travel inspirations
Cuba ISSUE #TEN
#10 Spring 2019 | Lu€15 www.diariesofmagazine.com
WELCOME
Cuba
The intricacies of a country Cuba is one of a kind. At first sight, the country seems to be stuck in the past, as if it were abandoned scenery from an old movie from the 50’s. That would justify all of the old-timer cars and the entire neighbourhoods of crumbling colonial buildings. However, there is more to intrigue us beyond the scenery: why are there all those long queues at bodegas and supermarkets? Why do people hold ration books? Some call it an experiment in socialism, one that has been going for around sixty years, since the Cuban revolution. Experiment or not, we were eager to understand the outcome of such an extraordinary trial: has it succeeded or has it failed? After mulling it over for two months – the length of our stay in Cuba – we still haven’t found a straight answer. This is also because failure or success depend greatly on one’s terms of comparison. Anyway, from our point of view, the closest we got to a conclusion, was that the Cuban experiment in socialism seems to be like the curate’s egg: partly bad and partly good... The good parts are directly connected to the fundamental ideals of socialism. In Cuba there is a universal system that truly provides free education and free health to everyone. In Cuba, contrary to its neighbouring Caribbean countries, safety is a pleasant reality. In Cuba, the system provides homes and free food for everyone. But food is precisely the element that brings us to the other part of the curate’s egg – the less good one.
As an outsider it is difficult to judge whether there is more good than bad in that egg. The Cubans we met along the road did not help much in clarifying this – some blame the American embargo for all their problems, while a few point the finger at the family in charge. However, the majority choose to remain vague as far as politics are concerned. Still, some do complain about the system, but they will not say so openly on the streets, they are afraid of their neighbours. This editorial would not like to discuss what’s right or wrong; instead, it’d like to show how fascinating Cuba’s socialist history really is. In Cuba, history doesn’t feel like a tedious subject that you learn from dusty books. In Cuba history is experienced in the present tense, as you meet old revolutionaries, as you read propaganda placards, and as you queue for a table in a state-run restaurant. If you have been to Cuba and did not experience any of this, perhaps you were in the Cuba of the all-inclusive hotels where, surprisingly, the embargo has not arrived and shortages never occur. It is the paradisiacal Cuba, which reminds us the story that Eduardo, a Cuban taxi driver, told us. A foreigner once told him that Cubans lived in a paradise, to which he answered: “You are right, we must live in paradise because we feel we go around naked, like Adam and Eve, stripped of everything, and because apples are prohibitive!” Then he laughed at his own joke. Out of need, Cubans have learnt to live with very little and to be resilient. What’s more, they are also able to laugh about all that. We end this introduction with an invitation. Before you leaf through the magazine, why not get in the mood for this country with some Cuban sounds. There are a lot to choose from: rumba, salsa or danzón. Pick your favourite, and with the record-player playing, fill your glass with rum and, if you’re a smoker, light a puro to complete the frame. The next pages will take you on a journey through the loveliest places we found in Cuba and will tell you the stories we lived with or heard from Cubans, these buoyant people of the Caribbean. Cover Photo Orange almendrón proudly emerging from one of the streets of Havana. Photography by Jorge Valente Editorial Photo Anabela and Jorge riding in front of Che Guevara’s memorial in Santa Cruz. Photography by Christopher P. Baker
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It is sad to see the supermarkets with half empty shelves and people queuing for hours to buy basic goods such as eggs or bread. Cuba is the one country where it took us much longer to find bread or water to buy, than it took us to find rum. It is heart-breaking to see cities such as Havana, with its once-magnificent colonial buildings, collapsing because their one owner – the government – cannot afford to restore them. It is upsetting to see doctors giving up their careers because they do not want to be sent to Venezuela where they have to work for four years, away from family and friends, for a ridiculously low wage (forty dollars/month).
