Cuba, Part 11

Danielle and I stepped off the bus with our suitcases and into the hot sun.

We arrived in Vinales, Cuba in a small sea of signs held up by Cubans indicating rooms for rent. It was impossible to make our way thru the throng of people without multiple solicitations being shouted all around us.

My eyes stopped on a heavyset man with a thick mustache and a pastel t-shirt, holding up a sign on the periphery of the crowd. I liked him on sight, and he was advertising a room for $25 US dollars per night which seemed to be the going rate, including meals.

"Let's go talk to that guy," I said to Danielle, pointing at him.

As we approached him, I realized how relaxed he was compared to everyone else in the crowd. There was something comforting and trustworthy about him. Not that I was particularly worried about anything, but it helped in the decision-making process.

"Hello, how are you?" he asked the both of us as we approached.

"We're good! Our bus broke down on the way here, but it was a nice ride from Havana other than that," I replied. For some reason the bus braking down had really hurt my mood earlier in the day, but Danielle added some levity to the situation and improved it somehow.

"How long are you staying in Vinales?"

"Five our six days," I replied.

"Oh, that's good! I'm Paulo. I have a nice home and my wife is a great cook! Would you like to see it?"

I looked at Danielle and could see she liked Paulo, too. We introduced ourselves.

"Yes, we would!"

"OK, let's go! I'm just a few streets from here."

We walked alongside the man, rolling our suitcases thru the dusty road. We took a right turn, and things became distinctly more rural. There were orderly rows of small, colorful homes on the dusty streets. I was admiring what a fine day it was when a piercing animal cry down the road raised the back of the hairs on my neck.

Three men were carrying a pig, upside down, with its feet tied to a large piece of timber. The shrill bleats from the pig were so loud I would have covered my ears if I weren't pulling my suitcase. It was physically jarring. As the men came closer with the pig it got even worse. This was just a normal everyday event here. The pig was being taken to slaughter and it was fighting back with the only thing it had left: its voice. It was the kind of thing that could turn a person into a vegetarian. Just an ordinary event. That's how we get ham and pork and bacon, after all, but it's interesting how something so basic and simple becomes an indelible event in the mind of pampered Westerners. It made me quite sad for the pig. Not sad enough to quit eating bacon, but sad nonetheless.

We heard the pig all the way down the road, on our way to Paulo's home. When we arrived, I saw that his street was very similar to the four others that we had passed, but just a tad greener in the front yards with more trees.

Paulo's house was light blue and had a large front porch with a bench swing, where his wife and two sons were sitting, expecting the arrival of new tenants.

Paulo had an attractive wife named Estelle who was several inches taller than him. His older son Carlos was eighteen years old, a very handsome kid, and the younger son, Teo, was five.

We pulled our stuff into the living room and noticed the house was nice inside and immaculate. Paulo showed us our room which was very basic with a large bed and dresser/mirror and we had our own bathroom.

"What do you think?" Paulo asked.

"We'll take it," I said with a handshake. I went to reach for my wallet, but Paulo stopped me.

"We can take care of that later. Let's get you two something to eat!"

We unpacked our things, walked into the living room-which adjoined the kitchen-and we could see that Estelle was already busy in the kitchen. There were a lot of lacy place mats on all the tables and a huge boombox on the long table next to the dining room. It felt nice and welcoming in the house and you could tell it was a good family just by looking at everything and how it was arranged. Pictures of the family were everywhere.

On the dining room table lay a guestbook of all the people who had every stayed there, and we were asked if we'd like to sign in. In the guestbook, all the previous tenants had put little stories of how their stay in Vinales went. One couple had a story of how they had rented motorbikes to ride thru the long, country roads that cut through the picturesque limestone cliffsides. The guy had taken a very bad spill and had to fly home with some teeth missing. Oddly, the story made me want to rent a motorbike--an idea I hadn't thought of. I vowed to watch the road carefully if we decided to do it.

Estelle made a very nice meal of rice, beans, pork, and fruit and it was arranged on our plates very artistically. We tried to curb ourselves from eating ravenously, but it was hard. We'd had a long bus ride.

