Cuba Libre

Monday 26th March 2007
We struggled when our 8 am morning call came today. We were both pretty shattered – we missed most of a night’s sleep on the way to LA and then had a short night last night. Breakfast was ‘interesting’. We’d been warned that Cuba is not a culinary delight because they are so restricted in what they get here, but the food was plentiful if not overly appealing. Still, some coffee, juice and toast was all we had time for before our guide came to pick us up at 10 am. He was there on the dot. Today was the walking tour of Havana that we had booked for just the two of us, rather than going with a big tour group. And it was a wonderful day. The guide (who I shan’t name because I think this blog still has open access and I’d have to invite all you bloggies to join again if I changed it) was really knowledgeable but quite laid back so everything was done at our pace. We took a taxi to Havana Vieja (old Havana –our hotel is right on the Malecon, the promenade that runs for 9km along the seafront) which took about five minutes. And then we walked, and walked, and walked. The old town is amazing. It really is like walking through a time capsule. If you think of what we now call ‘clone towns’ in England – every town looking alike with all the same chain stores, MacDonalds, Burger Kings and supermarkets, and then move away from that image as far as you can, then you have old Havana. Beautiful colonial buildings spanning three centuries in pastel stuccos with wrought iron balconies and attractive squares, narrow streets, wide boulevards, then you’ve got it. Little boutique shops, art galleries, street cafes and street sculpture everywhere – with wonderful live Cuban music at every turn. Everyone who’s been to Havana tells you how beautiful it is but seeing really is believing. Of course, much of it looks run down but is now being renovated and the whole of the old city is a Unesco Hertiage site. Because they’ve not been able to build for almost 50 years, it is the perfect example of an old town, still intact with no ghastly 50s, 60s or 70s buildings.I’m so glad we’re here now because it will change, sadly. We had some interesting stops but I won’t bore you with all the details, just three: something called the camara oscura, a tour of old Havana through a 360-degree rotating telescope lens placed in a tube in the top of a dome in Gomez Vila – brilliant and unlike anything we’ve seen before; the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway wrote most of For Whom the Bell Tolls and we had a Mojita, as he did, well he had many (rum, lemon, mint – delicious), and the Museum of the Revolution which took some time as we went through all three floors absorbing all the history of Cuba from slavery to Spanish colonialism, to US imperialism, to the fall of Batista through the revolution from 1952-59, then the Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis of 1962. Just one worrying thing: Guantanamo was retained by the Americans through something called the Platt Amendment. Sid denies any involvement! A brilliant day rounded off with a late afternoon swim in the hotel pool. An ok meal in one of the hotel restaurants as we were too shattered to make the effort to go back to town to eat.