Cuban Tour: Day 3

Our third day in Havana was, once again, packed with activities, new experiences, and new people. 

After catching a quick (and I do mean quick!) glimpse of the Capitolio (which was built to look similar to our Capitol building in Washington DC, although 6 feet taller, and now houses the Cuban Academy of Sciences), 

the tour bus then took us to a small colonial township in eastern Havana called Guanabacoa.

We met up with a local tour guide there, a pretty young woman named Patricia, who after receiving her college degree in English language, is now teaching English to university law students. Her salary, like all state salaries, does not pay enough, so she does a little tour guiding on the side.

She took us to the house of a family whose patriarch was a doctor before, and was allowed to continue his practice after, the revolution. It was not your typical Cuban family home. It was actually quite a bit larger than most homes, as the ground floor had been the doctor's office, and the family lived on the second floor when he was alive. As I recall, his daughter and her adult son and daughter (Patricia's best friend) are the only residents now, in a space that would normally house a much larger family.

Not only is the house very large and fairly nice, it also includes a lovely, enclosed patio out back, where we sat in the shade and were offered coffee (made me wish that I liked coffee). Patricia told us the patio is often used by friends and neighbors for parties and special events. She explained to us what life is like in a small town in Cuba -- happily and energetically answering all of our questions. She was adorable and her English was excellent. She used many expressions we are used to hearing in the US, because she watches a lot of American TV, including a show called Gossip Girl!

Patricia in her pretty purple high heels.

She described how difficult it is for her to commute to work (3 days a week?), because there are no buses, and of course she doesn't have a car. Instead, she has to hitch a ride any way she can, which usually means standing in the back of a truck, bobbing around, trying to keep her balance in her high heels. She said she doesn't care that she may look silly climbing into the back of a truck in her heels, she refuses to give them up. Besides, sometimes her fancy heels mean she will get a ride before some guy standing next to her does! She was so sweet and cute, we all wanted to take her home with us!

We left the doctor's house on foot, and as we walked through the crumbling neighborhood, we came upon a classroom full of rambunctious kids. They were very excited to see us, and more than willing to pose for pictures through the window.

Our Road Scholar tour leader, Yeraldine, talked to the students in Spanish, explaining who we were.

Our next stop in Guanabacoa was the Santeria museum. Santeria being the Afro/Cuban religion practiced by many Cubans. It is the syncretic combination of the West African beliefs the slaves brought with them to Cuba, and the Catholicism forced on them by the Spanish colonists. After we were given a tour of the museum, we were treated to a performance of ceremonial music and dancing. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from the museum because I chose not to pay the fee required to use my camera inside. However, Sam did, and he got lots of pictures and videos of the performance. You may have already seen some of it in his video Cuba Through Music. During the last part of the performance, the dancers had almost our entire group up and dancing! That part was not in Sam's video, but it was a lot of fun and quite invigorating!

After lunch (at a very good seafood restaurant called El Templete), we had a short tour of the National Museum of Fine Arts Havana led by our guide José, who never ceased to amaze us with his wealth of information and knowledge! Then we went on to see a different kind of Cuban art -- street art on Callejo de Hamel. When we arrived, there was a music video being shot for a French hip hop artist.

It's actually a pretty cool location for a music video with all it's colorful strangeness.

All of our meals were included on the tour, and were always at state owned restaurants, except for our third evening in Havana. For that meal, we were encouraged to venture out on our own, and we could choose to eat dinner at what is called a paladar. Paladares are run by self-employed persons, mostly families, and often within a residence. They are known by Cubans and tourists (anybody but Americans) as the best places to eat, and can be very gourmet.

Sam and I chose to take a taxi to a paladar called Vistamar, a few kilometers away from the Hotel Nacional, in a quiet residential area. It was wonderful! If you ever visit Havana, I recommend this restaurant. It is fine dining with a lovely view of the sea, and it is a great place to watch the sunset. The only problem we had was that the estimate of how much dinner would cost didn't take into account a bottle of good wine and the lobster special. It turned out we didn't exchange enough US dollars into convertible Cuban pesos (CUCs) to be able to enjoy a fine restaurant the way we usually do. And since Americans can't use credit cards in Cuba, we had to be careful what we ordered for fear we would end up washing dishes for our supper! 

It's not that it was all that expensive, especially considering the quality of the food, but due to our limited amount of CUCs, we were afraid to to order ALL the things that sounded good to us! We didn't get to try the lobster, but we did have a good bottle of wine, and considering my expanding waistline, that was probably blessing in disguise! What we did order was delicious and the sunset was gorgeous!

Note: To view enlarged photos, just click on one of them and you will see a slide show of all photos in this post. Click the X in upper right hand corner of the slide show to return to the blog. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, any type within the post that is a different color than white, can be clicked on and it will link you either to a video Sam has posted, or another webpage with more information.