Cuban social life

Hey, if anyone is reading this I would be happy for a comment or an email!

Social life in Cuba is really important. Everyone depends on everyone else. It is normal to share coffee, food, favours, everything in daily life. People talk, exchange and interact. Having a social network is the basis of daily life. Apart from being necessary, it is pleasant. People kiss and hug and stop and chat. That is life. I have not seen anyone in a hurry or anyone looking too stressed.

Then there is the rum. Some people say that it is the most important thing in Cuba. Perhaps this is true. You simply cannot get away from it. Today I took a photograph of Havana´s Alcoholics Anonymous club, just because it does not fit in at all.

Then there is the conversation. People don´t just socialise lightly, they talk over issues at length. They talk about everything in depth and the general knowledge puts Australia to shame. It is not just the knowledge though, it is that fact that people have ideas and are really good at negotiating the expression of difference. We are all enjoying this aspect of Cuba. Josh is absolutely blown away by it, because he has never seen anything like this before.

Then there is the flirting. Everyone does this, boys love girls, and girls love boys. They seem to be having a great time of it in small groups dotted around each public square. Young men go into raptures about beautiful women and shamelessly declare their lastest infatuation.

Then there is the most important thing of all as far as I am concerned. The music and the dancing. EVERYONE IN CUBA CAN DANCE. If you can´t dance you are not Cuban. They learn from a very early age and keep doing it til they die. Boy are they good at it, unbelievably mezmerisingly good at it. Old and young, beautiful and not so beautiful, fat and thin, everyone can dance and everyone does dance. There seems to be no discrimination on the basis of age or even ability, the most important thing is that you give it a go.

´This is Cuba¨

Nothing runs smoothly in Cuba. Cars break down, bookings are lost, people don´t show up, the power fails, the telephone connection is interrupted. When this happens you are supposed to settle in for a while, drink some rum, have a laugh and say ¨This is Cuba!¨ We have said it a few times.

Leaving Trinidad our transfer did not show up, our bus tickets were not reserved and the bus was full, we eventually got on, one poor girl was repeatedly and violently sick, so the aisle flowed with a little river of gastric juices. This is Cuba! Finally the bus stopped working altogeather, someone stood up and asked all the passengers if they had any tools with which the bus could be fixed. In broken English she described a screwdriver. Surely enough someone had one! (unbelievable in any other context.) The bus was fixed and we were on out way back to Havana. Weirdly enough things seem to eventually get done and we are just getting used to it.

Back in Havana, Tony and I have met up with some friends and will spend New Year´s Eve with them. A look inside a Cuban family is something to be prized. The boys (the chicos) met up with their musician friend and will have some more fun with him tomorrow.

Horses for Courses

The Norwegians staying in the house with us explained how northern Europeans dream for years of lying on the beach in the sun and urged us not to be so hard on them. They were setting off for a day by the crystal blue and I see their point.

We, on the other hand organised a horse ride through a sugar cane plantation, through the national forest and to waterfall. I thought that the trip was three hours. I listened carefully and I swear I heard him say one hour there, on hour swimming and one hour back. I know I heard him say the number three many times. Indeed he did. It was three hours each way!
Sugar cane farmer's daughter

We had only one litre of water between us and the riding was really hard. The walking was bearable, the trotting was painful and the cantering was fun. At one point I got really sick and could not work it out. When I actually thought I might faint (no vision, then spots before my eyes, then nausea) I realised that I had motion sickness.

In the end, I think I had pretty severe dehydration, heat stroke, motion sickness and was sore all over. The cowboy guide tried everything, changing the stirrups, fanning me with his hat, consoling me, then he had a brain wave. He got me to change horses with Tony and things improved. My horse had a particularly bad gait, Tony´s was a smooth ride. So I made it back in one piece. The boys raced off and had fun, but in the end even they had got horse riding out of their systems for quite a while.

The young fit German tourists behind us said that it was the hardest thing they had ever done, and they were going to spend a week in a spa. This made me (double their age) feel better.

Back in the room, I opened and used one of my emergency packages of Pantene conditioner. Having soft hair for the first time in two weeks made me feel better. My calf muscle went into cramp because I had sweated so much. I have promised myself not to go horse riding for another 50 years.

Salsa and disco

Tony, Josh and I enrolled in a salsa class. Tony has not timing and no sense of how to move at all. Josh understands the timing of music (naturally) and can follow instructions about which foot goes where, but can´t make it look good or natural. I have some sense of timing and some idea how to roll my hips. It was great fun! No matter how many times the gorgeous dance intructor push Tony away from me to demonstrate what he should be doing, he simply could not get it. He did, however, provide comic relief for all.

The problem was that the lesson was on a roof under some plastic sheeting, it was stiffing hot and there was no breeze. Josh did an impersonation of Pat Rafter playing tennis on a 40 degree day, Tony panted like a dog and I fanned myself with my skirt. Charles (the smart one) sat and relaxed with an ice-cream.

Later that night we trekked up to the cave disco. I don´t believe there is anything like it anywhere in the world. You have to treck past a semi-demolished church on the outskirts of town, through the mud, over the broken cobblestones, all in the dark. If you keep going way beyond when your senses have told you to stop, you get to a cve entrance. It costs $3 to get in and that includes a drink. After following the path down and around, into the belly of the beast, you eventually get to the disco. And it does not disappoint! Mirror ball, fancy bar, strobe lights and really bad music. Tony and I left at about 11 to stumble back home with out loosing our footing and the boys stayed on in wonderment.

