Havana: A Visual Diary (4/4)
by Marc Nair
26 Jan 2020
Last day in Havana! I take an original Cuban taxi to get to my bike tour. I’m going on the Bay Tour with Ruta Bikes.
Either the taxi or the driver smells of aftershave, just like an old barbershop. He asks for 10 cuc. I halve it and he agrees very quickly. It’s hard to figure how much to bargain here.
People at bus stops look at me in envy. A taxi with just one passenger in it! A luxury. Some of those old American cars pack in eight or nine people.
A picture of a 100 dollar bill is pasted on top of the driver’s rear-view mirror, for good luck or maybe to indicate the fare for very long rides.
The tour is well organised and we set off through Verdado, with its large, crumbling mansions. We swing by Plaza de la Revolución, which I’ve now seen on three different modes of transport.
Waiting for passengers to disembark before we board the ferry to Casa Blanca.
To get to the ferry terminal, we cut through Sol street in the old city. You do see different things on a bicycle, a kind of triple speed montage. This tour will cover about 40km over five hours, a pretty leisurely pace. The main reason why I chose this is that most of the tour will take place across the water. We start with the ferry to Casablanca, a quick ten-minute ride away. The obligatory PNR policeman on duty is an unsmiling statue.
Our first stop is Christ of Havana, a 20m high marble statue of Jesus. It was pushed for by then-President (name) wife in 1957 when the Presidential palace was under assault. She said that if the President survives this coup, she would commission the statue. The sculptor was Jilma Madera.
The view of Havana that Jesus sees. All day, every day.
It was made in Italy and assembled in Cuba. But look closer at the visage. It doesn’t really resemble typical representations of Jesus. This one looks older, a bit more world weary, haunted with something. Apparently the sculptor’s model was Madera’s lover, not Jesus himself. Just fifteen days after its inauguration, Fidel Castro entered Havana during the Cuban Revolution. I wonder what it must feel like to have your face visible from every point in Havana?
We drive by an outdoor museum with some of the weapons used in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Men are scything grass by hand. I’ve never seen anything like this before.
Morro Castle has been ruled by three different Kings. It was taken by the English in 1762 and traded with Florida 11 months later. Before the lighthouse on its grounds had electricity in 1946, it used to be lit with fire. The castle grounds begin to fill up with colourful cars. I never felt like going for a joyride in one of them because it’s the whole castle mentality. A castle, like a car, is always better as a subject. If you’re at the castle then there’s nothing to photograph. The castle, like the car, disappears. Besides, why be like every other American kid trying to recreate the 1960s?
We cycle through neighbourhoods far away from the tourist buses. Horse-and-carts are used extensively on this side of the city. Loads of people are waiting outside a construction yard for government issued building materials. Apparently no new plots of land are being issued here. We stop for a drink and a bite in Guanabacoa, where slaves first used to live when they were brought to Cuba.
At Regla there’s a large, crumbling monument to Lenin, complete with a hollowed out dacha. Built in 1954, it was the largest monument to Lenin outside the USSR. Around an olive tree, what I assume are workers of the state prance around, perhaps sharing their common joy and bounty. One of them has his arm dramatically busted open. He does look in pain.
Regla is a pretty, if rather religious town. It is mostly Catholic, although its denizens usually practice a syncretic mix of faiths. An example is Our Lady of Regla, dedicated to Yemaya, goddess of the seas, or the queen of the salty waters.She is a major deity from the Yoruba religion and occupies the prime spot in front of the altar, a black virgin, while Jesus and his men are relegated to a sideshow in niches along the walls.
Back down the Malecón, vulture-like birds circle above the hospital. There’s a dedicated lane for bicycles, and it is glorious to race down the boulevard, cars zipping by on one side, and the waves crashing against the sea wall on the other.
I decide to go for a last ice cream and realised the two Germans on my tour, an older, very fit couple have conned me, albeit unwittingly. We shared a taxi back, and instead of giving me a 3 cuc note, they gave me a 3 peso coin, which they said was 3 cuc. I only found out when I couldn’t buy ice cream with it. Sigh.
I pop into a bookstore and they have a tiny English section. I buy a book on Abakua, which has been described as an Afro-Cuban version of the Freemasons.
Last impressions of the old city:
Man teaching his granddaughter to ride a bicycle
A woman, slumped in an armchair, watches TV.
A man with coloured socks is arguing intimately with a girl not more than 14.
A man singing loudly to the radio in his house
A woodworking shop, with a gutted interior, is a vast cavern of machines.
Muscled men and wide women abound.
The aesthetics of the tourist desire: Black men with white women and white men with black women. I pad in between, brown, but not mulatto, nondescript. It is comfortable, a change from Singapore where I’m always seen as coming from somewhere else.
While sitting on a park bench, a woman finds a wallet next to me when she sits down. She asks if it is mine. I say of course not and together we try to find some ID. Flipped open, there’s an image of El Jefe, Fidel, and another Icon of Mary. I guess a man can serve two gods.
