Cuba: Part I - Classic Cars, Restaurant Cats, And The Toilet Paper Police in Globetrotter

I had this weird flashback as I was writing this entry—you remember back in the day, when OD first allowed you to post pictures to your entries? And how, if you had a lot of pictures, you’d put a warning in your title, like My Trip To A Michigan Piñata Factory (Warning: *Pic Heavy*). Why was that? I had people tell me it was because those entries took a long time to load, and I had other people tell me it was because if you were at work, it would completely suck down the bandwidth, possibly getting you in trouble, but I never had issues with either of those things, so I don’t know if those were valid reasons or people just making things up.

Either way, in honor of the fact that Bruce is supposedly trying to Jesus-allegory OD back to life…WARNING: Pic Heavy Entry Ahead.

PART I:

So, just some background, not because I think anyone reading this is not intelligent, but because it amazed me how many people I overheard on the ship who apparently had no idea about…a wide range of topics, most likely. But pertinent to the trip, there was a startling number of folks who were not aware of one or more of the following:

• Cuba is not strictly a communist country. It’s more socialist in that the government owns the means of production, and the wages people earn are theirs, to spend as they wish. And there were definitely poor and wealthy areas of town, which were called out by our tour guide.

• in 1963, Kennedy added travel to the Cuban trade embargo, that was already in place. This effectively stopped all travel between the US and Cuba. It did not, however, stop travel between other countries and Cuba. I swear, some of the people on the ship were acting like Russians were the only people who had visited the island in the past 50 years. CHECK YO HISTORY, PEASANTS.

• The Carter administration eased the travel restrictions between the US and Cuba, but in the early 80’s, the Reagan administration reinstated the ban, allowing certain categories of travel, but not tourism.

• It was actually in 2000—well before Obama was elected—when travel restrictions started being relaxed again. The Obama administration did make the biggest changes to the restrictions, and actually worked with Castro to normalize relations between the two countries, but no, he was not the one who suddenly flung the tourism door wide open and allowed Americans to stampede through.

Everyone caught up? Awesome. Let’s roll.

Our ship docked in Old Havana around 7:00 on Tuesday morning, and by 9:00 all of us were going through dockside customs.

“All of us,” included me, Dyfais, Red, Napster, their right-next-door neighbors; Bambi and HotRod, and Queenie and Jolly, who also live in the same neighborhood. Cuban customs was pretty much like any other customs place I’ve gone through, except for the fact that the agents were complete and total hard asses. I know customs agents aren’t really supposed to get too chatty with you, just in case you happen to be Jason Bourne, out to do a bit assassination, and some light sight-seeing, but man, crack a smile or something.

There were both male and female agents in customs, and there was no mistaking who was who. Mainly because while the men were all wearing your standard, semi-militaristic, khaki uniforms (complete with beret), the woman all looked like they just got out of a Halloween photo shoot for Sexy Militant and Naughty Prison Guard costumes. Short, tight khaki skirts, black fishnet hose, and three-inch heels. Every single one of them. As we were standing there, waiting for everyone to get through the gate, HotRod stage-whispered, ”I’m so confused right now. I’m feeling very aroused AND law-abiding.” I could hardly blame him. I really wanted to get a picture of these uniforms, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without it looking weird and questionable, and I had no desire to be possibly detained in a socialist country under suscpicion of being a pervert, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

This was also the first place that we encountered the concept of the Toilet Paper Police. There was a restroom in the customs building, but you had to pay? tip? the lady who was standing in there in order to get some toilet paper. At the time I didn’t attach a lot of significance to it. I figured that maybe they just had a problem with toilet paper theft in that building or something.

OH, YOU KNOW NOTHING JON SNOW.

As soon as you leave the port, you’re in Plaza de San Francisco, which is this cobbled town square plaza full of tourists trying to find their tour groups, and locals, trying to sell you everything from cigars, to taxi rides, to hastily drawn caricatures (most of which were just terrible.)

These two gals convinced HotRod to pay to take a picture with them.

Red had arranged for us to take a walking / taxi tour with a company called Blexie Tours. (Cannot recommend this guy enough if you ever find yourself traveling to Cuba.) So we walked around the plaza until we found our tour guide, Jorge. For the first part of the tour, he took us on a walk through a large section of Old Havana.