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CONTENTS
CITY
Havana – The old lady of the Caribbean
22
EXPLORE
Discovering Trinidad on a Quick Hop
EDITORIAL 3 CONTRIBUTORS 13 FACTS & FIGURES 14 POSTCARDS 16 CITY 22 Havana – The old lady of the Caribbean INTERVIEW
The Wonderful Valley of Viñales 44
Tasting Cuba
CARING 130
The All-Exclusive Beaches of the Caribbean 118 Classic Cuba on Two Wheels Cycling East in Cuba 108
EXPLORE
Art: José Ángel Toirac 38
Discovering Trinidad on a Quick Hop 80
Music: Janio Abreu 42
Cuba Redux – Memories of motorcycling through Castro’s Cuba 98
Baseball: Alex Quintero 40
FOOD 94
NATURE
ADVENTURE
80 A Social Project Renewable Energy
62
PORTRAITS 134 Face to Face
ESSENTIALS 144 Essentials of Cuba
CONTENTS
FLORIDA
108
THE BAHAMAS
ADVENTURE Cycling East in Cuba
Havana
CUBA
Viñales
Cayo Guillermo
Cienfuegos Trinidad Camagüey
62
Herradura Holguín Santiago de Cuba
ADVENTURE
Classic Cuba on Two Wheels
HAITI JAMAICA
44 NATURE
The Wonderful Valley of Viñales
Baracoa
118 NATURE
The All-Exclusive Beaches of the Caribbean
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CONTRIBUTORS
Göran Jäger has had the travel bug for seventeen years and has travelled almost every year, covering almost all of Latin America and most of Southeast Asia. He is always seeking the authentic life away from the tourist crowds. In his homeland, he has been an enthusiastic cyclist since his earliest childhood, often cycling in Europe and riding several thousand kilometres in the saddle every year. In 2018, he felt the need to combine his enthusiasm for cycling with travelling and so the plan grew, to tour the east of Cuba on his own for five weeks. He has also been an avid diver for many years, and has dived in Colombia, the Philippines and varied Indonesian hotspots.
Jesse Dhur is a Luxembourgish-Belgian philosophy student and journalist, with a keen anthropological curiosity, who strives for a holistic articulation of life. He spends most of his time writing and roaming around the wonderlands of Latin America. Gardening, farming, cooking and conversing are some of his preferred means of socially and culturally interacting with the people he meets. Couchsurfing and hitchhiking also belong to his favourite ways of connecting with people. Ultimately, he sees travelling as not merely an escape from one’s reality ‘back home’ but also a way of creating new realities.
Christopher P. Baker – winner of the Lowell Thomas Award, 2008 ‘Travel Journalist of the Year’– has written and photographed eight books on Cuba, including Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling through Castro’s Cuba. Hailed by National Geographic as “one of the world’s foremost authorities on Cuba travel and culture,” he has written about and photographed it for more than 200 publications, from National Geographic Traveller to Playboy. He leads group motorcycle tours of Cuba for Edelweiss Bike Travel, which he promotes at cubamotorcycletours.com
Follow him on
christopherpbaker.com
Anabela & Jorge Valente Born in Portugal and Luxembourg respectively, they explore together their passion for travelling, preferably with the motorbike. Naturally curious, they love to explore new places and to meet new people. They have travelled to all the continents, including Antarctica, and contribute with their stories and photographies to several travel magazines. In 2015 they quit their jobs to be full time editors of the travel magazine diariesof. Follow them on
diariesofmagazine.com
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CONTRIBUTORS
PESOS
Cuba has two parallel currencies: the Cuban Convertible (CUC) and the Cuban Peso (CUP). One CUC is comparable to one US dollar, and you need twenty five CUP to make one CUC. You can hold both currencies, even though the government prefers tourists to stick to CUCs. You will need CUPs if you would like to eat from street stalls, or in some state-run restaurants that only accept CUPs. This is also the currency of most public transport. It takes a while to adapt to both currencies, and there is no shame in using the calculator, especially when you pay in one currency and get your change back in another or even in a mix of both.
CIGARS
Tobacco is the second main crop, grown in Cuba, after sugar cane. Tobacco leaves are used in the making of puros, the finest cigars in the world. They are all hand-crafted and it takes nine months to develop the skill of cigar rolling. There are 250 different shapes and sizes of cigars and 27 Cuban brands.
4,000 Cuba is an archipelago made up of more than 4,000 islands and keys. Its main island is the largest in the Caribbean Sea. From the air, the shape of the island resembles a crocodile and for that reason Cuba is often called El Cocodrilo in Spanish.
11 Nine 1492
The population in Cuba is eleven million and there are estimates that another two million live abroad. The Cuban population is multi-ethnic, and there seems to be no consensus about the percentage of black and white in the population (because of mixed-races and how one feels about his origins). In 2014, a study on genetic ancestry discovered that Cuban genes are 72% European, 20% African and 8% Indigenous.