The beach trip: compensation or punishment?

The boss of the travel agent gave us a mini-van and his best driver, then personally accommpanied us to the beach. This was by way of apology. It turns out that Cubans are not allowed on the beach, only tourists. So it was Northern Europeans as far as the eye can see, and security guards every 50 metres.

The van was due back in three hours and Josh wanted to go after about 30 seconds. We swam in the Carribean, just so we can say that we have done it. I had a swim in the hotel pool for want of anything else to do. The boys tried to do likewise but the spy-dobber, sitting too close to us, pretending not the speak English over heard their plan and went and told the police. They walkie- talkied ahead and the boys were turned aboud. They tried to make it into a game like latern stalk, but no luck.

Just when a bad mood was setting in two Czech guys and an American (all buff and young) approached and suggested a game of beach soccer. Clearly they picked us for easy-beats, but how wrong they were. Despite all appearances, Tony displayed some agility as goalie, Charles was his usual deadly striker self and Josh was enthusiastic. I alternated between watching and cheering and giving dirty looks to the spy-dobber. So it turned into a good time despite everything and Australia´s reputation as an athletic nation has been upheld.

Bay of Pigs

We are not too far from the Bay of Pigs, so I thought it apt to describe all of the things you can do with a pig in Trinidad de Cuba.
1. Tie it up outside your house
2. Take it for a walk around town at night on its lead
3. Roast the whole darling on a spit
4. Sell bits of it between slices of bread
5. Put it on the back of you horse drawn tray and take it for a ride around town.
6. Butcher it, cut it into great hunks, set up a pork stall outside your house, shoo away the tourisits, but leave the flies to party.


Unfortunately the guy who was taking his pig for a ride had an accident. His tray was damaged on a light pole. Fortunately the passanger was not harmed.

We are now a little bit famous in trinidad de Cuba, as soon as we say ¨Caruso family¨ people make consoling noises and apologise to us. This is because we have apparently had more bad luck than any other tourist family. Apart from our accommodation being stuffed up our booking for horse riding through the sugar cane was messed up, the were told that our taxi driver is Trinidad´s most special idiot and that we were quite right not to pay him the $25 he asked to stuff us around.

For the first time Charles got annoyed, and even our tour guide has ¨left town¨ for the day. Even though this is all a pain, this is just a little taste of how Cuba functions all the time for Cubans. They queue for hours and wait for terrible service, this includes things like queuing for a hour in the sun just to pay a bill, or just to get into the supermaket. So even though the whole deal is frustrating we can claim it as authentic.

Both the boys are doing really well with their Spanish. They are way ahead of me. Where I might say the equivilent of fantastic music ´musico fantastico¨, Charles wil sit with the book and work out how to say the Spanish equivilent of ¨We think your music is beautiful.¨ all using the correct form of the plural pronoun and getting the tense correct as well. Josh is really giving it a good go as well and they are correcting each other not just on vocab, but also on grammar.

Getting to Trinidad de Cuba

We were taken in a minibus with two drivers from Camaguey to Trinidad de Cuba. On the road we passed hundreds of people on push bikes, horse and buggy rigss, motor bikes, a few trucks, some old Russian and Polish cars, a few modern Chinese made air-conditioned tourist buses and any number of broken down 1940s and 50s cars.

We made it to Trinidad okay but found when we got here that our reservation had not been made. After about four stops the bus drivers found the agents who literally sent people running around the city looking for spare bedrooms. No luck! The made a booking for us at a French own resort, we got there and hated it, but figured it was better than nothing. Yet again the booking (made by phone only 15 minutes earlier) did not exist and there were not spare rooms. The good thing is that we got to see how people can come to Cuba and not see anything of it.

After phone calls to Havana and handwringing, the bus drivers were prepared to take us to their place. Hours passed and we were taken out for dinner. The dinner was ridiculous: salad, fruit, beans and rice, great potatoes and a huge half lobster. All dinners in Cuba are finished with creme caramel. I have never had anything like it and, try as I may I just couldn´t finish the lobster. Now how often does that happen?

Finally, two spare bedrooms were found only a few doors from each other. The boys stayed with Fidel, yes Fidel! He cooked them breakfast and made them blanket turkey children. (That simply cannot be described, you will just have to wait for the photographs.) Tony and I stayed with Alberto and were treated so well it was embarrasing. In the morning the street had been transformed into a craft market. Right outside the front door ie literally one step outside stores had sprung up.

We have have done a tour of the town with a guy who still has the papers that show that his family are the rightful owners of a planation. He is just waiting til the time is right!

Camaguey

We had very little time in this city, just enough to get a sense of it. It is the artistic centre of the country and has a focus on the classics: ballet, painting, theatre. It is certainly the most wealthy city we have been to and the status of women is different. They drive taxis, ride around on bikes and just seem more able to transact daily business. Camaguey is different to other cities because, as our tour guide explained, the life of the city is inside the houses not out on the streets.

Juan Carlos, our tour guide was hilarious and told many jokes, some of which got lost in translation, some of which mystified us. He offered to take us to a comedy club and sit and translate each joke from Spanish into English for us, I was tempted because it was such a bizarre concept, no one else was even interested in trying it. He went to a fantastic old bar with a tattooed toilet and hand basin. There is a guy who sits outside the toilet who seems employed solely to open and close the door.

