The Two Ernies

Sent from Havana 

Apart from in museums there are virtually no references to Fidel Castro here which we think is because he’s still alive.   There are however many references to the two Ernies, Hemingway and Guevara with Ernesto ‘Che’ being impossible to avoid.  Apart from the expected t-shirts, dozens of different books and hundreds of photos, his presence is everywhere, on walls, shops and postcards.  Art galleries always have Che paintings, many of which are based on the classic poster shot we’ve all seen.  The bearded and 60’s hairstyle revolutionary in uniform with forage cap in place looking sternly over the viewers head, presumably to the post-revolutionary sunny uplands in the distance.  It is a personality cult, perhaps not pure and perhaps not simple but a personality cult nonetheless.  It helps of course that he was incredibly photogenic with film star looks and of course he died young which is always a good career move.  If you don’t know Che was an Argentinian doctor, middle class like all good revolutionaries and the earliest book about him seems to be his Motorcycle Diaries which tells of his journeys around South America seeing the grinding poverty of the poor and which I think fired up his revolutionary zeal to match his already communist ideals.  

Hemingway was a good writer but as a person he seems to have been a complete pain up the backside and that’s all I can be bothered to say about him except that every hotel and bar he went in wants to make a big thing about it..

My Spanish isn’t really what you could call improving although Heather’s is and she puts in a lot more effort than me.  This is a very male dominated society so H will often ask a question but the reply is always directed to me.  This is even when her question is asked of a woman and I find myself deliberately gazing absently in another direction.  A technique I think I mastered at school (unfortunately).  However we both get stuck sometimes with “O dear, I’m caught unawares in a foreign land” and respond in something not English but mixed foreign.  So, something in Spanish followed by s’il vous plait for instance.  Last year in France, Heather ordered some coffee in Spanish and didn’t even realise until it was pointed out to her.

In my last email we’d just left Santiago and we were going back to Camaguey to overnight before we went to Belen, a lodge in the south with birding opportunities.  We’d seen it in Lonely Planet and it had been recommended by a keen birder I know who had been there only two or three weeks before us on a full blown birding trip to Cuba.  It was remarkably cheap and the return taxi ride cost us more than the two night’s full board we had there.  Very attractive, decent sized swimming pool, very good birding walk for 2.5 hours (£4).  It was quiet and we were the only guests in a 16 room lodge.  The staff were friendly and very helpful.  That’s the upside.  Downside, H not well and missed the birding, no hot water, then no water, leak onto bathroom floor, food poor and meagre.  On the Saturday, some locals arrived and the poolside music was on loud all day.  As we were leaving on the Sunday morning, a British birding trip was due in and we saw all the supplies of food being carried in for them.  Well, it was cheap.  Our taxi driver was a big black man who told us he was a sports teacher and he enjoyed his music loud too.  It isn’t just the Cubans but lots of people seem to find quiet disquieting.   The taxi music was West Indian sounding to me (the expert) and almost every song featured a referee’s whistle at random points on the track and all featured men chuckling.  It was as if a slightly drunk Syd James and Leslie Phillips had wandered into the studio.  This last reference will only be understood by Brits of a certain age.

We have noticed that at a number of restaurants, the whole meal is served at once, first course, salad and main, sometimes pudding as well.  By the way it may be Queueba to us but it’s Cooba to the locals.  Queueba turns out to be appropriate though because although Baseball is supposed to be the national sport, it seems to us that it is really ‘waiting in a queue’.   It’s the sort of country where time doesn’t run, it sort of ambles along.  

Next stop Santa Clara for no real reason than it being a convenient distance of about 4 hours on the bus.  Oh. it also has the Che mausoleum.   We have no booking but H had a conversation on a terrible line with our preferred Casa owner and doesn’t know if we’re in or not.  So we just turn up at Wilfredo’s door.  No booking but he carries H’s bag to his friend to see if he has room.   This is more of Bunce luck because his friend runs the Casa Florida Centre, the top choice in Lonely Planet which, because they print that it is so popular it must be booked in advance, we hadn’t even bothered with.  Angel has a room for the night and we’re in.  It’s the same price as almost everywhere else at 25 CUCs a night.  It is the ridiculous to the sublime.  This place is a cross between an antique shop and a reclamation yard with a really lovely tropical courtyard garden which I guess was about 100 feet long and 30 wide.  Lon Plan recommend the food so we eat in the warm starlit garden, residents only tonight because the chef is off.  There are three tables of diners.  H has the most delicious rice and vegetables and I have Lobster and Prawns.  With three courses and wine, the best meal we’ve had in Cuba has cost us £20 so we decide to eat in on the second night.  This time the chef is in and we turn up after a cocktail in the town centre (400 yards away) to find about 50 diners in the garden.   H gets served the rice again instead of the pasta she has ordered.  Angel comes over, H decides to stick with the rice and Angel tells us that because of the mix up, her meal is free.   Unfortunately we have to move for our second night which is a shame because breakfast at the Florida Centre was also the best we’ve had in Cuba.  At our second night’s place on a return through the house from the garden we see a dog sitting on the kitchen worktop.  The offer of breakfast is declined and we leave breakfastless at 7.15 for the early bus to Varadero.  No, no accommodation booked here either.  Well, what could possibly go wrong. 

Varadero is the big resort location in Cuba and lies 100 miles or so to the east of Havana.  It’s a spit of land about 20 kms long and less than 0.5 km wide for most of it.  The further east you go the more expensive and resorty the place gets.  The whole 20 kms has the most Travel Agent perfect tropical beach of pale platinum blond sand and shallow, azure water.   Northwards, about 80 miles away lies Florida.   It’s about lunchtime and baking hot but we’re able to leave our bags locked away in the first fully booked hotel we go in.  The second is also fully booked and we’re getting glum looks.  So as a way of solving what could be a little difficulty we stop and have a latish lunch, our first food since the previous evening at Angel’s place.  We ask at a Casa Particular.  No vacancies but a friend might have one, so we wander another four or five hundred yards fairly dubiously and arrive at a Casa which does have room for the three nights we want.  Bunce luck strikes again because although this one is 35 CUCs a night, the gate opens onto a small patch of grass which leads straight onto the beach.  It is 60 paces to the water.  It turns out that there’s only a vacancy in this Casa because of a cancellation, the whole of Varadero is really busy.

Bobbing just offshore and looking back to land, we see palm trees and a few low rise buildings here and there.  It looks miles from anywhere and the beach is fairly deserted.  Theres also no noise except the waves gently lapping.

Varadero is the touristy place and great for a beach holiday but it’s as far from typical Cuba as you could find.   Naturally there are lots of tourists and the restaurants and taxis to cater for them.  In Cuba generally, there are lots of Canadian visitors and we’ve seen a lot of Germans and Italians.  Big American cars still hold pride of place although the number of convertibles driving around in this scorching heat surprises me and I’ve seen two Ford Consuls here, a car my dad had in the 1960’s.   We met some Canadian women from Snowva Scotia as they put it   (-17C when they left) who said they lurved my accent.  Naturally I had to point out that I wasn’t the one with an accent and that this winter had been very cold in England with temperatures almost reaching 0C.  I am English after all and I’m so used to understatement I could claim to be ‘not bad at it’.