TBT #32: In Cuba

WARNING: Below is a very long, detailed — but bizarrely detailed, since it focuses on the mundane and obscures the substantial for no real reason — and rambling treatise on Matt’s trip to Cuba. If you just want to see the pictures and not read all about them, click here. The big photos are Roger’s; the little ones are mine. And isn’t that always the way. And now, on with the show:

I’m not a very good storyteller.

Wait, you’re saying, you write stories. Seriously, you’re saying, you write A LOT of stories. For god’s sake, you’re saying, you have a site which exists solely for your stories. And, yes, that’s true, but it’s also true that all of the stories I write on this site are fiction. And fiction, for those of you just joining us, is a fancy literary-type term for making stuff up. The best part about writing fiction is the way that fiction, by its very nature, gives you nearly complete freedom from the facts. Some writers DO do research, but no one says you HAVE to. I don’t ever plan on doing it. If I ever write anything that happens to be historically, scientifically or ethically incorrect, I can always just chalk up the discrepancy to an alternate dimension, an insane or delusional character or good old artistic license.

Maybe it’s my aversion to facts that makes me such a lousy personal storyteller. I’m never truly impressed with the events in my life. No matter how cool or fun they were at the time, the retelling always gives me a “been there, done that” type feeling. I can’t imagine why. I feel that unless a story involves a cosmic crisis, a dinosaur or a melancholy declaration of love, it’s probably not worth telling. Where’s the hook? Where’s the excitement? I want to dazzle you.

But I went to Cuba, guys. And everyone keeps asking me about it! So I’ve been backed into a corner, I suppose, because if I don’t talk about it, people will think something terrible happened while I was in Cuba. They’ll assume that maybe I was robbed, or got lost or arrested. Or maybe they’ll just assume I got really drunk and did something stupid (which is only half true!).

Regardless, I guess I have to set the record straight, and do my best to tell stories about Cuba. Be forewarned that there are no cosmic crises, dinosaurs or melancholy declarations of love, so you might be bored. There are pictures, though. Almost 150 of them.

All together, they’re worth 150,000 words, and isn’t that just The Best Thing Ever for March 4, 2005?

In Cuba, the days are 38 hours long

Our flight left at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. You might think that’s not TOO bad. After all, a lot of people get up at 5:30, such as commuters, the elderly and people who really love watching old episodes of Care Bears. But you have to understand that Halifax International Airport isn’t actually in Halifax. In fact, it’s not even NEAR Halifax. I was never great a geography, but I think it’s actually in Maine. It’s THAT far away.

So taking into account that distance with the fact that the disarmingly low-key travel agent who helped us book the trip told us to be at the airport four hours before take-off (”Because the plane might leave early,” she said, and my head exploded), it all meant we were looking at leaving around 3 a.m. And since only one of us — see if you can guess — is a freak who can go to bed at 9 p.m., we boarded that plane having had no sleep.

Visual Aids:

• Here we are at the Halifax/Maine Airport, looking sleepy and annoyed as we are, of course, early. And the plane? Not taking off early. Shocking. I believe this was around the time I start making pre-trip speeches in which I declared “What happens in Cuba stays in Cuba.”
• The view from up here. They served some kind of egg-on-potato thing on the plane. The movie was Ladder 49 which, far as I can discern, was not the 49th chapter in a multipart film series about ladders.

In Cuba, you might as well take your shirt off

As a rule, I am not one to take my shirt off. I mean, I probably would if it was on fire. Or if it was haunted. But over than that, I am pretty happy wearing a shirt. I do not have the ’six-pack’ that some guys apparently do; instead, I have a scar from Scoliosis surgery. Which just isn’t as cool. In Cuba, however, there’s no way you can keep your shirt on. For some of us, as much as being on a beach made shirtlessness necessary.

This is what I was thinking the first time I really felt like I was in Cuba. Already exhausted, reeling from the foreign heat and feeling the lone Pina Coloda I had snagged from the bar near our room, I walked barefoot down a beachscene right out of a postcard. And as I looked from the crashing waves to the clear blue sky and back again, I realized that my friend, Rory O’Sullivan, was shirtless. And this, I realized, was Cuba.

Visual Aids

• Walking down the beach and it’s still before noon. It’s not often you feel excited, exhausted, amazed and a little bit nauseous all at once. I recommend it.
• We’re still pale. It wouldn’t last.

In Cuba, orange is the new black

I’d never been on a resort vacation before. Most of my past vacations were Florida-related, as I love nothing more than filling an autograph book with the signatures of people dressed up like animated characters. Seriously. So the resort we stayed at (Tryp Cayo Coco) was a bit of a shock to me. Mostly there were just… people. Hundreds and hundreds of people, lounging around, doing nothing, baking in the sun. I think we were actually in the minority in that our days consisted of more than just waking up, walking to the pool, sunbathing, rolling over, sunbathing, eating a quick dinner, and going to bed.

