Enter Fok (Cuba, Part 2)

Here enters Fok, whom I met last year in Russia and who I would now be travelling with for two and a half months through Cuba and Central America. We get along great, although we are pretty much opposites. He is a 37 year old, outspoken, gay architect and semi-professional photographer from Perth, who listens to Queen and Fleetwood Mac, and who was born in Vietnam and came to Australia as a baby on a migrant boat. Just another colourful character from the long list I’ve met, but it was going to be interesting to spend so long with someone I’d only ever known for two weeks.

 

He flew into Santiago de Cuba, the second city of Cuba, down the far end of the country. From there we went to Baracoa, to Sanctus Spiritis, Trinidad, Cienfuegos, and back to Havana. This blog will briefly cover these stops.

Santiago de Cuba – The city where the Revolution began; the air is filled with diesel fumes, it’s a little crumbly, and it has some old colonial heritage. It’s got a real working class vibe, (although technically there is only one class in Cuba), and the highlight here for us was our the guy who we rented a room off, a big friendly guy named Carlos who spoke to us about internet access (generally illegal in the home here) and what the USA is still doing in the nearby Guantanamo Bay (the clause the US put in Cuba’s constitution in the early 1900’s to allow them to use Guantamo Bay for 99 years expired in early 2000’s). Talking to people in this way is always better than going to some stale museum.

Here I also played chess with Carlos’s father who knew how to say just one thing in English; ‘Good Afternoon.’ The old man smashed me.

Baracoa -  5 hour bus through Guantanamo and over the mountains to this isolated seaside town. People come here because it has a cool Caribbean vibe of clear waters and palm trees. Because of the sticky heat we were excited for the beach but on arrival found it to be covered in rubbish, wandering chickens, and dead rats. The beach front houses here were the slums of the town. We had to walk about 40 minutes from the town to find a spot that was nice enough to swim.

A little further from the town was a cool little village accessed by a suspension bridge over mangroves and a river. Behind this village was something of a national park area, where we did a hike up into the palm covered hills, through some properties with wandering pigs, turkeys and jutia (tree rats which they eat), and into a water cave where we swam.

Baracoa was a highlight because it felt so remote and had the versatility to be beautiful or disgusting depending on which way your head was turned.

 

 

Sanctus Spiritus – we rode into town from the bus station in a horse drawn carriage, and after having a great meal in the casa, a wander around the next morning, and going to the immigration and police stations to inquire about my lost visa (causing me a little bit of stress), we decided we’d seen enough and bargained with a taxi to drive us an hour north to the next town.

Trinidad – This made Lonely Planet’s top ten places on earth 2014 list. We had three nights here and got into a routine; in the mornings we’d catch the bus out to the beach – a long white beach with palm trees and turquoise water. At midday we’d return to the city for some street food lunch. Spend early hours of afternoon in casa and out of the heat. Spend late afternoon/ early evening wandering around the incredibly picturesque town, soaking in the life and colour of it all. Dinner each night was a casa feast - pork, beef, goat. Having someone in the house you are renting spend the afternoon making your dinner is a luxury that we had to acknowledge by eating to the point that lapsing into a coma became a risk. Apart from the dead dogs/ kittens/ rats laying in the streets, Trinidad is as prim and proper as Cuba gets.

 

 

Cienfuegos  - unlike the rest of Cuba, this town was colonised by the French, not the Spanish, and so had a different feel to it…apparently. Here we wandered around the hot and dusty streets taking in everyday Cuba. We finished our days here out on a point of land that juts into the harbour drinking cheap beer and watching the locals swim in the filthy water.

 

 

 

Havana – I returned to Havana for a third time, and decided it was one of the highlights for me. We wandered around the streets of central Havana that look as though they have been bombed and risk collapsing at any moment, we visited the Florida bar in old town made famous by Ernest Hemingway who spent quite a bit of time in Cuba (lots of people have commented on the last name here), ate dirt cheap street food with the small amount of currency we had remaining, and hung out along the big sea wall running across the front of town.

The lack of internet in Cuba drove me crazy and getting in touch with Rin was difficult and expensive. To be on the other side of the world is one thing, but I regret that there were times and towns when it was impossible to even make contact with her.

A month in Cuba was always going to be a noteworthy part of my trip. Cuba is the land of big cars and big cigars, crumbling but colourful. These are interesting times for a country that is strictly communist but on the verge of capitalism, and many political commentators are predicting that when Fidel Castro dies the country will open up completely. People are saying that we made it here just in time. Out of everywhere I’ll go on my travels I think Cuba will be the one country I won’t recognise if I ever come back.