So it's Monday and this week has gone very quickly. It's been a
blur of Ron, early morning pizza, and new friends and experiences.
That Tuesday evening, we met with a Swedish man by the name of Torsten
that mike had befriended the night before. He's 48, single, unmarried,
no kids and is traveling by himself. Al though he seems like alcoholic,
he enjoys a good laugh, doesn't mind being the but of a joke and enjoys
dancing when he's drunk. He's an unlikely (mis) match to our duo, but
he doesnt seem to mind and neither do we. He eyes me up suspiciously
when I say I'm not Cuban. After he sees my passport, he flashes a big
smile and it's off to las Cueva. After a bottle of Ron and several beers
the lights come on and it's time to head off to the Cuban equivalent of
McDonalds/kebab shop, which goes by the name el Rapido. Here you can
get any sandwich, pizza or mini sub as long as it queso y jamón (ham and
cheese) and without any veggies. They also stock a large range of
snacks, lollies, smokes, and beer. All your morning munchy needs under
one roof. I chat a bit more with Torsten and he reveals that he travels
often. Hell work for a year, then bugger off where he feels like. He's
travelled parts of Asia, a lot of Europe and now Cuba. He enjoys to do
the foxtrot. He said he has a group of friends yyyhyhythat travel to
other towns during the weekends, and do the foxtrot with the locals. The
next day is spent hungover and sweating in the ever present heat. We
had agreed to meet b y hyhythat night again, but I planned to feign
sleeping in. But at 10:30pm they both turn up at mi casa. So off we go
again. The night is another blur of Ron, staring at women and dancing
drunkenly. Somewhere in the malaise we agree to go to the beach the
following day. With e Rapido in our sights we stumble through the dark
streets of Trinidad, with David Guetta blaring from my iPad. I've been
carrying it around every night this week. It's been very handy for
providing a sound track to our post la Cueva escapades and also as a
point of interest with the locals as we sit and munch on pizza.
I
sleep in the next day. Both mike and I miss the 11am bus that Torsten
apparently made. So we hop the 2pm bus and during the ride mike chats
with a group of Italian tourists, two obviously gay men and a woman.
Mike gives them a quick tip about catching the return bus as we part
ways and the rest of the day with me swimming and reading (very
touristy, I know) while mike plays basketball on my iPad. We search the
beach halfheartedly for Torsten but no luck. On the return bus, the
Italian tourists chat some more with mike and they agree to meet us at
Casa la Musica later on.
As I make my way way through the
crowd that evening I find Torsten, who doesn't seem the least bit angry
that we missed the bus, so we pull up a table, mike arrives about 5mins
later, then not long after him, the Italians. They look to be in their
late 20s and traveling just as a threesome for 2 weeks around Cuba. One
of the guys is named Dario and the women is Agnes (the Italian
translation sounds far sexier). I miss the other guys name, but he
speaks fluent Swedish, so he and Torsten happily chat away. Dario speaks
fluent English and Agnes not so much but being able to communicate in
English with them is a welcome relief. Can slowly see that Agnes and
mike are getting on really well and when we hit la Cueva, mike starts to
lay it on thick, whispering sweet Spanish nothing's in her ear and
whipping her around the dance floor effortlessly. Torsten and his new
friend have been contently chatting away the whole night, interspersed
with the odd dance, while I've been happy to quietly observe mike, Dario
and Agnes dancing, along with the usual posturing of the local crowd.
It's a welcome distraction from my inner thoughts as I still struggle
with everything that's going on. By the end of the night mike and Agnes
are mouth to mouth, our Ron is empty and we are all starving. So we head
to el Rapido with our new found friends in tow. Over pizza we decide to
all go see the waterfall at Tropes de Collantes in the morning. During
our feed one of the local police comes in and listens intently to the
music coming from my ipad. I beckon him to sit down and i give him my
headphones to listen with, his face lights up and he starts bobbing his
head ever so slightly. I show him how to change the song and he listens
for about 5mins then stands up. He goes to the counter and returns with
two beers, one for home one for me. We cheers and he goes back to my
iPad. I'm not sure if he was on duty but no one seemed to care. I've
seen him around the town during the day and he always stops me and says
hi. Anyway, with our pizza done, we all retire. Torsten just lives
around the corner and the Italians are staying in the opposite direction
so they head off. As mike and I walk, he's floating on air, smiling as
his favourite David Guetta song 'I gotta feeling' plays on my iPad. He
dances as we walk, singing in espanol, it makes me really happy to see
my new friend like this.
Mike picks me up at 9:30am and we
look for a taxi van to take us all to the mountain. Finding that most
have probably gone to the beach, we find two taxis, and old 80's ford
escort and a 70's Lada and pick up the rest of the troops. I have my
little FM transmitter with me, so I can play my ipod or ipad music
through any FM radio. We ask the driver to tune it in and his reaction
is fantastic. He turns up his stereo as loud as he can, almost blowing
the speakers. He seems proud to be playing music that isn't reggaeton or
the usual pop that ever other cab is playing. So we cruise the streets,
the driver smiling and us almost deaf. When we stop to get the others, I
let the driver play with my iPad. He immediately asks to buy it. I
laugh as I say not for sale and go and grab Torsten. With everyone
assembled, we hit the road and wow, what a road!
