Cuba - Opulence Amid the Ruins

Everywhere you look in Havana , grand colonial neighbourhoods are crumbling into dust. Most of the ruins are supported by scaffolding and wishful thinking! At first it was a shock. We thought we were in Kosovo, but then we did our walk through the old city. This is where the buildings have been renovated or are being renovated, and it is quite wonderful. Everywhere is the sound of jack hammers. There are magnificent squares surrounded by beautiful buildings with colonnades below, and half of the buildings are finished and others are almost empty shells, with no windows and usually no roof on the top floor, and the amazing thing is that people are living in them. There are cool dark patios, glimpsed through heavy sun bleached doors and it really doesn`t take much imagination to go back in time to how this city must have looked pre-revolution.

Barry is gobsmacked by the old cars. There appears to be literally hundreds of them, ranging from the late 30`s (very few) to the mid 50's, for example he believes he has seen more 50`s Customlines than he can remember in Melbourne. It is like a living transport museum, with sidecars, studebakers, pontiacs, dodges, chevvies, and he even saw a Mark V jag. They have probably been left to some Cuban when the rich families fled in 1958, and somehow they have kept them going. They are not the beautifully cared-for cars, lovingly buffed by their owners, but lumbering beetles, high, round, asthmatic and trundling along the roads with their home paint jobs.

Music is everywhere, and you can´t sit down for a coffee or a drink without being ambushed by some band (often 5 or 6 piece) appearing to play for you, for which you obviously pay. It is generally very enjoyable and the musicians are very talented. Some are really old and other quite young. One night we thought we we actually being entertained by the Buena Vista Social Club as 5 of the 8 band members were well in their 80´s. We were told that those members had been part of the top band in the country in 1948.

Cuba might be a Communist country but we have certainly had plenty of freedom for our visit. How the people live though is another matter, and every day we see some new and strange phenomenen. Many people stand or sit in doorways and we wonder whether Cubans are lazy or they actually have nothing to do! Some people, I call them the 'picturesqe people' dress up in clothes of the past and wander in the squares looking for tourists to take their photo. We saw many Carmen Mirandas, very old cigar ladies and old men with faces that appeared to be made up entirely of crinkles. There is such a scarcity of everything in Cuba, and we haven`t really had a good meal yet although we have sampled the famous 'mojito', a sort of sugary lime, teeth tingling rum concoction. We are about to go into the country for a few days which includes a home stay so that will be interesting.