I love Cuba. Have a look at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8430629.stm>
Saturday 26 December 2009
Wednesday 16 December 2009
HOLIDAY IN CUBA PART 2
Here is the second part of the tale of my holiday in Cuba
That Friday evening, some of us visited the Ernest Hemingway museum in the hotel. It was arranged that we should go there after the usual opening hours. The curator opened the place up especially for us. The museum is situated in the part of The hotel where Hemingway had lived for a while before he bought his own house. The hero of his story The Old Man And The sea was based on a real Cuban fisherman.
Hemingway supported the Revolution in 1959 and there is a picture in the Museum of him and Castro together. On his death, Hemingway left all his property to Cuba.
I asked the curator if we could touch the typewriter Hemingway used to write some of his greatest novels. He told us that this was not allowed, but then relented. To touch the typewriter of the great man and to be one of the few people who would ever touch it again was a real privilege.
That night a group of us younger ones instigated a mini revolution of our own. We broke ranks with the others who decided to spend the evening in the hotel and wen out looking for … . . well, excitement I suppose. Gwen was unanimously elected leader by the Revolutionary Council and was promptly renamed Gwenvara, after the revolutionary Che Guevara. A celebration was called for so we drank a few of the “best mojitas in Havana”, or so the man in charge of the bar we went to said, and he was right. Never again did I taste mojitos like those. We then made our way to the Old square and there we got talking to a woman who seemed to be a political activist of some sort. She told us that everything in Cuba was not as it seemed. The health system was not, she said, as good as we were lead to believe. She told us that she been in prison twice for “activities against the state and against the revolution.”
She then started to lead us through various streets. When the sighted people amongst us reckoned they were completely lost, we grew a bit worried about where she was taking us and asked her to take us back to the hotel, which she did. She seemed very keen to talk to us and exchange ideas about politics. She took a great interest when I told her about the down-grading of the hospital in Kidderminster and how this had resulted in us voting for an indipendent MP rather than an MP from a big political parties.
On Saturday we traveled in our air-conditioned bus 200 miles to the city of Trinidad. Throughout all our jurneys in the bus, Rai bave us a lot of information about Cuba. When Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba, it was already occupied by the Taíno and the Ciboney people. They were exploited by the Spaniards and either worked to death or died of European diseases. Man’s past inhumanity to his fellow man in the name of empire building or just out of sheer greed never ceases to disgust me. I often think the World would have been a much better place without humankind.
On the way to Trinidad we stopped at two places: Guama and Cienfuegos. At Guama we visited a crocodile farm where crocodiles are bred and then released into the wild. We were able to touch and hold them. My memory of how a crocodile feels to the touch has faded I’m afraid. Perhaps I was hot, tired and only half awake at the time. I was amazed at how laid back these crocodiles were. I suppose they were just used to being handled by humans. When one crocodile was casually draped over a fence by someone, he didn’t seem to care.
We went for a tour around Cienfuegos, one of Cuba’s chief seaports. It has long been a center for the sugar trade. It is close to some of the most fertile landscape in Cuba and also has a beautiful bay.
In Trinidad we stayed at the Brisas del Mar hotel. It was right on the beach and at around seven o’clock one morning a group of us, including my room mate Irfan, who was a really slow starter first thing in the morning usually, went for a swim in the sea. To swim and float around in the warm waters of the Caribbean was one of the highlights of the holiday for me.
Later we went to try our hand at playing Cuban musical instruments. The were bamboo sticks that were struck together to make a sort of drum sound, drums and maracas and I played an istrument that consisted of some sort of rough material that you strummed with a pointed stick to make a rough scratchy noise. We accompanied a group of professional musicians. When they played it was real music, but when we started in it began to sound like a terrible noise.
One morning during our stay in Trinidad we went to a dancing school to try our hands at salza dancing. Rai and the dance teacher showed me what to do with my feet by making the step movements with my hands and explaining which foot to put forwards or back or sideways. When I tried to dance with rai or the dance teacher I seemed to be able, to some extent anyway, get the hand of it, but when I tried to dance with anyone else it all fell apart.
