Realising we only have a few weeks left there is a sudden desire to consume as many new experiences and places as possible before we go. The last two weekends have been spent as mini-trips to places near Habana. The first place was an eco-resort called Las Terazas about 60km away. Set up over a decade ago as a model village that could be self-sustainable and attractive to visitors, the small village is delicately placed in a forest valley, alongside a reservoir. Three of us stayed in the plush Hotel Moka, replete with beautiful rooms and camouflaged forest setting, whilst the other three, myself included stayed 4km down the road in what were advertised as Cabenas Rusticas (rustic cabins). Upon walking through the airy spaces of the hotel and marvelling at its views over the valley, John, Ruth and I were a little reluctant to trudge to our shacks. Thankfully many areas and places in Cuba are severely underrated and badly promoted. The cabins were handsome thatched huts balancing on spindly legs, accessed via ladders and dotted along the banks of the river San Juan. Opposite our cabins were natural swimming pools, beautiful cascades falling into deep pools for diving, sunbathing and general merriment.
For lunch we visited El Romero Restaurant, Cuba’s premier vegetarian joint where even the menu is organic. After weeks and weeks of the same tastes, smells and textures it was more than refreshing to feast on cleansing things such as pumpkin, lotus flowers, rosemary infused juice, and beetroot soup. We were overcome with profound conversations of life, and happiness, self-sufficiency and making your own medicine. It was a very inspiring place, based on the idea of ‘slow food’, whereby you should aim to experience the whole process of growing, cultivating, cooking and eating your own food. This isn’t an unusual or new way of thinking of course, but in Cuba it seems rare. The variety and availability of food is so poor that this restaurant and attitude was like an oasis in the desert. Or a quiche in McDonalds. Something like that.
After feasting on steak, sipping mojitos and many a game of cards, us cabin dwellers set off on a moonlit walk through the hills to our lofty abodes. With not a single artificial light in sight the full moon bathed the road in its ethereal glow, with the help of a generous scattering of bright stars the walk back was silvery surreal. Going back to nature after even 4 intense weeks in a city is a grounding experience that makes me feel ‘right’. A sense of belonging and all that philosophical bla bla. But really, what a perfect place. We awoke to cockerels calling and sunlight streaming in through our triangular window, the gentle trickle of nearby waterfalls. Wobble down the ladder, devour fried eggs and coffee, collapse into the empty rock pools, sun drenched and mirror smooth, and dry on a flat grey boulder. If there is a better way to start the day I’d be keen to know. We discovered a shy little plant that recoils from even the slightest touch. Its mechanism is such that if it is threatened by consumption, it will draw its water and life from the exposed leaves, so that if they do fall prey to the jaws of a mouse, the plant will still survive. So you tickle just one section and the whole stem and leaves effectively collapse as if fainting. After a little while they perk up again allowing you to repeat the process and thus raising the question, can plants feel pain?
Las Terrazas is one of the great successes of the Cuban revolution. It is the most relaxing place, far removed from the constant touting in Havana, fumes and reggae ton beats blaring from Buicks. There is a strong sense of community and purpose of life, with everyone living off of the land and having seemingly tranquil existences. There was nothing hugely tangible about the atmosphere, but because it isn’t bold and fabricated, frequented by tour buses and cigar sellers, the atmosphere took us by surprise.
If Las Terrazas was the first slice of bread, and the weekend just gone the other (possibly fresh granary bread with bits of olive and poppy seed, soft, not too doughy, crusty on the edge), then the 5 days between would be a filling akin to Iceberg Lettuce, at a push mild cheddar. I suppose at some point there was designing and studying, tutorials and Spanish lessons, but it all melts into one grey mass of procrastination. On Friday night we booked a table at the Paladar (private restaurant) of a local artist, nestled in a leafy side street of Vedado. You walk up 3 flights of a spiral stair and emerge in a jungle, a maze of shrunken corridors, flanked by odd collections of masks and dolls, homemade chairs and walls. You are treated to a short tour of the house, where the curved bathroom walls are made of concrete and old bottles, so the light filters through them. Ducking, and manoeuvring past cages of tiny birds, via the kitchen and smiling chefs, into the dining room surrounded by antiques and paintings, a sculpture made of ribbons and a collection of sake cups. Its by far the quirkiest restaurant/home I’ve ever been to, and if it was built to my scale and not that of a small child I could quite happily live there for ever and ever. Amen.
The next morning me and Ruth awoke at dawn to get a local train to the once resplendent city of Matanzas – “languishing Titanic-like beneath a thick layer of post revolutionary dust, Matanzas is Cuba’s sleeping giant.” The Hershey Electric railway built in 1917 by the US owned Hershey chocolate company, chugs its way through plush valleys and stops at countless little villages in the middle of nowhere. It takes about 4 hours, finally sliding past the sleek River Yumuri and terminating in Matanzas. The city was once a rival to Habana, and was where many art forms grew and evolved – Rumba, poetry and theatre. The atmosphere is immediately relaxed and slow, with once again no one trying to steer you towards their casa or bar. We found a room for the night and then swiftly caught a bus to some nearby caves. They were discovered in 1861 by a Chinese workman who dropped an iron bar down a whole and thus over 3 km of galleries, tunnels and subterranean lakes were found. We joined the hourly tour of visitors, with no apparent guide and walked for quite a while through the well lit tunnels. The formations were mesmerizing, the walls and ceilings covered in white crystals. There were several forks in the journey, where dark paths led away into other areas of the complex. The place reminded me of The Mines of Moria in Lord Of The Rings, so many routes to choose, zigzagging ascents, shadowy nooks to hide (so of course I did).