It's kind of
like driving up and down the last incline leading to Piha (west coast
beach in Auckland for those who don't know) 5 or 6 times. But the road
isnt well paved, there's pot holes everywhere and cattle roam the
roadside. I don't find the drive that scary, the drivers have probably
driven it 100s of times, and even though their cars seem to struggle
with the hills I feel relatively safe. The drive takes about 30mins and
we negotiate a time for them to return before they go back to town. The
walk to the falls is 45mins, but as I did at Parque el Cubano, I turn up
my iPod, tell my friends 'hasta pronto' and run ahead making the trip
in about 25mins. I overtake surprised travelers , yelling gracias as I
pass. The track is steep and would be vary dangerous if you werent sure
footed. I find the fauna unremarkable, and ignore most of it as I focus
on my goal, the waterfall. There's about 15 people there when I arrive,
but most are sunbathing. I strip off and I'm in the water in the blink
of an eye. It's cold, though not as cold as fresh water back home, and
it's beautiful. After drinking bottled water and swimming in the ocean,
this is heavenly. I'm in the water for a good 15mins before my friends
arrive. They take their time and all but Torsten find the water almost
unbearable. Mike has one dip and then stands in the sun for the next
15mins steeling himself for his next plunge, while the Italians prefer
to dry off in the sun. I throw on my snorkle and explore the rock faces
and very little nook and cranny. There's tadpoles everywhere as before,
but to my surprise I see a small school of fish, about 15cm in length. I
take a deep breath and dive down, and even at 10m the bottom is still
out of sight. Torsten and I stay in the water for most of the time,
enjoying the cleansing feeling of fresh water, the rest preferring to
work on their tans. After about 30mins, we dry off and mike leads us to
another part of the waterfall further up above the waterhole. We round a
corner and the water flows down from about a height of 50m, cascading
gently down a gentle slope. Despite the warning signs, I drop my bag and
begin to climb up as far as I can. I make my way up nimbly to the
bemused stares of my crew. Reaching the top I find a small pool below a
drop of 10m from the top of the water fall. A private spa I think ,as my
shoes are off once again and Im in the water. I splash around for 5mins
then a whistle from mike brings me back down as we prepare for our
ascent. Now on my decent I hadn't really noticed the terrain. As we
begin, the incline is about 65 degrees, and I thought it won't stay like
this for long. 1.5km later I'm sweating like a pig, not a word has been
spoken for over 20mins as everyone struggles for breath, and the shade
of the trees is scarce. Instead of water I'm soaked in sweat, which
covers my entire body in a thick film. Agnes leads the way as Torsten
brings up the rear, trailing about 100m behind. He huffs and puffs, and
now and again he mutters something like 'fuck this' in Swedish, which I
replay in kind in English. In total with the descent taking me about
20mins, the return walk was about an hour, and most of it was at a 45
degree incline or more. The times about 3:30pm when we make it back to
the taxi, we're all spent, and I cancel my plans to play ball with mike,
but we all agree to meet at our local again that evening. Tonight we
have a huge group of people, there's more Italians that our friends
invited, also some French tourists, more Cubans and one Belgian. Most of
the group was forgettable but the Belgian woman, Claire, was lovely and
wonderfully flamboyant. She was probably in her mid 50s and had been on
the road for about 2 months. She'd covered most of central America from
Mexico down. She related stories to me about her 6 years living in
Africa, and how she loved to dance Afrikaans. We all headed off to las
Cueva, and we danced and drank and had a great time with all our new
friends. The Italians were leaving in the morning, so mike was feeling a
bit sad, and when it came time, he shed a couple of tears for Agnes. We
swapped emails, said our farewells and went back to the bar to help
drown mikes sorrows. The rest of the night went like clockwork, closing
time, iPod music and walk to el Rapido, then console mike as we plodded
home. Saturday was spent hungover and then a half hearted game of ball
as we're both still feeling the effects. This was to be Torstens last
night in Trinidad, but he had an early bus to catch, so he said he
wouldn't drink much. We left for las Cueva early as it would be busy.
We had a bottle of ron in my bag to try and sneak in, which we d done
every night previously, but they were checking bags tonight. As we
approached the front of the line, I nervously tried to hide my bag. Mike
whispered into the ear of one of the bouncers while the other searched.
As he found the bottle he shook his head at the same time as the other
bouncer said to go ahead, there was a split second stare off as their
eyes met, then we were waved through. Before we headed down mike was
called back to the bouncers. They asked for $2 tip as payment. Now Cuba
has two currencies, the CUC and the Cuban peso. One CUC is worth 100
peso. The local population only really has pesos, and most services in
town have two prices, one for tourists and one for locals. I'm not sure
how the economics work as a whole, but as you can see 1 CUC can be worth
a lot to the locals. So bottle in hand we were nice and early and
secured a good table with a good view of the dance floor. Despite
Torstens earlier statement, before long our bottle was finished and he
was still there, further reinforcing my suspicion that he was an
alcoholic. We managed to leave before closing time for his sake, and
after pizza gave Torsten a farewell hug as he stumbled back to his Casa.
