Taxi amigo? Taxi? Amigo, taxi?

Our next stop was Cienfuegos, about 7 hours from Viñales. Cubans can’t take the tourist busses so they’re all crammed on older and more run down busses, pressed up against the doors and windows as they squeeze more and more people on board. It's pretty uncomfortable.

Cienfuegos is the French inspired city in Cuba, with 19^th century French architecture pretty much everywhere. It’s another UNESCO city (to be honest, they all seem to be) but with a gritty vibe to it. Our casa was out of the city a bit, down the malecón and towards the sea wall. The owners were the only endearing feature of Cienfuegos where we were constantly hassled by touts, ripped off by taxi drivers, and sold tickets for the bus begrudgingly by the surly bus station manager after two trips to the bus station. I think the trouble was that we were reliant on the local systems in Cienfuegos. If you need something, Cuba can be an incredibly frustrating place to be. If you don’t need anything, it’s positively charming.  

We arrived in Trinidad on the 13^th. Trinidad is still full of touts, but is more relaxed, and a lot prettier than Cienfuegos. It’s looks as if nothing much has changed since 1840 here; the streets are still cobbled, the houses are still standing where they were built (some barely) and the horses and carts are still a common mode of transport.  

There’s not a lot to do in town – the museums don’t offer much beyond some more revolutionary rhetoric and a lot of rooms selling Che post cards and memorabilia. But the atmosphere is enough to charm you into wanting to stay for longer. The music is particularly good, with an outdoor amphitheatre near the town square playing live music from the late afternoon until late at night. The Cubans have got impressive rhythm.  

Camagüey was the next stop and it was noticeably hotter than the other cities so far. In its original location, the city was attacked by pirates so often that they had to move inland where they designed the city layout to ensure any further pirates got thoroughly lost in the labyrinthine streets. It’s also Cuba’s Catholic centre with a heap of old churches, some of which have been around since the city was founded in around 1514. In total contrast to the Catholic soul of the city, we stumbled upon a truly bizarre explicit art exhibition that would make even the most liberal/open-minded art critic blush. It definitely needed some sort of warning before entry. Luckily, we also found the working studio of one of Cuba’s celebrated contemporary artists – a nice change from the Chevrolets and Che Guevara portraits everywhere.

After a few days here, the next stop was Santiago de Cuba where it was allegedly even hotter, and the touts even more aggressive with their calls of  “Taxi amigo? Taxi? Taxi amigo? Amigo – taxi?” So far we’ve found the best way to get rid of them is the classic Kiwi “Nah bro”. Must be something about the accent that gets the message across. 

Cienfuegos architecture

"Cienfuegos is the city that I like the best"

The old cemetery in Cienfuegos where the bodies are interred in the walls because the water table is too high - hmm.  

Typical Cuban bus service with faces squashed up against the windows and doors

The new spelling of our names

Spooky Santeria Museum in Trinidad - this is for the goddess of the sea, apparently

Trinidad taxis

Swimming in the Topes de Collantes

Trinidad

Two of the three triplets we befriended in Trinidad

View from the rooftops in Trinidad

Casa Musica in Trinidad

Esther, one of our hosts, sorting rice in Trinidad

Street art in Camagüey

Fidel's super cheap ice-cream chain in Cuba, Coppelia

One of the friendlier bici-taxi drivers around town. He asked Hamish to take a photo of his bici-taxi when he saw him taking photos of others. He said his had the best painting on it.

Greetings from Cuba

We've just about come to the end of our trip in Cuba and stumbled on some good internet access so here is the first update from our travels here. 

From the stale air of Mexico City, we arrived in humid Havana on 7 February, our first stop in Cuba. Havana is packed with heritage buildings, mostly crumbling but many are being restored, there is a lot of UNESCO funding for these restoration projects. Havana is a sea port, with about 2 million people. There are touts on every street telling us to buy cigars because they are “the best present!” or offering us taxis. The best tout story so far was a guy who told us there was a Che Guevara/salsa/cigar festival on down the street (all in one day, I might add) – he asked us where we were from and what hotel we were staying at, all pretty innocent, we thought. When we walked away, we were approached by another guy who pretended to be the bell-boy from our hotel, and who was offering us the best prices on cigars because of the festival that was on. Surprisingly, the festival never materialised. So, some pretty elaborate schemes going on to try to extract some cash.