For the finale, we were let loose on some unsuspecting Cuban girls. We all had a lot of fun.
I spspect this kind of dancing needs a lot of practice, without which my memory regarding which foot to move first and whether to move it back or forward will deteriorate rapidly. In fact I think it already has, which is a shame, because the discipline and skill involved in the dancing reminded me of judo moves I used to execute during my time as a competitor in that sport.
It was either on the Sunday or Monday night that we decided to have a party on the beach. Rai was with us too that evening.
Throughout that day I had been forced to go to the toilet a lot. This problem persisted into the evening and forced me to leave the party and go back to my room earlier than I would otherwise have done. I was pretty fed up about it. I hadn’t been drinking either; I had stuck to orange juice. This problem persisted throughout the next day.
On the Monday afternoon, our last afternoon in Trinidad, Jill went with me for a swim in the sea. She was the only one in the group who seemed keen on the idea of letting me float or swim in that environment. I can’t wear my hearing aids in water so because I can’t hear much without them we worked out a system. Jill would point me in the direction she wanted me to swim in, I would swim out for a bit and then, using the sun to orientate myself, I would swim or float back towards the shore. This worked very well and I really enjoyed myself. I think Jill did too. I spent a lot of time in the sea that afternoon – a big mistake. I wasn’t used to the sun, it caught me, and I burned.
Tuesday was Rai’s last day with us. She would travel with us to Varadero and then she would have to go back to Havana.
I didn’t feel ill exactly, but before our 200 mile long bus journey started I was using the toilet frequently. I decided to drink as little water during the journey as I could. I didn’t want a repeat performance of the beach party evining. Anyway, there would be stops on the way to Varadero. It would be all right, I hoped.
We were to make a stop in Santa Clara and on the way there Rai gave us a lot of information about the revolutionary Che Guevara. It was at Santa Clara that the former dictator Batista and his men surrendered to Che and an arms train was derailed.
In Santa Clara we stopped and, after a wait in the hot sun, we went into the Che Guevara museum. A recording of Che’s voice was playing. From what Rai told us, Che sounds like a very passionate and intelligent man. He had studied English poetry amongst other things, and could recite some of Keats’ poems from memory.
I felt abdominal pain, I felt sick. “Christ”, I thought, “I hope this passes off soon.”
I was in bed. I was awakening from a strange dream; something about touring a museum. Something’s not right. I’m not in bed. I’m lying on a floor and Jenny and Irfan are talking to me.
When I asked what had happened, Jenny told me that I had collapsed. I had fainted and now I was back in the land of the living and in a mess. Irfan and Jenny gave me a drink of water and then took me to the toilet. With Irfan’s help I got cleaned up and changed into fresh underwear. I told him that I owed him about 10 beers after what he did for me.
I felt OK, so I went back outside to have a look at the derailed arms train that had been kept in situ as a monument.
I felt like a fool. I apologized to Rai. She said it didn’t matter. I had never fainted before. What happened in the museum was something I will never forget.
We got to our hotel, the Brisas del Caribe, in the afternoon and when we arrived, it was time for Rai to say goodbye. Only she didn’t say goodbye. She had told us early on in the holiday that Cubans didn’t say goodbye, they said Ciao, like the Italians, meaning that it was never a final goodbye, just taking leave of each other for the time being. She was crying. Some of us were crying too. She had been kind, warm, informative, clever. She is a natural teacher, and had helped us shake off our British reserve during the moments when we tried to make music and dance. She had made the holiday special for us. We missed her company for the rest of the holiday. I miss her still.
Varadero is a beach resort, but my partner the next day, Jaqui, was a non-swimmer, and after what had happened the day before, I decided to go along with her when she said she, with most of the others, wanted to go into Varadero town itself and do touristy things. We walked around, the sighted people looking at things. I can’t remember what things they looked at; I just wasn’t interested. Some of them rode camels in a park.
I didn’t get to swim in the sea that day, but the following day I got to swim in a pool with dolphins. Before getting in the pool with them we watched and listened while the dolphins performed their show. They jumped through hoops, jumped in the air and caught balls.