The absolute highlight is that we got to visit the home-gallery-studio of Joel Javier. He was adorable, the house was amazing and the art was gorgeous. Up to that point in Cuba, I had not seen anything, modern, traditional, craft or art that really grabbed me; but his stuff was really wonderful. So, I parted with a lighter wallet and a heavier bag. Getting the export permit was an ordeal in itself, but well worth the experience.

Señor Bigotes

Charles and Josh decided to have a haircut in Sandiago de Cuba. It is always fun to have a haircut in a another language. Charles gave them a rough idea and sat back for a cut throat razor shave and hair cut. Josh very carefully mimed out exactly how much hair he wanted off, exactly what he didn´t want, what facial hair he wanted left and what he wanted removed.

In the end, Charles got exactly what he wanted and Josh got exactly what he didn´t want. It is truely the worst haircut I have ever seen. If you imagine the time in your life when you saw the funniest thing you have ever seen and then double it, that is Josh´s haircut. If you picture a cross between Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck and a third rate model from a late 1970s barber shop magazine, maybe you will come close. He has a version of a short, back and sides with a kind of cowlick in front that the barber tried to slick down, his side burns are gone and the back is trimmed like a girl´s bob gone wrong. But that is not the best bit! The best bit is that he has the worst moustache is history! The world for moustache in Spanish is ¨bigotes¨, so Josh is now and forever more to be known as Señor Bigotes. Everytime we travel overseas from now on we are not taking Josh, we are just taking the bigotes. Charles declared the day of the haircut the best day of his life.
Josh getting some mooustache growing tips from and expert

Good time girls

Tony Uniting with Some of the Workers of the World

After meeting the official teachers in the official setting in Baracoa, I set myself upon a quest to have an unofficial conversation with some young Cuban women. This is difficult because so many people are out to extract a couple of dollars from tourists that girls who are not after that are at pains to explain that they don't want a free meal or whatever.
In Sandiago de Cuba you learn to say "No necessitato" (I don't need any) and "No gracias". Any girl in the company of tourists, even just chatting or walking in close proximity around the tourist centre is in trouble.

All that being said, we managed it. We came across four women aged between 22 and 28: a beautician, a literature teacher, a computer programmer and a salsa teacher. Quite a combination eh? They immediately identified Tony, Charles and Josh as complete dancing retards and seemed to think it would be funny to get them up dancing in order to laugh at them... and the night was away.

They wanted to show us where to go for dinner. They repeatedly insisted that they would not join us because that is not what they were after. It was sad. To get to this little private restaurant, we had to walk at least 25 metres behind them and act like we had nothing to do with them. Sure enough, the place was terrific and true to their word they just disappeared.

We had arranged to meet later and go to their favourite club. Again we had to follow at great distance. We had to enter first and pay $2. They can usually enter for about 5 cents. But the guy on the door decided that to get into the club they had to have a Cuban man accompanying them. Off they went to get one. Then the guy at the door decided that they had to pay $2 each to get in. Given that their monthly wage is probably about $20, this is ridiculous. After much ado, we managed to get them in. They were fuming. One went in to a silent rage, another talked and explained, another sat a stared at the guy on the door. Eventually they decribed a little about the difficulties of daily life as a Cuban women.


I had asked lots of people, and by that I mean male people, why I had not seen women driving or women tour guides and each time I was given an explanation that did not make a great deal of sense. eg "You don't see women driving because there are not many cars in Cuba", this completely missed the point and when I most gently asked if Cuba still has a touch of machismo, the men looked quite surprised. The four women, of course, had a different answer. Interestingly, they did not describe the situation in terms of sexism or machismo, but they did articulate how much harder life is for women. Tony was having a great time and being silly, at one point I gave him a mock slap up the back of the head. They laughed and cheered and said that it is how life should be. Tony played up to this claiming that I have him under the thumb and they thought this was just great. They did explain though that families are often matriachal, but I was not sure exactly what this meant in reality.

We asked them to come back to the hotel, so we could give them some pencils for their children, all the shampoo and conditioner from the hotel bathrooms etc. They had to really hang back and said that they did not want to be in the hotel area, first because the police would grab them and second because there were too many drunk men around. They were delighted with the gifts and the computer programmer was thrilled to bits with a lanyon that Tony gave her. She said that she had wanted one for ages so she could put her memory stick on it, but she had never seen one for sale in Cuba. The whole night was an exercise in seeing first hand what they go through. It was sobering.

The beautician particularly was interested in life outside Cuba, especially Mexico. (most Cubans I had met up til then were only interested in the west). When I described the poverty and illiteracy she was truely horrified. She had heard it all before, from Granma (the official Cuban daily paper) but she had not heard many real stories from someone outside the Cuban government machine. The literature teacher took a particular shine to Charles, but was frustrated but his poor Spanish.
All of this conversation was alternated with dancing, drinking a listening to the band. The band at the place they took us to was wonderful, the musicians seemed to be just old guys paying their instruments, rather than musicians trying to live up the the tourisits expectations of what a Cuban musician should look like.
I asked the women where their husbands and boyfriends were. It turned out that 3 of the 4 of them have children, but none of them feel the need to catch a man on any permanent basis. Every encounter is "just for the moment, and just for them memories". Like the vast majority, they live with their parents, which means they have no space, no privacy, but lots of babysitting available.

