Cuba by www.born2travel.it

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22. 04. 2006 Santa Maria del Mar (CUBA) After endless queues and checks, we finally step outside the airport... Here's Cuba! Just as we had read about it, seen it in documentaries or heard it told by people who'd been there or known it! 50s cars in John F. Kennedy style, Cadillacs, huge and lived-in. Beautiful mulatto girls everywhere with the inevitable smiles stamped on their faces; they make do and live on nothing at all! The life Carlo desires! During the transfer from the airport to our hotel, we began to savour this paradise, the workers waiting for uncertain buses from decades ago that never came, cars from another time at the edge of the roads (perpetually broken down)... Santa Maria del Mar is one big long road, not even lit, and which reminded me so much of Phan Thiet, Vietnam.

We walk and walk until we meet a boy: "Amigo, donde estas una discoteca?" And he, with a confident manner, tells us to wait and turns up with two girls of 14 at most! We look at him a bit surprised-bewildered-disgusted and walk away... Thank goodness it was us... Here more than elsewhere I saw with my sad eyes what "sex tourism" means. How many people of a certain age, all married in their countries of origin and who here act like young bachelors! At the reception everyone had taken strictly single rooms... They really disgust me and I think: "I'll never be like that!" On the street we meet a little group of girls and spend some time joking and laughing with them near our hotel.

They explained to us that here it's forbidden, for Cuban women, to be seen with tourists, they even risk immediate arrest! Fidel doesn't want it! By the way, how strange to see huge billboards along the roads praising the revolution, Che Guevara or against Bush. Meeting Barbara and Mirta made me understand many things, here it really is easy to have sex with a girl; sex takes on a different meaning, it's a philosophy of life, if you offer them something, they feel obliged to give you something back and what if not their body? (the only thing they have and that is well accepted?) Who knows, maybe I haven't managed to convey well what I mean but sex isn't a taboo here. When Barbara left she wanted to write me her phone number... her "own" so to speak because it's her neighbour's home number... Italian 50s come back to life here...

The local currency is the "Cuban convertible peso" and the "Cuban peso"; the first is used only by tourists... the second by locals and is worth about 1/24 of the first... Talking with one of the hotel vigilantes he confessed that theirs is one of the best-paid jobs: $20 a month... 23. 04. 2006 Santa Maria del Mar (CUBA) Wake up at dawn (thanks to jet lag!) and off to the sea all day! Carlo was jumping, rolling in the sand, running everywhere, he looked like a dog just released! This is the Cubans' beach, we "tourists" are "white" flies in every sense! Then today is also Sunday and: "Non se trabaha...!" everyone's here! [Charlie]:...and to think that Cuban women come to Italy...

But what do you come for? Here there's paradise on earth, people have a smile stamped on their lips! Even though they don't have the technology that has "attacked" and "knocked down" us, big-engine cars, luxury clothes etc. they live in luxury! I love everything about these places: the sun, the sea, the smiles, the fruit, nature, the endless days, the music, the dancing, the women, the satire, the rum, the brotherhood, the ease in a conversation (without taboo), the way of facing problems... always with a smile... and they're the poor ones! We're the poor ones. In the evening we decide to go dancing but at 6.30 pm we lie down a bit on the bed for a nap, after all we haven't slept for days... pity that we wake up after 12 hours... 24. 04.

2006 Havana (CUBA) It still sounds strange to me to say: "I took a little trip to Havana!" Meanwhile the little group has grown, two nice Roman girls have joined: Ilaria and Marta and two crazy Milanese girls: Leonarda and Sara.

What a spectacle those alleys so full of people, those sounds, those smells, the colonial houses witnesses of a past splendour, the posters of Fidel's regime, which reminded you, "brainwashing" style, that you always had to support socialism and its ideas! Then though, you see the decay and the poor sanitary and general living conditions and you ask yourself: "But is this socialism or communism or whatever you call it really in favour of the people?" You can't give yourself an answer or maybe, in your heart, you know it but you want to hear it said by them, by those who truly live it, and you ask the taxi driver, the barman, the parking attendant: "So then, how is Fidel's government?" And they, with an expression halfway between wary and diplomatic, answer you in unison: "I don't know, I don't know any other!" And I wonder, how must that taxi driver feel whose monthly earnings vary betwee

n 15 and 18 euros, taking our 15 euros for a single ride from the centre to the hotel! Since his salary won't change at the end of the month, everything else goes to the "Gobierno". And yesterday at the bar, tired of Charlie's constant revolutionary thoughts, I got him chatting with our barman... talking about their sad situation (he earned 10 euros a month) he was almost about to cry and Charlie didn't open his mouth again, nor did I hear him mutter or murmur polemically as he's been doing lately. "Communism" is an excellent "philosophy of life", important and lofty principles but absolutely not applicable... I really think that on Fidel's death everything will change, there will be a pro-Western and therefore pro-American government that will even abolish the embargo and maybe this island will flourish again...

the smile certainly no one will ever extinguish it for them! On our tour we visited the "Plaza de la Revolution" where holy mass was also celebrated when the Pope came to Cuba and which can hold up to a million people. Classic communist works! With an immense Che Guevara who reminds us: "Hasta la victoria siempre!" In the evening we went to a nightclub: "La casa de la musica". There I was ashamed to be Italian. I've never seen so many "pigs" of 50 and over, Italians excited and without dignity all together! You saw them wandering in this nightclub among girls who must have been the age of the daughters waiting for them back in Italy, and all gleaming, after a while they'd leave the room hand in hand or embraced, like little lovebirds with these poor girls, naturally after agreeing with their slimy "protectors", friends or often relatives.

Carlo and Jeff as soon as they came in stop to chat with two very pretty girls and immediately specify: "We don't pay...!" They hadn't even finished saying it when the girls had already gone off in search of other... suckers! But the limit came a few minutes later when a little group of other girls came in, my brother approaches them and one looks at him and says: "No money: nothing!" Had the word already spread?!? [Charlie]: I'm sitting on the terrace with a good glass of rum and a cigar (I look like Che Guevara); every day I breathe, I talk with local people, I observe and think many things, maybe too many! Tonight, at