We had to wear life jackets in the pool which, being a good swimmer, I hated. Not being able to wear my hearing aids when I was in the water, I was pretty well cut off from everything and everyone. It came as a surprise when the first dolphin made contact with me, brushing my arm. Their sking is so smooth to the touch; it is like touching the surface of a plastic water bottle. I could not believe at first that this was a live animal I was touching. Then it rippled the muscles of its back as I moved my hand over it. The muscle felt so flexible, so powerful. I put my hand on his back and he started to swim, dragging me behind him for a wile. I was not sure whether to get hold of him and hand on or not. I decided not to, just keeping contact with him through the merest touch. After a while he submerged his back in the water and I lost him. Others brushed against me, putting their faces close to mine and making squealing noises that, even without my hearing aids, I could just hear. I was told afterwards that for a time they paid me special attention because they knew instinctively that I was different from the other people in the pool with them.
We spent about half an hour or so with them, longer than scheduled. I would like to have stayed with them longer. They are truly amazing animals.
Most of that afternoon was wasted while we waited for Andy and Jenny to drop in. They had decided to go sky diving but, despite my repeated attempt to ask the lifeguards in Spanish, nobody seemed to know which part of the beach they would land on, so we missed them. We spoke to them afterwards, and it seemed that the whole thing had been a bit disorganized, with the activity being overbooked, so that people had to wait hours for their turn. They enjoyed it anyway. It’s something I would like to try one day.
Later, thanks to Jill, I got to swim in the sea. It was much rougher than the sea at Trinidad. I just loved floating about on, or getting hit by the big waves. I got to swim in the sea the next morning, the final day, too.
I bought a bottle of rum back with me from Cuba. I also bought a model wooden car, a necklace made of nut-shells for Mum, a Che Guevara tee-shirt, some CDs of Cuban music and a wooden dolphin.
I brought back lots of memories too. Memories of the people I met, both from our group and from the Cubans we met. In my attempts to find out more about the country I grew to admire and love, I listen to Radio Havana on short-wave and on the Internet, I try to talk to people from Cuba via Ham radio and read articles from newspapers about Cuba from the Internet. As tourist we only scratched the surface of what life is really like over there. We in Europe see the lives of Cubans as being restricted, but the official line is that they have a big bad neighbour next door to them, the United states, who have plotted in the past and are still plotting their downfall for the purposes of exploitation. They see themselves as being on a permanent war footing and because of this, they say they have to put restrictions on reporting of events, of movement of people, just as the UK did during the Second World War.
I would love to go back there. Being rational about it though, if I lived there I know that as a dual-sensory impaired person, I would not survive long in Cuba as it is today. There is such poverty there, such injustice. But the people are warm, friendly and very independent and I wish them luck.
That Friday evening, some of us visited the Ernest Hemingway museum in the hotel. It was arranged that we should go there after the usual opening hours. The curator opened the place up especially for us. The museum is situated in the part of The hotel where Hemingway had lived for a while before he bought his own house. The hero of his story The Old Man And The sea was based on a real Cuban fisherman.
Hemingway supported the Revolution in 1959 and there is a picture in the Museum of him and Castro together. On his death, Hemingway left all his property to Cuba.
I asked the curator if we could touch the typewriter Hemingway used to write some of his greatest novels. He told us that this was not allowed, but then relented. To touch the typewriter of the great man and to be one of the few people who would ever touch it again was a real privilege.
That night a group of us younger ones instigated a mini revolution of our own. We broke ranks with the others who decided to spend the evening in the hotel and wen out looking for … . . well, excitement I suppose. Gwen was unanimously elected leader by the Revolutionary Council and was promptly renamed Gwenvara, after the revolutionary Che Guevara. A celebration was called for so we drank a few of the “best mojitas in Havana”, or so the man in charge of the bar we went to said, and he was right. Never again did I taste mojitos like those. We then made our way to the Old square and there we got talking to a woman who seemed to be a political activist of some sort. She told us that everything in Cuba was not as it seemed. The health system was not, she said, as good as we were lead to believe. She told us that she been in prison twice for “activities against the state and against the revolution.”