After a nice conversation with Estelle, we decided to venture out into town and rent a couple of the motorbikes we'd read about. We found the guy on the side of the main road, under a large canvas umbrella, and to our surprise, all the bikes were brand new. There were about ten of them, mostly red and yellow. We left our drivers licenses with the owner and didn't even have to pay in advance. I thought that was strange. The guy trusted us with the brand new mopeds with just driver's licenses which were totally worthless. Perhaps he'd seen us drag our luggage over to Paulo's and figured we would have to come back. Or perhaps a tank of gas couldn't really get us anywhere urban from here.

Danielle and I got outfitted with some helmets and we were grinning from ear to ear. This was going to be really fun! We got started on the bikes and turned off onto a paved road which unfolded into completely unspoiled countryside. The towering limestone cliffs alongside the road were stunning. I pulled the throttle on my bike and found that it could go around 50 miles per hour. We gunned them for a little bit, Danielle and I racing down the smooth, paved road and deeper into farmland. There were no interesting turnoffs so it would easy to find our way back to town.....

TO BE CONTINUED.....

Cuba Short Story THUS FAR....

What Could Go Wrong in Cuba? Short Story in a lots of little Part-sies:

Cuba, Part 1

Cuba, Part 2

Cuba, Part 3

Cuba, Part 4

Cuba, Part 5

Cuba, Part 6

Cuba, Part 7

Cuba, Part 8

Cuba, Part 9

Cuba, Part 10

TO BE CONTINUED on the MONDAY NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING....

Cuba, Part 10

...


Seven days and seven nights passed quickly in Havana before Danielle and I were off, by air conditioned bus, to a small tourist town named Vinales about 100 miles due East of the spot where we were deposited initially.

Vinales was nestled inside the lush and verdant valley of Pinar Del Rio, which was well known for its prime tobacco growing properties. And tobacco meant Cuban cigars! But the thing about Vinales, in particular, was that it had these dramatic limestone mountains jutting out of the earth like rounded teeth with pockmarks. These formations broke thru the terrain, or maybe they were set there purposefully, obese carnacs, by mischievous and playful Gods who were now long gone.

These protruding rock formations were famous for housing obscenely large colonies of bats. Shortly after dawn, if one had keen eyes, it was possible to spot a massive cloud of bats fleeing their elevated penthouse caves, in a cacophony of screeches, to feast for the night.

Danielle and I had heard about all this in Havana, and we knew we had to see it for ourselves. Vinales had captured our imaginations from the first word.

Our bus arrived in Vinales in front of a general store, not unlike one that may have been in an old Western town except that the colors were pastel as opposed to unfinished wood. The colors and the manner in which the buildings that lined the main street were painted, gave them an almost dollhouse-like quality. However, everything was too dusty and plain to be called "quaint" by any stretch. We couldn't see the entirety of the general store very well because a large crowd of people pushed up against the bus, all the way from the porch of the general store, and most of them held hand-written signs above their head. Very quickly we realized that the majority of the people were trying to sell a room in their home for the night or longer periods depending on the needs of a particular tourist. The signs ranged between 20 and 30 dollars per night and all the prices were written as "U.S. dollars" which I found interesting.

One sign advertised a "Luxury Villa" just down the road. Really? A luxury villa? From a cursory examination through different windows around the bus, it appeared that Vinales was the most rudimentary of farm towns. A pitstop with running water. Every single edifice was a one story, small home or home-turned-business with a porch. They all looked pretty much the same. The main street, itself, was just a wide path of dry, cracked dirt. I saw horse droppings along the far side of the rode. I doubted there was even one clothing store, here. Not even a place to purchase a hat to shield us from the hot sun. Not that we needed one, anyway.

Could this be the place that everyone, when visiting Cuba, "had to see"?!

But, as we were about to find out, things could change for the worse very quickly in Cuba, even in a place like Vinales.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Cuba, Part 9

The five of us walked down the gravel road in the dark, saved only by the full moon.

"I almost forgot about that," the leader remarked.

"What?" I asked.

"The Hotel Lido is right there!" he said, pointing ahead of us and to the right.

I looked in the direction of his finger. A few blocks down, light issued from a window, faintly. Still no streetlights, but I was encouraged.

"It looks like you are in luck!" the Cuban continued, "They have electricity!"

