Cuba

Arrived in Cuba almost by chance, with an unplanned trip as an appendix to a tour of Central America including Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. In fact, at the end of the Central American itinerary, a friend from the Sorrento peninsula and I found ourselves in Cancun ahead of our return flight, so we decided to spend a few days in Cuba. Having reached Havana airport with an hour's flight, we headed to a residential district of the city where, through an agency in Cancun, we had booked into a guesthouse. The house was clean and tidy, as was the room; the lady was kind but rather strict with her guests, so much so that she made clear right away, accustomed as she was to Italians looking for easy adventures, that it would not be possible to bring girls to her place. That same evening we took a long walk along the seafront, realising the extreme poverty in which this country lives.

Every person we met on the street offered to help us find anything, from a restaurant, to a dance hall, to a girl to spend the night with. Approaching the centre we passed by historic dilapidated houses with crumbling façades, sagging terraces, unhinged doorways but with traces of fine architectural friezes reminding us of their glorious past. A sad end for these buildings on the seafront, once the residence of aristocrats and now brothels. And yes, because here in Cuba prostitution seems to be the only possible business, so every house is a brothel and every girl you meet on the street a potential prostitute. And it doesn't matter whether she prostitutes herself making you believe she likes you or whether she waylays you on the street trying to convince you to take her, what matters is the payment that follows, because this is often for them the only way to survive.

And so one cannot be surprised if family members are accommodating or even encourage this trade. Certainly for someone like me who came to Cuba purely for tourism it all appears very squalid, especially along the main pedestrian avenue, the Prado, where those prostituting themselves are the underage girls who obviously all claim to be eighteen. We eat, as we will almost every evening, a lobster in the restaurant of a hotel that was once certainly luxurious. Cuba, for what it offers, is expensive because foreigners pay with the convertible peso, a currency minted only for them and obviously this banknote has a higher value than the locals' peso, 16 times stronger! Obviously the American dollar is not disdained either but officially it is forbidden.

The hotel where we dine, besides the lobster, would offer us a nice terrace over the Prado, but the avenue is half-dark because here one must economise on electricity and darkness favours prostitution. We return to our lodgings by taxi. The next day we visit Havana but we don't have a guide with us and so we skip many interesting things. The capital is better by day, you don't see the prostitutes, or rather they devote themselves to other things, they have a job, they go to school, in short a normal life, because the metamorphosis happens at sunset. We go to the university district where there is a beautiful marble staircase, we snoop in a bookshop leafing through anti-American books, we ask about the buses to the sea where we'll go the next day and then head to the centre.

By day on the Prado there are children playing, mothers taking newborns for a stroll in prams, tourists doing their "strolls". What else can a tourist do in Havana, the shops are few and those there are almost empty or with things we used twenty years ago and this goes for records too, in the windows there are vinyl ones from the '60s. In the bars then you're afraid to go in because besides there being nothing they are housed in places where you'd fear to sit. There are of course also places for tourists but those are for their use only and certainly don't represent normality. Beyond the Prado a large tree-lined square opens up because Havana may be poor but it is rich in public greenery. Here are the statues of figures from Cuban history and the Capitol, entirely similar to the one in Washington with marble columns, the staircase and the big dome.

We go to our lodgings, the next day we wake up early because by taxi we reach the bus station and go to Varadero, the best-known seaside resort in Cuba. The beach is long but nothing exceptional, little local colour and lots of international tourism. We swim and have lunch in a hut on the beach that serves fish at modest prices. We return disappointed to Havana, take a little stroll on the Prado and go back to the guesthouse. The next day we avoid, as every day, the boys offering us very advantageous exchanges but which are likely scams, and we discover that the centre of Havana still has a lot to offer us. Almost by chance we find the historic centre and it seems another city, in a few dozen metres we are projected fifty years away from the rest of the capital. The central district is a world heritage site and is kept neat and tidy.

There are beautiful buildings in Spanish style with flowering patios, monuments, squares, green parks, cafés and restaurants where folk groups play. Besides, historically this along with Santo Domingo was the main Caribbean city and now it is the best preserved. The area is totally pedestrianised, has museums and memorial houses and a splendid cathedral which we also visit inside because, like others, it claims the remains of Columbus. Here the wide avenues travelled by big American cars from the '50s are replaced by narrow alleys and pedestrian streets travelled by horse-drawn carriages. Now and then you notice some elderly mulatto woman dressed in a characteristic outfit and a multicoloured headdress smoking an enormous Cuban cigar. Historic Havana is fascinating and we regret having discovered it only now.

We return to our lodgings for the last overnight stay, the next morning we reach the airport passing through the immense square where popular rallies take place, dominated by a tall obelisk and the famous image of Che placed on the façade of a building. At the airport we take the plane and return to Cancun in Mexico to continue our journey in Central America.