Cuba: Day 7 - Part 2

Finca Vigia

Our next stop:  Finca Vigia, the house where Ernest Hemingway lived for 21 years and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and A Moveable Feast.  From its hilltop, the house affords a fantastic view of Havana only 10 miles to the northwest.  Tatiana, our talkative and very learnèd guide, explains that Hemingway’s wife-of-the-moment (Martha) wanted to get him away from the bars of the city, and he hated the place in the beginning.

       After the Revolution, and with talk of Castro wanting to nationalize property owned by foreigners, Hemingway moved to Idaho but kept the house. It remains as it was upon his departure, wild game trophies, paintings, furniture... even his deep-sea fishing boat, the Pilar.  He had hopes of coming back, but the house was expropriated after the Bay of Pigs.  It has remained in a time warp, just as he left it, books and all.

       We hear two versions of how it became the property of the Cuban government.  The official one says that Hemingway’s widow Mary signed it over to them in 1961.  The unofficial one says that she had no choice, so yes, she did sign it over, but under duress.  Whichever is the case, at least the house was preserved, rather than being sold and transformed beyond recognition by someone else’s interior decoration.  Today it operates as a Foundation.  (And by the way, there was a group of musicians playing live on the premises.)

View of Havana from Hemingway's terrace

Our return to the Hotel Parque Central feels sort of like a homecoming.  But we’ll be here only two nights.  And tonight is our Havana free night. Dinner on the town at the restaurant of our choice.  Cindy is planning on dining at Dona Eutimia’s, the paladar just outside the Taller printing shop we visited early in our trip.  Ever since that day, I’ve been wanting to try some of their renowned ropa vieja so I’m going along, as are five others.  We walk down through the animated streets, working up an appetite.  The food is excellent and the ropa vieja lives up to its reputation.  Made with lamb instead of the usual beef, it’s the best I’ve ever tasted.
       After dinner, Cindy and I head back to the hotel on foot while the others drive off in classic-car taxis to the Tropicana night club for their show.  I’ve seen the Lido and the Folies Bergère in Paris, so I’m content with the relative quiet of the Havana streets.  Plus a chance to have a conversation with Cindy, who has been so very, very good at this guide/mother hen thing.  She’s one competent lady.

Cathedral of Havana

Hemingway's office

For a look at Hemingway’s house, there’s a video on this link.  You’ll see it as we did, maybe even better, because no one is allowed inside.  Luckily there are a lot of windows and doors:
http://www.hemingwaycuba.com/finca-la-vigia.html

Cuba: Day 7 - Part 1

Cienfuegos had an influx of French from New Orleans after the War of 1812.  We were told its French influence could be felt, and if we had more time here, I might feel it more.  But it’s already time to head back to Havana,
  Before we leave, our tour team wants us to experience the municipal market.  For some Americans, it would be a rude awakening in hygiene, but I’m used to it from rural France and so are those of my co-travelers who have been abroad before.
       Still, the meat counter is not for the faint of heart, and I hate to imagine how it is in the heat of summer.  I hope they have ice, but there’s none in sight right now.

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One seller fluffs up his rice into neat little piles.  A veggie guy smokes over his vegetables, his ash perilously ready to drop off.  Portraits of Che, Jose Martí, the Castro brothers, and famous slogans such as “La victoria siempre” (victory, always) are painted on all the walls.  The vendors seem curious about our unfamiliar faces, but smile and exchange holas if we start things off.  I catch Ismaël buying tomatoes and other vegetables to take back to his wife in Havana.  He tells me they’re fresher here, and cheaper. 


I catch Ismaël buying tomatoes and other vegetables to take back to his wife in Havana. He tells me they’re fresher here, and cheaper.

His veggies safely stashed under the driver’s seat, Ismaël navigates us expertly down narrow, meandering roads and through small hamlets that are poor to the eye.  At one crossroads, charcoal is being made by burning down pyres of wood.  I’ve read about this practice in medieval France but never seen it actually being done.  This is obviously not a rich part of the country, and one where the Old Ways have been preserved.
  After not too long we arrive in Playa Girón, known to Americans as the Bay of Pigs.  Instead of a battleground, it’s strange to see all the brightly painted cabins that make it look like The Shore of my childhood, where people would live in tiny houses for a month or two in the summer.  We’re dropped off in front of the small museum that tells the sad story of the invasion, from the Cuban viewpoint.  It interests some of us, but personally - war not being something I enjoy - I prefer the other option:  walking along the beach, looking for shells.  There are very few, and National Geographic doesn’t allow people to remove them anyway, so I end up just wading in the warm turquoise water and enjoying the sun.  I wish we had time for a swim, but it’s on to lunch.

  We arrive at Hostal Enrique in nearby Playa Larga, where you can rent a room or just have a great meal.  Things work boarding house style here, with the food set on the table and you choose what you want.  And there’s a wide choice:  calamari, meat stew, the ubiquitous chicken and the equally ubiquitous beans-and-rice, plantains... typical Cuban fare.  Obviously there is live music, and Cindy somehow ends up on the maracas.  Here again, we go for a stroll along the beach until Ismaël is ready to drive on.  (We were supposed to tour the sugar mill where Fidel was headquartered during the ill-fated U.S. invastion and to take a ride on an old steam locomotive through the sugarcane fields, but it’s being repaired.  Instead we’ll visit Hemingway’s house, which sounds like a good fall-back plan to me.)