This is a statue of an eccentric old man who used to walk through the streets of Old Havana, extoling folks to be nice to each other, and help each other. He would also feed stray animals. What made him eccentric were his clothes, which look like they’re from the 1800’s. Except he died in the early 1980’s. When he died, the city erected this statue of him outside a church.

According to local folklore, if you touch your foot to the statue’s foot, grab his hand, then grab his beard, you’ll have good luck.

Hey, I can always use some good luck.

This was outside a building that used to be an orphanage. It was literally a place to drop off abandoned babies. Instead of leaving them on the front step in a basket, you just put them in here. Like a baby version of a Blockbuster video return.

The streets were typical, old-world avenues: narrow, cobbled, and laid out in straight lines. Cars were only allowed along a few major streets, and to make sure people didn’t drive where they shouldn’t, almost all of the streets had these old cannons that had been sunk, muzzle first, into the ground along the intersections, only leaving room for people to walk around, but not enough room for cars to get by.

The architecture was baroque, and gorgeous, and there were courtyards and plazas tucked away everywhere.

Plaza Vieja:

This mural was painted along Via Mercaderes. It’s literally a “reflection” of the other side of the street. For example, where that big double door is in the mural, right across from it, is a door the exact same size and location. So cool.

This is Plaza de la Catedral. The church is La Catedral de la Virgen Maria de la Concepcion (say that five times fast), where the Spanish kept the remains of Christopher Columbus for a period of time, until 1898, when they went to war with the United States, and his remains were returned to Spain so that they wouldn’t fall into enemy hands.

Queenie is a pharmacist, and she asked Jorge how healthcare worked in Cuba. He told us that medical care is free—if you need to see a doctor, you just go. Medicine, however, is a different matter. Medications—even stuff we’d consider to be over-the-counter, like aspirin—is tightly controlled, and can only be purchased at the farmacia. He took us to go see a corner farmacia, which was interesting.

Jorge then took us to one of the bars that Hemmingway liked to frequent. It was down this narrow street that was about 30% alley, and it was roughly four square feet away from being a literal hole-in-the-wall called La Bodeguita del Medio. Tradition states that you have a drink at the bar, then you sign your name on the wall somewhere along the street. So we did, because we are not ones to buck tradition.

After we’d been walking around for about 90 minutes, we headed to the spot where we were meeting up with the van to continue the tour. An air-conditioned van, thank all the big and little gods. It was hot out. And humid. My thighs were squishing. Poached eggs, people. That’s all I could think of anytime I tried to come up with words to describe the weather. It wasn’t terrible, or unbearable, or anything like that. It’s just that after awhile, when you’re out in heat like that, it just makes you tired.

In Cuba, by law, private citizens are not allowed to purchase any car manufactured after 1959. So there were a ton of classic cars, all of them washed, waxed, and gleaming.

Businesses and government organizations though, can purchase whatever vehicles they want (hence our large, fully air-conditioned van.) This led to an interesting mix of classic cars, modern cars, and a large number of vehicles that I mentally dubbed “biscuit tins,” because they were small, and had a boxy shape. It took me an age and a half to realize that they were Russian cars. I’ve never seen any book on the subject, but if anyone out there is looking for any sort of socio-political thesis topic, then you’ve got to write a paper on American vs. Russian vehicles, because holy disposable automobiles Batman. Compared to the American cars, the biscuit tins looked like Hot Wheels.

Another interesting fact: most of the classic cars we saw actually had modern engines. The guy who owned the purple car in the above picture let HotRod take a look under the hood, and he told us that it had a Mercedes-Benz engine in it. Which I guess makes more sense than believing that these guys could easily get parts for 50+ year-old engines that aren’t even manufactured any more. How or where these guys get parts for their cars remained a mystery, as Jorge would only smile enigmatically when asked.

On the other side of the port, is the El Cristo de la Habana. The story goes that when Batista commissioned the statue, he wanted it to be as tall as the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, but the artist, Jilma Madera, felt that a statue that tall wouldn’t look right in the location that they’d picked out for it. So she only made it 56 feet tall (instead of the 98 feet Batista wanted.) When the statue was delivered, Batista angrily wanted to know why she hadn’t made it to his height specifications. Madera calmly informed him that if you factored in the elevation of the location above sea level (32 ft.), the pedestal (10 ft.), and the statue itself (56 ft.) then you got 98 feet.

Also on the other side of the port, is the Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro (say that…hell, just one time fast), which is an old fort that was built to guard the Havana harbor from pirates.