She then started to lead us through various streets. When the sighted people amongst us reckoned they were completely lost, we grew a bit worried about where she was taking us and asked her to take us back to the hotel, which she did. She seemed very keen to talk to us and exchange ideas about politics. She took a great interest when I told her about the down-grading of the hospital in Kidderminster and how this had resulted in us voting for an indipendent MP rather than an MP from a big political parties.
On Saturday we traveled in our air-conditioned bus 200 miles to the city of Trinidad. Throughout all our jurneys in the bus, Rai bave us a lot of information about Cuba. When Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba, it was already occupied by the Taíno and the Ciboney people. They were exploited by the Spaniards and either worked to death or died of European diseases. Man’s past inhumanity to his fellow man in the name of empire building or just out of sheer greed never ceases to disgust me. I often think the World would have been a much better place without humankind.
On the way to Trinidad we stopped at two places: Guama and Cienfuegos. At Guama we visited a crocodile farm where crocodiles are bred and then released into the wild. We were able to touch and hold them. My memory of how a crocodile feels to the touch has faded I’m afraid. Perhaps I was hot, tired and only half awake at the time. I was amazed at how laid back these crocodiles were. I suppose they were just used to being handled by humans. When one crocodile was casually draped over a fence by someone, he didn’t seem to care.
We went for a tour around Cienfuegos, one of Cuba’s chief seaports. It has long been a center for the sugar trade. It is close to some of the most fertile landscape in Cuba and also has a beautiful bay.
In Trinidad we stayed at the Brisas del Mar hotel. It was right on the beach and at around seven o’clock one morning a group of us, including my room mate Irfan, who was a really slow starter first thing in the morning usually, went for a swim in the sea. To swim and float around in the warm waters of the Caribbean was one of the highlights of the holiday for me.
Later we went to try our hand at playing Cuban musical instruments. The were bamboo sticks that were struck together to make a sort of drum sound, drums and maracas and I played an istrument that consisted of some sort of rough material that you strummed with a pointed stick to make a rough scratchy noise. We accompanied a group of professional musicians. When they played it was real music, but when we started in it began to sound like a terrible noise.
One morning during our stay in Trinidad we went to a dancing school to try our hands at salza dancing. Rai and the dance teacher showed me what to do with my feet by making the step movements with my hands and explaining which foot to put forwards or back or sideways. When I tried to dance with rai or the dance teacher I seemed to be able, to some extent anyway, get the hand of it, but when I tried to dance with anyone else it all fell apart.
For the finale, we were let loose on some unsuspecting Cuban girls. We all had a lot of fun.
I spspect this kind of dancing needs a lot of practice, without which my memory regarding which foot to move first and whether to move it back or forward will deteriorate rapidly. In fact I think it already has, which is a shame, because the discipline and skill involved in the dancing reminded me of judo moves I used to execute during my time as a competitor in that sport.
It was either on the Sunday or Monday night that we decided to have a party on the beach. Rai was with us too that evening.
Throughout that day I had been forced to go to the toilet a lot. This problem persisted into the evening and forced me to leave the party and go back to my room earlier than I would otherwise have done. I was pretty fed up about it. I hadn’t been drinking either; I had stuck to orange juice. This problem persisted throughout the next day.
On the Monday afternoon, our last afternoon in Trinidad, Jill went with me for a swim in the sea. She was the only one in the group who seemed keen on the idea of letting me float or swim in that environment. I can’t wear my hearing aids in water so because I can’t hear much without them we worked out a system. Jill would point me in the direction she wanted me to swim in, I would swim out for a bit and then, using the sun to orientate myself, I would swim or float back towards the shore. This worked very well and I really enjoyed myself. I think Jill did too. I spent a lot of time in the sea that afternoon – a big mistake. I wasn’t used to the sun, it caught me, and I burned.
Tuesday was Rai’s last day with us. She would travel with us to Varadero and then she would have to go back to Havana.
I didn’t feel ill exactly, but before our 200 mile long bus journey started I was using the toilet frequently. I decided to drink as little water during the journey as I could. I didn’t want a repeat performance of the beach party evining. Anyway, there would be stops on the way to Varadero. It would be all right, I hoped.
