Havana

Take Me Back to Old Havana

by Ekua on June 4, 2011 · 6 comments in Cuba,movies with movement

I recently came across this wonderfully honest and beautiful video of scenes from Old Havana. It unexpectedly made me feel like I was in Havana again. It captures what a visit to the city is all about. The main thing to see there is everyday living as is — the resourcefulness and creative solutions, lots of people spending lots of time observing the same things they see everyday, the prominent mellowness and seriousness that sometimes is what it is but can also belie spirited living, the unique characters that isolation develops… some of the things that make it impossible to compare Cuba with anywhere else, some of the elements of Cuba that make it so strange and so enticing.

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Photo Essay: Final Thoughts on Cuba and Portraits from Havana

by Ekua on October 7, 2010 · 12 comments in captured on memory card,Cuba

It was our last day as a group; we’d all be heading in different directions the next day or the day after. We’d recently been strangers, but now we’d shared an insane and insanely amazing week and a half together. When we got back to the city, the six of us who were left commemorated by wandering through Old Havana without a plan. This was followed by one last crappy dinner and towers (yes, towers) of surprisingly good local brews.

My flight was leaving very early the next morning and I was grateful for the last hours I had in Havana, however few they were. The second time around, everything seemed more familiar, more comfortable. And it was a Friday night so the streets of Old Havana were alive and full.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the average Cuban does not make a big deal about tourists. Sometimes in travel, it’s nice to simply be treated like a regular human being. On my own, I could’ve blended in with the Cubans, but I was surrounded by people who could not. Either way, the treatment was no different. As we walked by people, they’d make eye contact. They might smile or they might not. We walked up to band practices, barbershops, and art studios where people acknowledged our presence by looking up and waving us in. Then they went right back to concentrating on whatever they were doing without caring that a group of tourists was hanging out to watch.

One time, we noticed an open doorway and a hallway full of paintings and thought it was a gallery, but it was really someone’s house. People were gathered in the living room and one of them came to investigate us for a less than minute before returning to the living room and leaving us to look around.

Could you imagine that happening in any other big city in the world? What would you do if people walked into your house like that? Your door wouldn’t even be open like that in the first place, and it likely has more than one lock. Everywhere we went in Cuba, you could walk right into peoples’ homes.

The ability to observe life in Cuba without the bullshit and filters of tourism was a large part of what made it such a fascinating country to visit. At first, Cuba confused me and I resisted, then I succumbed to the confusion. I left with no answers and more questions than I had when I’d arrived. Cuba challenged me to think about the inherent bias I view the world through, the one that was developed by growing up in a place where we’re taught that the way we do things is the way. Even as the forward thinking person I consider myself to be, the bias is hard to shake, but I am becoming more aware of level at which it infiltrates how I view other countries. And each time I let go of part of that bias, the harder it becomes to come home and try to readjust to the stubbornness.

I gave up on coming up with definitive answers about Cuba almost as soon as I’d arrived, but what I did walk away with were observations. Cuba is visually stunning; it’s one of the most beautiful countries I’ve visited so far. I could have loved Cuba based on that alone, but what pushed it into to my favorites list were the wonderful people I encountered there with their calmness, complexity, and surprising openness. Like a microcosm of the larger America-Cuba situation, their doors were open, you just had to have the courage to step through.

I didn’t know until later why this woman and her lovely group of children were gathered around this statue. Apparently, rubbing the beard or index finger of this “Gentleman from Paris” gives you good luck.

Amazingly talented musicians are around every corner in Cuba.

This man saw me taking a picture of the band and invited me to take a picture of him with the band.

It’s hard to see his facial expression in this picture, but the adorable boy in the chair didn’t look too happy about getting his hair cut.

A lot people were gathered around this street performance of Afro-Cuban music and dance and there was also a craft table for kids there. I love when people take culture to the streets and make it accessible.

A man working on some leather art in his studio/gallery.

I loved the way the man, the statue, and the mask lined up.

Boys playing soccer on the cobblestone streets of Old Havana. I never saw anyone playing baseball in Cuba. Aside from a volley ball match I saw on TV, soccer was the only sport I saw people playing there!

