Cuba 6 Havana, Habana, Have and Have not

Do not underestimate the cunning of man when he needs to get into his coconut - to enhance his rum drinking!

After settling Shadowmere into her berth in Hemingway Marina I am introduced to Josh. A taxi driver and fixer, he gets me a gas cylinder with an American fitting and an American gas regulator. The marina staff wire up my 110V autotransformer to the electric and I have mains electric again. (Thank you Screwfix for getting me the autotransformer for £60 – about a twentieth the price of a marine power supply). 

Josh takes me up to the airport and Shirley arrives after taking an hour to get through customs – carrying a second hand autopilot controller and various glues and chemicals with no problem. She also has a new ensign for Shadowmere.

 This is what 8000 miles does to a flag

Nice new one - thanks Shirley

Whilst waiting for Rachel, Matt and Amy to arrive we visit the Hemingway Yacht Club – premises on the Marina site. The marina site is huge in fact, it has 4 long canals all parallel with strips of land between them – housing a hotel and several restaurants and cafes as well as a couple of shops – the supermarket has about 30 types of thing in it you get 10 feet of shelving all loaded with one type of pasta. It does have beer and there is a butchers that has cooked ham and cheese (and ice cream…) one of the other shops sells cigars and rum. What’s not to like?

The yacht club has an interesting building, we meet a lovely Canadian couple a few boats down from us that I had met very briefly when travelling along the North coast towards Havana – Mary and David in Wandering Rose.

Shirley and I went into Havana to await Rachel’s arrival by bus and we sit in a café with a lovely Jazz singer, she had eyes that sparkled and told a story – she looked at me and winked at Shirley, I wonder what the story was…

Rachel arrives next and brings hats for herself and Shirley

When the Rachel, Matt and Amy arrive we have some Rum, some of us smoke some cigars or cigarillos, some enjoy these some do not. Rum is best drunk out of coconuts of course – an American called Chris had stopped by with Shirley and I a few days earlier and opened a coconut husk using a machete, we had then drunk rum with coconut water with him, nice!

I used more mundane tools, but did succeed – see later for Matt’s attempts using rocks!

 From that big husk comes quite a small coconut - these two were just lying on the path  - the marina is full of coconut trees

 Success

 Getting close to rum time

 Note the half coconut on the table

 Rachel does sophisticated quite well...

Well.... hmmm.

We also engaged in more esoteric activity – Amy and I play Matt at Chess

I can think you can tell from the look on our faces that Matt is screwed… – to be fair he did give us Rook and Queen odds.

We visit the capital – and see the capital building, an impressive structure

And of course we see many beautiful old buildings and cars.

We relax for a coffee, lots of live music about – good musicians too.

Havana is a city of two halves – if you arrive into a hotel you will probably only visit the old town, and the better parts of the old town, maybe you will take an excursion to see specific things – like the Havana club rum museum that I cover later. Also if you arrive in Cuba to a resort you will probably not leave the resort much as it has everything you need and can conveniently organise anything you ask for. Our experience as independent travellers is that it is much more difficult to get things done. Everything is difficult, buying food is organised slightly opaquely – supermarkets do not do fresh food, just a few varieties of bottles, tins and packets of long life stuff. Butchers are few and far between and don’t carry a variety of produce. Fresh vegetables and fruit, or eggs can be obtained – if you know where the backstreet markets are and when they open. There are very few bakeries or pastry shops. (I saw one that sold out its bread every morning early). Public transport was tricky too – there are four different types of bus and three or four different types of taxi. You could pay a few coins, a CUC (about a pound) or 20 CUC for the same journey.

It would probably help if you spoke Spanish. Having said all that Cuba has the best tropical Islands, beaches and reefs in the Caribbean that I have seen, stunning scenery. And the town of Havana has many, many lovely old buildings, parts are majestic.

We did also enter a maze of small streets were a lot of locals lived and clearly a very poor part of town. All capitals have these of course. Counterbalanced by taking a wrong bus and touring the suburbs for 50 minutes exposed us to vast numbers of very nice, large houses (as well as streets full of 15 foot wide single storey buildings and dozens of street eating places) – It was dark, so no photographs of that excursion unfortunately.

Of course there are lots of cars and taxis

We also visit an old castle museum at the port of Havana

We also visit the Café Paris and have the worst waiter service we have ever experienced, and food delivery that missed a meal and was wrong. I think they modelled it on the French waiters of world renown 50 years ago. In contrast we visit a modern café bar called Restaurante Tabarish – it had a Russian feel to it.

We often judged places in Cuba on their toilets, often they were clean but the real test was if it had toilet seats, soap and paper provided (always travel with some toilet paper in your pocket!) The Tabarish was thoroughly modern and Western (and had seats, soap and paper in its spotless loos) Recommended

We saw this interesting entrance to a jazz club but it was unfortunately shut. In fact Havana is fairly dead after 10pm so I suppose lack of tourists does have an effect. I am amazed at some shops that have staff waiting to serve someone and might have complete days when no-one comes into the shop. I suppose the government can afford the loss of income in one area if it can make up for it in others. It is not efficient.

We also visit the Floridida Bar where Hemingway drank Daquiri. As I look like Hemingway it seems only fair that we drink Daquiri in his honour.

Tres chic, all three ladies! (Photos courtesy of Rachel and her camera - thanks R )

We also visit the Hemingway Rum Museum – recommended.

I like the old wooden machines for pressing sugar cane to get the juice out and also the old barrel making machines that the coopers would have used

The real star of the tour is a scale model of the distillery – complete with a working model train that was used to transport the cut sugar cane quickly to the press and mill.

Remember the scale of a model railway when looking at the photographs below!

Finally the end part of the tour finishes in the bar! The wall of which lists cocktail recipes!

And us (Rachel behind the lens )

We get good sunsets at the Marina. We decide to hire a car for 3 days and travel back to the South coast to visit CienFuego and Trinidad. We visit a beach resort in the Bay of Pigs, the beach at Casilda (the coast at Trinidad) stay in a couple of Casa Particulas (B&B!) and take a 55 foot catamaran to a tropical island for snorkelling, lying on a beach, eating and drinking from a free bar. That’s next.