The
heat comes early when you're away from the water in Cuba. With the
heat of the day comes bugs and a little bit of warm weather inspired
laziness. We were at the end of a two hour bus ride. It was time to
get off the bus and to explore.
Our
first stop in Bayamo was at the Casa de La Trova, a combination
hotel, bar and restaurant. It is the longest standing establishment
in the inland city. Unlike Santiago and Havana, Bayamo is not
situated on the Caribbean Sea, and one would think that it was safe
from marauding pirates, from back in the day, as a result. That was
not really the case because the pirate hordes would simply land at or
near Santiago and then follow the river inland to the next
settlement, to plunder at will.
At
Casa de La Trova, we were greeted and seated in front of the house
band after a request that we try the house drink, which looked like
rum laced fruit punch, with real fruit chunks swimming in the glass.
At all establishments in Cuba that we visited we were given the
choice of our drinks with or without rum. In other words, they make
them virgin or without alcohol and if you want the rum or the vodka,
or whatever, then it is added at your table in front of you. At this
time of the day, I drank out of politeness. I added the rum because
it is Cuba after all and everyday brought me closer to when I would
no longer be able to drink real rum.
I
also marveled at the woman who was our host. At every stop we were
greeted by a spokesperson who literally hustled us for drinks and
CD's made by the groups entertaining us. The music was uniformly
priced at 10 CUC, leading me to believe that this was an island-wide
state run hustle, allowing the people to make money off tourists. The
crowd consisted of several different tour groups each of whom spoke a
different language. Undeterred, our host greeted and spoke to each
group in their language. She never missed a beat delivering her spiel
in Spanish, English, German and French, switching effortlessly
between the different tongues.
My
brain gets tied in knots just trying to go from English to Spanish
even though I also speak French and a little German. One of the
things that bothers me about the United States is that we Americans
only speak English unless our parents recently migrated from
somewhere else. In America, there is no proximity of cultures or
languages. Even if you learn another language in school, there is no
place to practice it and thereby become proficient.
Our
tour continued down the block toward the restaurant where we would
take our noontime meal. On the way we stopped at the town square to
learn the history of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, and to view from the
outside, the only hamburger joint that we would see in Cuba. The
square was dominated by a statue of the great man, a sugar plantation
owner, who after returning from a visit to Spain, promptly assembled
his slaves and told them they were all free. He also asked them to
join him in revolution against the Spanish. It was the start of the
10 years' War, in 1868. In 1969 Cespedes became President of the
Republic of Cuba.
Cespedes
was deposed in 1873 and died in 1874, killed by the Spanish. The war
ended in 1878 with agreements of liberation of all slaves and
Chinese who fought with the rebels. Spain refused to free all slaves
and also refused to grant independence, which would come later as a
result of the Cuban War for Independence.
We
continued our stroll down to our lunch destination, one that our
guides told us would be an adventure, as in “we don't know if this
food is gonna be any good,” kind of adventure. It wasn't bad at
all. We had beans, rice, meat, coffee, mojito, water and cerveza. A
satisfying and filling lunch on a veranda, complete with chickens and
roosters adding sound effects to our foodie adventure.
More
museums ringed the pedestrian walk way, including a wax museum that
was closed to the public, unfortunately, a pottery school and exhibit
space where we watched young people work in clay, smiling at us, but
refusing to talk or engage with the nosy Americans.
More
walking down narrow cobble stone streets, past a radio station to
find our bus, seeing obviously a couple of same sex couples,
unobtrusive but out in the open, and flirting briefly with a butch
woman who ran a state store and who tried to entice us to join her.
No time for fun, the bus was there waiting for us on a wider street
than those we'd just traversed, and it was raining as well. It was a
quick springtime shower, not enough to wet us down or to turn on the
windshield wipers.
Time
to go home to Santiago.
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