I Love Cuba
Ozzie Wright spends a week in that radical communist country just off Florida whose existence tortues the very hell out of the USA.
WEDNESDAY
The flight to Havana, Cuba, is simple and takes about an hour after stops in Miami and Cancun, Mexico. It takes us about 10 minutes to get through customs. There are no crazy delays or questions about our paperwork and no one puts the muzzle of an AK47 in my mouth as the US government's website had me believe. I tell them I'm a tourist and they send me straight through. Taylor Steele and Dustin will later tell me that they were detained for trying to tell the customs agents that they were in Cuba to do humanitarian aid work, which I told them to say. Oops.
Picked up by Alexandra (Alex), a friend of our guide Jason's, who is a heart surgeon by day and a guide of drunken idiots like us by night. Alex takes us to our hotel, which is about 25 minutes from the airport, and on the drive I see Che Guevara's image about 15 times. They love El Camandante. Havana looks crazy. It's decaying gracefully. At night it looks a bit rough, with old cars littering the sides of the roads and people out on the street heading out for the night. Check into the hotel and find a note from Dustin that reads, "Mr. Joel Patterson and Oscar Wright. Let's party!!!" We put our stuff away and by the time we're ready to head out, it's close to midnight. We see Taylor and Dustin, who've just returned from what looks like a long day of drinking. Both are repeating themselves excitedly about how great the city is. They're drunk and it's great to see them taking a break from their usual professional postures. They tell us we should go out, and then head to their room to crash.
Ozzie and I get our stuff stowed. We find Taylor back down in the lobby. He's found his second wind and rejoined us to head back out. Alexandra takes us to a club in Havana Centra called Las Vegas. It's new to the town and there's a line out in front. Lines work in a very different way in Latin America. They're freeform and unruly. Everyone is jostling for position. It's chaos, but there's order to it. Afterall, this is a communist country, where waiting in line is a part of life. They don't seem to get frustrated with it like Americans. We're told that Jason is already inside the club and he soon appears to tell us he's trying hard to get us in. The women around us in line are stunning. Some are black, others hispanic, and they all have Latina attitude. They'll stare you up and down and let you know with a look whether or not they approve.
We finally get in, and the place is classic Latin America. A loud dance floor playing Latin-style hip-hop and dance music, beautiful women everywhere. I'm told that to get a girl's attention, you just wave them over. Jason is with a half-dozen girls, half of them beautiful and all out for a fun night. We meet his friend Ice, who's travelled down with him to have a vacation. We're introduced to women, but it's hard to mingle. The language barrier is tangible. Seems like only one in five Cubans can speak enough English to communicate. We hang for a while and then a girl walks up out of nowhere and pulls me out onto the dance floor. I'm nervous. I'm not a good dancer, to say the least, but this isn't really dancing. The girls just grind against you. There are actually women fighting over the right to dance with me. At one point two women actually argue over me. I fucken love it.
THURSDAY
Up at nine, miraculously. We spend the day walking the streets of Havana Centra and Havana Vieja taking photos, drinking beer, and the photographers shoot portraits of Cubans. Though the buildings are delapidated and sometimes even in ruin, the streets are clean and there is
no sign of trouble for tourists. I'm told this is because the Cuban police essentially forbid Cubans from mingling with foreigners. The consequences can be drastic for citizens, so they often do little more than give you the once over and keep walking.
In Havana Vieja we stop in a bar and listen to a Latin band while we drink beer. The buildings are reminders of the roaring twenties and we soak up the Buena Vista Social Club-style atmosphere.
Lunch at a bar that Hemingway frequented in the days before Castro cut Cuba off from the U.S. Photos of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Diego Marodonna on the wall. Everyone eats fish, chicken, beans, rice, bananas and drinks mojitos. Around 10 pm, sitting in front of the hotel having drinks, the sky erupts with rain. It pours for about five minutes and stops. The night turns colder. The cold front that is supposed to hit and bring surf has just arrived. We leave the hotel and Alexandra drives everyone minus Ozzie (who's decided to have a quiet one tonight, saying, "I fucken hate nightclubs") to a club in Miramar, about 20 minutes from Havana Centra.
The club costs $15 to get into and we're some of the first people there at 11 pm. We buy a litre of rum and we drink and talk and mingle with women, who all seem to be hookers. One girl walks up to me and says, "Hello. I love you. I make love to you at private house. $30."Well,
that's direct. Every girl I talk to wants money and by 2:30 am, I'm out of there. Jason says there's a fine line between hookers and girls who are just looking to make a little money. I can't see the line.
See the magazine for the full story, Issue 11 Jan/Feb 06
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Reply #1 on : Fri May 16, 2008, 06:27:12