Cuba Part 8: What camera to take?

Of course, the only really important decision was what camera to take.

I decided not to lug a DSLR around on this trip. My back is getting more and more weight-sensitive. That’s why I moved into the micro four-thirds (M4/3), mirrorless format late last year, starting with a trip to Myanmar in December (worth a blog entry,  if I ever get round to it).

So I took a Panasonic Lumix GX7 body to Cuba. It handles and performs well, despite the complexities of the menus and button options.

GX7 with Panasonic 20mm (source: ephotozine)

The lenses were:  Panasonic 12-32mm and 14-42mm zooms (both bought secondhand); Panasonic 20mm prime and 45-150mm zoom, both of which came as a package with the camera. And the Sigma 60mm f/2.8 DN. The two wide zooms largely overlap in range – I used the 12-32 more of the two, probably too much: that extreme wide angle (12mm M4/3 is equivalent to 24mm in old-style 35mm or ‘full-frame’), and can start to look a bit tedious, even gimmicky, if overused, and you have to spend a lot of time correcting verticals on the computer. I find them both very good performers: indeed, for cheapo plastic kit lenses they are amazing. No complaints there.

Panasonic 12-32 (top)
and Sigma 60mm f/2.8 DN

I used the 20mm a bit in low-light circumstances. It’s a good lens for when you really need it. Yes, it's slow-focusing – you jut have to take that into account. The 45-150 comes out well in reviews, but I find it disappointing, even for an inexpensive lens. It’s not a fast lens and I may be relying too much on the in-lens stabilization, but I don’t think I will take it on the next megatrip. The Sigma 60mm, however, is excellent, a fast lens that’s sharp from wide open. A great buy, in my opinion.

My bank account is flinching at the prospect of the GX8 rumoured to be due for announcement later in the year. But then, there are some other juicy mirrorless options coming up …

The electronic viewfinder of the GX7 is OK, but not up to the best that’s now available. I hope the GX8 improves on that, with a higher eyepoint.  And finally, the GX7 battery performance is crap. Totally. You’ll get through two batteries in a day of intensive tourism, maybe more. For confidence on a trip like this you need to take three spares.

For backup I took my Fujifilm X20. It’s a nice little camera within its limitations, but I didn’t have to use it much.

My Pentax DSLRs (K30 and K5) produce better results than any of the above, but so they should with their larger sensors. For a trip that involves a lot of walking around, their extra weight and bulk is an issue, for me anyway. Another of life’s trade-offs ….  Or should it be trades-off? Perhaps so, but without a hyphen.

I've just remembered. I was going to do an entry on cars. I will, but not today.  But here's a contrasting pair anyway, to be going on with.

Top: Cadillac Eldorado, around 1952, I would guess. Pretty gross, but preferable to what Detroit was doing ten years later. Below that is an Austin A35, anything from 1956 to 1959.  A friend of mine at university in the 1960s had one of these,  known as Gruntington Bollockheap. Well, what you saw is what you got.  Some people raced them. Yes, really.

There are quite a lot of European cars in Cuba. There are not many countries where you don't still see an occasional Morris Minor tottering around, and Cuba's no exception.

Cuba Part 7: A trip to the coast, Havana and home

The Plaza Marti and the church of the Virgen del Buen Viaje, Remedios

Santa Clara was the last major stop on the way back to Havana, but we were in for a nice surprise: a short trip north via Remedios to Caibarien on the coast.

Remedios is a small town dating back to the 16th century. Like all Cuban towns it has its main square, the Plaza Marti, and is an ideal place to spend an hour or two just walking around. The Iglesia Parroquia Mayor de San Juan Bautista de Remedios (the parish church, to you) has an amazing carved cedarwood altarpiece covering the entire east wall – the most spectacular piece of interior decoration we saw in any church we visited in Cuba. And we found another church, the church of the Virgen del Buen Viaje, in the throes of restoration. The inside looked like complete chaos, but the place was alive with builders and craftsmen who – presumably – knew what they were doing.

The cedarwood altarpiece (if that's the correct term) of the Iglesia Parroquia Mayor de San Juan Bautista de Remedios

Remedios: the church of the Virgen del Buen Viaje undergoing restoration

And then to Caibarien, once a busy little port, and now fallen on hard times. In fact, semi-abandoned, with great stretches of grand old buildings in various stages of decay, some no more than shells. It was like a film set, the sort of place that attracts photographers with a weakness for ruin porn.  – hard to believe that in the 1920s, National City Bank (today’s Citi) felt the need to set up a branch there. With the aid of an old sepia photo, I was able to track down the building, now occupied by a local bank. I doubt if anyone’s doing much business there. The seafront is derelict, with just a few foundations and other traces of the old quaysides.