Resort culture is funny, demographically. You have a pretty even split between university kids — like ourselves — and the elderly. There were, of course, some families there, and some middle-aged couples, but by far the majority was made up of those two groups. It makes for some odd scenery, as your eyes could easily go from an attractive twenty-something girl in a bikini to a 65-year-old man wearing a very tight speedo. And all the 65-year-olds there were orange. Maybe I’m missing something about aging, but apparently once you hit retirement age you come to the conclusion that what has been missing from your life all these years is skin cancer and the colour orange.

We did our fair share of lounging, both at the beach and around the pool. It’s the latter that made for some of the more interesting experiences, as in addition to laying around a pool, it’s also nice to, you know, swim in it. Weirdly, whenever you went in the pool at Tryp Cayo Coco, you’d feel like those around the pool thought you were crazy. They’d look at you with this attitude of pure confusion, as if to say “He’s in the pool! He’s getting wet! Why?!”

Visual Aids

• The resort from above. Note: Men in Speedos. I don’t understand the concept behind the Speedo at a resort like this. In competitive swimming, sure, they’re more aerodynamic or whatever, but at a resort? Does the outline of a penis really attract people? It is a mystery.
• A shot of the ‘party pool’. This is the pool that was huge and had all the activities like aqua jazz or whatever they call it. You can see the swim-up bar on the left side, though it was really more of a walk-through-the-water bar — the maximum depth in both pools at the resort was about 1.8 metres. I was really hoping the swim-up bar would be out in the middle of some deep water, thereby resulting in danger when getting a drink. Oh well.
• One of the bars. There were about seven of them, all told. And you had to be aggressive if you wanted to drink at a peak hour. Things look quiet in this picture because it’s about 11:30 in the morning, but normally the bars were FLOODED with people who wanted 16 Sex on the Beaches or 9 drinks that involved the use of a blender. If you wanted a drink then, you had to be prepared to take no prisoners on the way up to the bar.
• The room. Roger, Rory and I shared a room on one side of the resort, while Kristine and Bryan shared a room on the other side. Our room wasn’t bad. It was on the ground level and right near the “quiet pool”. Bryan and Kristine’s room was on the third floor and smelled like a bird sanctuary. I feel like we got lucky.
• Pretending to be Flamingos. I had this vision of us in one of those Spring Break type shows, like Wild On: Cuba or whatever. And the camera cuts from guys doing tequila shots, to girls flashing their breasts, to jetskiing, to wild club dancing, to us… pretending to be flamingos. Because, well, we were standing in front of flamingos. It made a lot of sense at the time. Note: My shirt.
• Some of that scenery. All of the high-resolution pictures are Roger’s, by the way. There were A LOT of bikinis in Cuba. In fact, it got kind of boring, you saw it so much. By the end I was scanning crowds hoping for a nice one-piece. It was then that I realized I had been in Cuba too long. Also, the girl in white is sickly looking. Here is a Matt Beauty Tip: If I can see your RIBS, you need to EAT MORE FOOD. Jesus.
• I am shirtless in this picture. I am also possibly asleep. For some reason the Cuban air made my hair all poofy, so it looked like it had gel in it all the time, which is not a look I particularly like. I like my hair flat! And lifeless! This was only Day Two, so the tan hadn’t progressed to the epic levels it would later reach yet.
• I don’t even know how to caption this one. He’s single, girls.

In Cuba, five is an awkward number

On the Wednesday, we went on a Two City tour, which visited the Cuban cities of Moron (pronounced ‘Idiot’) and Ciego de Avila (pronounced ‘Ciego de Avila’). This was absolutely the highlight of the week, as it felt like we were actually visiting Cuba in our Cuban vacation, as opposed to some fairy-tale resort. It’s hard to find words to describe the way it felt to tour a Communist country. Here we were, just tourists, in a land where no one gets to go on vacation. We rode in rickshaws past giant billboards proclaiming the glory of the Revolucion, walked through “Book Festivals” where the only books available were about Castro, Guevara and Marti. We entered a Cigar Factory that smelled terrible, watching row-after-row of women roll cigars, for who knows how many hours a day.

The cities themselves were full of unrealized beauty. Spanish architecture combined with Soviet collapse, a sort of EuroAmerica third-world, half-finished and existing in four different decades all at once. It’s hard to make any real claims about Communism or Marxism based on what I saw, because Cuba is such a unique case in the world, existing so close to America and having to deal with the embargo (or the blockade, as they call it), but it did make me think about my own life, and the money I had in my pocket. Would I trade-off the elimination of homelessness and abject poverty if it meant everyone would, in effect, live a lower-class style of life? I don’t think I would. Yes, the education was free and everyone had a house, but none of it seemed worth it.