The Cuban economy

The Cuban economy is driven by the following export industries, in this order 1. Tourism 2. Medicine (Cuba sells doctors to the world) 3. Nickel 4. Sugar

Having tourism as the main source of income has a certain corrosive impact on the national character. Getting tourist dollars (convertibles or CUC) is imperative if you want to live. Thinking up a scheme by which to get them is the uncomfortable part. Tips are important, selling trinkets is big, operating as a blackmarket taxi driver is possible (but only if you are one of the very, very few people with a car), convincing people to come to dinner is another avenue. I can´t blame anyone for trying to get a few dollars from rich tourists, but it is really starting to upset me that it seems a good proportion of the nation have been turned into hustlers.

On the other hand, people are remarkably healthy, any complex medical conditions is dealt with very well, everyone have lovely teeth and is entitled to two checkups per year for free, there are few beggars, no one is illiterate and everyone is fed, even if it is just beans and rice.

There is no MacDonalds or Starbucks, we are not missing the advertising and shopping is a necessity rather than a recreational activity. We keep realising all of the things that Cuban does not have and many of them are things that we are happy to do without.

Sandiago de Cuba

The revolution began here on July 26 with Castro´s unsuccessful attack on the barracks, and ended here with Castro giving a speech from the balony opposite our hotel. Today we will go through the museums and pay our respects.

This is the most together town we have been to so far. It is certainly wealthier and more organised. Our hotel was the place where Graham Greene sat and wrote Our Man in Havana, which I have not read, but apparently the hotel is described in great detail.

We took a turn around town in a big old Chevrolet, walked the streets and got offered all manner of services every 50 metres or so. One evening we went to the famous Casa de Trova where Buena Vista Social Club look alikes play. The club has about six dancers who perform, then dance with tourists for a small fee. Last night we went up to Plaza de Marte where regeatone, the preferred music of the youth of Cuba is played. Several hundred young people gather, huge speakers are stacked up and a party begins. There is a lot of cruising about and checking out of the scene, people dance and joke around, but there seemed to be little drinking. The dancing is all about the groin and even very young children do it with disarming expertise. We stayed for as long as we could stand the terrible music (even Charles and Josh found it repellant) then got ourselves home.


We are learning to be more discerning. The big lesson is to ask the price of everything and ask not just to see the menu, but to check what is actually available. Of course these lessons have been learnt the hard way, and while we have enjoyed the $2 mohitos, we did not enjoy the $80 fee for washing! On any given menu the things that are usually available are fried chicken or pork, rice and beans, and salad. Everything else in the menu is really just an idea of what they would like to serve if they could. Still we have not done too badly with the food.

Tony and I sat up with a delightful black couple from Germany and swapped stories. They had the most fantastic little acinine quips about their life in the country that wants to show the world how things should be done.

Money, money, money

Money is not so funny is Cuba, unless you mean funny as in strange. There are two currencies, the Cuban national peso and the Convertible peso, known as the CUC. Some things can only be paid for in CUC, some only in Cuban national peso and some in a combination. We have got the basic idea, but are not at the point where we really know what to expect.

We went into a chocolate cafe in Baracoa and ordered the first four things on the menu. We got four desserts and it needed to be paid for in Cuban national peso. Our guide helped us change CUC to Cuban national peso and the grand total was about 35 cents. One night we went out and had a grand dinner with shrimp and pork, chicken, rice, beans, salad, soup, coffee and mohitos and it cost $20 each. The next night we went out for dinner and had a more simple meal of beer, salad, chicken, pork, rice and bean and it cost $2 each.The following night we went out and have a simple but nice meal and they wanted a combination of Cuban national pesos and CUC. We ended up paying about $5 per person.

We have travelled from Bayamo through Guantanamjo (a very sad town) to Sandiago de Cuba. (The boys have not got over the fact that they can get a bottle of rum in a club for $4.50 or at a store for $3.50) Charles put his head on the bus seat in front and fell asleep. Josh was loaded into the excess luggage rack where he fell asleep. Even the Irish backpackers were impressed with their efforts. They had been out the night before and learnt how to party in the style of young Cubans. Apparently this means, no talking just dancing, touching and drinking. Josh told the girls that he has a girlfriend and is not allowed to do dancing or touching, so that just left him with drinking. At the end of the night, Charles tried slapping Josh and throwing a bucket of water over him. That didn´t work. He rounded up a group of Cubans to carry him home. That didn´t work. He then paid for a bici taxi (bicycle taxi) loaded him across the seats, got someone to walk alongside to carry his legs and got him to the hotel. The next problem is that the hotel has no elevator only a marble spiral staircase and local Cubans are not allowed in the hotel, not even to carry in a drunk Australian. Charles convined the porters to carry him to the room and drop him on the bed.

22 December National Teachers´ Day

Workers at School on Saturday

Saturday morning the town of Bayamo came alive. I stumbled across a political meeting where they seemed to be discussing education. Passionate speeches were being delivered all punctuated with chants of ¨Vive la revolucion! Viva Castro! They were happy for me to join in.

Turns out it was a meeting of all of the teachers of the town who were receiving gifts from the Commander in Chief and praise for doing the most important job¨, providing people with ¨the only way that a human being can improve themselves¨ etc. After the meeting the music went on, the wine and rum was poured and the dancing started. I made a bee line for the pretty female English teachers and introduced myself, told them that I too was a teacher of English and that it was my birthday! We compared everything, testing, class sizes, attitudes, curriculum and pedagogy. They had no comprehension of the fact that in a very expensive private school in Melbourne, Australia, I have to threaten Year 12 students and phone the parents in order to get them to read a book!