The four men continued walking with us, chatting in Spanish, while Danielle and I said virtually nothing. We had no energy left at this point. If, by some chance, we arrived at the hotel and it was closed with no concierge person, I was fairly certain that we were going to lie down next to the door and sleep on top of our luggage.

But when we arrived and looked through the window, we saw a pleasant looking, middle-aged woman at the counter watching a very small black and white television.

"Have a good time in Cuba!" the leader said, extending his hand to say goodbye to us.

"Thanks for walking us down. We appreciate it," I answered, also shaking hands with the three friends as they wished us luck in Spanish.

Four pairs of dusty cowboy boots made their way back to their post, up the road, presumably to knock out at least four more beers before sleeping.

Danielle and I made a monumental effort to drag our heavy suitcases up the few stairs to the entryway of the Hotel Lido, and I propped the front door open so that we could make our way in with our stuff.

"Can I help you?" the concierge woman inquired in Spanish, turning down the volume knob on the television.

"Hablo Ingles?" I asked, knowing that my Spanish was in no shape for a conversation.

"Si, un poco...but just a few words."

"Gracias. Do you have a room?"

"Yes," she said immediately.

Victory!

"But...we only take CUCs. No American dollars," she clarified.

Oh no!

"No dollars?" I repeated, hoping that she would magically change her mind.

"No. I can't. Sorry." she frowned.

"What if we pay a little bit extra?" Danielle suggested to her.

"Que?" she replied, her forehead wrinkling with the difficult translation.

"How many CUCs per noche?" Danielle asked in her finest Spanglish.

"Four zero," and she wrote the number "40" on a piece of paper in front of us.

"I'll offer her sixty and see what she says," I told Danielle.

I peeled sixty dollars out of my left pocket, being sure to go for the fatter bill roll, where the twenties were. I put them on the counter in front of her.

"Para este noche? Si? Esta bien?" I asked, going for my first bribe in Cuba.

She looked at the money and thought about it for a few seconds.

"Si. Yes. I will take you to your room," and she took the bills and put them in some sort of box that was underneath the counter. She'd made an extra twenty because there was an exact one-to-one relationship between CUCs and the U.S. dollar. I wondered whether she would pocket the money or whether she would turn it all over to the owner (and the government). I was pretty sure she would turn it all over. Unless she'd made up the fact that they only took CUCs. In which case, she could very easily pocket the money, which, at that moment, I did not mind one bit. Hell, for all I knew the price was twenty dollars per night and she was going to pocket forty. That would be two week's salary for a lot of people in Havana.

She led us up the long, thin stairway to our room, opened the door, and said goodnight.

I closed the door on her. It had a decent lock on it, and I clicked it shut.

"Thank God!!" I exclaimed.

"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" Danielle agreed.

I looked around the room. The walls were a dingy yellow, and the paint was peeling. It was white underneath. There were two very thin beds placed right next to each other with ugly green and yellow sheets which looked uncomfortable just on sight. The "bathroom" consisted of an old, slightly rusty sink and there was a crudely fashioned wardrobe next to it. Randomly, I remembered some advice from the guidebook: 'Don't drink the tap water in Cuba or it is very likely that you will get sick.' It was the worst hotel room I had ever seen in my life and I was quite happy with it. At least it was reasonably clean, and the ceilings were very high, which always helps. The quality hardly mattered.

Danielle and I crashed on the bed, in our clothes, and slept like rocks.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Cuba, Part 8

There was no avoiding him, now.

The big man moved toward us, at a leisurely pace. The other three guys were left rubbing their hands over the oil drum fire and watching.

Danielle and I let go of our suitcase handles, and stopped, wondering what the guy would say to us. I was more than a bit concerned. I noted, for the umpteenth time, that absolutely no one was around, as he got nearer to us. If these guys weren't friendly we were going to have to make a run for it. This thought didn't fill me with joy because I realized that I could outrun them, but Danielle probably couldn't. I very much doubted that any of those guys could catch me, but if Danielle weren't fast enough, that would render the point completely mute.

"Are you guys lost?" he asked us, almost with a laugh, stopping just arm's length away. He said it a bit hesitantly, though, as if he weren't quite sure what language we spoke.