Visual Aids

• The tour started at 8 a.m. Which is way too early for ANYTHING to start. Here we see our Tour Guide, an awesome lady who never seemed to care that her jokes were lost in her thick accent, showing us what a sugar refinery looks like. Cuba, you see, is known for its sugar. Or something. They walked us through the process about eight times over the course of the morning (including in a flashy video with bouncy music!) but I never got to caring.
• Some people dancing.Throughout the day, a lot of people danced. I don’t exactly remember why these people were dancing but I know that there was a whip involved at one point. Now that I think about it, I think the whole think was about slavery. With dancing.
• Just for reference. My Camera vs. Roger’s camera. We got to ride on that train!
• These apartment building things were the most common kind of Cuban housing. I can’t remember the exact figure, but I believe it’s law in Cuba that you can only ever pay 15% of your earnings towards rent. Which brings up a lot of questions, with regards to value and the idea of currency.
• Trying to eat Sugarcane. I was also trying to look like Mike Weir, weirdly enough. Hey, does Sugarcane count as vegetable? It was really hard to eat!
• The streets of Moron. They were crowded, and filled with Canadian flags. It’s abundantly clear that our country is a major pillar in the continued survival of Communist Cuba. I’m not sure how I feel about that but… hey, at least the cars are neat
• This is the kind of thing I was talking about. There were some gorgeous buildings that just have not been taken care of. And I don’t blame them for it or anything — it’s not like I want to take care of any god damned buildings either — but it gives the city such a weird feeling.
• “Hey Douchebag, open your eyes”. If only my past self could hear me.
• This steel rooster is, like, the mascot of Moron. I don’t really know what to think about that. It’s like one step up from something you’d see on a barn roof. If this was America, the rooster would be HUGE. And animatronic. And sassy and in-your-face!
• Ciego de Avila wasn’t a whole lot different than Moron, really. For some reason it seemed less depressing, but that might have been because we were used to it, less tired and less hungry. It was here that we rode rickshaws through the streets. For some reason they blared rap music as we rode, in what essentially was a giant circle.
• The Watchful Eye of the Freemasons knows no limitations.
• The cigar factory. This was amazing, astounding and otherwise alliterative all at once. Maybe it’s because I’m not a cigar smoker, but it smelled TERRIBLE. And everyone just worked and worked and worked while we stood there. It made me feel bad about my job, where I spend half my day surfing the internet and the other half eating lunch. I swear this is a bust of Lenin. You could claim it’s Cuba’s folkhero Jose Marti, but that dude did NOT have a beard and the bust does. It’s gotta be Lenin. It’s funniest that way.
• After walking through a factory and watching people toil it was time for us aristocats to go dancing! Dance! Dance! Now Conga!
• We walked through a Cuban Heritage House as our last stop in Ciego. I was supposed to pay money to take pictures but I was subtle about it. I figured if I got caught I could always make a break for the Canadian embassy. An international incident always sounds like a good time.
• We capped the day off the way all days should be capped off: In a speedboat. After rocketing across open water, we went through a pretty channel, where one of the drivers got out and climbed trees for no apparent reason. It was cool.
• The tour stretched from 8 in the morning until about 6:30 at night. By the time we got back, we were tired. And also in the mood to read, I guess. Who knows what’s going on with that Roger guy.

In Cuba, there are only two things I feel strongly about

Of the five of us who went down, I got drunk the most. I’m not saying this to brag, or to try to make myself sound cool. Because, honestly, it really wasn’t that cool. It was just something to do, really. I developed a taste for Rum & Cokes (They get you drunk AND keep you awake!) so much so that I got in a political debate (Science is not another philosophy!), declared my two biggest passions (Evolution and Man Landing on the Moon), told everyone which girls I would marry if the situation called for it, defended ad nauseam my belief that girls with bones in their hair are attractive, quoted Apocalypse Now for some reason, and tried to make sure everyone knew Kristine had poise. Also, apparently I can be a mean drunk. Honestly, who knew?

The night life was weird. A lot of the time, we had trouble staying up past 11, likely due to our frequent 8 a.m. wake-up calls and the fact that it was hot as all hell the whole week we were there. There were two entertainment shows every evening, not counting the Spanish lounge singer who came on at 10:30 and ALWAYS played such bar room classics as “Candle in the Wind”, “Tears in Heaven” and “Yesterday” — seriously, he knew about six songs and those were three of them. The first show was the kid’s show, which was the same eight British kids playing games like Hot Potato and Musical Chairs to this remix of Sisqo’s “The Thong Song.” The second show was more adult, usually featuring a lot of dancing. The kids’ show was usually more entertaining, save for the times when the adult show featured a guy making jokes. I don’t know what it is exactly, but tourist-focused stage humour is my absolute favourite kind. The more puns they better, I always say.

