Cuba, don’t go changing
Cuba, don’t go changing
Castro’s gone and Coca-Cola has arrived, but there’s still enough communist charm in the Caribbean island to keep our writer coming back.
“This way for VIP,” says Maria as I land at Havana’s Jose Marti airport. It’s not very communist, I know, but I’ve booked ahead and paid £40 for fast track. I jump the lines and make it through immigration and customs in less time than it takes to get through Gatwick. Outside, an air-conditioned minivan is waiting, and I’m at my Airbnb flat in Vedado, the most desirable suburb in the capital, less than an hour after I touch down. Anabel, the host, is waiting with bread, yoghurt and bananas. It’s five-star service — but what’s it doing in Cuba?
Fidel Castro died in November and the sunshine socialist island is changing faster than ever. It’s not just that Americans are cluttering up what used to be a refreshingly Yankee-free destination. (One in four of the 4m tourists who visit each year is now from the US.) With El Comandante no longer looking down on them with Cold War surliness, and small firms now legal, Cubans are getting seriously good at the business of tourism.
The signs of unprecedented professionalism and good taste are shocking. My favourite mural of George W Bush — the one in which the former US president sports a giant Hitler moustache — has disappeared, a rare gesture of goodwill towards visiting American officials following the rapprochement between Washington and Havana.
The two countries now enjoy full diplomatic relations and US firms can operate in the travel, tourism and technology sectors. The jaunty Sheraton logo sits atop the biggest hotel in Miramar. Google has installed local servers, so Cubans can use wi-fi hotspots to watch cat videos like the rest of the world.
Walking around old Havana, I see billboards advertising Lancôme, Bulgari and Adidas. Coca-Cola is on sale at the Saratoga hotel. Mojitos now come frappé. Clean new Audis are replacing the shabby Russian Moskvichs, Ladas and Volgas. Santy restaurant serves the freshest sashimi I’ve ever tasted. There is even a new nightclub for Cubans called VIP, where champagne socialists, known locally as Yummies (young upwardly mobile Marxists), nibble snapper ceviche and tuna tataki.
This is no good, no good at all. People don’t go to Cuba for the same experiences they can find in Barbados. Service that ranges from Soviet to nonexistent is as much part of the charm and authenticity of the place as the cigars, music, ballet, theatre, architecture, bureaucracy, politics and rumba. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Jonathan Ashton, a Brit who runs a top-notch travel service from his base in Havana: “People come here because it’s not like anywhere else and, frankly, not everything will work all the time.”
I’m staying for a week, though, so there’s plenty of time to try to find the Cuba I came to love on my first visit in 1993 — when there was so little to eat that chefs in the restaurants would deliberately cook inedible food so that customers wouldn’t eat it, enabling them to take it home to feed their pigs. It takes a few days, but I discover that it’s still there, sunbaked into Cuban life like the pastel colours on an old Havana mansion.
It starts when I ask to change some money at the front desk at the Melia Habana hotel. I can, I’m told, but only if I “take care of” the cashier. Cashiers asking for cash to dispense cash? I’m feeling better already. Can I get online at the Melia Cohiba hotel? For a whopping £8 an hour, I can, “but it is dial-up and doesn’t work too well”, the lady in the business — no irony intended — centre tells me. She’s not kidding. It doesn’t work at all. Excellent.
I’m up early one morning, so head out for a run along the Malecon, Havana’s corniche. A wiry Cuban man appears by my side. “Can I have your clothes and your shoes?” he asks. Eh? He repeats the question. “But I’m wearing them,” I protest. He cannot see how this might be a hurdle. I arrange to meet him on my final day to give him my kit.
I arrive at Nazdarovie restaurant for dinner and am relieved to find it still decorated with Soviet-era slogans and photographs of Fidel meeting a succession of Russian leaders in Red Square. The Georgian ambassador is at the best table, choosing between the pelmeni and the chicken shashlik. The Ukrainians will show up later and the vodka will really start flowing.
By now, comrades, the good stuff is coming thick and fast. Deathtrap tuk-tuks that cost more than London taxis scuttle around the 6ft-deep potholes. There are endless references to Fidel on the TV news and the weather forecast. Habanos cigar shops open and close when it suits the staff because, if you’re getting a standard state salary whether you sell a single stogie or not, who cares about the customers? And — joy! — Bush is still on the Wall of Cretins in the Museum of the Revolution.
Hiring a car still takes longer than the journey you intend to make and requires more forms than applying for a mortgage. In yen. “Full AC” means you can open all the windows. When I reach Santa Maria beach, at Playas del Este, I’m disappointed to see that the Hotel Tropicoco is derelict. No, wait! The windows may be smashed, but it is still welcoming guests. Take that, Tripadvisor.
On my final day, I ask the maître d’ at my favourite breakfast spot in old Havana why breakfast is still chaotic, years after I started coming. The menu bears no resemblance to what is actually on offer, and what food there is varies comically from day to day. One day, there are guavas. Next day, not. One day mangoes, next day, not. One day, eggs, the next not. “Sir, it’s very simple,” he explains. “The supplies arrive in the morning. We sell them out the back. You get what’s left.”
Now that’s what I come to Cuba for. I hope the maître d’ will be telling guests the same thing for years to come.
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