Another Cuba

February 7, 2008

PLAYA BARACOA - Well, I'll tell you one thing: Havana isn't Cuba. It's not as though we've seen more than a few hours of the outside country yet but a whole different place opens up once you've cleared the original city.

For a start, there is what amounts to a New Havana tucked to its western side. The seafront of Havana, served by the harbour that gives the city its name,

A New Havana, at the other end of the Malecon. The American Special Interests office is down there, by the way (the USA doesn't have an embassy in Cuba), and Cuba has put up a forest of black flags in front of it to block the propaganda messages that the Americans sometimes display. The US is always referred to as "the Empire".

runs from a lighthouse opposite a grassy area that makes the entrance to the city centre, the downtown area, then west in a gentle curve. It's called the Malecon and it's known for the waves that splash up over it and for the old houses and hotels, once glorious, which have more than usually decayed because of the salt and the sea winds.

The Malecon is where every visitor to Havana strolls at least once and, in strolling, wonders what can be the mushroom of tower blocks at the other end of the bay. The answer is that it's the new commercial, residential and business area, not entirely new but markedly more so than the rest. I know that because it's where we went to replace Steph's tourist visa. Unlike other countries, Cuba provides a paper visa. One stamped in your passport would be easier and there'd be less chance of losing it, but the last thing that some people want - to be precise, what Americans want - is a Cuban stamp in their passport. Steph, who never loses anything, lost hers almost instantly. Since not having one is a great way to attract no end of problems that could result in missing the plane home, we rode to the new town to get a replacement.

It was a sunny ride along the Malecon but a pointless one since in minutes we found that we were at the wrong office and had to ride back to where we had started. Salvation was eventually found in the curiously named O'Reilly street, where Steph waited for four hours while I sat in a leafy square with the bikes, watched the world pass, talked to a couple from Munich and admired not for the first time the shapely legs and pulse-quickening short skirts of Cuban women.

"This is not an easy country," the Germans said. "Everybody is trying to sell things to us."

I said that, yes, that had happened to us as well, although nothing like in the streets of Beijing - "Fake Lolex?", they ask there, with impressive honesty - but that we'd also been shown kindness and been met by people who simply wanted to talk.

"In Havana?" Mrs German said, in a "I find that hard to believe" voice.

"In Havana," I said. "We haven't been anywhere else yet."

"Hmmm..."

She thought a moment before continuing: "And it is not a cheap place to have a holiday." And with that I could agree, because Cuba has not one but two currencies, both called the peso, but with the international peso trading against foreign currencies at a rate of about 25 times higher than its buying value. Or, put another way, you pay 25 times the price of everything compared to what a Cuban would pay if the same goods or services were available to him in the domestic peso.

We are now on the coast - Steph and I, that is, not the Germans and us - about 30km west, as far as we could get in the time left after the visa business and a meal. It has been a flat ride on busy roads in traffic which is kinder to cyclists than almost anywhere else I've been to. The moment we passed into Havana's built-up hinterland, we left the decaying old hotels and moved into an area of fresh, modern housing, all neat, well-kept single-storey houses in leafy surroundings. There were a few older places as well, of course, and the occasional house of bare breeze block, but generally this was a place where I'd have been happy to live. It is, I suspect, where you plump up your pillows if you work in one of the embassies down the road.

One feature of today's ride, which circumstance stopped my picturing, was the propaganda billboards. One showed an equation: a sum of two faces and a total. The faces were of George Bush and someone I didn't recognise and the sum was the face of Adolf Hitler. Another showed a furiously angry Uncle Sam in a big hat and a star-spangled suit dancing with impotent rage and pointing to a bunch of cynical, smiling Cubans who laughed back at him from their island.

We met a surprising number of Americans in Cuba, despite the US's ban on such visits. I often wondered what they made of signs like this...

...or this, a life-sized and less than flattering picture from the Wall of Cretins in the Museum of the Revolution. The other two "cretins" were George Bush and the last pre-revolutionary leader, Fulgencio Batista.

I've seen several references to the American embargo and there's no denying the damage it is causing the island. One sign we passed read "Just three weeks of trade and this new road would have been finished."

Nevertheless, its effects aren't universal. Computers run on Microsoft and spanking new buses have come from China and Korea or from Volvo and Mercedes. There are countless bangers of cars on the roads but there are also BMWs and Peugeots. You could buy Lucky Strike and Nestle ice cream. Cuba is not Havana; it may also not be the Cuba of those who seek to make a political point when they portray only the worst. There's plenty that is hard and much that is wrong, but life goes on.

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