Cuba: Day 6 - Part 2

The Bay of Cienfuegos

We head back to Cienfuegos for lunch - with musical accompaniment, of course - at the Casa Verde across from our hotel.  It’s like being on the lakeside back home, eating out in the open air.  But in January!  (That part isn’t like back home.)
       Then another opening for adventure, if we want to walk into town on our own and meet up by the statue of Benny Moré for our next people-to-people.  I jump on the opportunity to unwind my legs and burn off at least some of the calories from all this lobster that’s being forced upon me.  Besides, it’s comfortably warm and the sky is blue.  Perfect for taking photos.  And it’s impossible to get lost because the hotel is on the only road into town from this peninsula.

The waters of Cienfuegos’s Caribbean bay are much calmer than Havana’s Atlantic waters. This is the same blue that I know from Martinique, and it’s very inviting, even in January.  I pass the Yacht Club where we had lunch upon our arrival, and then on past house after house with a blue anchor sign indicating a privately-run B&B, all newly painted and pleasing to the eye.  On the waterfront, there’s a huge billboard - a rarity in Cuba and usually reserved for political messages.  This one is of a man doing a dance step and saying “Cienfuegos is my favorite city”.  He looks a bit like Michael Jackson but is probably Benny Moré.  Farther along, a young man walks atop the breakwater, a bucket in one hand and fishing nets in the other.

        All of a sudden a pedicab stops and the two men in the back ask me if I speak Spanish.  They have Slavic accents and want me to ask the “driver” whether he has to pay anything at the hospital if he gets sick.  That is within my capabilities.  The answer is no, he doesn’t, it’s free.  The pedaler thanks me and pedals them off, all happy.  I guess once an interpreter, always an interpreter.
       In town there are lots of people, many of them young.  Maybe it’s a week-end.  I’ve lost track of the days.  I poke around a bit, and when it’s time I ask for directions to the Benny Moré statue, our group’s meeting place.  After one young man tries to lure my tourist pesos into his Benny Moré café instead, someone has pity and points to the corner.  There’s the statue; I’ve walked right past it.

       Our group reconstitutes itself, arrival by arrival, and we’re off to our next appointment.  On the way, we go into a few stores to see how things function in Cuba.  One is a pharmacy where a sign says “It’s free for you, but here’s what medical services cost” (I’m assuming in Cuban pesos, not CUCs) - and then there’s a whole list of treatments:  general and local anesthesia, angioplasty, glaucoma surgery...  All very interesting.  And obviously designed to make people realize that they’re getting their money’s worth with Fidel, and now Raul.  Another store is a dry goods and old-fashioned general store, with a corner for “recycled” clothing.  All very interesting and orderly.  Very 1950's rural America, actually.

       We’re allowed a few minutes to take a spin around the main square, with its Arch of Triumph that’s the only French touch I see in this reputedly “French” city.  Another bigger-than-lifesize statue of Jose Marti... with a pigeon on his head.  Just like the pigeon that sits atop the head of King Henry IV’s statue in Paris.  Or the one on Lincoln’s head at his Memorial  in Washington, DC.  Worldwide, pigeons have no respect.

        Our people-to people is at a theater on the square.  It’s a performance of the Choir of Cienfuegos.  17 singers in an a cappela group that has traveled the world, including Paris but not the United States.  They start out with Monteverdi, move on to a Cuban classic and a more modern Cuban song.  Then, in honor of the Yankees, they perform Oh Shenandoah, and close with a stirring version of a gospel piece, My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.  We’re very honored, and their harmonies are beautiful.

Back at the hotel, I avail myself of the services of René, the bartender.  Last night he served me a pineapple juice, followed by a pineapple juice “but this time with rum”.  Which he taught me is called a Habana Especial. When I walk into the bar and say Hola, he smiles and asks “Habana Especial?”  Good memory.  We talk a bit and I tell him he has a French name.  He’s relieved to learn that René is also a man’s name in French, if it has only one “e”.  He thought is was only a girl’s name.

       Then it’s across the parking lot to a Moorish mansion, or “rather palace”, the Palacio de Valle.  Shortly before the Revolution, a company bought it and planned to turn it into a casino.   (Perhaps it had Mafia connections?)  But Castro returned, won the war and decreed that casinos were a thing of the past.  So now it’s a restaurant and meeting place for the Hotel Jagua.  Built of alabaster and marble from Carrara in Italy, accented with exotic woods such as mahogany, the walls and ceiling completely covered with elaborate carving, and all of it lit by crystal chandeliers of astounding proportion, it’s overwhelmingly luxurious.  The meal is every bit in keeping with the setting... and there’s lobster yet again. For once, the wine flows freely. Will this torture never end?