Hemingway is everywhere here, with statues of him at Floriditas bar which is the home of the daiquiri, and hotels dining out on the fact that he wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls” there decades ago.  Havana is busy, with roaming stray dogs and cats, a lot of locals, pollution from the Chevrolets and motorbikes, and litter. It’s also beautiful, with old 17^th century buildings, two old sea forts, the malecón along the sea wall, friendly elderly locals dressed up for the tourists, and gorgeous old plazas. It’s also hard to get a feel for the place – it’s very touristy; there are bus loads of Europeans here and the city is set up to keep you away from the Cubans and to ship you around the sights. We did, however, meet a crazy Australian man who insisted that he was having some very big problems with the CIA, Australian secret services, British secret service, Australian Foreign Affairs Ministry etc etc. Very appropriate for a city that feels like you’re part of an evolving conspiracy.

Viñales, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. It’s slow moving, and rural with pigs and chickens in just about everyone’s backyards.  Viñales is in Pinar del Rio province to the west of Havana. We stayed in two lovely casa particulares, bed and breakfast type establishments where you pay roughly $60 for a room with ensuite bathroom, a huge dinner, and breakfast (this is compared to maybe $250 in a state run hotel).  The people are friendly and give you a real insight into living in Cuba. The food in casas is much better than the average restaurants and your hosts serve HUGE portions – soup, rice, beans, salad, potato, malanga (like taro), your choice of fish/shrimp/lobster/pork etc, fruit and dessert.

Viñales is the agricultural capital, with plantations of bananas, tobacco (it’s compulsory to grow tobacco if you are a farmer in Pinar del Rio province; you are given a set government quota), cassava, pineapple and rice. It’s also home to some beautiful beaches, and we visited one – Cayo Levisa, a key about 2 hours from our home in Viñales. We also did a three hour walk around some of the farms here and saw a little boy learning to lasso (practising with a goat!), a tobacco plantation, and loads of farm animals roaming around. It was one of our favourite places where you got a real feel for the lives of the Cuban people. 

Daily book stall in Havana

Mojitos in Plaza de la Catedral

View from the rooftops

The man himself - Hemingway

Courtyard at our hotel in Havana

Cayo Levisa

Cayo Levisa

Carla and Caleb from our casa particular in Viñales

Local farming methods - no tractors in these parts

An old tobacco farm in Viñales

Dad you should get one of these, they're pretty good

EVERY house we've been to has at least two rocking chairs

Tobacco farming with a drying shed in the background

Making cigars - its a delicate process

This is the boy who was lassoing the goat - super cute

Oaxaca

Hey there

We're off to Cuba tomorrow so we probably won't be in touch for a few weeks. We've heard the internet access is not great there so this may be our last update for a while.

We've spent the last three days in Oaxaca, 6 hours south of Mexico City. It was a beautiful city, again with lots of churches and an amazing Cultural Centre in the old Dominican Monastery. Outside the walls of the church was an exhibition of clay statues which represent the thousands of Oaxacans who have emigrated to the USA. Next to the monastery is a huge church, Santo Domingo de Guzman, where we saw a large society wedding with a lot of sparkles and frills! All of the pews in the church were full. On our walk home after seeing this wedding, we passed a Oaxacan funeral procession with a large brass band leading the way. Hamish befriended a cat called Molé (Alida, I have posted a photo below) at a roof top bar, but didn't try any grasshoppers. We visited the largest market in Oaxaca City which was packed with clothes, shoes, veges, meat, spices etc.

Now we are in Mexico City again, about to go to the Anthropology Museum and meet a friend of a friend for dinner. Last night we watched the Super Bowl, which was HUGE here.

One final note - one of the guests at our hotel is a Bolivian "Conflict Management Specialist" who works in Afghanistan with NZ security personnel. He offered us his services when we told him we were going to Cuba tomorrow - what the!

xx

Santo Domingo de Guzman

Emigrants to USA

Monastery Garden

The old Dominican Monastery

Statute from the Cultural Centre

Courtyard at the Library of Oaxaca

Chilies! 

Grasshoppers - from left to right: whole, medium grind, powdered

Giant air balloons at the Zocalo in Oaxaca

Street scene from our restaurant

Hamish, Mole the cat and Hamish's mezcal

Society wedding at Santo Domingo de Guzman

Detail of the ceiling at Santo Domingo

Whole hillsides of cacti on our bus trip back to Mexico City