We were to make a stop in Santa Clara and on the way there Rai gave us a lot of information about the revolutionary Che Guevara. It was at Santa Clara that the former dictator Batista and his men surrendered to Che and an arms train was derailed.
In Santa Clara we stopped and, after a wait in the hot sun, we went into the Che Guevara museum. A recording of Che’s voice was playing. From what Rai told us, Che sounds like a very passionate and intelligent man. He had studied English poetry amongst other things, and could recite some of Keats’ poems from memory.
I felt abdominal pain, I felt sick. “Christ”, I thought, “I hope this passes off soon.”
I was in bed. I was awakening from a strange dream; something about touring a museum. Something’s not right. I’m not in bed. I’m lying on a floor and Jenny and Irfan are talking to me.
When I asked what had happened, Jenny told me that I had collapsed. I had fainted and now I was back in the land of the living and in a mess. Irfan and Jenny gave me a drink of water and then took me to the toilet. With Irfan’s help I got cleaned up and changed into fresh underwear. I told him that I owed him about 10 beers after what he did for me.
I felt OK, so I went back outside to have a look at the derailed arms train that had been kept in situ as a monument.
I felt like a fool. I apologized to Rai. She said it didn’t matter. I had never fainted before. What happened in the museum was something I will never forget.
We got to our hotel, the Brisas del Caribe, in the afternoon and when we arrived, it was time for Rai to say goodbye. Only she didn’t say goodbye. She had told us early on in the holiday that Cubans didn’t say goodbye, they said Ciao, like the Italians, meaning that it was never a final goodbye, just taking leave of each other for the time being. She was crying. Some of us were crying too. She had been kind, warm, informative, clever. She is a natural teacher, and had helped us shake off our British reserve during the moments when we tried to make music and dance. She had made the holiday special for us. We missed her company for the rest of the holiday. I miss her still.
Varadero is a beach resort, but my partner the next day, Jaqui, was a non-swimmer, and after what had happened the day before, I decided to go along with her when she said she, with most of the others, wanted to go into Varadero town itself and do touristy things. We walked around, the sighted people looking at things. I can’t remember what things they looked at; I just wasn’t interested. Some of them rode camels in a park.
I didn’t get to swim in the sea that day, but the following day I got to swim in a pool with dolphins. Before getting in the pool with them we watched and listened while the dolphins performed their show. They jumped through hoops, jumped in the air and caught balls.
We had to wear life jackets in the pool which, being a good swimmer, I hated. Not being able to wear my hearing aids when I was in the water, I was pretty well cut off from everything and everyone. It came as a surprise when the first dolphin made contact with me, brushing my arm. Their sking is so smooth to the touch; it is like touching the surface of a plastic water bottle. I could not believe at first that this was a live animal I was touching. Then it rippled the muscles of its back as I moved my hand over it. The muscle felt so flexible, so powerful. I put my hand on his back and he started to swim, dragging me behind him for a wile. I was not sure whether to get hold of him and hand on or not. I decided not to, just keeping contact with him through the merest touch. After a while he submerged his back in the water and I lost him. Others brushed against me, putting their faces close to mine and making squealing noises that, even without my hearing aids, I could just hear. I was told afterwards that for a time they paid me special attention because they knew instinctively that I was different from the other people in the pool with them.
We spent about half an hour or so with them, longer than scheduled. I would like to have stayed with them longer. They are truly amazing animals.
Most of that afternoon was wasted while we waited for Andy and Jenny to drop in. They had decided to go sky diving but, despite my repeated attempt to ask the lifeguards in Spanish, nobody seemed to know which part of the beach they would land on, so we missed them. We spoke to them afterwards, and it seemed that the whole thing had been a bit disorganized, with the activity being overbooked, so that people had to wait hours for their turn. They enjoyed it anyway. It’s something I would like to try one day.
Later, thanks to Jill, I got to swim in the sea. It was much rougher than the sea at Trinidad. I just loved floating about on, or getting hit by the big waves. I got to swim in the sea the next morning, the final day, too.
