Sundays are not bad here, more to see and do than many places in Latin America.I run across an active cathedral while walking the old city, so decide to stick around for Sunday mass, my first ever.That’s typical me, waiting to attend my first mass in a Communist country.Before this I’ve only attended a small one in Gualupita, Mexico, up in the mountains close to Toluca, where my sweaters used to be made, maybe still are.There we slit chickens’ throats and made mole’ and paraded through town with an image of the virgin of Guadalupe just like the most normal thing in the world.This one on Sunday is a little more involved.It drags on so long I’m getting really hungry towards the end.So when everyone goes up for their holy wafer I sneak out to go look for a holy hot dog.My stomach rumblings threatened to disrupt the service.Aqui estoy, Senor, para hacer tu voluntad.
It’s good to finally get out into the countryside.This whole trip has had too little of that, and too much city.This is something of a life’s thesis for me, that civilization is not limited to cities, and northern European cultures have proved that, they the barbarians of the Roman outback who eventually superceded and surpassed it oh, say, around 1700.The larger synthesis of course is that cities CAN be very nice places, green and clean and not so mean. My current life thesis is similar but with a different emphasis- that nomadism (nomadicism?) is not only normal but healthy, put of our psychological and biological makeup, of vast frontiers and open skies.We didn’t just accidentally disperse all over the globe- we were driven, by the powerful engines of our imagination.Obesity is not much of a problem with this lifestyle, nor are mortgages.True, cities are a great repository of great art and the great artifacts of culture; let the clerks handle that.This is dialectical materialism in real time- thesis, antithesis, followed by a more complete synthesis, hopefully.
There’s nothing spectacular about the Cuban countryside, but still it’s nice, rolling fields with agricultural plantations and the occasional wilderness.We pass through Cienfuegos, a small city on the western coast, where half the passengers, mostly backpacker types, disembark.I notice scads of touts hawking rooms on the periphery.I breathe a sigh of relief.As much as I prefer to avoid touts, I prefer to avoid expensive hotel rooms even more.I assume the situation may be similar elsewhere.When we finally pull into Trinidad an hour and a half later, I gulp audibly.Uh-oh, I’ve been here before, not here exactly, but many other places like it, most recently San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.The rot sets in first where the fruit is ripest.It’s too small, a tourist enclave and little else.A lady on the sidewalk holds up a sign reading “ROOMS $15”, looking for all the world like a cute little webcam ‘performer’ with a sign across her bare midriff reading something like “$.99 min.”They swarm me like flies on shit, even though I explain that I’ve already booked a room.The problem is that my place knows nothing of it, even though I’ve paid a deposit.
So now I need the barkers and their colored balloons and their cheap cheap rooms.That’s no problem, but I immediately book onward transportation, just two nights and one full day here.That should be enough, considering there’s no food, or should I say ‘only expensive food’.The street scene in Havana, limited though it is, at least has some variety.Here there’s pretty much only pizza and sandwiches, though still only a quarter US a pop.Then prices for Gringo food go straight up from there, $8-10 a plate and on into the stratosphere.It’s no wonder everybody wants your lunch money, as if I spend money like that every meal every day for something as common as fried chicken.But that’s the big deal here, hawking you to come to their house to eat.I tire of the routine quickly.“Open a restaurant!” I bark back.There is some good music here, though, just like the Hemingway quarter of Havana.That’ll soothe frayed nerves.There are good deals to be had, too, it just takes time to familiarize myself with them, the guy with the coffee, the old lady with the fruit, etc.I went crazy when I found coconut custards and cakes for a dime a pop, buying a bag full for the onward journey.
All in all Trinidad’s okay, with a lively little late-night music scene, though I can think of probably a dozen places in Mexico just as colonially charming without a UN plaque.But this ain’t Mexico; this is Cuba.I travel onward to Santa Clara.This gives me not only another view of Cuba, but also a different route back to Havana, so as to avoid backtracking.It certainly doesn’t have the charm of Trinidad, but compensates with diversity, lots of local theatre, and I even manage to catch a concert.At least neither’s got the bombed-out feel of much of Havana.Comparisons to Hanoi are okay; comparisons to Phnom Penh are not.Only problem is that buses stop through on their way between Santiago and Havana, so the availability of seats depends on how many people get off.Ouch!This is what happens when you don’t have Internet, but they don’t seem to know that, or care.Long distance taxis do good biz in Cuba btw, claiming prices no more than the buses for foreigners, but I haven’t tested them yet.