There are billboards crowing about the Yankees’ defeat in the Bay of Pigs fiasco along the road.  One marks how far “the Mercenaries” got... which certainly isn’t very far:  only 4 km, or not even 2½ miles.  Evidently planning was poor, the site ill-chosen and Castro’s infrastructure vastly underestimated.

  The entire length of our road back to the A1 highway runs along the Zapata Peninsula.  Similar to the Everglades, this vast marshland - 5,000 square kilometers, or over 1.5 million acres - got its name from its shoe (zapata) shape and is now a national park.  It’s the largest not only in Cuba but in the entire Caribbean.  In addition to its beaches, it offers wetlands for birdwatchers and is a wildlife refuge.  Before lunch, back at Enrique’s, Armando Herrero, one of the park rangers, told us about all that’s being done to protect endangered species, including crocodiles, and we see some of them as we travel along the road.
  During the long drive back toward Havana, we have time to take in all we’ve seen so far.

Zapata Peninsula

Cuba: Day 6 - Part 1

This morning is a morning of greenery.  Out in the countryside.  Ismaël and his Trusty Bus take us down the backroads around Cienfuegos, past several Yellow Jackets and to the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden.

What I call The Mermaid Tree

     Our guide will be botanist Roger Echeverria.  I blurt out "un nombre vasco" (a Basque name) because I recognize it from Basque friends back in France.  Yes, he admits.  He has Basque ancestors. That and the fact that my father was a veteran gardener build a bridge between us as he leads us around the garden.
       It was founded in 1901 by a Massachusetts family named Atkins to carry out sugar cane research for their sugar mill across the road. Now it’s owned by Cuba’s Department of Technology and Environment.  Roger guides us around the extensive property, pointing out all the exotic trees by name, both common and Latin.  At the end, I mention to him the Matthaei Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan, and he’s heard of them!  I take his e-mail address so I can put them in touch with each other.  I’m sure they’d have very interesting exchanges.  Especially as Roger’s English is impeccable.

Former Soledad sugar mill

Atkins' mansion

The next stop is Atkins’ old Soledad sugar mill complex, originally built by a family from the town of Trinidad, who arrived in 1820 with 800 slaves.  The Atkins family took it over in 1884 and modernized it after slavery was abolished two years later.  (Atkins was an abolitionist.) The young Atkins set about helping the ex-slaves obtain land.  He also developed the infrastructure of the entire area:  phones, electricity, a school, a dispensary.  Although the plantation was nationalized in 1960, along with most everything else on the island, a lot of what Atkins set up is still visible here, even though the sugar cane operation was closed in 2002 because it couldn’t be mechanized.  12,000 machetes would be needed to farm this terrain.  In spite of that, the population living on the plantation’s imprint today is a walloping 4,000.  This has become an industrial zone - cement plant, oil refinery, asphalt plant - that also raises cattle and grows some vegetables.  Funds have been obtained to restore what remains of the plantation as a part of the region’s history, and the house will need a lot of restoring!

       After a presentation by yet another Nancy (which seems to be a popular name in Cuba), up steps Pedro Gutierrez, who used to be a steam train engineer on the property.  Farming the cane required 300 train cars, seven locomotives - Baldwins from Philadelphia he tells us American tourists - and 80 kilometers of track.  Now Pedro is the night watchman.  It’s touching that the system has provided a job for him, and allowed him to present his part of the plantation’s history to visitors.  He walks among us, proudly sharing the few photos he has of this part of his life.
      After the presentation by Nancy and Pedro, we're set free to roam.  In the kitchen of the worn-out mansion, a smiling woman is cooking lunch for the entire staff in huge cast iron pots that may well date back to Atkins' time.  It's pasta today, and she invites us to stay.  Another woman is mopping the mansion's courtyard with water that no longer comes from the huge well her plastic bucket is perched on.  What the mansion really needs though is a new coat of plaster and some fresh paint.

Inside the "Company store"

       I’m curious about what could possibly still be sold in the bustling Mercado Industrial Amenecer (Daybreak Company Store) across the way, open 9 to 5 according to the hours painted on the building, right alongside “Still offering good service” in red letters.  I stroll past a tired horse and cart and into the relative darkness of the century-old building.  On the wall is the now-familiar blackboard listing prices, as they were at the bodega in Havana.  Interestingly, quantities are always quoted in pounds rather than kilograms, a vestige of America’s past influence here.  And as with the bodega in Havana, shelves here are... let’s say “airy”, with few goods visible.  Condoms, prominently displayed, cost 1 Cuban peso, if you’re interested and a sign declares that you have to be 16 to buy cigarettes or alcohol.  With Chris’s help, I manage to buy a colorfully-painted wooden puzzle for my younger grandson.  I say “manage” because the price is in Cuban pesos, as are all prices, and we need to know how much the clerk will sell it for in CUCs (the tourist currency), and that takes quite a while.  It appears to be a major undertaking because few foreigners buy anything here; it’s truly a store for locals.  Fidel looks down from his painted place on the wall, keeping a careful eye on the Evil American trying to subvert his people.  Everyone else just watches with amused curiosity.  What a strange creature I must seem to them!

To be continued...