Cuba has nine sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, of which seven are cultural sites (the archaeological landscape of the first coffee plantations; old Havana; San Pedro de la Roca, in Santiago de Cuba; Trinidad and the Valley of Los Ingenios; the historic centre of Cienfuegos; ViĂąales Valley); and two natural sites (the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park and the Desembarco del Granma national park).
Christopher Columbus arrived on the island, in 1492, and claimed it as Spanish territory. The indigenous population of the island were the Guanajatabey and the TaĂno tribes. In less than 100 years most of the indigenous people succumbed to the diseases brought by Europeans or were worked to death. For that reason slaves were brought from Africa to replace the indigenous people in the sugar plantations.
FACTS&FIGURES
FACTS& FIGURES
Slaves brought from Africa were forbidden to practice their Yoruba religion and were forced to adopt Catholicism. However, they were not ready to give up on their religion, so Santería was born, as a way of syncretising both religions. Instead of giving up on their saints (the Orishas), they searched for similar saints in the Christian religion and started worshipping them, while keeping their religious customs.
1898 1959 Special By 1820, Cuba was the world’s largest sugar producer and the USA was its biggest market. Several US governments offered to buy Cuba from the Spanish, without success, and Cuba remained a Spanish colony until the SpanishAmerican War of 1898, when the USA annexed Cuba, and offered it a ‘quasi-independent’ government, while retaining firm control over the country.
The United States had a strong influence over the island until 1959, when communist revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro took over, and ousted General Batista’s dictatorship. The new government nationalised the economy, leading to the American embargo and, consequently, to a turn towards communism in order to seek support from the Soviet Union.
With the American embargo in place, Cuba relied on the Soviet Union to provide not only petrol but also primary goods such as food. Because Cuba depended greatly on this communist power, the country experienced a period of economic austerity, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, which they called the ‘período especial’. The situation improved after 2000, when Venezuela emerged as Cuba’s new economic partner.
‘ Nuestro vino és amargo pero és nuestro vino ’ ‘ Our wine is bitter, but it is our wine ’
~ José Martí
poet and independence leader
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Santería
‘Old-timer’ Old Havana A group of girls wait for the school transport, perfectly dressed in their school uniforms. The decrepitude of the building behind them, as well as the old car passing by, contrast with their new uniforms and the education of school children. Bakarne & Fernando
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POSTCARDS Send your photos with a description to jorge.valente@diariesof.lu
‘Playing for pleasure’ Santiago de Cuba
The band, playing in Casa de la Trova, in Santiago de Cuba, was having so much fun doing it that we wondered whether they were playing for the public or for themselves. It was a moment of good quality music and the public seemed amazed by this band. Jorge Valente
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’Sunset from the Paseo el Prado’ Cienfuegos Cienfuegos is renowned for its amazing sunsets over Cienfuegos Bay. Many locals come to the Paseo el Prado, and to the specific spot where the road turns into an esplanade opening up onto a lovely bay... Oliver Gerber
‘Steam Train’ Remedios One of the steam trains in the Train Museum, where one can walk around old locomotives. It is also possible to have a small train trip, but the best views of the trains is when they arrive at Museum Station. Domenico Schiano Morello
‘Cuba’s Enchanted Valley’ Viñales The trip to Viñales took me on an extraordinary journey, to a lost village in an enchanted valley, where tall Mogotes rise from the same ground where peasants grow tobacco. This land was given back to the peasants, after the Cuban Revolution, but the government still receives the majority of its harvests.
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Patrícia Campos
Havana
The old lady of the Caribbean
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Text by Anabela Valente Photography by Jorge Valente
[previous page] After a storm, the waves crashing against the Malecón create an almost apocalyptic atmosphere
Havana
Havana is arguably the most complex city we have ever been to. It is a city of contrasts, where the crumbling walls of once ostentatious buildings hide certain shortages. However, the same walls can hardly dampen the loud sounds of carefree music and nocturnal pleasures...
W
e arrived at the José Martí International airport in the evening and survived a drive with probably the maddest taxi-driver in Havana. He offered to take us on a trip the next day, which we kindly declined. He could have offered to take us to the moon, we would never have accepted, not after experiencing the way he drove.