The only guaranteed seat leaves at 3am the next day so I take it, figuring to save a night’s rent, too, since I don’t usually sleep too well anyway.This whole trip’s way over budget thanks to that flippin’ ferry in Suriname and the generally high cost of rooms in the Caribbean in high season.Thank God for the low-budget Melbourne Inn chain in Barbados and Port-of-Spain!If Cuba had wi-fi I could balance my budget here over the next three weeks, but I can’t go incommunicado for that long.That’s not negotiable.Cuba’s starting to get on my nerves anyway, and I’m sick to death of pizza, so that’s good.Otherwise I might feel some regret.Too short of a travel time gives false impressions, too.I’ll try to find something cheaper than Montego Bay in Jamaica, with wi-fi hopefully too, maybe Negril. At least I finally get through to Thailand on my world phone.I’m not behind an iron curtain after all, just an ironic one.
What else do I need to tell you about Cuba?Oh yeah, they’ve got $3 bills, both local currency and convertibles.That’s notable, especially the local ones with Che’s picture.What else?There seems to be very little racism in Cuba, blacks and whites freely intermixing and seemingly unconscious of it.That’s good.What else?Travel is easy, plenty of hostales and casas privadas outside the capital, so nothing to worry about there.They’ll find you.These people also smoke a lot, especially cigars, though cigarettes, too.Going to a concert in an auditorium?No problem.Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.They drink a lot, too, mostly rum, available almost any time almost any place.The analogy to the Russian’s vodka is too obvious to ignore.My most communistic friends back home are usually the most pharmaceutically experimental also.Religion’s far from perfect but it’s better than all that I reckon.The three most common items at any street stall are: cigarettes, rum, and condoms, in no certain order, whatever gets you through the night.Now that sounds like my kind of dialectical materialism.
For some reason Cuba imports Gallo Beer (that’s a rooster, not an Italian) from Guatemala, reflecting new realities and trade relationships (ssshhh! Don’t tell Uncle) that got severely severed in 1954 the year of my birth and my taxi driver’s car.I thought about trying one for old times’ sake, but… naaah.Beggars here are creative, freely offering to show you their disease, bandaged back, third eye blind, etc.Pragmatic women are not to be outdone.They’ll follow you back to your hotel and THEN approach you, as if proximity implies acceptance.After a quick inconclusive chat in the Paseo del Prado, one even snuck through the door of my apartment complex while I was holding it for a key-less elderly lady.They’re quick, and stubbornly persistent.And oh yeah, Cuba’s got a long hard road ahead.They’re good people, I think, but they’re out of the loop.Some feelings are going to get hurt.Except for North Korea most all the other old Socialist bloc nations have long reverted to market economies with its ensuing growing pains.Their newly capitalist sons and daughters now come to Cuba out of nostalgia.When Cubans go to the US they probably look for lines to stand in, just to feel normal.
Cuba and the US attitude toward it is an anachronism.Communists and capitalists here and there have both fed on polarization and non-rational behavior for far too long to prove points that are no longer even valid, much less necessary. There are other more valid issues facing us today.But for me, this trip’s almost over, seven countries in as many weeks including Jamaica thrice.That’s not bad.Fortunately I got to stay in most of the countries long enough to go through the full range of emotions, in the case of Cuba: surprise, shock, disgust, adaptation, love, hate, and acceptance in that order, the other countries with probably fewer steps.That’s realistic.Always stay long enough to get sick of a place.Anybody who is totally in love with a place probably doesn’t know it very well or doesn’t know many others, or is fooling himself, one.So now I’m off to Jamaica then back to the US then on to Europe while the dollar can still hold its pants up.Life’s a beach, but I persevere.