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Photo Essay: Colors and Crumbling in Havana

by Ekua on September 1, 2010 · 9 comments in captured on memory card,Cuba

While Havana didn’t always feel like I imagined it would feel, I found it to be one of those rare places that looked the same in real life as it did in pictures. There were the groups gathered on the Malecón to socialize, grand hotels that probably held interesting stories of opulence and indulgence in bygone times, the classic cars still moving along with the help of Cuban ingenuity. And of course, there was the fascinating juxtaposition of decaying and refurbished; buildings that have been left to crumble alongside those that have been renovated and painted in shades of saltwater taffy.

People gather on the Malecón, Havana’s living room.

A father holds his daughter’s hand as she walks on the seawall.

A tall building stands out in a row of buildings in various states.

A row of colorful buildings across from the Malecón

Urban decay.

Cathedral de la San Cristobal in Old Havana.

A bakery in Old Havana.

A statue in Hotel Florida in Old Havana

The classic Cuban must-shoot.

A market in Old Havana.

Clothes hanging to dry outside of windows, a very common scene in Cuba.

A street leading to the former Capitol Building.

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Exploring Havana and Settling into Cuba

by Ekua on August 30, 2010 · 11 comments in Cuba

I know this will send my indie traveler cred tumbling down, but I have a confession to make: I traveled with a tour group in Cuba. The tour was just about a week long, had only six other members who were also backpackers, and left me with my days free to do whatever I wanted instead of following a tour leader the whole time. But still, it was a tour that allowed me to not have the independent traveler challenges I most likely would’ve faced while navigating Cuba on my own. And I’m glad I did it.

Last year’s backpacking trip to Peru and Bolivia had been all about challenge. While it was an incredible experience, I wasn’t looking to throw myself head first into that same type of travel struggle this year. So after I tried unsuccessfully to coordinate my schedule with other friends interested in visiting Cuba and my bit of research led me to believe that I had no clue where to begin planning a trip around the island, I booked a tour that would take away from the planning aspect and leave time for me to explore Cuba as I wanted to.

On my second day, after my jet lag and initial culture shock had been slept off, I went for a walk. I’d arrived a day before the tour began and had the day to explore before checking in with the group that evening. So I went from the Vedado neighborhood where I was staying to walk along the Malecon and then continued in the direction of Old Havana. I didn’t quite make it to Old Havana, but instead wandered through a part of town that was obviously poorer than I what I’d seen thus far.

My dark skin blended in with many of the residents who inhabited this crumbling neighborhood. Amongst Cuba’s impressive equality, inequality has been created by income from expat family members and tourism; two types of income that darker residents of Cuba are less likely to have access to. From what I saw, this was much more apparent in Havana than on the countryside. As I walked around, I took out my camera to snap some photos. I could tell that only then were the locals aware that I was a tourist.

Back at the hotel, I came across two people who would be part of my group. They were a couple from Melbourne in their early thirties. They said they were off to find something to eat. I asked why they didn’t want to go with the group to dinner later that evening. “We’re going to go along with you guys, but we have a special diet and want to eat before dinner,” they replied. I pressed for more information until they came out with the whammy… they were vegans. I laughed internally, wondering what kind of effect traveling in Cuba with two vegans would have on our trip.

Later, I met the rest of the group. My roommate was from Norway, there were two guys from Sydney, and a woman from Florida via Poland.  The group seemed like it would mesh well and we were all within a 10 year age range. We went to dinner followed by drinks at a bar.

It was the weekend, and the city that seemed strangely quiet to me during the daytime was coming alive at night. It seemed like everyone of all ages was out walking around, drinking rum, or heading to the clubs and bars. We decided the best place to spend our first night as a group was at an open-air sit down bar where we could listen to live music and talk. As I sipped a mojito and conversed with my insta-friends, I couldn’t get over how incredible the band sounded. There, in a generic bar, I was listening to an amazing world class Cuban band who played with passion, but at the same time, played like it was nothing. No big deal. Es Cuba.

