Cuba at work and play and my favourite pic

Poor John gets a personalised shoe shine in Santa Clara

Jackhammering

Street life fascinates me. Everywhere we travel, I love seeing locals at work and play. Usually I’m thankful I don’t have to do the job I’m photographing, and often I wish I could join in on the play.

Cuba was no exception.

Last month, we had two weeks there, starting with two nights of homestay in Havana. Then we travelled by bus for stays in Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs), Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Santa Clara. If you keep up with this blog, you’ll know we didn’t have our luggage for any of these stops.

Luckily every homestay included a clothesline so we could do our laundry almost every day. Poor John was pretty lucky my daypack had an extra pair of shorts and, who knows why, a pair of bike pants.

Every destination also included a special activity or two, such as a walking tour (more about those soon) or a salsa lesson (for me, not Poor John). So we had plenty of chances to enjoy Cuba’s colours, sounds, smells, energy, architecture, people, friendliness and, of course, cars.

In addition to the amazing cars, we saw plenty of important monuments and an extraordinary number of souvenir shops. That said, I couldn’t find a single pair of knickers (underpants) and Poor John couldn’t find a place that would sell him a disposable razor.

There were plenty of restaurants. We dined at a couple of hole-in-the-wall eateries and our meals cost next to nothing. Something like $2 for two individual pizzas and two drinks.

The price was directly related to the CUC versus CUP. Let me explain.

Cuba has two currencies—the CUC and the CUP.

The CUP is for Cubans. Tourists use CUCs. The latter is a convertible currency and can be exchanged at the airport on the way out. CUPs stay only in Cuba. One CUC is worth about US$1 and about 25 times (I think I’m right) what a CUP is worth.

Hair salon

Some touristy-type places accept CUCs only, which means a Cuban can’t buy in those places unless they’ve somehow managed to acquire CUCs.

The CUC versus CUP issue makes Cuba a somewhat expensive place for a tourist to visit, because except at hole-in-the-wall restaurants, we were always charged at the CUC rate.

On our walking tour in Cienfuegos, I bought our homestay hostess an ice cream in one of the local hotels. The gesture was prompted by the fact that she said she could never buy one in that place.

But don’t get me wrong. Cuba is still fairly cheap to visit, but the CUC makes it more expensive than countries with similar economies.

But I digress on a boring subject—money. Sorry.

Back to street life.

We were lucky to see a whole range of interesting activities.

There was the fellow walking his pig somewhere, and the lass across the road painting her house. She finished the front in one day. Bands were playing in some parks and people were dancing. One fellow danced on his own for more than an hour.

I’m a sucker for the fruit and veg sellers, and the produce in Cuba looked wonderful, if a little limited in variety. Poor John is always on the lookout for an el-cheapo haircut or shoe shine. He got the latter in Cuba, having decided that his hair wasn’t quite long enough yet for a cut.

In Havana, we saw a group of people in wheelchairs. All of them were selling sunglasses. I had to run an errand and left Poor John sitting nearby with his book. He noticed that one of the sellers got up, stretched his legs, swapped places with another person (perhaps a daughter) and walk away. Things are not always as they appear.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of the many views we saw. Most pics don’t have captions, because they are self-explanatory.

I’m wondering if you can guess which pic is my favourite. Which one is yours?

P.S. I have two Cuban cookbooks and I’ll be making recipes from them soon. In the meantime, check out this delicious prawn and avocado salad recipe that uses ingredients that are plentiful in Cuba.