See the full set of Camaguey photos here
The latest men’s fashion tip from Cuba, especially for those blessed with a beer belly, is to pull your shirt above the beer belly and wander around with your fat proudly displayed. In a hot climate this is imminently sensible but be sure to have a lot of fat around your mid-riff or it just looks silly. The official uniform for female workers in Cuba is saucy, white shirts that are generally a size too small, fishnet stockings and skirts that gravitate towards mini. Casual wear is generally tight jeans shorts.
Our next stop after Trinidad was Camaguey which is further to the east, away from Havana. It’s in cattle country and famous for two things: having a lot of churches and its streets being deliberately designed as a maze. It’s not often you come across a city that is less confusing to navigate than Canberra but then we didn’t face looting from pirates in the planning stages of the city. Camaguey was purposefully designed with maze-like streets in an attempt to confuse marauding pirates which has to be the coolest reason for street layout and yet the most impractical. In the end it didn’t help them as the pirates got hold of a map of the city and ransacked it anyway. I’m not sure what the pirates were doing so far inland but I guess they worked hard for their loot in those days.
Today Camaguey is a much sleepier place known for being home to the Cuban cowboy. It has a sleepy feel in the day largely because if the heat. At night when it cools down it’s much more pleasant to wander the squares. We were in town on the night Cuba celebrates its independence from the Spanish and in celebration the town put on a musical dance performance which was a thousand times cooler than the equivalent ‘Australian government sponsored town square concert in a small country town celebration’ would be. Loose hips rule. I’m not sure the Aussie pub fallback of standing with arms crossed, schooner in one hand, and tapping your foot would really cut it over here.
Camaguey also stands out in my mind for pissweak park world. They have one of the largest parks in Cuba but have filled it with such a random collection of junk that it beggars belief. I submit for evidence the zoo which has a feature attraction near the front gate of a cage of pigeons. Never mind that pigeons infest every city in the world, for some reason Camaguey sees them as a drawcard to pull in the crowds. Slightly more interesting is the huge tree, not associated with the zoo, upon which were perched dozens of vultures. As a centrepiece for a park it’s creepy but not entirely uncompelling. Maybe people bring in dead animals as offering. The piece de resistance of pissweak park is the artificial cave filled with stagnant water and rubbish. This must have seemed like a good idea to someone at the time but it’s not entirely clear why. The frogs in the park sound like crystal baubles clinking together.
Luckily for Camaguey the attraction of the place is in the many fine squares, although this being the city of confusion many of the squares are different shapes, rhombus or rectangle. Having a quiet drink and watching the world go by is about as hectic as it gets. It was while having a drink in a plaza that we met some middle-aged Israeli men who had been taking salsa lessons for a decade and were here on holiday to learn more from the masters. We went out with the briefly that night. Outside the casa de la trova (music house) a couple of young girls attached themselves to a couple of the Israeli guys, which we found strange because we were sure the Israeli guys were gay. Once inside the girls refused to dance until they had finished their free drink. One of the Israeli guys said that often they will end up going home with the Cuban girls and offering them money or gifts, but it’s not prostitution. I’m not sure how they define it in Israel but that sure as hell sounds like prostitution to me. It was hard not to feel a little sorry for these girls hanging out with foreigners for whatever handouts they could get.
As a tourist the feeling of being money on legs in the eyes of the local Cubanismos is easier to understand when you look at the figures. A doctor in Cuba makes around CUC$25-30 per month which is what a tourist will spend on the cheapest accommodation in one night. A taxi driver we talked to who has finished his medical degree said that he can earn CUC$500 per month driving tourists around so why would he earn less than a tenth of that by practising medicine. Letting tourists into the country was a desperate revenue raising attempt once the Soviet Union crumbled and stopped handing Cuba loads of money. There is not a lot going for the Cuban economy and letting people have tourists pay to stay in their home is a very quick way to inject money into the economy. This quick win comes at a longer term cost when doctors and professors jump on the tourist gravy train as the only realistic way to earn decent money in Cuba. Seeing all these tourists with money to burn must be demoralising for most Cubans who not only can’t afford to travel but are not allowed to leave the country by the Government unless under special circumstances. We try to bear this in mind when touts winkle a few more pesos out of us. A few dollars to us means a lot more to them. I swear they are going to an ‘English for Touts’ course. I can see the late night TV ad now with flashing peso bills: ‘Earn money now by learning such useful phrases as “Hey Lady!”, “Where you from?” or “Want a taxi?”.’ Cubans also do a hissing sound to get people’s attention, sort of like pssst but starting with an h. Instead of a wolf whistle they make a loud kissing sound.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Cubans are well educated, have decent (though under-supplied) medical care, can dance like the devil and enjoy themselves wherever possible. One bitter taxi driver we talked to compared keeping the population healthy with looking after your chickens so that they lay lots of eggs (ie. healthy people will work harder). There is definitely a mood for change in the country from the people we have talked to here but no clear indication of what should change or how the country would look. It feels like Cuba will slowly modernize but they are not an economic heavy-weight like China so it might take some time. It remains to be seen whether people have the patience to wait.
Part of the interest in travelling are the fellow travellers you meet. At our Camaguey casa we met Max, a 27 year old Russian who was taking photos of Cuba for his blog with a readership of 12,000. The angle of the blog is how crap socialist systems are and why Russia should not go back to communism. Max looked more like he was 17, a classic skinny computer nerd (the casa owner said he was ‘flacco’, Spanish for skinny but slightly insulting sounding). Max was avoiding the tourist areas but didn’t speak Spanish which must have been a drawback in discovering the real Cuba. He admitted that he didn’t really care about Cuba anyway, just what it reflected about Russia. He ran an interesting poker business which bankrolls players to enter tournaments who they select by statistically analysing online poker sites for the top players.
At the end of the dinner with Max he mentioned that he was going out to meet girls. Sarah translated this for the casa owner who in very matronly fashion told him that if he brought a girl home she would have to sign in to the casa (casa owners are required to register all guests for government records). I imagine this would be a romance killer.
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