I bought a bottle of rum back with me from Cuba. I also bought a model wooden car, a necklace made of nut-shells for Mum, a Che Guevara tee-shirt, some CDs of Cuban music and a wooden dolphin.
I brought back lots of memories too. Memories of the people I met, both from our group and from the Cubans we met. In my attempts to find out more about the country I grew to admire and love, I listen to Radio Havana on short-wave and on the Internet, I try to talk to people from Cuba via Ham radio and read articles from newspapers about Cuba from the Internet. As tourist we only scratched the surface of what life is really like over there. We in Europe see the lives of Cubans as being restricted, but the official line is that they have a big bad neighbour next door to them, the United states, who have plotted in the past and are still plotting their downfall for the purposes of exploitation. They see themselves as being on a permanent war footing and because of this, they say they have to put restrictions on reporting of events, of movement of people, just as the UK did during the Second World War.
I would love to go back there. Being rational about it though, if I lived there I know that as a dual-sensory impaired person, I would not survive long in Cuba as it is today. There is such poverty there, such injustice. But the people are warm, friendly and very independent and I wish them luck.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
HOLIDAY IN CUBA
HOLIDAY IN CUBA
BY MARK TAYLOR
I and a group of people - some visually impaired, some sighted – visited Cuba for a holiday in April, 2008. We went with a holiday company called Traveleyes. This is what happened.
As we flew over mountains towards Havana someone said that it was raining. The rainy season isn’t supposed to start until May and I hoped it wasn’t going to rain too much during our nine nights in Cuba.
The flight from Gatwick had taken nine hours. We landed at Havana, Cuba’s capital, at about 5.30 in the afternoon. It wasn’t raining when we landed but it had been.
I love it when you get off the aircraft to feel the soft kiss of tropical air on your skin. Getting our bags didn’t take long and we were introduced to our tour guide. Her name was Raicella (I’m not sure about the spelling). We called her rai for short. She was going to be with us for the next seven days. She really made the holiday great for us. Her English was fantastic. I explained in my best Spanish that I had a severe hearing problem as well as being totally blind, and when I asked her if she could help me practice Spanish by speaking with her she said yes.
There were 19 of us in the group, including Jenny, the Traveleyes holiday leader. Nine of us were blind or visually impaired and the rest were sighted.
Our bus, driven by Orlando, took us to the hotel we would be staying at for the next three nights. On the way Rai chatted to us about Havana and our hotel.
It was called the Ambos Mundos and it had a lot of character. It was a place where Ernest Hemingway, the writer, lived at one time. He wrote his famous novel For Whom The Bell Tolls while living there. One of the upper floors housed the Ernest Hemingway Museum. More about that later.
We were to stay in three hotels: The Ambos Mundos in Havana, another hotel in the city of Trinidad, and one in Varadero. In each of these hotels I shared a room with Irfan. He is a doctor in his twenties and he is a really nice guy. I owe him a lot. More about that later too.
Just before dinner each evening, Jenny would tell us who our partner would be the next day. Just like the Vitalise holidays I have been on in the past, we were paired up with a different person each day in order that we could get to know every sighted person.
The mojito as a famous Cuban drink and at dinner that night I tried it for the first time. It consists of rum (for which Cuba is famous), wine, fresh mint and soda. I liked it so much I had another. I think we turned in relatively early that first night.
The following morning, Thursday, after breakfasting on the roof of the hotel, from where you got a great view of Havana, we exchanged some of our English pounds for convertible Pesos or CUCs as the Cubans Call them, and then we set off to explore parts of Havana on foot. The weather started out a bit cloudy, but even when the sun came out, in my shorts and tea-shirt I didn’t feel uncomfortably hot.
The government doesn’t seem to have the money to maintain the old buildings in Havana and the impression I got was that a lot of them were in quite a dilapidated state. The US embargo on Cuba hasn’t helped the country at all. Lots of the classic American cars that were imported during the 50s, before the Revolution, can still be seen on Havana’s roads. I suppose spare parts for them are hard to come by, so like the houses, some of them look as though they are falling to bits. Those cars take you back to a by-gone era when Americans lived in, and some would say controlled to some extent through their money and influence, the country’s corrupt rulers of pre-revolution Cuba.