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You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea: First Day Perspectives on Cuba

by Ekua on August 24, 2010 · 3 comments in Cuba

This was it. I’d flown over it before in the darkness, excited to simply be hovering over it, wondering what about the island was so simultaneously amazing and awful. This time I would actually be landing there. After a strange and unnerving entry process, I was welcomed into the country with a smile. An arm motioned toward the door and urged me to go on and explore.

In the airport, I saw the jineteros and jineteras I expected to see, hanging all over their unlikely foreign significant others. I saw the bored female staff with hiked-up skirts, attempting to look as appealing as possible in hopelessly unflattering uniforms.

But what I didn’t expect to see as I left the airport and headed into the city was how though it was far from affluent, it wasn’t as poor as I thought it would be. Since I didn’t know what to expect, I’d projected images and ideas of other countries that I thought were similar on my hidden expectations of Cuba. The people I saw were “modern” looking and well-dressed. People seemed to have enough to eat. There was a lot of simple housing, but no slums. Everyone seemed to be out and about on the street or packed into buses, but there were no vendors. What struck me the most was that in general, aside from people who had money flowing in through expat relatives or jineterismo, the colorful array of residents seemed to be living their lives fairly equally.

In my mind, I’d thought, “Cuba will be like this country or that country and I will love it immediately.” Though Cuba might share a similar early history with other places I’ve visited, it’s relatively recent history makes it dissimilar from anywhere else in the world. And though I was impressed with what I saw, at the time, it seemed like there was an impenetrable reservedness about the country that would keep me from really getting into the culture.

When I arrived at my hotel, my room was not available yet. I went to the hotel restaurant to wait and have lunch. As I carefully browsed the list of sandwiches on the menu, the waiter came by and rolled his eyes at my audacity to think that there were options. He pointed at the ham and cheese sandwich listed on the menu and told me it was the only meal available. So I ordered it. Out came a ham sandwich, dripping with American “cheese” and a side of fries—an ironic first meal.

A few hours later, my room was ready. The peeling paint revealed the many layers that had been applied in an effort to cover up the previous peeling layer. The window air-conditioner blew warm air around the room. The pillows were the thinnest I’d ever seen. But it was fairly clean and it was manageable.

My tiredness and the weather kept me from exploring too much that afternoon and evening. The humidity level was so high that I barely had to move to feel like I was loosing bucket loads of fluids with each step. I showered and got organized with the idea that as evening approached, I would go out in cooler weather. The thick and moist Caribbean air’s ability to retain heat prevented that from happening.

But it was then it set in that I was in Havana, and there was no way I was going to hang around my hotel because I was sleepy and hot and in a bit of a funk. So I walked, slowly and aimlessly and stumbled upon a bit of Havana’s character for the first time. Across the street, I noticed a man painting to salsa music. I liked the way people seemed to be genuinely interested in watching this man create art or were simply enjoying the music he was playing. Everyone who walked by stopped to watch and looked happy to have a bit of free entertainment. An old man felt inspired enough to break out his salsa moves as a cigar hung out of the corner of his mouth.

I saw that there was a restaurant behind the guy painting and decided to eat there. Of the many dishes listed on the menu, just two were available. Pork cooked this way, or pork cooked that way. The waitress looked annoyed, but more forgiving than the previous waiter of the silly tourist who didn’t know better than to think that everything on the menu would be available. I had a mojito to wash down another pork product meal and renewed resolve to get to know as much as I could of Cuba as it is, not as it was, not as a place that is similar to another place, not as an inanely forbidden place, not through the idealistic eyes of others… just as it is, or at least how I saw it based on what I would see, hear, or do.

Back in my room, I opened the curtain to see what dusk in Havana looks like. Why bother painting the decrepit buildings when if even just for several minutes a day, you have the sun to illuminate them with rose-colored light?

I wanted to see what Cuban TV looked like. I watched silly short cartoons. A volleyball match. Bands playing wonderful music. But what stood out most of all was a public service announcement commercial: A woman goes to a park with her dog and lets the dog run wild. Some people are scared of the dog and jump on top of tables to avoid it. The verdict on the dog owner’s actions? WRONG. Then we see the same woman going to the same park, but this time, she keeps her dog on a leash. The people who were scared before are now happy and enjoying the park. CORRECT.

And with that message in mind, I went to bed.

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