I too was amazed at their stories. On Saturday the schools are full to overflowing. This is because Saturday is the day when workers can go to school for free to learn what ever they want. Language classes are popular, as are literature and history. The library is packed on Saturday moring, only rivalled in popularity by the chocolate ice cream shop. In the library all the books are old, but the place is jumping. The piano teacher sits up the back helping little children pick out notes and young handsome men with sweet children sit and read. The study of the trades is not considered real education, this is just training for a tasks, education is for the mind and heart. And they put their hand on their heart when they say it.


Charles joined me for a few minutes and caused a ripple of excitement among the young women. They giggled and affirmed that somethings are the same all over the world.

They asked me to go out with them that night, but alas we had to catch the bus to the next town. So it was the very best birthday.

Baracoa

The boys take the plunge


Baracoa is the oldest town in Cuba and many people say it is the most beautiful. They have actual relics from Christopher Colombus and it is the place where the very first uprising aginst the Spanish occurred. It is a very poor town and a very easy town to get around in. Albert, the official tour guide was most enthusiastic and tried hard to entertain us. We had dinner at his house and again the food was terrific.

The evening was spent in the most non-tourist bar that we could find and we had a great time talking to one of the locals. Cubans practise the art of conversation. They are both knowledgable, thoughtful, analytical and social. It is such a wonderful thing to have someone who moves a conversation along in a natural manner. It is such a lost art. One of the challenges that we have set ourselves is to try to find a boring Cuban. Perhaps the town drunk, but even he was entertaining as far as town drunks go.

We toured out of the town and walked up to the mountains, swam in crystal clear waters, and saw life off the tourist map. We managed to visit a cacao farm and a coffee plantation. Josh and Charles jumped 10 metres down a waterfall and lived to tell the tale. Our new friend, who we had met in the bar, showed us examples of the smallest species of frog in the world, it was smaller that a match head, about the size of an ant, absolutely beautiful.
This tiny spot in the guide's hand is the world's smallest frog

It was a true bush tucker day with our friend jumping up trees to get pomelos (grapefruit/orange cross), cacao fruit (velvety and sweet) and bananas. These weren't any bananas though, they were little sugar bananas that just blew the boys away. For lunch we were taken to someone's home and she made us Cuban hot chocolate with her own home grown chocolate and fried green bananas with salt (truely wonderful.)

Everyone has something to say about Cuba and life as it is unravelling and it is all interesting.

Gluttious to the maximus

Cubans are the coolest people on earth; so cool that I have forgiven them their terrible fashion sense. But I still feel the need to describe it. Of course for a very poor country which has a trade embargo, there is little choice.

Cuban women don't ask "Does my bum look big in this?", they ask, "Does my bum look big enough in this?"
There is something fantastic about women who walk around with the sense that they are dead sexy, whether anyone else thinks so is simply beside the point.

Fashion Statement 1
For women up to about 40. Size and shape irrelevant.
Super tight denim shorts, that come about 5 cm above the knee, a singlet/boob tube, big boobs are not optional, they are a requirement, plenty of cleavage, an abdominal overhang that surpasses even the most awful muffin top that you have ever seen and plastic wedge sandals a la late 1970s.

Fashion statement Number 2
For women up to the age of 40. Size and shape is irrelevant.
A micro-mini with a split up the back. Thick thighs and brown legs in high heels. Again topped with the tiny singlet and stomach possibly revealing stretch marks and even a vertical ceasarean scar.

Fashion statement Number 3
For policewomen of all ages, shapes and sizes.
Single breasted suit jacket, micro-mini skirt, lace or fishnet black stockings and high heels, make-up is optional, but if you are going to do it, then you may as well overdo it.

Fashion statement number 4
For women over 40, Shape and size irrelevant.
An impossibly tight pair of stretch shiny lycra exercise pants with a very tight top. Absolutely nothing should be left up to the imagination.

Havana Veja

It is really hard to get on the web in Cuba, so I won't be able to post every day, just when I can. Also it is hard to phone, but if anyone despeatly needs to find us they can contact Contour Tours in Melbourne on 93288488.

Touchdown in Havana and no disappointments here. On the trip into town we learnt that young girls wearing mini-skirts hitchhike home all the time; no worries. Of course, not so many do it after 12 at night, but up til then it is okay. This is the safest city I have ever been in. We have asked around and everbody says that they just don't have violent crime. If it happens it is really unusual. No muggings, rape, random bashing etc, and what a difference this makes to daily life!

Old Havana or Havana Veja is mainly run down. There are some beautiful restored plazas but most of it is literally falling down. Any vacant lot which is operating as a carpark is actually the site of a building that fell down. But, all the adjectives that might come before the word "atmosphere" are simply not enough.

There really is music everywhere, people are very friendly, everyone is educated, people know stuff about the world and are interested in it. The first night we saw a 10 piece flamenco dance group,it was fast guitar, amazing dancers, stamping, clapping and $2 mohitos. Tony noticed the roadie seemed to be studying in between sets, sure enough he was learning French. Many people speak many languages and we are feeling like morons.


We have made a study of Cuban cigars, Josh and Charles sat on the balcony in the evening to ruminate Castro style. Every day Castro used to write his reflections in Granma, the daily paper; now these only appear once every couple of weeks. Josh and Charles have their reflections just before signing off on the day.