We didn't see him again, so I guess he made it (his bus was at 7am btw
lol ). Sometime during the night I'd asked mike for some salsa lessons.
I
was awoken the next day by the unmistakable sounds of pigs getting
slaughtered. At 2pm when mike picked me up i asked about it and he
said that the butchers usually slaughter on sundays and to illustrate
his point we passed a couple displaying their meat, from the rooter to
the tooter. We headed back to his place, which I thought was close by.
It turns out that he lives another 10mins walk from there in what you
would call the Cuban suburbs. Now, Casa Yolanda that i spent my first
night in was majestic with its high arches and antiques, while Consuelo
and Jorge's Casa was humble in comparison. Now mikes real house was even
more humble in comparison to consuelos and jorges and reminded me of
the islands. Bare plastered walls, sparsely decorated with old photos,
there was a manual sewing machine in one corner, in another was their
little Santaria shrine and the furniture consisted of four rocking
chairs. Their entertainment system was by far the most interesting thing
for me. There was a 10 year old 20 inch tv connected to 5 year old DVD
player connected to the oldest amplifier I think I've seen in working
order. It looked at least as old as me and it didn't have buttons, just
big dials and switches, which in turn was connected to what looked like
the matching speakers because the leads going for the amp to the
speakers were about as thick as jumper leads, but the sound that it put
out was great, even if it was slightly distorted. I was the centre of
attention as I walked in. They all gave me the same look that every
Cuban I've met has given me, the 'if he's not Cuban, then I'm an alien'
look. They talked loudly about me, I think, then all stop and stared
and waited for a response. When none came they giggled and gave me the
'well holy shit, he's not Cuban) look. This carried on for a while as
we waited for mikes female friend to come help with salsa. While we
waited, I was offered a flat, cold beer. They called it cerveza agua,
which roughly translates as water beer. I thought that this meant
watered down beer, but it was pretty strong as I felt faintly tiddlely
after about 3 glasses. The whole time we waited, mikes younger sisters
were thrashing the same reggaeton hits that I'd endured everynight this
week at las Cueva, at full volume. They just talked even louder, and
even the elderly lady, who I think was mikes mum, seemed not to mind at
all as she rocked away and sipped on her cerveza agua. Mikes friend
arrived, the reggaeton was changed for salsa music and the lesson began.
I always thought that I had decent rythm, but the salsa beat seems to
evade my comprehension. There are some steps that I found easy while
some that looked basic kept messing me up. I recoreded the lesson for
posterity and will post it later. The lesson lasted about half an hour,
after which I gave up due to embarrassment. We sat and drank, I let his
little sisters listen to my iPad, and they even put on some of the
latest top 40 hits that they had on DVD to make me feel comfortable. I
wanted to tell them that I don't really like pop music but just sat and
mouthed the words to songs from Beyonce, Jordin Sparks, Chris Brown and
Pitbull, much to their amusement. I asked if I could get a photo, which
they kindly obliged, then I said my goodbyes and headed home for an
afternoon sleep. I met mike for one beer that night, but me body even
protested to that, so I was back home and in bed by 11.
So
here I sit in mi Casa, it's about 1pm, I had a late breakfast, and have
been typing away for the last 3 hours. Cordelia's due tomorrow at
4pm and I'm not sure what to expect. We've both promised to be relaxed
about the whole situation and see where the next few days leads with all
the talking thats expected. Before I pick her up there's the second leg
of the champions league football between Barcelona and AC Milan playing
at the international hotel. Tomorrow will be a great day I've decided.
First a huge game of football, then the arvo and evening chatting and
showing my baby around my temporarily adopted home.
Just
a few more observations from my people watching and interactions with
locals and tourists. I've already touched on how locals think I'm Cuban.
I've found that this is kind of double edged sword. It nice not to be
bothered as I walk the streets, but when it comes to socializing, when I
approach tourists and ask them if they speak English the usual reply is
no. I've found it hard to find tourists from English speaking nations
as most of the tour groups come from central or eastern Europe. So when I
approach, they think 'oh no, not another bloody Cuban' and they either
can't speak English or feign ignorance thinking that I'm another
jinitero with a really good accent,because they never would have heard a
kiwi accent before anyway. So I found that when I'm out I'm happy to
play the quiet Cuban, even though I don't think one of those even
exists. With everyone staying in such close quarters to their
neighbours, it seems that personal space is almost non existent.
Conversations are shouted across the street, and when face to face, they
are just that, almost nose to nose. Everyone knows everyone's business,
but no one cares. Front doors are always open, and you can see what
your neighbours are doing, music is turned up loud so that the whole
street knows what you're listening to. Ive found it
