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Friday February 9, 2018 – Playa Larga to Havana
Those of us in the hostal rejoined the group for breakfast
at the hotel. There will be no biking today as we are shuttling the long
distance to Havana. We did have a major P2P stop at the beginning of our trip,
at the Korimacao Community Project, dedicated to providing residents from the
surrounding communities an opportunity to develop and improve their performing
skills such as singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments. The students
do not need to have any prior art background. They need only be young and have
talent. We enjoyed brief performances by a dance group and a band.
On the bus ride to Havana, Alex provided an interesting
commentary on the “Special Period,” that time of great hardship for the Cuban
people after the sudden withdrawal of their Soviet benefactor due to the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Special Period began around 1989 and
lasted several years. With essentially no imported oil, Cubans had to abandon
their cars, tractors, etc., and begin the development of sustainable
agriculture without oil. We watched a documentary, “Surviving Peak Oil,” after
Alex’s talk.
We entered Havana and passed by Parque Central and the hotel
of the same name where Kathleen and I had stayed in 2003.
Many landmarks were instantly familiar to me.
A big surprise to me was that the “
camelos”
[camels] were gone. These were huge buses (more like cattle cars) pulled by
giant trucks and carrying up to 300 people. Today, there is a good network of
more standard size buses, although we saw lines waiting to board them in many
places.
We had a good lunch at a paladar, El Jardín de los Milagros,
which included an example of the rooftop garden which was a development during
the Special Period. This one was particularly whimsical, with plants in
toilets, shoes, and hard hats, and compost filling an old bathtub. They were
growing a wide variety of herbs and vegetables. This private restaurant is a
good illustration of the inverted economic pyramid – the owners had been in the
construction business [salaried engineers, I am assuming] but left their
professions because they could make more money operating a restaurant.
After about ten minutes we transferred to our bus and then
to our private restaurant, the paladar Decameron. It was a pleasant restaurant,
to which several of us returned on our own a week later. However, once again, I
made the wrong choice – my shrimp, served over rice, were small and tasteless.
Others appeared to have made better selections. After dinner, several of us
walked back to the Hotel Presidente, where we are staying for two nights, and
where we will also stay for two nights at the end of our tour.
Before dinner, I had inquired whether I could get laundry
done since we would be here for two days. I was told that I would have to work
that out with my chambermaid, and the receptionist called the chambermaid who,
along with her supervisor, met me in my room. I showed them my bag of laundry
and asked how much it would cost. They indicated that they would take the
laundry and let me know in the morning what the price would be. Reluctantly, I
let them take the laundry not having any idea what this would cost me. [The
front desk insisted that there was a laundry price list in each room, but I was
unable to find anyone in our group that had one, and my chambermaid could not
provide one.]
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