Day 3 — Car, Castle and Closed

After a good nights sleep I woke up around 7am, showered and tidied the room before hav­ing break­fast. Our casa, like a lot of build­ings within a Cuban city, is very ver­tical; while only two rooms wide, our casa was four stor­ies high includ­ing the bal­cony and a cor­nu­copia of side cor­ridors and hid­den rooms fold­ing in on them­selves. Our break­fast was on the first floor kit­chen which housed an immense sink and cooker along with sturdy, tiled sur­faces. Once break­fast was fin­ished and Matt had showered, we were intro­duced to a man called Alfredo who looked like his skin had been spray-waxed dir­ectly onto his skel­eton; angu­lar without being des­s­ic­ated. Alfredo spoke a wide vari­ety of basic Eng­lish and informed us that he could organ­ise a trip out­side of San­ti­ago for us.

Our ori­ginal plan was to go to the Castillo del Morro which was a num­ber of miles out­side of the city and down a coastal road; how­ever it was May 1^st, Worker’s Day, which meant that more than likely the castle would be closed. We were assured by Alfredo that it was open, adding that if it was closed we would pay noth­ing for the jour­ney. After some dis­cus­sion it tran­spired that Alfredo was not the one who would be tak­ing us to the castle, but a mech­anic friend of his would be.

We were intro­duced to a young, well built local with only a smat­ter­ing of Eng­lish at best. Led out into the street, we were shown what could only very loosely be called a car: a rust-red col­oured Lada of inde­term­in­ate age whose uphol­stery had long since given up cling­ing to the car and was from a time when seat­belts were obvi­ously con­sidered a lux­ury. At this point, the dis­tinct smell of pet­rol that lingered inside it didn’t worry me as much as the struc­tural integ­rity of the vehicle as a whole. Set­ting off, the mech­anic threw the glor­i­fied go-kart down nar­row side-streets, dodging people and bicycle-taxis with reck­less aban­don until we left the city and began to weave in and out of what were once pot-holes but were now just reg­u­lar holes. The road was cracked and uneven in the best places and torn and non-existent in the worst.

We stopped first at a Cathed­ral which was roughly on the way to the Castillo del Morro and was prom­ised by Alfredo to be an inter­est­ing sight. He was not wrong, and a pic­tur­esque colo­nial cathed­ral greeted us next to a tra­di­tional look­ing hacienda. Park­ing beneath a tree, it was an inaus­pi­cious start to the sight­see­ing with a withered and more-than-likely dying dog seek­ing shade near the cathed­ral. The build­ing was past a small vil­lage on a raised hill in the centre of a beau­ti­ful val­ley, unfor­tu­nately the tran­quil­lity was broken when two gar­gan­tuan tour buses pulled up and spewed out camera-toting tourists.

The cathed­ral itself was, for want of a bet­ter descrip­tion, a cathed­ral. Like all Chris­tian ori­ent­ated build­ings of wor­ship it made the place feel appre­ciably holy within the con­fined space and was lined with stained glass win­dows and a vari­ety of dei­fied icons. After being suit­ably humbled we got back into the death-mobile and began to head for the Castillo del Morro. Along the way we were stopped by a young, skinny man in plain clothes who we even­tu­ally man­aged to glean was a police­man; the mech­anic and the police­man spoke heatedly in stac­cato Span­ish for a num­ber of minutes before the police officer “won” whatever argu­ment it was that they were hav­ing. Piecing together the Span­ish in the after­math, we came to the con­clu­sion that he was prob­ably being chas­tised for taxi­ing two tour­ists without being a state-run taxi.

Head­ing towards the castle we passed through what could only be described as a police check­point where he was ques­tioned again, this time out of earshot of his two pas­sen­gers… The remainder of the jour­ney to the castle was unevent­ful, and we arrived in the bak­ing noonday sun and left our mech­anic driver to his own devices. The sys­tem in Cuba for admit­tance isn’t exactly com­plex, how­ever they do charge extra for cam­eras which seemed a little stingy to me at the time, and given my cam­era bag doubles as a con­vin­cing back­pack, I was some­times less than hon­est about my own­er­ship of a cam­era, the Castillo del Morro included.

As visu­ally impos­ing and impress­ive as the castle was, unless you were will­ing to decipher the Span­ish for the exhib­its, there was little to do apart from wander the multi-level fort and admire the sea views. To get to the castle you had to walk through a pol­ished tour­ist allot­ment which sold tat and kitsch in equal meas­ure. After wan­der­ing the castle for an hour, avoid­ing the glances of the staff as I snapped pho­tos and man­oeuv­ring around the pleth­ora of French tour­ists, I headed for the nearest shop and pur­chased some over­priced but excess­ively refresh­ing bottles of water and waited for Matt to fin­ish tour­ing. The jour­ney back to the casa was without incid­ent and upon arrival, we paid the extor­tion­ate price of $25 for the priv­ilege of now smelling like petrol.

With the rest of the after­noon to use up, Matt decided to wash some of his clothes in our shower. To give you some back­ground to this, the most pop­u­lar shower unit in Cuba seems to be an all-in-one shower head which simply attaches to the end of a water pipe and, ostens­ibly, heats the water and provides some water pres­sure. In most cases, they did neither. As Matt washed his clothes he hung them over the water pipe which led to the shower. I was scru­tin­ising the pop-up guide when the desk fan stuttered slightly then resumed. Matt stumbled out of the bath­room hav­ing just elec­tro­cuted him­self by try­ing to remove his cloth­ing from water pipe which we had fool­ishly assumed was insu­lated. This was to form the first of the Mat­tastrophes, and one which I assigned six points (on a ten point scale).

Matt seemed no worse for wear so we avoided the shower com­pletely and headed out to for­age. Along the way, a famil­iar look­ing jine­tero glommed onto us, going as far as to look for­lornly through the win­dow of the res­taur­ant we decided to eat at. Thank­fully, the effi­cient and con­genial waiter quickly shooed him away. The food was chicken covered in chip-shop style bat­ter with rice and beans; that com­bined with two beers each came out to the very respect­able $16 which made it cheaper and less likely to induce death than the pre­vi­ous taxi jour­ney. After lunch, we walked the streets look­ing for some­thing to do, unfor­tu­nately being Worker’s day meant that everything was closed. The jine­terismo began to grate when a young teen offered us weed without blink­ing an eye.

Resign­ing ourselves to the casa for the rest of the day, we sat on the bal­cony and hammered out a firmer plan on where we were going to go and what we were going to do after San­ti­ago. The weather held out for the even­ing and the sun­set over the bay was glor­i­ous to behold and I spent the major­ity of time snap­ping photo after photo, hop­ing that at least one of them would pro­duce a decent shot. This con­tin­ued even when our host brought our tea up to the bal­cony, prob­ably glad to get us out of the house or just noti­cing how much we appre­ci­ated the view.

Tea was pol­ished off and Matt decided to head out and sample some of the famed San­ti­ago night-life, hope­fully given a boost by being Worker’s day. I showered and listened to my iPod only to see Matt return after only an hour and a half, claim­ing the night-life was less than spec­tac­u­lar. With the con­stant jine­terismo and so little to do, both of us were becom­ing fur­ther dis­e­n­am­oured with San­ti­ago by the day. ¶