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...