Cuba.

Flip the Canadian temperatures to positive and that’s the weather I was basking in for a week.  Pure bliss. Snow became a distant memory and the warm sunshine a constant companion.

Cuba.

Hands down one of the most interesting places I’ve visited on my travels.  A return trip shall have to happen.  First of all, who can resist that picturesque beach with its turquoise sea and white sand?  One had the feeling of being in the cover photo of Thomas Cook’s holiday brochure.  Unlimited supplies of piña coladas and mojitos, drinking out of a coconut and feeling genuine warmth on your face.  All you need for a great Spring Break really.

It’s the kind of country where you just don’t really know what to expect from it.  You've heard something about a Revolution, have the iconic image of Che Guevara in your mind, and are aware of its links to Communism but are not quite sure how they will all manifest themselves in the reality of the place.  People rave about it and I feel like I have joined that crowd.  If we had just stayed in our hotel resort in the tourist bubble of Varadero, one could have thought we were on any island in the Caribbean.  However, it was the trip to Havana which made the country stand out.  You feel like there are familiar aspects to the place, as if you've been somewhere like it before.  The strains of the European colonial influence are clear and unmistakable.  It’s in the architecture, in the food, the atmosphere of the busy streets and the side alleyways.  You can’t quite put your finger on how to adequately and satisfactorily describe it all.  Then you read the guide book introduction and your random thoughts are translated into words. 

Mildew Magnificence.  Faded Beauty.  Lost times of glory.  

One half of a building carefully and beautifully maintained, the other side a deteriorating ruin.  Open, clean, bright squares with cafes and statues, filled with pale/sunburnt tourists wandering round with their cameras trying to capture a fragment of the place's character and ambience.  A few streets away and you come across how the other half live.  The street sellers, the rubbish in the street, the old men sitting in their doorways just watching the world go past.  Open windows giving an insight into people’s lives.  Every glimpse an entirely different snapshot from the other.  It was in the midst of this maze of streets that our hostel was located.  However, labelling the place a ‘hostel’ does a great injustice to it.  A chandelier, ornaments everywhere, heavy wooden wardrobes, gilded mirrors and a stunning rooftop patio overlooking the city.  Not quite your average backpackers hole.

Slightly contrasting maintenace.

We started our visit literally being pushed into rickety bike taxi vehicles, fearing for our lives as cars tooted all around us as we clung on for dear life (whilst worrying that our ancient driver/cyclist would have a heart attack from the effort).  Might as well get stuck in straight away, I suppose.  Naturally what also had to be experienced was being driven in the classic 1960s cars.  Their heydays behind some of them, falling apart and subsequently having doubts about whether you would make it to your destination, practically leaving a trail of car parts in their wake (others being in the same pristine condition as the day they left the factory all those decades ago).  The sight of these epic cars becomes the norm as they are simply everywhere. What also caught my eye was the care and attention people took over their appearance.  The haircuts of the young men in particular, opting for a perfectly styled, modern short back and sides. The crisp white shirts and maroon ties of the school children.  Along with the amount of bright lycra worn by the women.  An odd contradiction to the dilapidated buildings, dirty streets and crumbling cars.

So the two days in Havana were spent wandering the streets, taking countless photos, visiting the Revolution Museum, relaxing in garden courtyards with cocktails and spending lazy hours over meals.  Music is heard from everywhere as musicians with their guitars and dulcet tones are present in pretty much every cafe, street corner and restaurant.  On different note, the socialist aspect of the country was evidenced in the lack of American influences, logos and merchandise and a general level of poverty wherever you went.  The caricatures of US presidents with Nazi helmets in the Revolution Museum drove home the hostile reality of that particular relationship between the countries... 

Apart from this little city trip, the days were passed sunbathing, walking miles up and down the beach, checking out both a local club (a special queue jump for tourists, awkwardly walking past all those who had been queuing for hours, a slightly uncomfortable experience yet balanced out by paying five times the entry price), where a bunch of 12 white girls dancing like no one was watching made us objects of great fascination, and a tourist club (the sweatiest place I’ve ever been to, crammed to the rafters with pretty much only Canadians.  Can't escape them even nearly 3000 miles away...). 

One of the other best experiences of the trip was the Jeep tour excursion.  Think of a convey of shiny silver Jeeps cruising through the Cuban countryside.  Not sure how much more of a ‘classic tourist’ one can get but at least it meant seeing more than just the beach.  A day of snorkelling, driving through historic cities, a boat ride, sampling a local farmer’s produce and enjoying a traditional lunch (i.e. rice and beans), drinking coffee Cuban-style whilst sucking on sugar cane, swinging in hammocks, observing an old man and his pet bull, and ending up cooling off in a cave pool.     

When there you don’t exactly have on your mind constantly the fact that the citizens have practically zero political freedom or that the economy doesn't follow the capitalist model we are so used to.  Yet, finding out that ninety percent of the hotel workers are actually qualified professionals, such as lawyers, doctors and physiotherapists, causes one to question the system.  Their provision and quality of education may be world leading, but if it means that the degrees of the most intelligent and educated people in the country have only enabled them to be tour guides for oblivious, unaware tourists, simply because that is where the money is to survive beyond the meagre government wages and rations, there is some subsequent mental challenging of the set-up.  

It’s the contrast of grandeur with poverty, of the tourist world with the lives of the locals, and of history mixed in with modern life, which makes Cuba so diverging and intriguing.   Not seeing a Starbucks every ten metres but rather a picture of the dashing and much loved Che, being heckled by the local men every five metres (a boost to the self-esteem one could view it as perhaps?), and seeing a horse and cart trotting alongside a 1960s American car as if it was the most natural thing in the world, made the week quite the memorable Spring Break.