havanna

23 october 2012

the flight from panama to havana was great, i found juliana at the airport, we made it through immigration with no problems but many jokes (she always made me go first in line in case i didn't make it through 'the door'), we found a taxi and went to our 'casa particular'.  we made the taxi driver turn off madonna and play some cuban music.

our casa is a high-rise complex in new havana.  we have a 'mother' and a 'father' and i could understand every 7th word they said.  cuban spanish is near impossible.  they don't say the letter s.  at all.  but that doesn't stop them from talking to me constantly, at least after a couple days they started to speak slower and use small baby words.  julianna is way better understanding them, she's had a lot more spanish over the years and didn't spend the past month with gringos like i did.  our casa was decorated in complete 70's fashion, much like all of havana seems to be.  

we went to hotel nacional first to have a celebratory mojito and meet julianna's friends from germany.  they'd been here 10 days already and were about to go home. claudia and michael rented a car and drove all over the island, said it was pretty easy.  

our first nite out we went to cabaret parisien to see a show for $35 each.  kinda pricey but hey, we're in havana, everything here is expensive.  the exchange rate is $1 for 1cuc, and then they charge you 15% for the service.  so actually, everything is 15% more expensive.  

the cabaret was fun, lots of great music and crazy dancing in risqué costumes.  exactly what i think of when i think of a show in cuba.  

we spent the next day wandering through old havana, stopping at all the famous bars that hemingway frequented.  bodega el media, floridita, all of them.  mojitos galore.  too many, in fact, i haven't consumed that much sugar in the entire 5 months i've been traveling.  all of the bars had cuban bands, usually a singer and 3 others with various instruments and backing vocals.  amazing music.  we also stopped into a couple art museums for early cuban art.  beautiful.

the biggest question that julianna and i had was whether we should take buses everywhere or rent a car.  finding a bus schedule was basically impossible.  we could spend $20 to go to the bus station just to make a reservation, $20 back, then $20 again with all our bags.  none of the tourist info stands were any help, i don't know why they even exist.  everywhere you turn there are 20 guys yelling 'taxi lady' but no one knows the bus schedule.  

we did finally get a taxi when we were coming home late last nite, a '55 chevy.  it was gorgeous.  the cars here are amazing.  there are some modern cars of makes that i don't recognize but mostly what catches the eye are the vast numbers of american cars that were made when my parents were young.  some beat up but a lot are in mint condition.  there are also hundreds of bicycle taxis and horse and buggies.  

after talking with the other germans about how easy it was to drive around cuba we decided on renting a car.  we went to several rental agencies (cubicar, all the same but different prices) until we found the best price at a large hotel in old havana.  it was pretty straight forward but julianna argued about everything.  i thought the guy was finally just going to kick us out.  but then she'd been angry about lunch, our host family, basically everything today.  she's not afraid to tell people that she's upset, which i do like about her.

we get our car but we have no real map of the roads.  that was an argument that julianna and the rental guy had, lasted for a while.  finally one of the guys drew us a map to the autopista and we went home to collect our things and get on the road.  it was about 4pm at this point, and we had to say goodbye to all the people in our building.  that took forever.  one woman (who we're renting from when we come back to havana before flying out) wanted to introduce us to everyone that was currently staying in her apartment, lots of small talk, it was 5:30 before we finally got out.  our first destination was vinales, about 4 hours away, no map, sun setting in 2 hours, why did we think it was a good idea to leave so late?

but leave we did, with total fanfare.  we agreed that i would drive and julianna would navigate.  almost from the start 'slow down', 'watch the bikes', 'careful', total back seat driver.  i'm surprised at how good i was driving given that its been so long, and finally i had to tell her to relax, everything is under control, just tell me where to go.  driving through havana was kinda crazy but not too bad.  the first thing i noticed was that there are no street signs anywhere.  no direction, no arrows, nothing.  so we follow the guy's hand drawn map and everything seems to be going well.  some roundabouts, a tunnel, all good.  so we drive and drive.  i'm happy.

when we entered the small town with no cars, everyone on bikes and horses, that's when i started to wonder where we are.  the sun was setting and i thought ok, we're going south, i think that's good.  but vinales isn't south.  the road becomes dirt.  this can't be the autopista.  we drive through a muddy pothole the size of the car.  really not good.  julianna says that we need to follow this for 24 kilometers.  um, hell no.  dead end.