A wholesome feast was waiting for us on our return, of mackerel and soup, plantain crisps and fruits. Afterwards our host Manolo showed us a selection of Cigars and told us how to inspect them for their authenticity. We both bought a box of 25 for 30CUC – about £17. These were the fat Cohiba sort, and we have since seen the same box for 400 CUC in a posh Habana shop! Its hard to tell what is fake and what is not, but they don’t enarf smell lovely, mm mm.
In the morning we were going to leisurely return to Habana but then realised we were only 30km for Cuba’s most famous beach resort – Varedero. It is over 20km of pure white sands, stretching out into the sea on a huge spit of land, the hotels and prices increasing the further towards the end you go. It’s the Benidorm of Cuba, and not an ounce of culture in sight, but the sea is so beautiful that it would have been rude not to say hello. So we caught a bus and 45 minutes later were drifting in layers of turquoise and pearl. If you walk out into the water and don’t glance at the thousands of other tourists you could fool yourself into thinking you were alone in paradise. But you are not, by any means. For lunch I ate delicious seafood Paella, the 3rd best flan of the trip and was pleased to find my cohibas were not fake. Now mastering the art of not inhaling the smoke, I can almost pull off the act of cigar smoking. Ideally I should be fatter, sitting in a dark leather armchair and contemplating my successful life as the head of a multinational organisation but for now my twiglet fingers will have to do.
We tried to hitchhike for about an hour but being late in the day and 3 hours away from Habana, the traffic was thin and unwilling. Instead we missioned it back to the bus station and managed to wangle our way onto a posh tourist coach, only paying peanuts thanks to our ID cards. In fact our taxi to the train station on the first morning cost more than the train and 3 bus journeys together.
Weekends like this can quickly cloud previous thoughts about Cuba. I have to keep reminding myself that I am in a Communist nation where people can’t go on holiday or buy samosas or spend a 50CUC note without being cross-referenced. We have had about 4 or 5 inspections in our house in just 2 months. One lasted for a couple of hours, where the atmosphere was cold and intense. These bastard inspectors come along and go through every single piece of paper, searching for any mistake that they can fine you on the spot for. Our landlady was once fined the equivalent to £130 because a guest hadn’t signed the right piece of paper. I really hate the bare bones of communism, the idea of collective thought and actions, it being impossible to make your own way and be free. A few times Cuba has tried to initiate a way of thinking and doing, Las Terazzas for example, which is so successful, a model village. Apparently due to the ratio of land to population, Cuba is the only nation on earth that can be fully sustainable if it wished. This fact may be a bit fragile, but still quite inspiring. Cuba is beautiful enough, and the people ambitious enough to be able to stand on its own feet economically and be at the forefront of sustainable thinking but there are much bigger fishes to fry. Embargoes, dying leaders, severe poverty, buildings collapsing left right and centre, plus a whole generation of people who want change. Not the most stable platform yet then. I’m not really sure how to articulate all this thinking, so I will leave it in part up to Mr. George Orwell:
“ The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because the are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. Physical rebellion, or any preliminary move towards rebellion, is at present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.”
“There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and disconnected middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.”
I’m not sure where Cuba fits into all of this, it could go any of those 4 ways. The first is probably the most unlikely as the leaders manage to keep the people on a plateau of happiness with no extremes to jolt the senses or stir up the counter-revolutionary pot. Being conquered from without is a strong possibility but a long way away, and a slow process. Cuba is not yet a political danger to warrant invasion. An emerging middle class with aspirations of power seems viable too. An eventual unwillingness to govern? The generation of the revolution is dying out, and with it a lot of the passion and thought that was so strong in the 60’s. I’ve never thought too deeply about politics and what I’ve been writing about lately, but living in a country like Cuba you can’t escape these thoughts, or the analysis of governments. It has certainly made me appreciate my own country more. I still really hate the overriding apathy in England, and that is one thing you could never say about Cubans – they are never shy, or quiet, prudish or un-opinionated. In England people are so content with being discontent that they will quite happily roll over and let an aggressive police state take control.
I’m just throwing this all out into space. We’ve been having discussions like this every day, and never to any conclusion. Sometimes we realise we are just talking shit and don’t really care so we play snap, or adult snap which is a hardcore game to say the least.
Around your strongest mantras choke
A contradictory hand of oak.
PHOTOS:
*Attractive youths nonchalently bathing in pristine pools of joy
*Ruth
