cuba - the wrap up! #day8

we enjoyed our last morning at the suite, and headed out to finally get to a few of the havana viejo museums.  little did I know this would provide some more insight into cuban life, but not because of what was on display!  we walked into the museum of the revolution and were greeted by a lovely cuban lady who was so excited to show us around, sharing everything about the history of cuba.  as we walked through looking at the artifacts, flags and other stuff that is typically seen in a museum (you can see how much I get from museums), the funny part was the cuban lady herself!  she took our camera, urging us to pose for photos here, there and everywhere as she snapped away eagerly as if we were the first tourists to ever enter the museum.  as she came to the end of her turf in the museum (each guard seems to be assigned to a couple of rooms that they cover), she awaited her tip.  and on we moved to the next room to experience the same thing with the next cuban lady/guard, and this went on as we progressed through the museum handing over money each time as it was expected.  we moved on to another museum and the same situation occurred, only this time, one of the ladies continued to pursue us after she got her tip, telling us in spanish about all her ‘ninos’ and asking for more than we gave her.  we came to realize this is the typical situation so we opted to pass on the rest of the museums before we ran out of money and had none left to pay the airport fees!  interesting that we had not experienced this aggressive behavior until the last day of the trip, and I was pretty happy we had skipped most of the more tourist-y exhibits after finding out that this is the norm.  we went back to the suite to bid farewell to our casa owners, leandis and francois, and headed to the airport.  

as we entered the airport through the same door we came through a week earlier, it seemed that way more than a week had passed - more like 2 decades because of the time warp we found in cuba. we loved exploring the city, experiencing the throwback culture, and most importantly, meeting the very special people of the country.  the memories will stay with us and we are already in contact with our new friends via email, depending upon when and if they can get to a wifi hotspot!

adios!

the fort

view from the fort

the meat market (literally) - no gloves!

grocery store

street vendor

never gets old, yet so old!

beauty in disrepair is the theme

life if art

the colors of cuba

yes, people live here...

...and here!

the street to our suite

adios to our hosts, leanne and francois!  in blue is descales, our breakfast queen :) 

cuba #day7

day 7:

after our usual breakfast at the suite - fruit plate and pineapple juice, followed by one slice of ham and cheese on a plate, scrambled eggs and toast and of course perfectly fresh preserves - fresa is our favorite (fresh strawberry preserves) served with tea/coffee.  it is the same every day, which would probably start to get old, but I am not complaining!!  this would turn out to be the best day of the trip :) we started out with the usual exit into the sauna (aka streets of cuba) – let the sweating commence.  first stop would be the gallery of ernesto villanueva – the artist we visited in his home earlier in the week.  we knew we would purchase a piece of art, especially after spending time with such a gracious man and his wife.  we took awhile to select what we felt was right, and we look forward to welcoming our new painting to the beach house, coincidentally titled “sunset”!  we did our last stroll down the main shopping street called obispo.  

following the shopping, we asked ernestoche (driver) if he might take us for an hour or 2 to drive around the central havana area so we could take some pictures of architecture and visit some sights we had not done with the guide.  we figured this would be amusing enough without yaniet to translate, but we found out that morning that our spanish translation app actually works without the internet!  (better late than never on that discovery – oops!!) but of course, without the internet available, it only worked in one direction - from english to spanish. so we could tell him what we wanted, but when he replied…… ??? you get the picture... 

this was the day of surprises because we found out that he was like the mayor of havana and seemed to know everyone whenever we stopped to take some pictures!  suddenly, he was our secret tour guide, showing us his special city sights, for example a local park with the most beautiful cieba trees, and of course he was so excited to take pictures for us.  he took us into one of his favorite little churches off the beaten path that was just lovely.  he even tried to get us into a city cigar factory where they roll the cigars, which is the final step after the farm we visited earlier in the week!  unfortunately, he could not work his magic to as it was closed, but we appreciated his effort.  he spoke in rapid spanish to various security guards here and there as he navigated us through the city and he managed to get us a private tour of an art community we were hoping to see but was closed on monday.  the place was quite incredible - the “museo organico de romerillo”  - aside from being a museum itself, it is an art community where the art is integrated into the neighborhood for example, in a local grocery market, library, etc.  they are working in conjunction with google and the mantra was ‘con internet yo puedo’ – which means “with internet, I can”  (the opposite has been the mantra of our week!!) – and believe it or not, this place had free wifi available if you had the password.  woo hoo!!  apparently, they give out the password to anyone in the community, so of course there were people along the street standing around using the wifi.  since the museum itself was further from the center of the city, there were not as many people milling around as usual, but I’m sure as word spreads, that will change. 

while we got the royal treatment, ernestoche went to pick up his wife from work at a nearby university.  he certainly saved the best for last when we were lucky enough to spend time with this little gem of a woman named sary!  the happy couple (who also happened to be newlyweds), took us to a special coffee shop that is tough to describe after the fact, but the oh the charm – the seating was so unusual!  there was a bed frame which had been converted into a table with the mattress suspended from the ceiling above it, a bathroom with cushions in the bathtub and on the toilet, as well as a stage coach you could sit in and the back portion of a classic car!  it was hard to know where to look and impossible to really see every detail of this amazing place.  ernestoche and sary were so thrilled to share this place with us, they were like little kids pointing everything out!  it was adorable :) as well, it was located right on the water, so when sitting outside, there was a view of the caribbean. 

following our special coffee break, we returned to havana to change and regroup before our farewell dinner with yaniet, ernestoche and sary.  we picked a cute restaurant called "mama ines and enjoyed the company of our cuban friends, having so many laughs and jokes about the week, showering them with gifts and, they managed to surprise tom with a birthday cake at last to make up for the failed breakfast cake the previous morning.  all in all a fantastic night which ended in a borderline tearful goodbye to "our cuban daughter" yaniet!