We went to Revolution Square, where there are Russian-style buildings and monuments to Communism. The city seemed very lively and vibrant. It seemed as though you could not walk round a corner without coming across musicians playing their instruments and singing.
I think it was in the old square that we came across a priestess. As well as Catholicism, Cubans follow a religion called Santoría. This is a mixture of the Catholic religion and some of the religions the slaves brought with them from Africa. Rai was at pains to tell us that it is not like Voodoo. The priestess was smoking a big cigar and singing. She blessed us all and wished us good health and a long life.
For a few coins, there were girls who would plant a kiss on men’s cheeks. A few minutes after one kissed me, Rai told me that I had a red mark on my cheek. I realized after a moment that this had been left by the girl’s lipstick. I made out to Rai that I did not know how this had happened.
The smell of Havana is unlike that of any city I have ever visited. It was a mixture of hot tar, exhaust fumes, horses, and drains.
Music seemed everywhere. I’m not sure whether it was that afternoon or the following one that Gwen, one of the sighted travelers, and I sat outside a bar, drinking beers, being entertained by a trio of musicians. They sang very lively Cuban songs by a singer whose name I can’t remember.
I felt pretty safe walking around the city. They say you do have to be careful of pick-pockets though.
On Friday morning we visited the Botanical Gardens. We saw and touched lots of different types of palm trees, plants and flowers. Among them was the Cuban national flower known as the Butterfly Flower.
We went on to visit a cigar factory and then a rum factory. The thing that impressed me most about the cigar factory was that the process of making the cigars was all done without any motors or any electric aids. We had a go at winding tobacco through a machine of some kind that shredded it. You just turned a handle and kept on turning it until the process was complete. From time to time as we walked around the factory, a loudspeaker blared out, giving workers information about forthcoming political meetings and organized outings.
The thing that impressed me about the rum factory was the finished product. As the Molasses bubbled away in vats, it gave off an indescribable smell that wasn’t like rum at all.
We got to taste a couple of samples of the rum. It was very nice and very strong. I felt as though if I had too much of it my head would be blown off.
I don’t usually eat lunch, except Sunday lunch, but during my time in Cuba I got into the habit of eating a midday meal. We ate our lunches at nice restaurants, and in many ways the lunches were nicer than the dinners we had in the evenings. Rai told us that to Cubans, lunch was important, and this persuaded me to eat lunch fairly regulary after a couple of days in Cuba. (more tomorrow)
BY MARK TAYLOR
I and a group of people - some visually impaired, some sighted – visited Cuba for a holiday in April, 2008. We went with a holiday company called Traveleyes. This is what happened.
As we flew over mountains towards Havana someone said that it was raining. The rainy season isn’t supposed to start until May and I hoped it wasn’t going to rain too much during our nine nights in Cuba.
The flight from Gatwick had taken nine hours. We landed at Havana, Cuba’s capital, at about 5.30 in the afternoon. It wasn’t raining when we landed but it had been.
I love it when you get off the aircraft to feel the soft kiss of tropical air on your skin. Getting our bags didn’t take long and we were introduced to our tour guide. Her name was Raicella (I’m not sure about the spelling). We called her rai for short. She was going to be with us for the next seven days. She really made the holiday great for us. Her English was fantastic. I explained in my best Spanish that I had a severe hearing problem as well as being totally blind, and when I asked her if she could help me practice Spanish by speaking with her she said yes.
There were 19 of us in the group, including Jenny, the Traveleyes holiday leader. Nine of us were blind or visually impaired and the rest were sighted.
Our bus, driven by Orlando, took us to the hotel we would be staying at for the next three nights. On the way Rai chatted to us about Havana and our hotel.
It was called the Ambos Mundos and it had a lot of character. It was a place where Ernest Hemingway, the writer, lived at one time. He wrote his famous novel For Whom The Bell Tolls while living there. One of the upper floors housed the Ernest Hemingway Museum. More about that later.
We were to stay in three hotels: The Ambos Mundos in Havana, another hotel in the city of Trinidad, and one in Varadero. In each of these hotels I shared a room with Irfan. He is a doctor in his twenties and he is a really nice guy. I owe him a lot. More about that later too.