Over the next couple of days, we would come to understand that our mad-driver was, luckily, not the average Cuban driver. We could hardly believe that our casa particular was situated behind the wall where the number 206 was fixed. Everything about that building looked to be in ruins. We rang the bell and
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[top left] One of the many statues of José Martí, national hero and poet, on the Central Park of central Havana [top right] A Iyawó is a novice going through the initiation ritual of Santería. She dresses all in white as part of the ritual
the latch was mysteriously lifted. We followed a thread that was tied to the door’s latch, all the way up the staircase to the second floor. In the absence of a proper intercom system, this was an ingenious alternative that opened the street door without anyone’s having to come down. This would be a constant experience in Cuba: because of commercial restrictions, such as the ones imposed by the American embargo, Cubans have become inventive, finding creative solutions for undersupplies. The thin thread led us to an old mulatta – a lady with her hair in rollers. She gave us a warm welcome, and led us to an inner terraced courtyard, where the building’s cat was waiting for nothing to happen. As the night was still young, we left our luggage in our windowless room and
walked one block from our street, San Lázaro, to reach the Malecón – Havana’s famous esplanade – that stretches for eight kilometres along the Caribbean Sea. Here, the houses are eye-catching, for the best and the worst reasons. Dubbed the old lady of the Caribbean, Havana’s charm and character come partially from the crumbling facades of its buildings, which were once beautiful. It is saddening to see the decaying state of this mishmash of styles, where you can still spot the very best of Spanish, French and North American architectural influences. The breeze was gentle as we strolled along the Malecón and mingled with other couples on the seawall. Many listened to music from loudspeakers, sitting with their backs to the sea, while
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Fishermen are the first to wake up, before sunrise, to find a spot at the Malecón
[left page] The Capitolio in Havana is not a replica of the Capitol in Washington. Although they look very similar, the building in Havana is higher, wider and longer; here with a Ural (a Russian sidecar motorcycle) in front of it
drinking Havana Rum from the bottle. The atmosphere was relaxed, almost romantic, given the number of couples sitting next to each other, holding hands and kissing. It could have been the influence of the full moon, or the waves crashing on the wall that sprinkled skins, refreshing the bodies in a night that was pleasantly warm. Eventually, we returned to our tiny room, where the air was stale and, as we would find out later, the walls were much too thin. We were already fast asleep, when the couple next door introduced us to the pleasures of ‘dirty Havana’. They stayed up all night, playing adult games that culminated with the lightning of
cigars and filling up of glasses. So thin were the walls, we could practically have toasted their health with them. The next morning, still under the influence of the jet lag (or was it to avoid meeting our neighbours?), we left the room early and toured the city when Havana was still half-asleep. Apart from a handful of fishermen trying their luck from the Malecón, the streets were deserted. As if suffering from a hangover, windows started opening up only around noon, and yawning faces slowly appeared on the doorsteps. That’s when we noticed a woman, dressed from head to toe, all in white. Perhaps because we were staring at her, she addressed us
The almendrones are immensely photogenic, but without the Habaneros the streets of the capital wouldn’t have the same charm
“Mi amor, ¿no sabes quién soy?” No, we wanted to reply, as we had no idea who she was. So as not to unmask our ignorance we did mumble something like “Your face does look familiar”, to which she laughed. She was a Iyawó, one of the newly initiated in Santería, the Cuban religion. As it was, we should have recognised that she was a sort of novice. She was dressed all in white as a symbol of purification. She and all the other Iyawós we would see in Cuba (and there were many) undergo a one yearperiod of limitations and prohibitions. A sacrifice to be ‘reborn’ as a better person. Their sacrifice includes dressing in white only, having little social contact and eating with a spoon! This last one sounded like the most dreadful of all sacrifices. Imagine a big, fat steak and
all you get to eat it with, is a spoon!! In order to avoid any such problems, we decided to go to a vegetarian restaurant. This would be our only vegetarian experience in Cuba. Once inside we asked what the day’s speciality was. The answer was short and quick ‘chicken’. We argued that the sign outside said restaurante vegetariano, to which the young lady replied “It is correct. The side dish is rice with vegetables”. Understood and accepted… We roamed the streets, every now and again entering historic hotels such as the Habana Libre (Fidel’s headquarters when Camilo Cienfuegos conquered Havana), or the hotel Presidente or the Hotel Nacional with amazing views over
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The bici-taxi is a kind of rickshaw drawn by one person that takes up to two passengers. There are many of them near the stations
Improvised stalls, built on human-powered carts, sell fruit
Barbershops and manicurists are two of the most popular businesses in Cuba. Both men and women look after their appearance. These places become meeting points to take care of one’s hair, beard or nails, and most importantly, are also a place where neighbours can meet to share community news or casual gossip
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