It’s this enormous ampetheatre, a stage surrounded by trestle tables and benches. We take our seats near the stage and discover that yes, at Club Tropicana, drinks are free! Ticket price includes a glass of champagne, a tin of coke…and a litre bottle of Havana Club between four! God almighty, it was only then that we discovered how well we had been treated by the Cuban barmen. Myself and the guy I was sharing the table with were the only people drinking in our foursome and the cocktails we were making ourselves were not as strong as the ones we had had made for us.
The show was great. Glitz, glamour, singing, music, a two hour extravaganza of fun, feathers, thongs and song. The girls were all beautiful (and, I think, fiercely competitive, when one lost a shoe, another lost a head-dress) and the blokes all had trousers so tight I can confirm none were jewish.
Between dancing and singing their were acrobats! How cool was that? The last time I saw acrobats was at the circus and my god that was great, but this time I had alcohol. There was a small gasp from the males in the audience when the acrobats arrived, this was the gasp of ‘why don’t I look like that when I take of my shirt?’ The answer is a desk job and beer.
I thought the show was fantastic. In front of us, two perverts did too. I kid you not, in the UK these guys would be bounced. Every time the dancers appeared, so did their cameras. Well, I hope they are happy with their 2,000 exposures (that’s the word) of fuzzy images of brightly coloured crotches. I suppose that they were able to afford such great camera gear because they didn’t have any girlfriends to spend their money on…ever. They got their comeuppance though. You have to buy a photo pass (£2.50, money well spent!) to snap pictures of the show and these idiots had not. But the real slam dunk was when the dancers finish the show by coming onto the floor and dancing with the audience…and studiously ignored these guys who were desperate to dance.
Two things you can always here in Cuba, no matter what the location, no matter what the hour - music playing and dogs barking.
Early morning and it’s already hot - even though we lost an hour last night as the clocks went forward - I must write to my holiday company demanding a voucher for an hour of tropical time in lieu (I think I’ll use it one rainy lunchtime). Board coach and make for an Indian village. The indigenous Cubans, Indians, were wiped out by the Spanish hundreds of years ago, I guess the Spanish conquistadors were doing the whole of South America’s population as a job lot. But apparently there’s this little mock-up village that shows how they used to live.
What they didn’t say was that it’s on an island. Reached by boats. Speed boats. So we split up and board our speed boats. I sit by the engine, worrying a bit about sitting in a cloud of fumes if we put-put-putter all the slow way to the island. The instant the boat clears the boarding pontoon – the driver opens up the throttle and we shoot off. No fumes then, just a flume of spray and a ‘weeeeeeeeeeeeeee’ sensation in my stomach. We power along the river. Then we hit the lagoon and he REALLY opens up the throttle.
I barely have time to say ‘looks like the wind has stirred up a little chop’ before we hit the waves and my bollocks are batted into my backside. This is, I have to admit, great fun.
The island itself is a bit of a damp squib. You get lead along a boardwalk past recreations of what the Indians used to do. Basically they would fish, make fishing nets and cook fish. This was very much a fish based economy. There was even a little tepee where you wandered into the dark and a couple of Indian looking fellas in loincloths over their Y fronts banged on a drum before some Indian girl smeared your face with a couple of Nike swooshes on your cheeks. These were, I sincerely hope, not made from mud and crocodile shit, because that what it smelled like.
Obviously it was time for a rum cocktail. On the island the cocktail kit was a bottle of rum, a machete and a coconut. Get coconut, lop top, fill with rum, serve. It was served with a plate of crocodile meat (ordered because it gave me a chance to say ‘get me a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy!’). I assume it was crocodile meat, could have been chicken. Thinking about it, it probably was crocodile meat, maybe it was chicken-fed crocodile?Back across the lagoon, even faster this time, racing the other boats, bouncing over their wash and then dodging the river by going back via the narrows, the boat powering along regardless of wash as we shot through the mangrove swamp, passing termite nests, passing ospreys, slowing down for long enough for the driver to swoop and scoop the lilies from the water to present to the ladies on the boat (smooth!) and then off again, blasting along, the boat almost on its side and a fair amount of squealing in terror and pleasure going on amidships.
Then we disembark for the crocodile farm. Jesus Christ! Knowing just how important health and safety is on the island, I was frankly terrified. The farm was basically a large lagoon surrounded by a perilously thin and inadequate looking fence, the sort of thing you use to keep out foxes, surrounded in turn by a boardwalk and viewing platforms.
Before we met the big crocs, there was a chance to get your photograph taken with a little one. He may have been little, but they had some thick old rope over his jaws. One of our group was first up. Ironically, it was the chap I had been calling ‘Rolf’ for the last few days because of his resemblance to Rolf Harris. I wanted him to say something about little nipper making it through the night. Next up was another guy on the tour, who was smiling right up to the point when the croc buckled and bucked like, well, like three foot of pure prehistoric muscle. I don’t know about the memory centres of crocs, but I could see it thinking ‘I will not forget this indignity! One day mate, you’re going to be sat on the loo and then SNAP!’.
The big crocs lie, submerged to the eyeballs in the water, oozing prehistoric menace. The ones that are basking on the bank just lie there, camouflaged, before they appear out of the sand and undergrowth, like one of those Magic Eye drawings, then you realise you are standing three feet from snarling death.The fence did not look like it would put up with a concerted attempt by a three tonne monster who fancied chewing on tourists.