Last night's band was an amazing mix of flamenco and rock. We started up a conversation and ended up staying up til 2 in the morning talking to the guitarist. He knew more about Australian politics than most Australians do. He simply could not understand why people who have everything!!!, even the internet!!!! do not want to know about the world. Try as we may, we could not explain the complacent idiocy that grows out of never having to struggle for anything. In the end, the guitarist invited Josh to play with them on the 30th at the Hotel Valencia in Havana, so if any of you are in the area, drop in for the gig.

We went to the hotel where Hemmingway lived and Tony was able to recall more facts about his books than I was. The food is better than we expected, and at least in this part of Havana the prices are not quite as low as we had hoped.

Getting out of Fiji

Fiji proved difficult to get out of, more delayed flights, hours spent waiting in lines, bookings that simply were not on the computer etc. We did get to drive around and get a bit of a sense. This involved drinkiing mouth numbing kava and eating mouth numbing cassava. We saw teenagers smoking crack, petrol stations completely enclosed in security grille and a dead dog on the road. Still, there is something to be said for a country where 105kg men wear skirts and play the ukelele.

LA was LA, Mexico City was an airport and night's sleep and getting on the plane to Havana was a relief.

Fish in and out of water

After false starts with airline times, then an error with the hotel booking; things ended up well. We got upgraded to a seriously decadant place and are enjoying it, even though we are a little like fish out of water, talking of which...

Just so you get the picture, yesterday was spent floating facedown in the water amazed at the festival of underwater world, freaked out by an octopus tentacle reaching up at me from the kelp forest, surprised by the fish etc. It is as if a real try-hard teacher-pleasing 8 year old girl had opened up her Derwants and attempted the most colourful drawing ever of fish just so her parents say "my what great colours" and stick it on the fridge.

If I didn't have to breathe through the snorkel, my mouth would have been agape. Then it was what Josh described as "the best experience I have ever had with pineapple", sea-kyaking and dinner in a taxi-driver reccommended Indian place. I have never been such a tourist, and while we are all glad that we are only doing it for a few days, we are thoroughly enjoying it.

Fidel is waiting for me.

Well, actually he isn't but I am going anyway. This time the trip is Tony, Charles and Josh with me in charge of the worrying. I plan on getting all the worrying done before I go so that just leaves gay abandon.

Luche Libre Wrestling

The Reverend, The White Cat, Danger, and The Bucheneer were just a few of the wrestlers performing last night. The Bucheener was a favorite with young women pulling him into the crowd. Security guards had to dive in and rescue him from the girls trying to souvenir a lock of hair or a drop of sweat. The event went for two hours and each fight finished with the crowd favorites making a miraculous comeback. They fought in the ring, around the ring, up the aisles and sometimes even on the laps of people in the front row of the audience. Some of the moves were so fake that we laughed, some were so realistic that we laughed, but the best were the super athletic flips across the ring, through the ropes, spinning and turning in the air to land on the opponent who had previously been thrown out of the ring. Of course we have photographs of ourselves posed next to short, muscular, sweaty men in bizarre masks.

This excursion was especially organised for us by Horaldo, the bar tender. He is a total party animal: a blessing and a curse. He sings at the top of his voice, whoops it up, eats fried grasshoppers like they are peanuts, and is quite mental. When he feels like ramping up the mood he stands on the bar and pours mezcal or tequila straight down the throats of the patrons. (This is compulsory upon return from the wrestling.)

So, it was a really important lesson when he took us to the wrestling. There were 7 of us in the hostel mini-van, and this is the first time we have seen him be serious. The instructions were: "You are going as a group so stay as a group, a man always walks in the back of the group, stay very close together, don't let anyone push in the middle of the group, keep the young girls really close, if a woman has to go to the toilet a man goes with her and waits, when the wrestling has finished come straight outside and into the waiting van without stopping, and don't pay more than 20 pesos for a beer." All of these instructions, even though we were being delivered door to door and having our tickets purchased for us (on the black market). It was good for all the younger travellers to see this, because while he is a wild man, he takes no risks on the street. The stadium we attended was not the main stadium and attracts a rough more authentic crowd, it is off the beaten track of most tourists. As it turned out, we were the only gringos in the audience, but I think we cheered more than anyone else. I would not have wanted to do this without all the support.

So Mexico is over for us today and we have put a tick on the list of all of the things that we wanted to do. Because Mexico City is what it is and we don't speak Spanish, we have pretty much seen a tourisits version of Mexico, but next time...

San Miguel de Allende

Just a short entry because we are back in Mexico City in the Hostel Moneda. Horaldo the crazy man has arrived, and he is trying to organise a trip to the wrestling. This involves rounding up a group of people and then organising a taxi to take us there and pick us up. There is a huge street market outside the hostel. so it is closed to traffic, this means we have to walk up to the corner to meet Ricardo, our taxi driver. Going out at night is dangerous, but the most dangerous part is hailing a taxi on the street. Not even the real risktaking, Spanish speaking men do that. Hailing a taxi on the street means that the statistics about Mexico being the kidnap capital of the world might just come true for you. The story is that the taxi driver picks up the passengers, drives them to where he wants, meets up with his gang and then they and all their possesions become his. Even the last train on the subway is safer than hailing a taxi. Or so it goes. If, on the other hand you know the taxi driver, and have a time and place for pick up, it is okay. The hostel has its own taxi driver and our excursion is with him. All this and we are only going out from 7.30 til 9.30pm, hardly a late night.

