Cuba - Day 1 - “Gold, God, and Glory”

8/22/15, “Gold, God, and Glory”

Santiago de Cuba, Cuba (San Pedro de la Roca Castle)

Why did the Spanish Conquistadors set sail for the new world?  The answer we learned in school was quite simple: gold, God, and glory.  The gold has long been spent and, other than a handful of names, the glory, too, is long gone.  God, however, remains.  He remains throughout the entire Caribbean and all of Latin America.  The Spanish (and English and French and Portuguese) served their God.  With two-thirds of the island still holding to the Spanish religion (Catholicism), it is clear that the Spanish got what they wanted.  However, it was not an easy path, especially with threats from other European powers.  That is why they built castles and forts such as this one.  Commonly known as “El Morro,” San Pedro de la Roca Castle allowed the Spanish to defend against their rivals.  The fact that everyone on this island speaks Spanish and most are Catholic speaks to the success of the Spanish effort.  It also makes this castle the perfect place to begin my religious studies in Cuba.  However, I woke up over six hours ago, and a lot has happened.

It took me no time to get out of bed, get ready, and to the check-in counter.  That was when I realized why they told us to get there three hours early.  The line was incredibly long, and everyone had trolleys of stuff.  Not luggage, just stuff.  I soon realized that these items, clothes, even TVs, were gifts for their friends and family in Cuba.  I had never seen anything like it.  I wound up upgrading to first class for a nominal charge, which was well worth it.  In fact, with my nap on the flight to Miami, sleeping at the hotel, and the nap on the Santiago flight, I am fully rested.  After I checked in and filled out all the paperwork, just a little more than I would for a normal international flight.  I went back to the hotel for breakfast (bacon and eggs), having my first cup of coffee since Monday.  I then went through security and was soon on the plane.

First class was exactly half-filled, which meant I had two seats to myself.  We soon landed in Santiago.  One of the main reasons I opted for the upgrade was that I could be first through passport control.  I was.  He spoke no English, but he had few questions, only wanting to know if I had visited Africa.  He stamped my passport.  I now have Cuban and Iranian stamps in my passport.  My bag took forever to come out, but, when it did, I proceeded through Customs.  Oh, right, before I went to the baggage claim, I had to go through a security screen again.  He seemed to think I had an external hard drive.  It turned out that my Taylor Swift CDs looked like a hard drive disk in the X-Ray.

As soon as I stepped outside, I was approached by a taxi driver and a baggage handler.  I knew I was being scammed.  After a bit a minute, I asked for my bag back, and he asked for a tip.  I handed him the first small banknote I found, far more than I should have given him.  I then heard my name.  That was my driver, the one I had reserved.  We proceeded to a pink Chevy that was about the same age as my mother.  We made our way to the first site, this castle.

As soon as we got out of the car, I lit up a Germany Exclusive Por Larranaga.  That meant the cigar went from Cuba to Germany to the United States, and I am now taking it back home to Cuba to smoke.  We explored the castle and talked about the religious diversity of the population.  I found the spot from the inscription photo, but it was shaded, so I couldn’t get a good photo.  Ernesto, my guide, said that I couldn’t smoke in the car, so we explored the castle some more, the realization of where I was finally kicking in.  I was floored by the wonder of the castle.

I picked up a souvenir, and we headed to the car, where I got my laptop.  I walked back to the bar, which had a great view of the castle, and I ordered a Havana Club rum, not caring that it was before 11 AM.  I sat down, where I took in the view of the castle and proceeded to write this entry, as I smoked and drank, which I will now close so that we can get back on the road.

Santiago de Cuba, Cuba (Parque Céspedes)

Alright, I figure I’ve got about half an hour before I start to crash and need to go back up to my room.  Gold, God, and glory.  That is the theme of today’s entry, and the three world heritage sites we visited today neatly fit into that.  Let’s start with glory.  While Cuba, like any country, has its national heroes, such as Antonio Maceo, the hero of this region, there was little glory to be found among these parts we traversed today.  There may have been glory to be found in defending Cuba from el Morro, but that time has long since passed.  In fact, it feels like a lifetime ago that I closed from the castle this morning.

Our next stop would focus on gold, the ancient coffee plantations, which provided a way of life for so many early Cubans and helped in developing an entire region.  However, it was no easy task to find one of these ancient coffee plantations.  After I closed, we headed to the hotel, where I checked in, changed money, and changed into more comfortable clothes before getting on the road.  We were going to stop in Guantanamo for lunch, and my little sheet said the coffee plantations were right in the city.  He said they were another 100 km away, towards the National Park, and he thought it was all too far to do in one day.  Rookie.

The tip I had planned for him was, I would later learn, about equal to the average annual salary of a government worker here.  If he did not follow my schedule, there would be no tip.  We could not find a quick place to eat in Guantanamo but later found someplace nearby where we could get ham and cheese sandwiches.  I just ate the ham and picked at the cheese.

As we drove, I asked him about the religious views of the country.  I expected that such a religious country would have deeply set religious values, such as the Catholic Right of our country would impose.  I was wrong.  Abortions were legal for the first two months.  Many people lived together without getting married, even having kids together.  I was shocked by how liberal the values were for such a deeply religious country.  I could not get a straight answer on homosexuality (no pun intended), due to our language gap, but I did ask about Muslims and Jews.  He gave me a non-answer, which I suppose was the answer.  There are so few of each that no one gives them a second thought.