Lie and bask was all they did, until catfish-gut guy stepped up. This bloke appeared with a bucket of catfish and started hurling them over the fence. After stepping back smartish to make sure I was not splattered by an arc of catfish guts (and so marked as ‘lunch’ for the crocs), I stepped closer. Wow it was ugly. Those brutes went from looking dead to running like a fat kid runs past a salad bar to get at those catfish. Then the sound of those huge jaws cracking down and crunching the skulls of the catfish – that’ll stay with me for a while.
It does give you a respect for nature, and toilet facilities. They may have looked like shoes, boots and handbags in motion but they made short work of the food. The catfish gut guy obviously tosses the fish to make the crocs move about when the tourists turn up. I wonder if it’s really a good thing to start this kind of association, are the crocs not going to start associating baseball caps, cameras, shorts and sunburn with dinner-time? As long as they don’t run out of catfish I guess the tourists are okay.
This tourist got himself a Che beret from the gift-shop. Makes me feel like a revolutionary but look like a sex offender.
Lunch. More bean soup (I’m really starting to like it, I suspect they put rum in it) more music.
Hit the road in the afternoon for the long trip to Havana - so the driver sticks a cassette of western pop music on. ‘Now’ style compilation tape and the first track up is Phil Collins (hope it doesn’t encourage the driver towards the middle of the road) with ‘another day in paradise’ - I’m pretty sure this is an accident rather than a conscious attempt to direct our attention to our situation by playing a track about rich western people ignoring poor people. I love the Cuban countryside. You look out of the window and watch the green fields roll buy, the guys harvesting sugar, the burning of the stubble, the black fields. As we rolled towards Havana the traffic got heavier, less bicycles, more cars, more police. The police sit underneath bridges, in the shade, occasionally pulling people over. Then I saw my first traffic light and I knew that we had reached a metropolis.
Didn’t really have time to see Havana on the first night. Did see one interesting thing though. The Americans don’t have an embassy on the island, they have a ‘presence’. This is a big f**k off building in the middle of Havana which is basically ready to be turned into an Embassy at a moment’s notice. Outside it is a purpose-built protest square where the Cubans have organised protests about things like Guantamo Bay. This is a great idea. The American Embassy in London is a fortress these days, they’ve pulled concrete barriers across the roads and look at you funny as you wander up the street, a bit pissed, at ten in the evening. This is their own bloody fault for placing the Embassy on the route of one of my pub crawl routes.
Hotel and shower. It’s cold. Wow! Ah, I know this trick, turn on blue tap. It’s colder. Ahhhh, shit, shit, fiddle with taps! Do the little dance of the cold shower when you try to shield different parts of your body from a cold spray. Give up. Have cold shower. Debate whether to ask management to fix cold shower. Look at city out of window. Decide that they have quite a lot of stuff to fix before they get to our shower…like the rest of the city.
The majority of the hotels date from the 1950s and were all built by the mob. Rival mobs all had different hotels. When prohibition bit in the states, they went 90 miles offshore and indulged in drink, gambling and whores. This was how it stayed until Fidel booted their arses out in the 50s.
Tonight is a big night…tonight is Tropicana night! We arrive and here, at last, is some glitz and glamour. We’re standing in a marble and mirror lobby, it looks unaltered since the 1950s and looks the very height of mobster chic. Then we walk through the doors into the Tropicana…
…which is open air! Of course it is. We’re in the tropics. It’s this enormous ampetheatre, a stage surrounded by trestle tables and benches. We take our seats near the stage and discover that yes, at Club Tropicana, drinks are free! Ticket price includes a glass of champagne, a tin of coke…and a litre bottle of Havana Club between four! God almighty, it was only then that we discovered how well we had been treated by the Cuban barmen. Myself and the guy I was sharing the table with were the only people drinking in our foursome and the cocktails we were making ourselves were not as strong as the ones we had had made for us.
The show was great. Glitz, glamour, singing, music, a two hour extravaganza of fun, feathers, thongs and song. The girls were all beautiful (and, I think, fiercely competitive, when one lost a shoe, another lost a head-dress) and the blokes all had trousers so tight I can confirm none were jewish.
Between dancing and singing their were acrobats! How cool was that? The last time I saw acrobats was at the circus and my god that was great, but this time I had alcohol. There was a small gasp from the males in the audience when the acrobats arrived, this was the gasp of ‘why don’t I look like that when I take of my shirt?’ The answer is a desk job and beer.
I thought the show was fantastic. In front of us, two perverts did too. I kid you not, in the UK these guys would be bounced. Every time the dancers appeared, so did their cameras. Well, I hope they are happy with their 2,000 exposures (that’s the word) of fuzzy images of brightly coloured crotches. I suppose that they were able to afford such great camera gear because they didn’t have any girlfriends to spend their money on…ever. They got their comeuppance though. You have to buy a photo pass (£2.50, money well spent!) to snap pictures of the show and these idiots had not. But the real slam dunk was when the dancers finish the show by coming onto the floor and dancing with the audience…and studiously ignored these guys who were desperate to dance.Two things you can always here in Cuba, no matter what the location, no matter what the hour - music playing and dogs barking.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home