We returned from San Miguel de Allende at 4 pm today, and it met every preconception of Mexico, especially in the rustic, quaint, cute, colourful etc range of descriptors. Some of the features are: cobblestone paths, Mexican folk taking their children to school on horseback while wearing white cowboy hats, terracotta pots, mustard yellow walls, silver jewellry, and a laid back attitude. (If you google the name of the town under images you will see what I mean.)
The thing I did not expect was the number of American and Canadian folk who have retired here, and the ease with which we got around. This town of 60,000 was listed in some newpaper as one of the top ten retirement spots in the world, and come they did. The real estate is cheap (with North American money), in winter it is 20 to 25 degrees, and the cost of living is one third to one half of the US. Many people live in this town for half the year, and I can't say as I can blame them. It is the only place in Mexico where I have seen Chinese food, sushi, Italian food, muesli and decent coffee.

Back to Australia soon.

Bullfighting: not so delicious when killed this way

We are really happy and healthy. We are managing the subway quite well and getting around with ease.

We saw the famous Diego Rivera Rockefeller mural recreation today and in front of it was a really interesting guy from Canada. He was a leftist, but I don't know what sort, the only thing I could work out was that he was not a Stalinist. He knew everything about the mural and answered all our questions with relish. It was particularly wonderful to have just come from the Rockefeller Centre and know the context. We also saw a good deal of modern Mexican art. The murals are bigger and better than I can say, and everything is an adventure. I am trying to write quite a bit on the blog, just so I don't start to forget.

All of this and we are really just on the tourist trail. Very, very few people speak English, so it is hard to talk to anyone beyond the tour guide, the people who work at the hostel and other travellers. Much to my surprise, I am developing a bit of Spanish. The little bit of Italian that I have and few words of French are actually working for me. One guy today has been studying Spanish for a while and asked me how long I had been learning Spanish. I felt most flattered. They had a band at the hostel last night and Charles managed to befriend them, but none of them had any English, so it was communication through gesticulation.

This afternoon we hooked up with a two big Aussies (uncle and nephew team) and went to the bull fight. The older guy had spent 5 years travelling the world and spoke a little Spanish. It is really good for us to meet these people and moving around the city with a big bloke or two or three certainly has its comfort. While the bull fight was horrible, it was not quite as horrible as I thought and I managed to keep my eyes open most of the time. But never again. I won't describe it here, because I know that few people would want to know the details. Suffice to say that few people who were raised in this culture think bullfighting is okay. I am happy to eat beef, but not so happy when it is killed in this way.

Horrible as all of this is, the train trip remains the real horror. Terribly disabled, and deformed people pass though each carriage selling junk. Worst was the young guy laying on the seat next to me, not moving, eyes open, chest not going up and down- at least as far as I could tell. Too make matters worse another couple had a chuckle, pointed, then took photos with their mobile phones.

I also met a couple of women from Canada who live 6 months of the year in San Miguel de Allende (where we are going tomorrow) and they reassured us that it is the most wonderful friendly town, so I am feeling good about that decision too.

People are coming and going from Oaxaca and are all reporting that it is safe and wonderful for tourisits. Perhaps not so safe and wonderful for leftisits, workers and teachers though. Still, it is a 6 hour bus trip and I am more than happy to see a different colonial town.

Yesterday we tried to go to a pre-Spanish cafe for dinner because Charles wanted to eat an iguana. (The grasshoppers did not fill him up.) It was closed. Better luck next time. Questionable as to whether they are delicious when fried.

The big day out

In the Plaza de Garibaldi, at night hundreds of mariachis gather. The are in full costume and they all have mariarchi vans. A mariachi band usually has 8/10 members and they meet the tourist steroetype to a T. The idea is that they are for hire. For about $7, they will sing any song you order. We ordered ''Sing and Don't Cry". If you really like them, you negotiate a price and take them back to your place for a party (that is what the mariachi van is for). Not a single one of them speaks a word of English, so the negotiations just for one song were hilarious. We danced and laughed, clapped and had a great time. Then, we noticed that everyone else who paid for songs was most sombre. This did not gel with our experience of Mexicans to date, we have found people very funny and friendly. One woman patron had her arms firmly folded across her chest and she looked deadly serious. Eventually, she and another woman with her started crying. This is when I turned my brain on, and remembered that the name of the song I ordered, and that the point of a lot of the music is to move people to tears with tales of epic, personal tragedy. We felt pretty stupid for singing and dancing, but how were we to know. We managed to talk a big Dutch guy and Aussie girl into coming with us. This was useful because the area is a little dodgy and it was good to have both Charles and the guy with us.

Today was the Xochimilco flower market and a ride down the canal to the islands in the middle of Mexico city. It is another world. We got there early and it was very peaceful. On small boats came shops of the following varieties, a marimba band, a soda hawker, a jewellry hawker, a bar b qued corn seller, and a more. It is a floating market with so many colors, it is almost an offence to the eye.

Next was the Frida Karlo Musuem. It was beatiuful, but when I saw the painting of her amputated foot I cried. Her decorated back braces, crutches, the bed with the mirror and her unfinished painting, still on the easel are all on display.

Lunch was at a terrific market at Cocoyan (the place of the coyote). Mexico has 25 million people and we ran into people who we knew! Lunch was delicious, but I am finding is hard to remember all the names of the food. I had a great hot soup with chicken, pork, lime chilli, herbs, radish and something else.

