Feature

At Casa de La Musica in Miramar, a beautiful Spanish colonial suburb of Havana, the upbeat music of local band Charanga Habanera is reverberating from every corner of the room. The afternoon salsa session is in full swing and sexy Cuban women clad in brightly coloured lycra strut their stuff to the delight of the foreign male contingent. Sizing up the talent, most of the men are two to three decades older than the girls, but as the afternoon progresses and the atmosphere gets increasingly steamy, this doesn’t seem to be an issue for anyone.

Miramar is where the foreign diplomats and ex-pat business people live, but nearby the old mansions are divided into small units crumbling around the ears of local inhabitants. Few structures have been built in Cuba since ‘the triumph of the revolution’ in 1959, other than the flagship soviet-like structures typified by the skyscraper adorned with a mammoth Che Guevara on the Plaza de la Revolucion.

But in Old Havana, where the tourists flock, investment in restoration over the last five years has left it gleaming. The vibrant blues and greens of patios and doorways are a contrast to the wedding cake-white of the immaculate cathedral. Up around Parque Central, the hub of life in Centro Havana, locals pile into 1950s Buicks and 1970s Ladas. Tourists manoeuvre the streets in brand new Peugeots – the Hertz and Avis signs like stickers proclaiming them part of an elite club.

The sun is shining and people are meandering by the Malecon, a seaside boulevard that stretches the length of the city. It’s 3pm on a weekday but young couples amble hand in hand, squealing teens are diving from rocks into the sea, and the happy, laid back feeling seems to quietly mock the political slogans dotting the walls. Reading as fervently as the scriptures in a Catholic church, Hasta La Victoria Siempre (Until Final Victory) and Socialismo o Muerte (Socialism or Death) are an integral part of the scenery.

Back up on the Paseo del Prado, a group of school children pack up after a fencing lesson. The streets are used as common areas for all kinds of activities, so just sitting around (as many do, preferring to earn the standard monthly state salary of about £18 by working the black market) is enough to see regular life in action. Today the rumour is circulating that Fidel Castro has been spotted wandering the streets of Miramar, near to one of his many secret homes. This comes close on the heels of previous rumours that he is on the brink of death. His frequent columns in Granma, the state controlled newspaper, have been conspicuosly absent of late, and he has not appeared in public for some time.

I head for La Guarida, touted as ‘the star of paladares (privately run restarants) and the paladar for the stars’ Jack Nicholson and Naomi Campbell have been here, so it must be worth a visit. Housed in yet another crumbling old mansion-turned-to-tenement in Centro Havana, chipped white marble stairs lead to a warren of small rooms where tables are simply dressed and walls covered with curiosities. The food is good, no mean feat in Havana. Despite the fact that this is a Caribbean island with the potential for fantastic fresh produce, food served in most paladares is basic, with the traditional rice and black bean dish topping the menu. The reasons for this are many, including the fact that the best ingredients such as lobster and chicken breast are reserved for the small number of up market hotels. The atmosphere is the big draw at La Guarida; with low lighting and dripping candles it’s far from the typical paladar, most of which resemble the family front room, not least because in many cases this is what they are.

Next morning the limp nozzle in the bathroom at the casa particular, Cuba’s equivalent of a B&B, produces little more than a slow dribble of cold water. I’d trade my European passport for a strong hot shower, but running water in the house is considered quite a luxury by many here, and having a fully working shower head verges on the miraculous.

Making my way to the cigar factory, I’m wondering is this a pointless tourist cliché of little real interest, but I find a fully functioning operation where Dickens is being read from a podium at ten in the morning. Seeing the coma-inducing movements involved in rolling the cigars, it’s easy to understand why a chapter of the classics might help to pass the time.

Cigars are commonly sold on the black market and I’ve seen the locals make surreptitious journeys on the back of battered bicycles to deliver the illicit box. It’s a practice that feeds many families. But once we’ve done the cigar-making circuit, most tourists make a beeline for the official factory shop where a good cohiba doesn’t come cheap – prices vary but you can expect to pay upwards of £200 for a box.