While we were there, Jolly asked Jorge if there were any bathrooms around. It was at this point that Jorge really earned his paycheck. See, it turns out that the only restroom was inside the fort, which you had to pay to get into. The tour included the spot where the fort was, mainly because of the lighthouse, and because it had some really great views of Havana from across the harbor, but it didn’t include actually going inside the fort. So Jorge walked over to the small kiosk where a couple of men were taking tickets, and what commenced was about a minute’s worth of passionate, intense Spanish, plenty of emphatic arm waving, and several suspicious stares aimed in our direction. At the end of it, Jorge came back beaming, and told us that he’d talked the guards into letting us go inside the fort without paying, so we could use the bathroom.

The only hitch was when we actually got TO the bathrooms, which were at the end of long series of narrow passageways, and twisty stone walls. Apparently there was a Toilet Paper cop in each restroom, and they were NOT happy that a bunch of freeloaders were looking to relieve their bladders. Their displeasure was manifested in the fact that neither one would provide our group any toilet paper.

When we questioned Jorge about this seemingly vehement policing of the butt papers, we were informed that the people who work in the restrooms—that we had taken for the American equivalent of bathroom attendants—were, in fact, licensed to work in specific restrooms, which meant that they were responsible for cleaning and stocking the restrooms using cleaning supplies and toilet paper that THEY had to pay for. So, in order to have enough money to keep their restroom stocked AND make something of a profit, they doled out the TP sparingly.

All I can say to that, is VIVA LA CAPITALISM! Because, while you can blame capitalism for a lot of things, for the most part, going to the bathroom in the U.S. consistently ranks as a free activity. And you also have to concede that capitalism’s given us small miracles, such as wet wipes and mini-packages of Kleenex.

After this ring-side seat to the minor brush up of Capitalism vs. Socialism, we headed back into the city for lunch.

Jorge explained to us that in Cuba, it’s extremely difficult to get a loan from the bank, unless you already have either money or property to put up as collateral. It’s the age-old issue of only being able to get a loan if you can prove that you’re rich enough to not need it. As a result, homes are typically owned by entire families, and are passed down within families for generations. Jorge explained that the house he lived in with his girlfriend and his father, was owned by his grandmother. Buying on credit is rare in Cuba. If you’re part of the working class, and you want to buy a house, you save up until you have the money, then you buy. Of course this puts the age of the average homeowner somewhere around 50, but the upside is that Cubans aren’t overwhelmed by debit like Americans are.

Another aspect of the low rate of loans, is that it’s really common for people to start businesses in their homes, because all you need is a permit. Currently, one of the more popular businesses is that of restauranteur. As part of the tour package, Jorge took us to one of these in-home restaurants called Habitania. It was literally the first floor of a two-story house that had been set up with tables and chairs. There had been no attempt to knock down walls, or open up the space. We were sat at a large table in what looked like a spare bedroom, although that might have just been the impression I got, considering that there was a chest of drawers against one wall.

So, for anyone who’s wondering, the food we had while in Cuba was…unremarkable. It wasn’t bad, it’s just that there was nothing to it that distinguished it unequivocally as Cuban food. Like, you know when you’re eating Mexican food, or Indian food, or Asian food, but there weren’t any culinary markers that declared that you were eating Cuban food. They did serve this pumpkin squash soup though, that was abso-fucking SUPERB (even though it looked like baby shit on a cracker.)

Halfway through the meal, we noticed the cats. There were three of them, and they were wandering around the table, occasionally looking up at us as though perplexed as to what we were all doing there. As soon as she saw them, Bambi began cooing, and clucking at them in a wholly annoying manner. I don’t have anything against cats. I don’t even have anything against having them around while I’m eating. But having a grown-ass woman sitting right next to you clucking, and cajoling, and wheedling for three straight minutes in order to try and coax an otherwise indifferent cat to her, was a bit much.

The funny part, was that as soon as HotRod noticed what his wife was doing, he snorted out, ”Ugh. Cats,” and immediately one of the kitties jumped into his lap. Because cats and babies always know which people don’t care for them, and perforce, those are the only people they’ll pay any attention to.

This entry is way longer than I thought it’d be, so I’m going to stop this here and write up the rest in a second entry. Join us for Part Dos, where our heroes visit the Museo de Revelucion, buy some cigars, and go to a private island that used to be a cache drop for industrial cargo ships.

My God, the sequel practically writes itself!

”There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Last updated March 22, 2023