By Laura Parfitt
PEUGEOTS and Toyotas – they just don't look right. When I first went to
Cuba 10 years ago, the only cars on the streets of Havana were huge
1950s American saloons and 1980s Soviet Ladas – the products of the
superpowers that successively sponsored this beautiful, bewildering island.
Today, shiny and sensible cars are taking over. The people on the
streets are dressed in trendy jeans and T-shirts bought in shops that in
the 1990s were devoid of stock.
Even the women are sporting those huge cigars so much a part of the
island's male psyche – as much a life requisite as a nip of the local
firewater – while part of the latest Hollywood remake Miami Vice was set
there.
Havana soon might be transformed more profoundly than at any time in the
past five decades. With the illness of its leader Fidel Castro, 79, Cuba
is on the brink of change.
Still, everyone looks well-nourished and well-clothed. But first
impressions are just those, nothing more than a surface clue.
Soon I remembered that although life is materially better, Cuba remains
a place of parallel existences. People have their state existence – the
face they show the officials; and they have their hidden lives, full of
black market dealing, political whispers, access to foreign ideas,
culture, books and CDs.
And whoever I spoke to, people are waiting for change.
All visitors to Havana soon gravitate to the old town, probably one of
the most beautiful architectural gems in the world, full of fascinating
museums and private homes.
The colonial-style Spanish buildings were crumbling in the mid-1990s – a
beautiful mix of pastel colours, flaking paintwork and cool squares. Now
a huge restoration project is under way.
The three main squares of the old town look as though the original
builders have just finished work – except for the cappuccino-sipping
tourists in the pavement cafes and accompanying street theatre.
A troupe of stilt-walkers banging drums gently harass you for a peso or
so in exchange for a photo; later I found out that they're highly
trained professional ballet dancers and musicians earning extra cash.
The main drag that bisects the old town – the narrow Calle Obispo – is a
bustling thoroughfare where you'll be offered Che Guevara T-shirts,
paper twists of peanuts and black market Cuban cigars.
Whether they are trying to sell, practise their English (seen as the key
to economic and possibly romantic success in life) or simply being
friendly, Cubans are strong on eye-contact and touching.
One place the tourists haven't yet found, although it is surely only a
matter of time, is the Museo del Chocolate in the old town.
Here, you can sit among Cubans at marble tables, surrounded by chocolate
moulds and chocolate-making machines, sipping the most perfect cups of
hot chocolate and eating plates of confectionery.
In the first independent guidebook to the island, the chapter on eating
out began: "If you want to lose weight, go to Cuba."
A decade ago, a collapsing economy had depleted menus in cafes and
restaurants. Today, you can find choice and quality in abundance –
lobster and Chilean wine at smart restaurants such as El Patio, the
scents and tastes of Havana's thriving Chinatown, or choose a paladar –
a legal, private restaurant in people's houses.
My first experience of one of these was Calle 10 in the flashy beachside
quarter of Miramar. The restaurant is marked by a small neon sign on the
wall, but then you're left to discover a small path to the right of a
large art-nouveau-style house in total darkness.
At the back of the house was a tatty old blue door with a sign insisting
"Knock and wait". After several minutes, the door was opened by a
heavily pregnant woman who ushered us through to an open-air courtyard
with four small tables and chairs.
As we walked through, the lights were switched on, the music started and
the family emerged to cook us a meal of great quality, proudly served.
Later, the mother-very-soon-to-be even ran out to the road to flag down
a taxi for us. "Taxi" still covers a multitude of sins in Havana. Even
today with vehicles and fuel in abundance, almost anything that has four
wheels and moves can be regarded as for hire.
If you like your driver, you can then take his mobile number (Havana's
catastrophic fixed-line telephone network has thankfully been rendered
obsolete) and call him night and day throughout your stay.
As in the US, the largest city is unrepresentative of the rest of the
country. Journeying away from the capital takes you into a lush and
beautiful island dotted with tiny villages where the only sign of
movement might be an old man gently rocking on his veranda in the
afternoon sun.
Not too far from Havana you can explore challenging mountains – and, in
the town of Trinidad, traces of Spanish colonialism.
It is a wonderfully eccentric old cobbled town with one-storey houses.
Like Old Havana, Trinidad is a world heritage site, with a fresh paint
job to prove it.
But with tourism has come high-visibility state security: the private
enterprises and hostels are carefully policed. Security personnel stand
on many of the street corners. Their presence in key tourist locations
may also account for the reduction in begging compared with my last
visit and noticeably fewer prostitutes on street corners.
I feel guilty for saying this, but although the island is still
wonderful, I think Cuba was more fun in the old days – more serendipitous.
On this trip, I couldn't help feeling slightly apprehensive: despite the
clear upturn in fortunes, the greater choice and pleasures for the
traveller, the innocence, the spontaneity seems to all but disappeared
from the scene.
Like the '20s and '30s, the influx of Western visitors has imported
capitalism yet again but I guess that, like Fidel Castro, is as old as
the hills.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,25917,20146812-28017,00.html
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