Doing things in Havana
A famous Havana landmark (actually there are hundreds) is an 8 km promenade walkway along the coast called the Malecon. Walking, sitting, chatting, romancing, fishing, swimming and even doing the triumphal wedding day loop in some grand chevy seems to be of the main recreational activities here in Havana. That and drinking rum, smoking cigars, playing dominoes, dancing and making music! We were fortunate enough to catch the national Cuban ballet company doing their stuff at the oldest theatre in use in the western hemisphere - absolutely fantastic! Live music is unavoidable - pretty much every restaurant has live bands.
We met a new friend during a Malecon sunset. Gerardo is a history teacher who speaks excellent English. He took us on a free tour of the Museum of the Revolution, invited us over for an interesting diner at his home, had us dancing in the living room, showed us a great (and cheap) restaurant hidden away, shared many a Cuban anecdote with us and, of course, in the end tried to get us to purchase 'real' cigars from his friend who works in the cigar factory (we found that every Cuban who we met seemed to have a friend who works in the cigar factory) - which we graciously declined. We could never walk with him in the streets (he always walked on a block ahead) because there is a police officer on every block - literally. The government is quite uncomfortable with uncontrolled mingling of locals and tourists and locals are not allowed to offer any service or product to tourists - like playing guide, etc. Gerardo did none of these things but he assured us that the police are so corrupt they are just best avoided all together. The tour of the museum was the same and we were supposed to tell anyone who asked that we were friends of a mutual friend in Germany, Marcus, who had travelled to South Africa and given us photos to give Gerardo which were taken in 1999 while he was over in Germany on an exchange. He had the photos with him all the time. He showed us his family's ration card which is the same one which allows all Cubans access to rather dismal monthly rations of food. He shared about a time during the special period when the government did their bit by blessing wedding couples with free crates of beer and a cake on their big day. Gerardo married and divorced twice in this time with a friend of his - the sale of the beers made it a very profitable maneuver!
Probably the most beautiful (and most touristic) part of Havana is the UNESCO world heritage site of the oldest part of the city - called Havana Vieja. The buildings (or at least the facades) are well conserved (they have to - apparently 300 buidlings collapse a year in Havana!) and the number and beauty of colonial buildings in this area is truly breathtaking. Musicians here only seem to strike up the band when tourists pass by and one can easily find old woman here posing with enormous cigars waiting for lucrative photo opportunities.
There is just too much to see and do in Havana. We tried to stay off the main tourist circuit, but we did pop into the occasional art gallery as well as the national fine arts museum for Cuban art - which was actually really excellent. We visited the Capitolio - a building very close in design to that in Washington DC - built middle last century to house parliament (no longer in use). A giant 17m tall statue of a woman representing the republic is housed inside the building and there is also a 21 carat diamond positioned in the floor - well, it was replaced by a replica a while back after a brief and very interesting disappearance and reappearance...
We also took a most fascinating tour of a cigar factory where professional cigar rollers have to fulfil a quota of 110 cigars a day. The process of Cuban cigar making is almost magical and the people churn them out all day long while being read to from the national propaganda newspaper everyday. We had to purchase one or two although neither of us can say that we enjoyed the cigars at all - the rest of Cuba seems to love of them!
Another impressive site was the San Cristobal cemetery where there are blocks and blocks of elaborate graves that host more than 1 million dead. One can't help being impressed by the decadence of it all. After a while, though, we needed a break from the city and headed out to the country.
One of our final maneuvers while staying in Havana was to innocently try to buy a painting on display on the Prado (a long elaborately built walkway in old Havana). We selected the painting we desired to purchase and were told that someone would meet us presently at a nearby hotel and we would receive our painting there for the amount indicated (all in Spanish). It was like a drop-off: you walk along the sidewalk until someone starts walking alongside you. After a while the moment for transaction is indicated and the 10 CUC note leaves your one hand while a rolled painting appears in your other...
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