I RAVES AND RUS'T
Lizzie Porter takes the pulse of Castro’s changing island on a budget tour that packs in plenty
NSIDE the cave, sound reverberated around the walls. Perspiration dripped off the knuckly surfaces, and somewhere a DJ started a Rihanna track. Men in neon vests and girls in short skirts whirled as a fuzzy version of Happy, the song by US singer Pharrell Williams, played on screens pinned to the rock face.
Tourists edged nervously around the dance floor, as locals threw the best shapes. Feet were placed carefully, to save unfortunate spillages of cheap beer. Salsa it was not: this was a slightly surreal attempt at a Berlin-style rave, somewhere in the middle of a Communist country. Outside, enterprising Cubans had set up the equivalent of a university-town kebab van: a rickety stand selling ham buns.
It was only later that I found out the name of this place, the underground Discoteca Ayala, somewhere up a muddy track on the rim of Trinidad, central Cuba. This 501-yearold Unesco-listed town had a blemish-free main square, and laziness in the air. There were so many pastel houses it was impossible to number them. Cuba as one might expect it.
But before long, such freeze-frames disappeared, along with the cigars, Buicks and mojitos. The Berlin-style rave was very real, not something I had imagined after too much Havana Club. Alongside it was crumbling infrastructure and a country battered by isolation, where the cows were skinny and the streets more pothole than tarmac.
Tourists may not like the loss of idiosyncrasies that the easing of US-Cuban diplomatic relations may bring. But the author Stephen Smith got it right in Cuba: The Land of Miracles when describing his search for an apartment in Havana: “It was a definite plus if a place had water … and if it was in one piece.”
Escorted tours are not normally something I warm to. But I had been lured by a trip aimed at 18-30-somethings that promised ample time for independent exploration. Perhaps the insight of our guide Rodolpho — “Rudi” to the Australians in the group — would also be an asset in a country whose external image is overshadowed by a Communist leadership. Anyway, it would be more fun to check out Cuban nightclubs with some dance partners.
And to go riding. We picked up the horses, gorgeous things, from a ranch on the edge of Trinidad. Boys probably no older than seven trotted along bareback. Emerkys, our suave riding instructor, steered the animals with ease, amused by my uptight, very British style. In his Super Mario T-shirt and knock-off Ray-Bans, clutching his cellphone, he led us along dusty orange tracks and through coffee plantations, past royal palms and over knolls. Gradually, the new seeped into the old Cuba. We left the horses in some bosky shade, and eventually heard the rushing sound of waterfalls. Cuban families lazed in the sun. Another local displayed a nice bit of free enterprise with his shack selling fizzy pop, including “tuKola”, the Cuban equivalent of Coca-Cola. He had a captive market in the visitors who had come all this way.
Peeling off our sweaty clothes, we slipped into the pool beneath the falls and leapt from jumping-off points higher up.
It was difficult to ignore the signs of young, future Cuba, as careful observers at the Casa de la Música in Trinidad. Yes, there were maracas. Yes, there was salsa. But there was also the dapper, dreadlocked hipster in tight jeans, his — possibly fake — Nike trainers tracing circles around the dance floor. iPhones appeared among the onlookers — they are covetable accessories among Cuban youth. Rodolpho, however, explained that he had received his bite of the Apple from a foreign client. Its internet function didn’t work. Not such a smart phone, but candy-sweet Americana slipping into Cuba all the same.
The tour’s budget nature meant simple accommodation but that also meant no fancy hotels, where I feared clichés such as guitar wielding bands in straw hats would be reinforced. Instead, we found comfortable beds in the home of Juana, a Trinidad local. Such homestays — casas particulares — are among the best accommodation options in Cuba. As we sat for guava jam and white bread at breakfast every morning, Juana’s daughter delighted in whizzing up and down
iPhones appeared among the onlookers — they are covetable accessories among Cuban youth
the corridor in her plastic truck, her Dora the Explorer balloon twisting in the breeze.
Signs of weariness were not hard to find in Cuba. In Trinidad, the mini-mart stocked a bizarre array of products. Knickers sat in neat piles next to bottled olives, tinned fish and shampoo. Letters were posted at a desk fronted by a scrappy piece of paper bearing the words “Post Office” in faded, felt-tip pen.
It worked but there was a sense of fatigue and frustration around everything, which had nothing to do with the sweaty heat.
At a former sugar plantation in the Valle de los Ingenios, with an ominous tower that commanders once used to watch over the slaves toiling below, the lavatories had been broken for a fortnight. The state company that was supposed to fix them had not turned up. The consensus was that if more private enterprise had been around, they would have been mended in days. It was difficult to believe the graffiti on a wall in Viales, the village at the heart of the eponymous park: “One of the best ways to serve the country is to devote oneself to work.”
I didn’t tire of the group but I did appreciate time away. When it looked likely that scuba diving would not be possible on an excursion to Cayo Levisa, a white-sand islet off Cuba’s north coast, I decided to split off and stay in Viales. Here mogotes — limestone hillocks some 160 million years old — rose like giants’ backs from the otherwise flat valley floor. I and another group member mounted horses again and rode past plantations of mangoes, bananas and guavas.
Lightning split the sky but the views over the Viales valley, the fog steel blue and crisscrossed by darting swallows, were better for it. As drops like lead bullets thumped through the air, I was as content as could be, here instead of on a desert island.
Finally, Havana called. The clichés were there. The crumbling colonial buildings. The cigar vendors. The battered Chevrolets. But the new enterprise — modern bars such as El Chanchullero on Plaza del Cristo, the nail bars on run-down Obrapía, the PlayStation sign above what appeared to be a games lounge — was ever apparent, and all the more interesting.
On the way back to the airport, I spotted a shiny Apple logo sticker on a decrepit threewheeled van. Perhaps future visitors to Cuba will see more of them. Maybe there will be more certainty that the Nike trainers and RayBans are genuine. Maybe tuKola will be replaced with the real deal. But to twist the words of Fidel Castro, I’m not sure that history will absolve all of this, this crumbling isolation, this current Cuban predicament. — © The Daily Telegraph