We finally found a coffee plantation, after asking numerous people on the way.  It was run-down and no longer in use, obviously, but it was exactly what I was looking for.  There were many locals there, and we interacted with them.  I lit up an H. Upmann, but I knew I would not be able to finish it.  We were tight on time, and I could not smoke in the car.  We spent about half an hour there and discussed Cuban prices and rations.  Apparently, every citizen gets a monthly ration of sugar and salt and cooking oil, among other things, along with five eggs.  Wait, five eggs?  They get like half a pound of salt but only five eggs?  I can eat five eggs for breakfast.  Half a pound of salt is 200 grams, which is 40 teaspoons.  That’s a teaspoon of salt a day, fine.  Five eggs?  For the whole month?  I didn’t get it.

He also told me how shockingly low the price of sugar was, like two orders of magnitude lower than in the states, but it was in line with the low salary.  The average government worker’s monthly salary in Cuba is about equal to the minimum hourly wage in parts of the United States.  Reader, let that sink in.  However, private jobs do exist.  Additionally, all education and healthcare is free.  What about the taxes, though, for those private jobs?  It’s something like 70%.

There was a little shop next to the ruins of the coffee plantation, and I thought at first it was a museum.  No, these were actual items for sale.  They had cigars, grown locally, made in the next town over, Baracoa.  They looked and smelled fine.  I bought 23.  It cost me about the same as I regularly pay for 1 or 2 cigars back home.  We headed to a coffee shop, where I got 25 more cigars in a sealed package, along with a coffee.  The price was even cheaper there.  The best part?  I can legally bring these back to the states.

Our next stop was to be Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, but I had a splitting headache at this point.  Was it heat or hunger, or was it lack of caffeine?  I had only had half a cup of coffee this morning, so it was all too familiar to get this headache when I skimp on my morning caffeine intake.  We stopped by Ernesto’s friend house.  The friend was out, but his mother (or grandmother), made us some coffee.  We also arranged to rent a car.  Ernesto said we could not keep doing my ambitious itinerary on his car.  It was too much distance, and we needed a faster, more reliable car than the 1950s Chevy.  I reluctantly agreed.  We had to take a very bad road, bad even by Cuban standards, but we were soon enough at the National Park.

The clock has just struck 2 AM, so I will wrap up.  The WHS file for the National Park mentioned how the plants had to uniquely evolve due to toxins in the rocks.  Is that what the locals believed?  That the plants looked the way they did because of evolution?  Or was it because that was how God created it.  I’m quite sure that they believed every bit of beauty to be found in nature is only there because God created it.  I was technically in the WHS at that point, so all I needed to do was light up a cigar and turn around, but I had wanted to reflect here, to see if I could begin to understand what the locals feel when they look upon what they view as God’s creation.

I budgeted myself another half an hour, since it was almost sunset, and I did not want us on that bad road with the potholes after dark.  I opted for one of the new cigars, called El Credito.  With my first puff, I knew that it was a real Cuban.  With my second puff, I knew it was a good Cuban.  With my third puff, I thought it might have been the best cigar I’ve ever smoked.  I walked around as I smoked, reflecting and admiring the creations of nature, preferring to believe the explanations in my science textbooks, rather than the ones to be found in religious texts.  It was soon time to turn around, and we back in Baracoa before long.

Baracoa is Cuba’s oldest village, established four years before Havana, in 1511.  We got dinner at a restaurant called Calalula, a name Ernesto found amusing for some reason.  I got the pork covered in cacoa sauce and a Cuba Libre, along with coffee before and after the meal.  It did not help my headache, which was now at the point where it was painful just to stand up and sit down.  With my first bite of food, my first Official meal in Cuba, I announced “53.”  The meaning should be clear to my reader.  After dinner, I said it again, this time, “53 down, 140-some to go.”  It was slightly past 9 PM.

Four hours later, with me napping sporadically until midnight, we were back in Santiago de Cuba.  My hotel is cross the street from the famous, historic Parque Céspedes, which was quite bustling for it being close to 2 AM.  I sat down there, where I proceeded to light up another El Credito and write this entry.  As I wrote, I was accosted by beggars.  I just wanted to finish this as quickly as possible.  The first one started by asking for a cigar.  I thought he was going to sit with me as he smoked it, which would be a worthwhile person-to-person experience, but he just kept it for later.  Then he asked for money.  That was too much.  I turned him down and pretended my Spanish was much worse than it was and waited for him to go away.  He did, eventually.

Alright, one last thing before I close.  Cuba has been exactly how I expected it to be.  There have been no cultural shocks or surprises, other than the cheap prices of some purchases.  It is more similar to Panama than any place I have visited, and I expect Havana to be extremely similar to Panama City.  Alright, on that note, I will close.  Tomorrow our travelling party will grow from two to four by the end of the day, as Ernesto’s girlfriend will be joining us for the rest of the trip, and my best friend will be waiting for us at the hotel tomorrow night.