turns out that we're not on the autopista.  julianna knew this but didn't tell me an hour ago when it would have been easy to go back.  i just figured that we're in an undeveloped country and i've spent months driving on dirt roads.  so i turn around.  we make it back to the small town and everyone in the road is waving and making signs at me that i can't understand.  i keep wanting to stop but julianna thinks that everyone is going to rob us and refuses to let me talk to anyone (our host family was very adamant that we don't pick up hitchhikers or talk to anyone).  but really, i don't want to die in the middle of nowhere in cuba so the next man yelling (gigantic black man), i stop and roll down the window.  turns out i'm going the wrong way on a one way.  this at least is easier to understand than the first guy i asked (julianna almost freaked out) whom we didn't understand at all.  so we get directions back where we came.

as we're driving back to find the autopista there's a fabulous sunset.  which of course means night.  we make the decision to go back to havana and spend the nite and try again in the morning.  but at nite with no signs we get lost.  our hand drawn map is now even worse.  did we pass this before?  which direction did we come from in the roundabout?  where the fuck is the tunnel?  

after a couple turn arounds we find familiar ground, we find the tunnel, we find the glorious ocean on the left hand side.  julianna is almost in tears, i'm trying to pretend like all is great, but all the while i'm deciding where would be a good place to spend the nite when we are so lost we can't find havana.  i did decide that if worse comes to worst i could pull into someone's driveway and pay them $10 to sleep in the car.  but at no point did i see a place that would have been appropriate.  i would have settled for kinda sketchy but didn't even find that.  

i truly enjoyed our first adventure driving in cuba.  never once during this trip did i imagine that i would be driving across cuba so it was a mark in the positive adventure column.  we got lost, i didn't freak out, even when there were no lites anywhere and i had to dodge crazy bikes and walkers and swerving oncoming traffic.  i thought julianna might have a stress attack so repeating 'todo esta bien' over and over helped us both.

we both laughed and cheered and almost cried when we found the hotel nacional again, its right across the street from our casa.  the front of our casa is a big hangout for people, and they were all there when we left over 3 hours earlier, so it was a crazy scene when we pulled in.  our 'mother' was sitting on the stoop and instantly she needed to know why we were back.  luckily the woman who reserved our room didn't show up so we could spend another nite without any hassle.  except for the hassle of explaining to everyone why we were back and getting lots of 'i told you so's ' in spanish.  everyone decided to blame me because i was driving.  whatever.  that's what i get for having a stressed out navigator who won't tell me when she thinks we're lost.

we took all of our stuff out of the car, back to our room (which, btw, is a small room with one small bed, i liked julianna a lot in guatemala and instantly am sleeping with her and spending every moment together, not quite my way of doing things but its working).  we had to take the car to secure parking at the hotel so we had a beer and laugh about all the crazy things that happened in the past 4 hours.  we also made a decision that if we make it to vinales tomorrow and have a lot of trouble we're ditching the car and taking buses for the rest of the week.  there's a fee to leave a car somewhere other than where you rented it but i don't care, if this is too much of a pain in the ass it will be worth it to bail.  

i'm now sitting in the stairwell in the complex because i can't get anyone to stop talking to me long enough to write anything.  as it is, everyone who walks by asks why i'm still here.  i don't even care that i'm speaking in horrible kindergarten spanish now, i have beers from the bar across the street and i'm happy.  this has been the most adventurous thing i've done on this trip, so far out of my comfort zone, and i survived.  i didn't succeed, but i survived.  i don't even care that everyone thinks i'm a total moron.  todo esta bien.  

cuba as a whole has been way outside my comfort zone.  i usually sit at a restaurant or hotel and plan with the internet but that isn't possible here.  we got a guide book from julianna's friends but its in german.  i figured that there would be regular buses and tourist agencies like everywhere else but instead i find nothing but people i can't understand and men that want to marry me (julianna thinks that i hit some sort of latin sweet spot, everywhere i go men fall over themselves to talk to me and tell me how much they love me while ignoring women that i think are way prettier and younger than i am, i don't understand it at all, i wish all this love would get me something other than declarations of love, why am i paying for anything?).  

but tomorrow's another day, we're having breakfast at 7, finding a real map, then hitting the road again by 8:30.  we should get to vinales by noon if all goes well.  and if it doesn't, at least we know the way back to havana and can take a bus.  

todo esta bien.  

wow