For a look at the Palacia de Valle, try this link:  http://www.cienfuegoscity.org/cienfuegos-city-arch-valle-palace.htm

Cuba: Day 8 - Part 1

Our last full day in Cuba.  And it’s a varied schedule.
       After breakfast, Chris gives a talk with a slide show of his photos of those vintage American cars we’ve been seeing each and every day, all over the place.  They are not museum pieces; they’re a true means of transportation.  Sometimes it feels like time traveling back to my childhood for me.  With his talk, Chris has set the theme for the morning:  things with engines.

   
 Which is why our next stop - in the Vedado area of Greater Havana - is to the workshop behind the home of Luis Enrique Gonzalez, where he keeps his flock of Harley-Davidsons running through extreme talent and ingenuity. As with those classic American cars, no Harleys have been sold in Cuba over the 50+ years of the embargo.  So these are vintage bikes.  Sometimes visitors to Cuba bring parts with them.  But not entire bikes.  And yet there are 200 Harleys registered and running in Havana alone.  Their owners call themselves Harlistas.  Luis shows us motorcycles in various stages of rebuilding.  He calls what he does resolver, to resolve.  Or as he says in English, “keep it running”.  One example of Cuban ingenuity:  enema tubes used for brake linings.  I feel Luis’ efforts merit a Harley T-shirt from Ann Arbor, or maybe Paris... or both.  Maybe Chris can bring it with him on his next trip.*


       On our way to our next stop, we drop by Lennon Park, also in Vedado.  And yes, that would indeed be John Lennon.  Not only does he have this park named after him, but he also can be found sitting there on a park bench.  Of course, both Lennon and the bench are bronze (by sculptor Jose Villa) but the likeness is striking, right down to the granny glasses, which are real, but not John’s.  And there’s a funny story behind that.  The glasses have been stolen several times so now someone stays nearby, 12 hours at a time, rain or shine - just like the guard at Jim Morrison’s tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris - and places them on John’s nose whenever people come to take a photo. Which is often.  Today the Glasses Custodian is a shy lady who lets me take her photo, and even tries to put my own glasses on John, but the temples aren’t right so they won’t fit over his bronze ears.  How sweet of her to have tried.  My (bad) Spanish seems to endear me to the Cubans, and they go the extra mile to connect.

Our lunch spot today doubles as another people-to-people because we’re eating in a home-cum-museum.  The art here reminds me of two artistes in France:  Picassiette from Chartres and Le Facteur Cheval.  Picassiette used broken pieces of pottery as mosaics to cover everything in his modest home, including his wife’s Singer sewing machine.  (I’m sure she was thrilled.)  Being very religious, he also drew frescoes of the famous Chartres Cathedral and covered them with pottery shards as well.  Le Facteur Cheval was just that:  a postman, with a rural route in the hills near the Rhone Valley.  On his rounds, he would find strange-shaped stones and wheelbarrow them home, gradually building towering monuments behind his house.  The complex became known as his Palace and includes one ensemble that looks surprisingly like a Cambodian temple.  Surprisingly because Cheval never even saw a photo of a Cambodian temple.
       Here in Jaimanitas, the artist is José Fuster and we are greeted by his son Alex.  Fuster’s home is a fantasy world of strange shapes à la Facteur Cheval and covered with mosaics that would make Picassiette proud.  Its three stories are covered with mosaic tiling in bright colors on walls that look as if they’ve erupted like fireworks.  The best way to sum it up is Gaudi Meets Picasso.  There’s a modernist Madonna holding a baby Jesus up for the Three Wise Fishermen to see from their boat below.  A pool provides a perfect reflection of the shapes high above, and the floor of the pool is also tiled with designs. We lunch at tables around the pool, on food that’s the usual Cuban fare, but delicious, and we just all dive in while people pop back and forth to the kitchen to refill anything that has run out.  Finally it’s time to leave this amusement park of mosaics and head back to the hotel.

      But first we’re given a bit of time to walk around because Fuster has also decorated some 80 homes nearby over the past ten years, turning this simple neighborhood into a colorful, fun place to visit... and probably to live.

* Chris duly delivered the sweatshirts I bought at the Paris Harley-Davidson store for Luis and his daughter on a subsequent Cuba trip.  They were vintage D-Day reprints, as H-D was the motorcycle used in the invasion of Normandy and the freeing of Europe from Nazi rule.