6/12 - Hi, baby! This morning it's off to the countryside and a week of seeing just how different life in Havana is from life in the rest of Cuba. First stop is Santa Clara, a three-hour bus ride to the east, and the Che memorial. We get a brief lecture on his life upon arrival: he was born June 24, 1948 in Argentina, had asthma, and could read and write by age 5. He was home taught by his mom, learned French, Latin, and English, was excellent at math and science, and was going to be an architect (or an engineer) like his dad until his experience caring for his sick grandmother made him a doctor. After graduating from school in Buenos Aires he traveled to Latin America twice and ended up in Mexico, meeting Fidel one night and joining the Granma expedition to Cuba in December 1956. He was invaluable to the group's success with his medical skills and his strategic ingenuity, and he led the key armed column with Camilo to Santa Clara in December '58 for the decisive victory of the revolution (more on this later.)

After the revolution he was the military chief at La Campana (the fortress in Havana I told you about earlier -- the one right next to El Morro), the head of the national bank (funny bit about this is Fidel asked a group of comrades after their victory to raise their hand if they wanted the job as head of the bank. He reminded them that the person should be an economist. Long story short, the punchline is Che saying, "economista? I thought you said COMMunista!" (Oh, that Che...), and minister of industry. He left for Africa in '65 to help the invaded Congolese people and stayed there for seven months before returning to Cuba briefly to train for his expedition to Bolivia. He left for that country in November 1960 to start their revolution and was killed in 1967 by the CIA and his remains were finally discovered and returned to Cuba (by Argentine scientists) in 1997.

 

After lecture we race across town to the armored train museum to see that historical site before it closes. The train was Batista's last-ditch effort to stop the resistance in '58 and he sent it down to Santiago full of arms and soldiers to save his skin. Che got wind of this and raced to Santa Clara to head it off. Che and his merry band of misfits snatched a bulldozer from the university, yanked the tracks, and got 408 soldiers to surrender after it derailed -- with only 23 men, including Che. (They hastened the process by tossing Molotov cocktails under the wooden-floored cars to cook them a bit, first. The surrender, not surprisingly, came shortly thereafter.) This was the biggest win of the revolution and Batista fled Cuba shortly thereafter, ending things as a victory for Castro in '59. The museum is just the last five or six cars of the original train lying where they landed 45 years ago, scattered on the side of the still functioning railroad tracks. You go in them, see pics from the decisive day, specifically noting the expressions of shock and bottom-of-the-stomach sickness felt by the soldiers after realizing they'd been duped by a group no bigger than the players and onlookers of a domino game at the local park.

 

After this we go to the hotel and are caught in a monsoon, which forces us to remain there for hours on end, so we play cards all night and drink Cuba libres until it finally lets up. When it does we have a brief dinner at the hotel and then watch a weird fashion show in the lounge (really odd. I’ll tell you more later.) By that point it's time for sleepy, so I turn in for some sweet, if troubled, dreams. (Seriously, what the hell was there a fashion show for? Strange, man…)

 

6/13 –Woke up this morning and walked around our hotel a bit, Los Caneyes, which is an old type of Indian house here. All the rooms are in these straw-roof capped huts, kind of like cabanas, and they're pretty cute. There’s turkeys running around the grounds and I think you'd like it. Kind of secluded and relaxing.

 

We bug out and head on the road for a three-hour trip to Camaguey, the largest, flattest province in the country. (Surprisingly, the first hour or so is beautiful as we drive through the mountains, palm trees, and green-capped peaks everywhere.) I nod off a couple of times, but wake up just as we get to town, one of the seven original cities in Cuba and home to endless tinajones, gigantic clay pots originally used to catch rainwater during drought conditions that are the town's ubiquitous symbol. Our first stop after lunch is the Nicolas Guillen home/museum, Cuba's best-known poet. He was a journalist, originally, and traveled to Spain before returning to Havana and taking up the cause of the revolution. He was a staunch Marxist/socialist and has written very fondly of its key members. (Che, for example.) We’ll have to check him out.

 

Next is a quick bus ride across town (listening to Lazaro Ros, an afro-Cuban Santeria musician that is very cool) to check in and go on a walking tour of the town's key plazas. We see the Plaza del Carmen (which looks JUST like the plaza in Cinema Paradiso, the church subbing for the theater here), the Parque de Ignacio Agramonte, the town head who fought for independence from the Spanish in the late 1860s, the Plaza de las Trabajadores, and a few others. It’s a really cute town and DAMN I wish V and I could have sat in that Paradiso plaza together. It was beautiful and romantic, peaceful and serene. It actually LOOKS like a normal town, too -- there's shops with stuff in them, parks, theaters, etc. It seems like people could actually have things to do here and there's more than one choice for options.

 

We laze around for a bit like bears after dinner and eventually go to Casa de la Trova, a local bar with live music, for a GREAT mojito (one of the best I’ve had here) and some good music before turning in. Nonis…