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| Revolution Plaza from the top of Jose Marti Memorial Tower |
Editor’s
note: On a daily basis from June 1
thru June 30, 2015 Pillar to Post online magazine is featuring articles, photos
and insights resulting from a recent group tour, an adventure we dubbed: the
April 23 Brigade’s Tour of Cuba 2015.
DAY 7, Thursday in Havana
This
morning we met a bit later than usual because we had a former Cuban diplomat
arrive to
give discuss current U.S./Cuba relations as to the possibility of the
Embargo being lifted. Camilo Garcia
Lopez-Trigo is now involved with a writer and artist group (some sort of
lobby).
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| Camilo Garcia Lopez-Trigo |
His
impressions of where his country is vis a vis the world and what it needs for
the future was fascinating.
Rain was
predicted and judging from the overcast skies everyone expected some rain. Nobody expected a deluge. More on that later. At least, the day was cooler than the
sweltering temperatures we have been experiencing since we arrived in Havana.
Our first
bus stop was at Revolution Square. The
square itself is one huge parking lot. I
guess I was expecting Red Square in Moscow.
But what was impressive were the government buildings surrounding the
square including two with four story murals of Che and Fidel. Also, nearby is what I call the “tower of
power” or in reality the star-shaped Jose Marti Memorial. At 358 feet, the monument soars above the
Square.
[More on Jose Marti later in Pillar to Post’s coverage of Cuba.]
From the
Square, we drove a short distance to Estadio Latinoamericano, the 55,000-seat home
of the Havana Indusriales, a member of the Cuban National Series, the most
elite baseball league in the country. The baseball season wraps up in early April
because from May until early fall it’s the rainy season in the tropics.
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| Estadio Latinoamericano, home of the Havana Industriales baseball team |
All
through Havana, I’ve been looking for real Cuban baseball caps. This being Cuba caps are expensive. At the stadium gift store, I finally found
what I was looking for at 20 CUCs each.
It’s a handsome home team cap and I proudly purchased several for
grandsons.
The
tour’s next stop was at the Santovenia Elderly Center in El Cerro, a Catholic local
center for the elderly, where the director Inez gave us a tour and discussed Cuba's
healthcare system.
From the
abuelos we visited Finca Vigia (“Lookout Farm”) in San Francisco de Paula, which
was Ernest Hemingway's winter home from 1939 to 1960. He loved Cuba and its
people, who returned that affection to the American author by simply calling
him "Ernesto." We view the novelist's 9,000-volume library, his yacht
Pilar and the typewriter on which he wrote some of his greatest works,
including his last masterpiece, The Old Man and The Sea.
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| Interior of Ernest Hemingway's winter home in Havana |
As we
left the Hemingway estate, we began to feel a few drops of rain coming from some
really dark clouds arriving from the northwest.
Rain is on the way. Later, we felt
more light sprinkles during lunch at Havana's Il Divino, an open-air terrace
paladar, where we savored some of Cuba's latest cuisine, supplied by the
adjacent two-acre farm La Finca Yoandra, charmingly named for the owner's wife.
Because the owner is Cuban and Italian,
I opted for the Lasagna (delicious) as I wanted to skip rice and beans for at
least one meal.
We hopped
on the bus just as the rain began. We
were amazed how Adrian was able to get the weather to cooperate. Not once did he drop us off when it was
raining.
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| Tropical rainstorm slams Havana with seven inches of rain in five hours. Huge flooding in many parts of the city. |
A few
miles down the road back to Havana, however, we got slammed by an old-fashioned
tropical downpour. Glad we were on a big
bus as the roadway was turning into a river.
The rain was so heavy we could not see out of the bus windows. But, not once did we think Adrian, our
driver, couldn’t handle the situation.
He kept us on course and by the time we reached the porte cochere of the
Hotel Nacional, the rain had stopped.
I figured
the rain was done for the day, as had been the pattern during our trip. There was moisture every day, but before 5 pm
it seemed to blow over.
Today, it
was not to be.
We
arrived at 4 pm and no sooner than we reached our fourth floor hotel room that
faced the Caribbean to the North, once again the heavens opened up. This time, the storm brought two friends:
thunder and lightning. At least a dozen
serious sounding flashes of lightning were followed instantly be a bellowing roar
of thunder.
Being a
life long Southern Californian, I had not been in a thunder and lightning storm
like the one I was experiencing in Havana.
My Midwestern raised wife only laughed at me. But no one was laughing in some parts of
Havana because the two-hour storm, which was showing no signs of letting up had
already dumped seven inches of rain on the city. My hometown of San Diego only registers ten
inches per year.
My hotel
window was front row entertainment but we were the lucky ones as many parts of
Havana were in flood stages.
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| From The Guardian, London: Stranded car sits on a flooded street during an intense rainstorm in Havana on April 29, 2015. Two people were killed, three buildings collapsed and another 24 structures suffered some kind of damage from the heavy rain on Wednesday. Building collapses are not uncommon in Cuba's capital where many edifices are crumbling and in need of immediate repair. |
But
because we didn’t tune into limited the TV news coverage in our hotel room and
newspapers were hard to find, we did not know how bad the storm was until after
we returned to Miami (two days later).
Also, it was not a topic of discussion by the tour guides or fellow
travelers.
We did
learn that the jazz combo, which was going to play after dinner at La Moraleja Restaurant couldn’t make it in time because of the flooding in Havana.
Again, by
not knowing how serious the flooding was, I feel (looking back after several
weeks have passed) that our night might have been akin to the last meal aboard
the Titanic. Of course, this is a gross
dramatization, for which I apologize, however I mention the poor comparison
only to show how cocooned we were on the tour regarding the state of the
flooding.
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| First major storm of the year brought on rush hour fender benders heading into Havana Photography by Bruce Henderson |
Dinner was
a bit later than usual this evening.
Partly because we had a later lunch and also because it really didn’t
stop raining until nightfall.
The restaurant tonight was at an amazing paladar very near to our hotel in the Vedado neighborhood, one of the most important commercial and recreation (night life and cuisine) in Havana. Because no one knew if the rain was gone or coming back, we dined inside the large home instead of the large veranda overlooking a nice urban garden. Called La Moraleja Restaurant, the cuisine was Cuban but with certain international styles. Huge portions of rice, fish, meat and vegetables kept arriving.
The restaurant
has won many world cuisine completions with the most recent being last year in
Europe. But was it the best meal we
tasted on our trip? It certainly ranked
up among the best.
When the
feast ended complimentary cigars were offered.
Many on tour took advantage of the early return to the hotel and enjoyed
a good smoke on the main plaza of the Hotel Nacional while listening to the
excellent musicians in the bar area.
It wasn’t
lost on all of us that tomorrow would be our final full day on this magical
island.
DAILY DINING ROSTER
Breakfast: La Veranda, Hotel Nacional, Havana
Lunch: Il
Divina (paladar)
Dinner:
La Moraleja Restaurant (paladar).
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| Il Divino Restaurant |
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