We then went to Trotsky's house and again with the tears. The photos were so moving, his grave is at this place and the rabbit hutches are still in situ. We saw the bedroom, the kitchen, the study, the bullet holes, the guard towers and all the documents. One woman on the tour knew a great deal of the history and taled to Charles and all the others. I was a bit beyond speech, especially when it came to the bit where they explained what Stalin did to Trotsky's entire extended family.

I needed some relief after this, so when we got back to the hostel we went off to the Plaza San Domingo (where the Spanish inquisition was conducted) and bought a bag of fried crickets with lime. Delicious when fried.

Downtown Mexico (pronounced Me/hi/co)

I wish I could find a way to upload photos. Even the small bedrooms at the hostel have murals of giant flowers.

Today's adventure was a trip to the education dept office. It is all built around a courtyard in colonial style and it is enormous. The building is three stories high and all of the walls facing the courtyards on each floor has a mural. The is more than 1km of murals. Diego Riveria and has helpers produced this. The scale is amazing, and even though I am not so crazy about his particular style, they are effective. They are symbolic as well as literal, but they are easy to decode. Some of the more simple ones depict images such as a strong man with a hammer and sickle lapel pin bringing workers, peasants and soldiers together, others relate to the aztec culture and some are a little more abstract. The whole thing in free and there were very few people walking around looking at the murals. Even Charles said that being forced to study art history was a drag, but he is glad now looking at this and all the museums we saw in New York. Mexico particularly has the feel of art for the people, where as everything in New York emits the sense of art for the privileged.

Today in the Zocolo (central sqare of the town) we saw a break dancing group. The are absolutely professional, well organised and did things with their bodies that should not be possible. Even after seeing contortionists in Circe de Soliel, these street performers still impress. They were thin and young and energetic, I am convinced that they were dislocating limbs at will.

We also went to an artisan market. Most of the stuff was really junk, most of the stuff, except for the food. We ate things that we cannot name and it was wonderful. The only problem is that we wanted to try it all and at a certain point we just had to surrender.

On Monday we have booked to go to San Miguel de Allende on a bus and will just stay one night. I spent last night with a really great couple from Sweden and Charles hung out with a bunch of young assorted folk. All up thet best people we have met have been an Australian couple Dave and Bonnie. Usually when overseas the sensible thing to do is avoid other Aussies but these two are the most well travelled, interesting couple. They both work on luxury boats that sail out of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. All the boats are flagged to countries other than America so they don't need a green card. When they work, they live in cramped conditions and they work very long hours, but they pay no food or rent. Then they get paid, quite well actually, then they collect tips, big tips, sometimes really really big tips. Anyone can do this work, all you need to do is a one week sea safety course and you have the qualification to be a deck hand. Young Aussies are preferred, and there is a dire shortage of crew. They admit that the money is so good, it is hard to leave and do anything else. They have sailed the whole world and have almost enough to buy a hostel at Byron Bay.This is all well before the age of 30.

The thing is they took Charles under their wing and you guessed it have lined all the information and given him their email addresses for any other questions. They have spelt out the dangers and traps to avoid, as well as telling him how to get the right visa. I am not kidding! Charles does not even want to come back home (but he will, if only to save up enough money to return). We have checked it all out on the internet and everything they say is true!

The altitude dizziness has faded, but Charles is tired today. We re feeling quite safe and comfortable. Even when we cannot work out the money and just offer a big denomination note we seem to get back the right change. We managed the subway by ourselves.I know this is not India, but I am still sickened by the poverty, today's horror was a man with no arms or legs on the ground on a piece of cardboard outside a church begging. Heart breaking!

15 minute blog

Hi Colette, great to hear from you!

We are using the computers at the hostel and there is a 15 minute limit if people are waiting. Of course everyone goes out all day then uses the internet in the evening, so there is a queue, and I will just give a few comments. Now the high altitude has kicked in and I have a headache. The hostel scene is good for us. Mainly the people are young, single, world travellers. A whole array of young single adventurous women are here and Charles is managing quite well. They all have great and terrible travel stories.

Today we drove for ages along a freeway, though about 20 kms of non-stop slums to the pyramids. We climbed two of them including the second highest pyramid in the world. The view was spectacular, the pollution was even more spectacular. These people had foresight, they built the pyramids over centuries, they engineered an architectual marvel, they also practised human sacrifice at special alters and sometimes rolled the decapitated bodies down the stairs. We stood on the top of the pyramid and watched people raise their arms to the sky in worship.

I too have found something to worship. At last something that religion has to offer me, something that I can realte to. In the biggest cathedral of the Spanish (built from the ruins of the Aztec temple that they knocked down) they have a series of chapels. One of these chapels is devoted entirely to the worship of chocolate. I too worship chocolate and suggest it to you all as a most fulfilling (or filling at least) devotion.

Apparently 85% of Mexicans are Catholic and 95% are Guadalupans. I knew nothing about the story of the virgin of Guadalpe, but she is the hot ticket in meso-America. We are both staggered at the religious passion, everything revolves around this. The tour took us to the Cathedral of Guadalupe, outside was a street market and at least half the bus was more interested in cruising the market than in the cathedral. It was still interesting though, we watched crippled people gingerly toughing a photograph of the image of the virgin, praying to be cured, the cathedral was packed an apparently almost always is and in the enourmous courtyard outside a Spanish version of Simon and Garfunkles Bridge over Troubled Waters was being playéd.