"We were looking for a hotel down the road," I answered, pointing ahead of us, into the darkness.

"It's a little late to be looking for a hotel, isn't it?" he chuckled once again. Then he looked back at his friends and bellowed, "They are looking for a hotel in the middle of the night, during a blackout, what luck, eh?!!"

This was, of course, followed by peels of laughter from the peanut gallery around the oil drum. One of them even slapped his knee as if it were the funniest thing in the entire world.

"Is there a hotel down there?" Danielle asked impatiently. At this point, we were definitely a little pissed, not to mention tired and hungry. And we both knew there was absolutely no way we were getting any food for hours.

"Where are you from?" the big man asked Danielle, completely ignoring her question.

"Canada," she replied casually, as if she had lived there her entire life. Good job! We had discussed this before, and we were prepared.

"You don't sound Canadian," the man remarked thoughtfully. It was becoming clear to me that everyone in the world spoke at least two languages, except, of course, Americans.

"We live on the border, in Vancouver, there's not much of an accent in that city," she explained to him.

Danielle was cool as a cucumber under pressure, I had to hand it to her. If she had succeeded in fooling him, all the sudden we were just regular world travelers. Possibly without a cent in our pockets. But had he pegged us for Americans, he would have known instantly that we were packing a wad of greenbacks.

The man leaned back to address his friends again, "They're Canadian! We love Canadians, don't we guys?!!"

The guys started hooting and hollering like it was the Fourth of July. They must have been pretty lit up. I noticed all the empty beer bottles around the oil drum. Quite a lot of bottles, in fact.

"I still can't believe you came to Cuba in the middle of the night during a blackout! That's not the safest timing, is it? I think maybe me and my friends should walk you to the hotel. We wouldn't want anything to happen to you!" and he motioned for his three friends to come over and join us.

Now, I was definitely nervous. I didn't like the comment about the safety of our timing at all. I studied Danielle's face which seemed to say, 'It's a little dicey, but I think it will be alright.'

"C'mon," the leader said once the three men walked over, still drinking their bottles. "We'll show you where it is."

The five of us walked down the road, hopefully toward lodging...

TO BE CONTINUED

Culver City, Part 2

THINGS I HAVE HEARD, RECENTLY, IN CULVER CITY, WHILE SPENDING A DAY THERE:


"Hi, I live in Culver City and sometimes I like to sit at home, turn on the TV, and fart into a jar."

"Hey, let's all tell everyone we know how cool Culver City is and try to collectively raise the value of our homes!"

"Can you guys watch me go to the bathroom for a sec....I just want to make sure I'm doing it right."

"We're so incredibly cooler than downtown! I mean...it's RIDICULOUS how much cooler we are than downtown LA. Hey, anyone wanna go buy a new pair of Steve Madden sneakers!!!"

"Hi! I'm retarded!!"

"I built an outhouse in my backyard to be ironic. Isn't that funny? AN OUTHOUSE IN MY BACKYARD AS IF I WOULD TAKE A SHIT OUTSIDE LIKE IT WAS THE OLDEN DAYS OR SOMETHING OR LIKE IN SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....but I really wouldn't....we have very expensive indoor plumbing, now. Would you like to see it? It's all copper pipes!"

"By the way, you guys, the risotto here is excellent! While we're eating this risotto the value of my home will increase by $2,459.97!!! That's why Culver City is the coolest place to live in LA!! ISN'T IT?!?! ISN'T IT JUST THE BEST!?!?! Bon appetit, everyone!"

"I would have bought in Beverly Hills, but it's got such a stale vibe. I really would have, though! I mean...what am I....80 years old? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....HAHAHA...ahem."

"A Somalian child slapped me in the face the other day while I was standing at a crosswalk for absolutely no discernible reason!!!"

Culver City.

I would like to take a small break from our normal programming to remark upon a small section of Los Angeles, called Culver City.

Now, for many years, Culver City has had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Not one.

It was just a pissant little pit stop between Beverly Hills and West LA, where you could eat a burger that may or may not give you indigestion and then quickly be on your merry way.