Visual Aids

• It’s Night Time in Cuba. And I’m, uh, ready for bed.
• The Adult Show. When it was just dancing, I was just bored. I demand jokes!
• Oh, here are some embarrassing pictures. I look pretty happy, don’t I? Drinking my Rum & Coke through a straw — because everything had a straw — I just got happier and uh, happier(?).
• I did manage to meet a few people, unfortunately I remember very little about them. Not because I was drunk, mind you — they were just really boring people. This girl for example: I have no idea who she is. And where did she get a cat? That’s absurd! And here is Roger with a group of girls. You can probably accurately gauge their personalities just by looking at them! Finally, this group met me down by the beach. They wanted to go skinny dipping and asked for my opinion. I gave them advice, which is the only thing I wanted to do all week.
• A note on ‘picking up’. It didn’t happen. I had this great pick-up line all worked out. I was going to go up to a lonely looking girl and say “Have you found what you’re looking for here, on this island?” Unfortunately I never saw any lonely-looking girls. No one agrees with me but I swear that that’s a great line! It’s profound! It’s unique!
• In our biggest rebel moment of the week, We went swimming. At night. Yes, just like the REM song. This was technically against the rules, so we felt like pretty big rebels. Hey, you can see me shirtless in that picture, too. I should open up a pay section!

In Cuba, I’ve found my sport

Our other day trips always seemed to lead to snorkeling. Which is something I’ve never quite understood. I’ve never ever seen anything SO FASCINATING underwater that there’s no way that I’d want to life my head for a SECOND and take a breath. I just do not understand the snorkel. It’s foreign to me. I try to use it and all I get is my brain sending my signals saying “You can’t breathe underwater, doofus!” So I don’t breathe and the snorkel is useless to me.

Regardless, the trips were still fun. In the first, we took a bus to Cayo Guillermo, where we got to drive our own SPEEDBOATS across the ocean. It ruled so hard it was extreme-without-the-leading-e! Then we got to snorkel in this little channel that, I swear, had a current stronger than the hand of god. Swimming up the channel took about 10 minutes. Swimming down? 25 seconds. I have new empathy for salmon, and their quest to spawn.

The second snorkeling adventure was out at a coral reef on the ocean. We took a glass-bottom boat, which is something that is really only cool for about 5 seconds. “Wow, you can see the bottom!” is about the only thing to say about a glass bottomed boat. Still, though, snorkeling over a coral reef is REALLY cool, because you get to see all kinds of fish, who will eat bread and bananas right from your hand like little tiny aquatic puppies. It’s great.

Visual Aids

• Our speedboats I can’t be SURE on zoom-in, but I am pretty sure that is me in the boat there. I got to drive on my own both ways, where Bryan and Kristine and Rory and Roger had to share, because I am a badass loner with a heart of gold.
• Our glass-bottomed boat. You’ll note that the WHOLE bottom wasn’t made out of glass, likely because that would be a feat of engineering so stupid it would eclipse the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But look! Glass! Fish! How cool is that. And Kristine wearing a hat! How rare is that?

In Cuba, I think he blamed you for his broken watch

All in all, it was a fantastic way to spend my reading week. It’s hard to relate my feelings on the trip exactly, because as much as I had fun and really did love it, I’m not sure I’d ever want to go back. To Cuba or to a resort like that. I mean, I would if it was free, because, seriously, I love things that are free. But there’s something almost… seedy about being a guest at one of these resorts. Everything is so damn fake you feel like you’ll drown in it. A week is a long time to spend in such a place — probably just long enough — it was good to get back to air that wasn’t muggy, drinks that aren’t watered down, food that didn’t all taste vaguely the same and people who aren’t so damned orange.

Visual Aids

• The tan at its apex. It became more beast than man at this point, seeking to devour my trademark paleness forever and for always. I have no idea how long it will take to get back to pasty whiteness, but I’m committed to staying indoors for as long as it takes.
• Whenever the sun rose or the sun set, Roger was running off to get a picture of it.
• By the time we got to the airport on Sunday morning I was ready to get out of Cuba. I had five pesos left in my pocket, which I used to buy Bongo Drums at the gift shop for some reason I still can’t figure out; I was pretty tired. They showed Friday Night Lights on the plane ride back, which was better than I expected. The food was some sort of pasta dealie that wasn’t bad at all. I’m not sure why any of you would care but still, there it is.

In Cuba, the theme of the week is miming actions with sound effects

This article is way too long. I’ve become aware of that very recently. I could go back and edit it, but I don’t want to. Instead, I think I will let it stand in all its grimy, rambly glory. At the very least, it put me in the very mindset I was in when I sat in that airport last Sunday: ready to be done.

I will now open the floor to questions.

Thank you,
Matt