One internal flight later I’m in Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city to the east of the island. While music and noise is ever-present in Havana, it seems to emanate from each nook and cranny in this city. In the searing heat, windows are always open and life takes place on the balconies. Teens listening to the beat of reggaetón, a heady mix of Latin American music with North American rap, compete with grandparents glued to Columbian soaps on old-fashioned TVs.

Staying at another casa particular I meet the thirty something owner Rafela, dressed head to toe in white - socks and sandals included - with her hair covered by a scarf. The house is milling with neighbours frantically preparing for a feast. Tomorrow is the last day of her year of initiation into santeria – a mix of Catholic and West African Yoruba religious traditions. For the past 12 months she has dressed only in white, has not worn a screed of make up nor looked into a mirror, and has not been out at night. Under close guidance by her chosen ‘godparents’ she has made daily tributes to the orishas (similar to Catholic saints) in the form of prayer and salutations and the ritualised sprinkling of water. Elaborate cakes and pastries have been smeared with flourescent-coloured icing and are now piled around a growing shrine in the living room for tomorrow’s feast. Plenty of beer and rum will also be on offer. After the ceremony, she’ll no longer have to follow such strict rules of purification and humility, but will continue the regular rituals and offerings to the orishas on her path to fulfilling a destiny laid out for her from before the time of birth.

Travelling back west to Trinidad, the brightly painted colonial buildings are almost toy-townesque. It’s another UNESCO heritage site, and like Old Havana, the main parts have been fastidiously restored. This time I’m with a Cuban friend, Juan. We hire a moped and navigate the back streets where we’re stopped twice by police who demand documentation (cubans and non-nationals travelling together always attract police attention). Twice they radio headquarters to check that Juan has no criminal ‘antecedentes’.

Further on we almost crash headlong into a crowd in the street. They are clambering around an elderly man crouched on the pavement over a huge plastic bag. It’s like manna from heaven – he has cheese, brought fresh from the farm. It’s hugely in demand but illegal to sell without all the right papers. We join the rest of the foragers and buy the biggest wedge he’ll give us. It’s tastes like water in the desert after the thin plastic-like strips of processed dross we’ve been eating in the city.

Leaving town we drive out to Playa Ancon, a glorious stretch of golden sand backed by shimmering Caribbean sea. Developed as a resort after the Revolution, the beach is far prettier than the three main hotels flanking it. One is built to resemble what would be a very garish ship. Communist architecture has never been known for its aesthetic endowments and has never claimed to be anything but functional, but here the natural beauty of the beach makes up for the rest.

As someone who likes milk in coffee, I’m getting used to frequently drinking it black. “How can you not have milk in a café?” I ask the waiter, incredulous. With a languid shrug of the shoulder he manages to convey that there’s simply no milk today. It’s a great country for learning to be flexible. Two of the most commonly used verbs here are to sort out and to invent, and the Cubans are amazingly skilled at both. When the soviet union collapsed in the late 1980s, the Cuban ecomomy was left in a jam, losing the huge subsidies they had long received from the big cheese of communism. The ‘special period’ was declared in 1991, with serious shortages of food and essentials. The most telling anecdote I hear is from Jorge, who was a teenager at the time. “We’d no soap, let alone creams” he grins “but we did have some engine oil so I used that to treat a bout of acne”.

All kinds of changes have taken place in Cuba this year, from the loosening of restrictions on buying certain goods to the ousting of popular government ministers. Whatever the outcome of the current regime’s bid to strengthen international relations and the effect of Obama’s policy on the island, what’s on the long term horizon is anyone’s guess. For the islanders themselves, with the possibility of travel as remote as the stars, the only thing fixed on the horizon is the distant landmass of Miami.

More information:

www.casaparticularcuba.org
www.laguarida.com

For further information on Cuba, visit our destination guide

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About the writer:

Gillian is a photojournalist and writer specialising in travel who has lived in South Africa, Cuba and Ireland. Her work has appeared in several British, Irish and international magazines and newspapers and she travels regularly on behalf of The Irish Times.