Havana Humidity

The suffocating heat and humidity is ameliorated only by Hemingway's favorite cocktail and the magical light of sunsets.
Laundry takes forever to dry!
The friendly chaos of the streets invites a certain solitary appreciation. No matter where you turn, the air is thick with color and the city's ruins speak of neglected elegance.

Diversity Squared

Never have I experienced such a melting pot - or such long painted nails!

Printing in Havana

How about a Study Abroad program in Old Havana?
The presses are up and running. The art community is thriving and artists are the very, very luckiest of all Cubans.

Old Havana

Dancers, Santerias and Schoolgirls fill the square.

Grande Dame and her Man

We're staying in the Nationale Hotel in Havana-an elegant Grande Dame for the 1930's filled with threadbare sofas, tobacco stained lampshades, halls of photos of famous people and zillions of fat, sweaty foreign tourists. She must be in profound mourning. In the garden nearby, for no apparent reason, is a Cuban Vitruvian man - exercising his proportions between the tanks from the Revolution and the tunnels of the Bay of Pigs. These clashes are exhausting.

Beginning of the end

They are coming...the entrepreneurs are finding cracks in the city fortresses. Pay phones and phonographs are still used daily, but the signs of insidious "invadores" are everywhere. It's just a matter of time. Cuba successfully traded with pirates for many years. Now Starbuckaneers await in a harbor being upgraded by foreign investors. Will Havana become another Singapore? Now, Che's call to arms seems far away and in an a different key:

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre!
Toward victory - always!!!

Comics

What we've been eating.
What other tourists eat.
There must be a song about this....

Fidelishionistas

Yo amo Petaluma

All our new "Abuelos de Fiesta (Partying Grandparent)"dance teachers are wearing "I love Petaluma" buttons. Their total age is over 500 years.
Average life expectancy in Cuba is 79.

CUBAN Sandwich

It's the same everywhere

We went to a Senior Club here in Santa Clara (a short drive from Havana) and found ourselves dancing, gossiping, sharing jokes and exchanging gifts (they LOVED the readers I brought).
Everyone is optimistic about the new relationship with the US. Here, in the middle of CUBA and in the historic center of The Revolution, everything is definitely O-Che.

Saturday nights 50 years apart

Here's the theater from the Soviet Sixties and what the typical Trinadadian does on a Saturday night. Salsa, Cha Cha Cha, Rumba and sexy Son dancing seem to have passed over these sweet souls. We're staying in a Casa Particular where men pick up their dates on horseback. Mom's don't wait up.

Retail Madness

The "Special Period" is not over. The shelves are stocked, but variety is non existent. Wasn't it Henry Ford who sai "You can have any color as long as it's black."?

Crutches,cars and coupons

El Cobre Cathedral, at the base of the Mountain exploited for its copper, has an altar of miracles where people throw away their crutches and canes. Not a good place to open a prosthetics business.
BUT a fabulous place to be an auto mechanic or restorer. I've never seen such combinations of models, styles, rivets and uses for Bondo.
Our guide showed us a Ration Coupon discount card. Every week, each person can get:
I egg
1/4 chicken
1 1/2 c white sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1T coffee
5 lbs beans
2 1/2 lbs rice
7 small rolls of bread
A few slices of "mortadella"

1/4 kilogram of salt, 1/16 lb of palm oil, 80 grams of pasta depends on availability. No toothpaste, soap, fish, meat, potatoes, fruits or vegetables.
Don't know how they get cigars, but a lots of them have them in their mouths.

The two systems of currency is beyond confusing...

No Cuban Sandwich today

Had an orchestrated "interaction" with four fishermen today (three of which have secondary jobs as security guards). Lunch was frozen fish with shrimp and cheese sauce from Canada. Worked it off getting delightfully lost in downtown Santiago after a visit to the Museo de Rum and extensive mojito research.