In recent years, many pisspoor quality art galleries have opened in downtown Culver City, and when I say art galleries please realize that I am using the word 'art' in the very loosest sense of the word.....meaning....since the word was invented in the early 1200's by the famous American Indian, "He Who Shits on Canvas After Hot Enchiladas". It is excruciatingly difficult to find a good piece of art in Culver City which is only exascerbated by the fact that every single art gallery in Culver City is closed on every single Sunday of the year!

Because who would want to go see 'art' on a Sunday? What sort of unthinking buffoon would even imagine such a bourgeois transgression? Why open art galleries when 90 percent of people have free time to enjoy them and perhaps even (GASP) purchase something? "Ridiculous!" says Culver City in all its blue-blooded omniscience, "Absolutely foolhardy!"

Now, I want to say that I am very happy for people who have lived in Culver City for a few years, and their homes have appreciated significantly because, (finally), there are exactly two bars that a small faction of utter losers in squeaky clean Steve Madden sneakers will now deign to frequent on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

U.S. News and World Report recently conducted an interview of 100 Somalian children with the defining question: "Would you be willing to relocate from abject poverty and famine, here in Somalia, to Culver City with free room and board, no strings attached, as long as you desire?"

Not one single child accepted the offer. NOT ONE CHILD. NOT EVEN THE ONES COMPLETELY COVERED IN FLIES LIKE A FLY-SNUGGIE!!!

SUCK IT CULVER CITY!

Here's my new advertising theme for Culver City:

"Culver City: Hey, it's better than Palms! Come check out the art on Sundays!!!"

Cuba, Part 7

The humid air covered us like a blanket in the night. We could see a decent amount of stars in the sky courtesy of the blackout. It was considerably cooler now, so the humidity was not bothersome. Danielle and I stood there for a second, suitcases at the ready, amazed at our arrival. We were in Havana, alone at last, ready for an adventure. And quite possibly sooner than we would have liked.

I looked at my watch. It was 2:00 in the morning. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, (the only light coming from a three-quarter's moon), I looked, again, down the long, gravel road with low slung storefronts all along the right side. On the left, I saw mostly crumbling edifices of varying heights. I was willing to bet that there were squatters in all of them. The buildings were falling apart while the people were living in them. The residents of the top floors probably had to watch for holes in the flooring. That would make for a very dangerous trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night, indeed.

I reached down with my left hand and felt the outside edge of my pocket to reassure myself that the two bulges were still there. A rubber-banded roll of hundreds and one roll of twenties, each totaling one thousand U.S. dollars. Thus, one bulge was quite a bit bigger than the other. That meant that my left pocket represented about 97 percent of my life savings at that point, and I was feeling a bit protective of it. The bank of The Hollywood Machine. I should have hung a sign on my pocket that read, "Apply within for micro loans!"

Whatever hotel supposedly resided 'only three blocks down' according to our new friend Melanie, I didn't see any people in front of it. I glanced in the direction that our friends had just gone with the car. I didn't see or hear another car in the vicinity.

Danielle smiled widely at me, pulling at her suitcase to suggest movement, content as a meadowlark. You'd think we weren't in a place we knew nothing about, who's denizens may or may not detest Americans, in the middle of the night, during a blackout, with no native currency on our persons, whatsoever. It was as if she were taking a stroll on a lovely, spring day down the wide and convivial Champs-Élysées, twirling a parisol, en route to a trendy boutique! Life couldn't have been more wonderful or serene! Mais oui, le bon temps, n'est-ce pas?!

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and it made a loud noise as it telescoped out with a snap, and Danielle and I rolled our suitcases, side by side, over the gravel, making approximately as much noise as a stadium-held Monster Truck Rally. For some reason, the sound echoed between the two sides of the street, amplifying it, and it pierced the otherwise silent night quite forcefully.

As we rolled along, Danielle pointed to the dilapidated, crumbling apartment buildings on the left side of the street and remarked on their faded beauty, and the imposing prominence of their arched entrances which tended to be a couple of stories high, at least. It was mostly the tops of the buildings that were in bad shape. That, and the fact that all the glass from the windows was long gone. It was just open-air, with clothes lines drying out the day's laundry in front of some of them. Trying to keep bugs and insects out of the living spaces was an unthinkable luxury.

Danielle continued to expound, quite loudly, upon the architecture, and the raw beauty of everything around her as her hands gestured and mirrored her passion for the various discoveries.

