datamusicata

Tom and I arrived at the El Tropico Hotel, which was a huge compound with lot’s of ground and beachfront, glens, valleys, rockwall breakfronts, and cabana’s. Tom and I were ensconced in a two bed beachhouse with a very quiet air conditioner that didn’t seem to have any impact on the air around us.

After suffering the heat for a day or two, I took the front off, only to discover that there was nothing inside but a light. Yes, the light went on when you turned it on and the light went off when you turned it off, but as for actually doing anything...no chance. A communist air conconditioner? I don’t know.

The hotel had daily excursions for us, as well as activities and food and cigars and rum. You can actually dunk a cigar in rum, but they don’t chew worth a darn. Tom loved them and kept lighting them up, but I kept breaking out the fire hose and letting him have it. Even Cuban cigars smell bad to me. Why would anyone want to put something like that in their mouths?

We decided to take a cab into Habana after a few days and discovered that they have a very different take on the way a cab should work. In our country, you call a cab, you tell them where to take you, they turn on the meter, take you there and charge you. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

In Cuba, each of the cabs is actually like a little tiny bus. It has a route from which it cannot legally deviate. It just makes its circuit and you have to sort of cab surf to get where you are going. But they have thoughtfully provided a large round woman at a folding card table at each nexus where one cab route intersects with another.

She knows which cabs are going where, so you give her some money and she directs you to the cab that will get you farther along towards your destination. And everyone was delighted to take US dollars. I don’t even think I ever used any Cuban money, though I did go to the banco and get a remarkably dreadful exchange rate. When I complained they smiled and explained that they were the only game in town, “take it or leave it”. Then some nice Cuban lady explained that we really didn’t have to exchange the money, as everyone takes dollars.

So back to the cab surfing. We looped our way along, hopping from cab to cab and in only about two hours and sixteen cabs, we had traversed the twenty three miles it was from the El Tropico to downtown Habana.

The people were warm and friendly, and the ladies beautiful, but the city itself had seen more prosperous times. The embargo that we have imposed on Cuba these last fifty years (yeah, that makes real sense—keep a nation poor, they are bound to love you then) has had its impact, though this was 1975 and at that time it had only been in effect for about fifteen years.

All of the mansions in the downtown area were now broken up into apartments...if you saw Dr Zhivago, it’s like that. Each mansion is now the home of as many families as they can cram into the space. And amazingly enough, most of the cars were Ford Falcons, 1961 Ford Falcons.

They were held together by some very resourceful Cuban mechanics, bubble gum, bailing wire, bungi cords, crazy glue, house paint, rope, twine, monofilament line, spot welding, nuts, bolts, screws, nails and hope.

And believe it or not, I don’t recall ever seeing one of them broken down. Ford could make a car in those days.

We roamed around the city for hours, and I’ll fill you in on all that next time. Suffice it to say, we ate too much, drank too much and then took the bus home. Another peculiar experience with the added spice of teenage soldiers of Fidel riding on the the bus with us...along with their sub machine guns.

You can’t imagine what a smart ass I wasn’t.