CORDON BLUES
My first taste of Cuban food was a good one. I experienced it at the bar of a Quito restaurant nibbling spicy dishes and sipping pokey Cuba Libres. People who could dance danced while I pretended to be absorbed in my thoughts in a place that counted customers in twos.
But after sipping continually for three hours, with every drop ringing up an invisible till, I slurped myself into financial liquidation. The bill was around twice the size of my wallet. So I pushed forward pathetically a paltry handful of notes and coins and confessed my immediate shortcomings to the waiter who had been grinning at me happily all evening. I braced myself for the Latin equivalent of a barman's bitchslap and an unplanned shift of dishwashing. But while his face fell for a nanosecond, he quickly regained his senses before picking up the few notes I'd mustered and shoving them firmly back in my hand. Now that I had enough money to get a cab home from badlands, his smile reformed, and he thanked me warmly for my dubious custom. I walked home with tears of Latin love in my eyes.
I never got to pay him back but figured a trip to Cuba would give me the chance to repay his kindness by proxy. The general absence of shops and eateries in Havana reduced this possibility. Those existing usually showcased a miserable slither of congealed dog meat in a stale bun parboiling slowly in the tropical sun. But elsewhere we found edible freshly cooked pizza and digestible chicken forelegs, and if you could get hold of the local currency, we could buy them for the price of a few penny chews. There were restaurants in the less run-down tourist end of Havana but these accepted convertible pesos that effectively convert prices to levels you'd rather not pay in Latin America. Furthermore, a warning that storms could interrupt food supplies for days suggested we should plan and eat ahead.
Waiting for the bus to Santa Clara a few days later, we chewed slowly and gulped nauseously through a dank pile of cold spaghetti with a side order of slightly warmed botchelism-friendly Bolognese. Dessert was hot ice cream. And it wasn't cheap.
In Santa Clara, we found accommodation late and were told to hurry if we wanted to find any food, anywhere. We went to the hotel where the former right-wing dictator Batista stayed before being usurped by his current left-wing equivalent Castro. The lift taking us up to the tenth floor took so long we almost missed the 9pm deadline. At the top, 30 people sat waiting outside. Some faces wore the blank expressions of the eternally waiting while the more energetic glared at us with unsuppressed hatred. Most of them would be hungry again before they reached the foyer. The mule lifting it was probably grateful to have dodged the menu draft.
In the tourist town of Trinidad a few days later we stayed in a Casa Particular - a home licensed to house tourists. Our two hostesses were under the impression that I was a figment of their imagination so sensibly ignored me for the duration of our stay. They put my occasional bored interruptions down to the whisperings of the pagan gods they worshipped. On our last night they continued to chat lovingly with the more visibly embodied dentist but were kind enough to cook us each a huge succulent lobster. Thank Chango for that.
A RUM LOT
Of all the people I've recently met called Luis, the latest is a dance instructor. Or was, as drinking strong local rum and befriending tourists seemed to be his main occupation. Like all Cubans he'd been educated gratis before lapsing in to the apathy that absorbs many of the people after a few years work within the system. When doctors make around 20 quid a month - it's easier to push the phallic properties of a good Montecristo onto the wide-eyed hotel-dwellers and weekend communists who make up many of the island's visitors. Incidentally, according to another Luis, Cuban cigars are not rolled on the thighs of virgins, as Cuba doesn't have any left, except presumably, for his unmarried sisters and nieces.
But this Luis mainly drank, certainly on the lazy rainy Sunday afternoon we met. I thought he was inviting us into his bar but it soon became clear that it was merely a house that operated as one, in which he lured, spider-like, any morsel of wandering foreigner incapable of turning down his infectious Cuban charm. Once inside he injected us with venomous rum and showed us how he could move in all known directions using only two feet.
Dr Lopez, my travelling physician, is a specialist in Latin rhythms as well as dental abnormalities. But she was initially hesitant to accept his offer to sweep her about the clammy floor of the dilapidated building that would have once housed the pre-Communist middle classes. But I had, by now, got over the shock of seeing her dance spectacularly with fellow Colombians, seconds after shuffling patiently around my two left feet. So I assured her I could handle it without recourse to therapy. After adding a layer of polish to her otherwise well-honed technique, Luis stepped down several levels to hammer out some of my more glaring inadequacies until I'd trod on his bare feet once too often. By now locals and tourists were gathering in the street outside.
As the rum flowed, so did Luis's tears, as he related his past. He shuffled through a large stack of letters sent by our worldwide predecessors - several of which strongly suggested he seek immediate psychiatric help. He insisted we finished his bottle of rum before I paid someone for another along with various other passing neighbours who billed me for various other products ultimately unavailable in the few buildings masquerading as shops.
We were later invited to lunch at his friend Omar's despite Luis having no real idea where his best friend lived. We found it by bizarre coincidence several floors up another once grand colonial building whose interior made the Peckham Estate look like Knightsbridge. After we'd dined on what was possibly Omar's entire weekly food supply, the good doctor and I bid farewell to our hosts whom we left staggering around the compact and bijou space that made up Omar's flat. The now incapacitated Luis made one last gesture of indirect generosity by slipping one of his friend's family heirlooms into my pocket with a wink.
We caught a bicycle taxi home to avoid the typhoon-related rain and any more unsobering reality. We bargained the driver down to a fare that would keep his family fed for several days - on the assumption that he found any food. Despite this, he dropped us some blocks short to avoid being arrested for trafficking tourists. He insisted on giving us his book chronicling the history of communism. He looked relieved when we accepted it.