stay tuned for one last cuba post tomorrow.

street action

beauty despite disrepair

classic sights

cieba tree

arches and more arches

some outdoor art at museo organico de romerillo

private tour and just a bit of google branding

this is not a joke - it was sitting on a table in the museum

 borrowing a little free wifi "with internet I can"

cozy tub time - cafe fortuna joe

surprised they are not actually using these typewriters :)

toilet bowl table

empire state of cuba - cafe fortuna joe

outdoor seating - the view

paladar mama ines

our cuban family :)

cuba #day6

day 6:

happy birthday tom!!  he seemed ok with the entrance into a new decade and he was very happy we were away enjoying such a unique experience to celebrate it.  at our hotel breakfast, they tried to bring a cake for tom because our guide told them it was his birthday, but it was a ‘fail’ since it took too long and we were on our way out of the breakfast area before they could execute. we piled into the enestoche-mobile for our ride back to havana to spend our last 2 nights in our favorite suite havana!!  we arrived back in time to check in and walk around to some of the little shops.  there is not much to buy except for tourist trinkets, but there are a few jewelry artists and of course I needed to bring something small home for myself to remember the trip.  as we decided to check out a few museums finally (tom always loves this, me, not to much) and of course everything had just closed and apparently nothing is open on monday which was the following day when we had all the time for sightseeing. oops.  we walked down the road a bit to find a place for lunch and we happened into an unexpected experience.  good thing we had the mindset ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ because the place was the definition of a third world road side stop complete with flies everywhere, cats eating off the floor, and an antique metal rotisserie with chickens roasting which looked like they’d been there for a week.  I was skeptical, but we decided to have an authentic cuban experience.  the prices on the menu were crazy, 3 “kooks” for a chicken meal!  what??  It was a scene, but we went with it.  2 cuban ladies were running the shop, no tourists in sight, locals in and out buying beer, and a chef in the back hard at work on our chicken meals.  we of course attempted to chat with the waitress who did not speak a word of english and then tom went to photograph the chef at work in the kitchen.  I had that thought that maybe he should not go see where this meal was being cooked because the place was honestly a wreck, but for some reason, it never looks that bad in the photos as you will note below even through I tried to capture the rawness of the experience. we waited so long for the food and we were wondering what the heck he was doing to the chickens!!  but when the meal appeared, it was like a work of art on a plate and it tasted great. #onlyincuba

after lunch and a quick stop a the tourist-trap flea market on the water, it looked like it might downpour any moment, so we opted to head back to the suite.  the rain never came so we enjoyed some relaxation time on the roof deck and tom enjoyed his birthday cigar and a glass of cuban rum.  amazingly and for the first time so far, the humidity dropped for a bit and it was breezy and comfortable outside probably due to the little storm that passed without unloading any rain.  by the time we headed back out for the dinner, it was of course hot and humid again – cue the hair frizz! we had the birthday dinner at chef ivan justo - a very unique restaurant located again in an unassuming little colonial apartment with the most unassuming entrance – it’s a theme.  though we felt a little rushed due to the speedy nyc-style service, the ambiance was great, the meal was excellent and the overall experience so unique.  we strolled back to the suite using the backroads and seeing true havana life: a barber at work at 10 pm in his home shop, people sitting around their living rooms that are pretty much open to the street with no privacy or screens to keep out animals, bugs or people like us looking in on them for that matter.  mostly they watch tv or sitting around in groups talking.  as mentioned, there is no internet and the tv’s have only 8 channels.  yaniet explained that they get movies and music on usb’s that are shared on the black market so if they are lucky enough to have a tv with a usb input, that is great, but most of the tv’s in the homes are the big old clunky heavy ones with the giant back sides.

I thought I would share the answers to a few questions a friend asked about the trip:

“where you able to travel wherever you wanted to go?”

yes - there were no limits as far as we were aware.  they seemed to love it when they found out we were American and the word amigo was spoken often in these chats!

“do they speak of the government at all?”

they do not initiate conversations about the government, fidel, etc, however we read ahead of time not to talk politics, so we didn’t particularly initiate it either.  after a few days with our guide, we felt comfortable enough to bring it up and she shared with us memories of fidel speaking in the large square addressing the people and how much everyone loved him.  they seem to revere him to this day and we never sensed any negativity from them toward him.

“do they realize how far behind they are as a country?”

they are somewhat aware, but the reality is, they know life as they know it, and they accept it.  our guide was a very smart young lady who seem to have a good understanding of the fact that things are far behind, and she feels lucky to have a laptop and other luxuries.  though she lives simply, she does not feel that she is missing anything and seemed very content and happy in her life, with typical career goals as any young girl might have -   hers: to someday be an event planner.

“what do they think about our upcoming election?”

they just shake their heads at the mere mention of trump.

spotted the first apple car on the road back to havana

waiting waiting waiting for lunch in the hot heat and humidity (redundant on purpose)

chef at work - like at that counter!!! 

the meal!! crazy good.

they loved posing for this photo and were so proud!  cuban lunch success

walking sights - that scaffolding looks safe (???!!!)

the crazy flee market 

birthday cigar break

cafe ivan justo - entrance to restaurant! (sign? anything? nope)

and this is the charm we found inside!

birthday dinner #success

selfie with the waitress and cuban kitchen workers!

just someone's house, door wide open, no screens

another home, come on in pooch, why not...

barber at work - 10 pm

pedicab garage