Just before dinner each evening, Jenny would tell us who our partner would be the next day. Just like the Vitalise holidays I have been on in the past, we were paired up with a different person each day in order that we could get to know every sighted person.
The mojito as a famous Cuban drink and at dinner that night I tried it for the first time. It consists of rum (for which Cuba is famous), wine, fresh mint and soda. I liked it so much I had another. I think we turned in relatively early that first night.
The following morning, Thursday, after breakfasting on the roof of the hotel, from where you got a great view of Havana, we exchanged some of our English pounds for convertible Pesos or CUCs as the Cubans Call them, and then we set off to explore parts of Havana on foot. The weather started out a bit cloudy, but even when the sun came out, in my shorts and tea-shirt I didn’t feel uncomfortably hot.
The government doesn’t seem to have the money to maintain the old buildings in Havana and the impression I got was that a lot of them were in quite a dilapidated state. The US embargo on Cuba hasn’t helped the country at all. Lots of the classic American cars that were imported during the 50s, before the Revolution, can still be seen on Havana’s roads. I suppose spare parts for them are hard to come by, so like the houses, some of them look as though they are falling to bits. Those cars take you back to a by-gone era when Americans lived in, and some would say controlled to some extent through their money and influence, the country’s corrupt rulers of pre-revolution Cuba.
We went to Revolution Square, where there are Russian-style buildings and monuments to Communism. The city seemed very lively and vibrant. It seemed as though you could not walk round a corner without coming across musicians playing their instruments and singing.
I think it was in the old square that we came across a priestess. As well as Catholicism, Cubans follow a religion called Santoría. This is a mixture of the Catholic religion and some of the religions the slaves brought with them from Africa. Rai was at pains to tell us that it is not like Voodoo. The priestess was smoking a big cigar and singing. She blessed us all and wished us good health and a long life.
For a few coins, there were girls who would plant a kiss on men’s cheeks. A few minutes after one kissed me, Rai told me that I had a red mark on my cheek. I realized after a moment that this had been left by the girl’s lipstick. I made out to Rai that I did not know how this had happened.
The smell of Havana is unlike that of any city I have ever visited. It was a mixture of hot tar, exhaust fumes, horses, and drains.
Music seemed everywhere. I’m not sure whether it was that afternoon or the following one that Gwen, one of the sighted travelers, and I sat outside a bar, drinking beers, being entertained by a trio of musicians. They sang very lively Cuban songs by a singer whose name I can’t remember.
I felt pretty safe walking around the city. They say you do have to be careful of pick-pockets though.
On Friday morning we visited the Botanical Gardens. We saw and touched lots of different types of palm trees, plants and flowers. Among them was the Cuban national flower known as the Butterfly Flower.
We went on to visit a cigar factory and then a rum factory. The thing that impressed me most about the cigar factory was that the process of making the cigars was all done without any motors or any electric aids. We had a go at winding tobacco through a machine of some kind that shredded it. You just turned a handle and kept on turning it until the process was complete. From time to time as we walked around the factory, a loudspeaker blared out, giving workers information about forthcoming political meetings and organized outings.
The thing that impressed me about the rum factory was the finished product. As the Molasses bubbled away in vats, it gave off an indescribable smell that wasn’t like rum at all.
We got to taste a couple of samples of the rum. It was very nice and very strong. I felt as though if I had too much of it my head would be blown off.
I don’t usually eat lunch, except Sunday lunch, but during my time in Cuba I got into the habit of eating a midday meal. We ate our lunches at nice restaurants, and in many ways the lunches were nicer than the dinners we had in the evenings. Rai told us that to Cubans, lunch was important, and this persuaded me to eat lunch fairly regulary after a couple of days in Cuba. (more tomorrow)
Monday 14 December 2009
RADIO CONTACT
Yesterday I had a CW Contact on ham radio with a guy in Phila. I told him that I knew that his city was famous for boxing, as well as music – including my favourite female group, Sister Sledge. I then told him that the only thing my town is famous for is the manufacture of carpets. We had a laugh about that.
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