Notes on Havana

After eating with Leo and Beto, Allison and I went on a mission. Allison had brought the wrong recharger for the camera. She had brought the charger for the vonage phone. We have a 2GB SIM card that can take 700 pix in 10 megapixels, but we didn´t have a charger and the battery doesn´t have a disposable variety. Let´s just say I had to stay very calm. Especially since AL felt really bad about the situation. No point in making it worse. So we figured the best place to get a charger would be Old Havana where the tourists are. We wandered through there again and found a shop but by the time we got there shit was closed. So we wondered and took in more of the sites in the area. The place definitely has an old world charm. When we finally got hungry we ate at La Domenica which is considered the best Italian restaurant in town according to Lonely Planet. The place had pizza that tasted like pizza and was cooked in a wooden oven. Traveling and being a vegetarian isn´t easy.

On Wednesday, we had our first folklorico and salsa class. For 2 hours it was just a bit more than 20 dollars and the lessons were totally one on one. Can´t beat that. I like the folklorico stuff, but the salsa makes me nervous. I still can´t hear the timing and don´t really know when to move. Salsa is hard because there is a lot of responsibility on the guy´s part as he´s the leader. The girl just has to follow. If I don´t know what I´m doing then it ain´t much help for her. In folklorico, we learned the basic dance for the orisha Eleggua. A mischievous orisha and my favorite kind. It´s funny cause almost all the people from the group came. Yeni and her daughter Casey, Glandis to run the music on the DVD player, and Leo to dance and Beto to hang out as the manager. We danced right in the living room of our casa particulares. After the dancing, I invited them to a matinee at the hot salsa club in town Casa de la Musica, which we are conveniently located right above. The matinee started at 5:00 s we had some time to kill. So we went on our recharger mission. We got on a bike taxi and we told the guy to go to Habana Vieja. As we were biking we were chatting with my limited Spanish and mentioned that we were going to a photoshop. As we were biking he pointed to a shop on the way and so we stopped there. It was to no avail, but when we came out our biker was being questioned by a police officer. This is a scene that I was to see play out many times. Cops randomly pulling people over and questioning them and people reacting the same way. No arguments just answering quietly and calmly. I guess the biker must have said something because he left the card with the officer and biked us to the placed recommended by the people in the photoshop. He said the cop wanted money from him (bribe) but he didn´t have money to give. He asked me for money, but I pretended to not understand him. At the next place we met with success. The result of the black market. I explained my problem to the lady and she made a phone call and told us to wait. Moments later a man came into the store with a big bag and pulled out a Chinese multicharger. Bless my people. 40 CUCs. Undoubtedly, way more than it was worth, but he had us by the balls. The guy was a professional photographer and showed us his digital camera. He was going to sell us a SIM card but he saw that we had a 2 GB one. Our mission was a success so we decided to get some food. Our biker said he would take us somewhere and we said that we wanted authentic Cuban food. But I mentioned that I didn´t want to pay too much. I als odecided to invite our guy with us. The first place was too expensive. The guy wanted to eat meat as all Cubans do and his dish was 10 CUCs while our dishes were only 3 CUCs for the rice and beans. I wasn´t about to pay for a meal where his stuff cost more than both of us combined. I got up and left that place. So now he got the picture and took us to a place nearby where the whole meal was 8 CUCs for the 3 of us. This actually was the best deal that we had in Cuba. It was in a lady's house up some shady ass stairs. If this wasn´t Cuba I would never have followed him. We had green beans and onions, salted avocado, rice, beans, and water. It was pretty good and definitely worth the price. After that we returned home to get ready for dancing. The guy tried to invite himself along with us to that as he was a salsa "professor", but then óf course aren´t they all.

The group playing was called Bamboleo and are pretty famous in Cuba. We invited the gang but Leo couldn´t make it. Unfortunately, Casey was too young so Yeni had to take her home and couldn´t come either. The club was cool. It was just DJ music for 1-2 hours until the band came on. Alcohol is incredibly cheap in Cuba. Their 5.4% beer was only 1 CUC and small plasitc cups for mojitos were only 2 CUCs. But the mojitos were strong and good.

Ok so here it is. Cuba like much of Latin America is an ass oriented country. The US is all about the titties. Girls there were bouncing their asses like they were trying to fan a fire. As a connoisseur, I gave it a thumbs up. Whenever I walked to get drinks, I had girls approach me. Perhaps, it was my Chineseness, perhaps it was my obvious tourist look and money, and maybe it was both, but hey...I was there with wife. Flattering but no thanks. The band was great and played salsa, reggaeton, and romantic music. The lead female singer was hilarious and during a song called "Agua" poured water on herself and threw it on the audience. People were loving it. During the time I also got to talk more to Glandis and Beto. They are really cool guys.

Around 9, AL and I decided to have a nice romantic dinner. Glandis took us to a restaurant called Los Nardos and we had to wait in line to get in. Of course, the place was heavily meat oriented. I made the mistake of ordering too much because I thought I wouldn´t get enough.