"Look at the entrances!! They're so incredibly huge and GRAND! It's amazing here!!"

I tried to reply, delicately. I didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm.

"Danielle, can we keep it down just a bit? I'm excited, too, but this may not be the very best time to attract a bunch of attention." I suggested, pointed at the bulge inside my left pocket.

The truth of the matter was: we had no idea where we were, and it was almost too dark to even read a map.

"Oh come on! We didn't travel to Cuba to be timid and worry about everything. You've really got to lighten up a little!" she laughed.

I was, again, surprised and impressed with her insouciance to the utterly unknown. Perhaps I was being unreasonable, but I really didn't think so. I genuinely felt that the situation warranted at least a little bit of caution.

"Alright, I'll try, but maybe we'll talk low just to humor the gringo."

"I'm so glad we came!" she exclaimed.

"Me too!" I agreed.

And I was. This trip really was a hell of a cherry-buster. I felt like an animal in the wild. My hearing seemed to improve three-fold. My pupils widened like saucers to absorb more light. In short, my entire system was on high alert.

Danielle was right. I did tend to worry too much. I told myself to relax a little. I tried to imagine the tension from my body collectively draining out thru my feet and into the gravel and soil beneath it. To some degree, I succeeded, and began to enjoy the scenery more...even though, there really wasn't that much to see.

We walked three blocks and there was no hotel there. I can't say that it surprised me one bit. Dammit! I had a feeling that Melanie didn't know what she was talking about it. Just dropping us off, in the middle of nowhere to fend for ourselves. I stewed about it for a minute, then dismissed it. We kept walking.

"That's pretty much what I thought would happen," I said to Danielle, evenly.

"It must be close by," she muttered. She was a bit annoyed, also.

We walked another three blocks. Good thing we both owned good suitcases with tough wheels. There were some restaurants and some boarded-up houses or businesses. Some were (perhaps clothing?) shops with heavy iron girders behind the glass. Every shop that had a window, had a set of large iron bars behind it. It didn't seem like a particularly good part of town.

Then, I heard voices, and turned my head away from the nearest shop window.

Ahead of us, in the distance, there was a group of men huddled around a fire in what looked like an old, oil drum. I heard the distinctive clink of beer bottles and hearty laughter. It seemed strange that they were huddled around a fire, until I remembered that might be the only source of light for many blocks in every direction. Plus, perhaps it was slightly chilly. Danielle and I just hadn't noticed because we were walking and lugging our heavy suitcases down the road.

We kept walking toward them, Danielle still pointing to architectural wonders and almost yelling their valuable idiosyncrasies to me in bullet point fashion. I was discreetly eyeing the men, then, eyeballing the next several blocks down the road. There was no one.

Now we were fairly close, about a city-sized block, and all the men stopped talking at once. The two men with their backs toward us, turned. They were now staring at us, almost in disbelief, it seemed.

Danielle hardly noticed them, being fixated on the left side of the street like she was.

I thought to myself: "Really? You don't notice four guys drinking and laughing around a fire made inside an oildrum with no one else around for miles, in the middle of the night, but you notice that the window sills are more prominent and ornate, here?"

Even after all this time, Danielle still surprised and fascinated me. We were very different in certain fundamental ways.

Rolling, and continuing to be noisier than hell breaking loose, we were almost upon the four gentleman who now issued a few whispers amongst themselves, and were all still staring at us. Danielle finally noticed them and her architecture/urban planning 101 lesson dropped off quickly.

I smiled at them, self consciously, and then regretted doing so. I probably even would have tipped my hat at them, if I'd been wearing one, as if we were in the old West on the way to a saloon with those high-waisted swinging doors. I should have just kept walking and ignored them completely, but that wouldn't have been right, either. Not one of them smiled back in response. Their bearded, tanned faces barely moved, inscrutable. The crackle of the fire was suddenly very loud as we walked by. It smelled like gasoline.

For a moment, it looked as if we'd just pass by them without incident, but then the largest one started walking toward us.

I found the continued whispering of the other three men around the fire extremely annoying. What the hell need was there to whisper? No one was even around for Chrissakes!

TO BE CONTINUED...