The former premises of National Citiy Bank (now Citi or Citibank) in Caibarien

Going to the movies in Caibarien

Talking of industrial relics, there’s an old sugar mill on the road to Caibarien, now the Museo Azucarero Marcelo Salado. It’s hard to resist that vast old machinery, heavy engineering, literally: and there was a steam locomotive museum next to it. There was actually an engine all steamed up ready to run, but with a taxi driver chafing at the bit, anxious to get back to Santa Clara, there was not chance to take a ride.

So that was it. Back to Havana for a day, in preparation for the marathon trip back to London: Air Canada to Toronto; a five-hour wait, and then another Air Canada flight across the North Atlantic. Feedback note: the Toronto–Havana leg seems to be treated as a domestic flight. Be that as it may, you have to pay for everything, the aircraft interior was on the tired side, and the service was – lets say – grudging. Or cursory. Or indifferent. The leg to London was fine, and the food was actually quite good. Air Canada are not as liberal with the drinks and snacks as BA though, it has to be said.

I would like to go back to Cuba. Whether I will is another matter. Maybe to Havana for a less frenetic visit. But there’s no doubt that this was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve done, and I’m pretty well travelled. But to repeat the earlier message, if you’re thinking of going, go soon.

Band in rehearsal outside the music school in the Plaza Marti, Remedios

Cuba Part 6: The last big stop, Santa Clara

Local government offices at the Parque Vidal, Santa Clara

We could have got a bus from Camaguey to Santa Clara, but I wanted to hunt down a particular bank building in Ciego de Avilar on the way, so we did this leg by taxi. I found the bank – and one or other interesting bank buildings, including the former Royal Bank of Canada (now a local bank), with the royal coat of arms still splendid above the entrance. 

Santa Clara was the last major stop on the road back to Havana. Most people go there to see the monuments to Che Quevara. One of them is the Tren Blindado, a monument centred on an armoured train that Che attacked and took over in 1958, in the early stages of the revolution. By this stage, I had had enough of Che, and so maybe I was less receptive than I should have been.

Getting around Santa Clara

As usual, the main political sight was a bit out of town. The Plaza de la Revolucion Che Guevara is overlooked by a great monument with a statue and the mausoleum of this iconic (literally) figure, who had the great fortune, in career terms, to die young. The tourists were more interesting than the monument, with a fair sprinkling of awe-struck, idealistic, middle-class revolutionaries of various nations, with expensive cameras.

The Che Monument, Santa Clara

The star attraction of the town proper is the Parque Vidal, a big, formal square with the municipal office on one side – imposing by any measure. A blot on the townscape is the Hotel Santa Clara Libre, an insensitive 1950s building (now painted in lurid shades of green) only notable for the shrapnel damage sustained in the revolution. And its ugliness. The square really comes alive in the evening, with concerts and two little carts pulled by small goats, giving rides to kids. Children, that is, not small goats.

For me, the best thing in Santa Clara was completely unexpected, the 1880s Teatro La Caridad. There was a rehearsal going on, and we were able to go in and wander around. The building would be regarded as a treasure in any city.

The 19th-century Teatro La Caridad, Santa Clara

And – there was the theatre bar, where le tout Santa Clara goes for a drink at sundown, including some undoubtedly friendly local ladies. Hilarious, particularly after a few mohitos all round.

Talking of the mohito: white rum, sugar cane juice, lime juice, soda water and mint. Every one we had was different. I think the key is the mint. I got a taste for mohitos … just the thing after hard day’s tourism.

Our Man in Havana …  oops sorry, Santa Clara

Cuba Part 5: The road to Camaquey

After Santiago, our next stop was Camaguey. The day before leaving, we slogged up to the bus terminal and tried to book tickets on the Viazul bus. The man at the desk had obviously had a hot, difficult day, and said flatly there were no tickets available and there was not going to be be any, so tough. Bugger off (or the Cuban-Spanish equivalent). The people at the Casa were more positive and said we should go to the bus station in the morning an hour or so before departure (another early one), and indeed the husband accompanied us to act as interpreter if required – this was typical of the friendliness we found pretty much everywhere. Anyway, there were tickets, and we made it on to the bus. So began our gradual return across the island towards Havana.

Camaguey, looking towards the Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad

But this does raise a point. Given the current state of infrastructure and transport, travelling around the island does require effort and resilience, unless you’re prepared to pay serious money for taxis and drivers at every stage. Internet access and functioning ATMs are virtually non-existent in most places. It’s hot, and getting any form of service, whether buying a ticket, changing money, or finding accommodation, is a test of character. You wouldn’t want to do it with a heart condition. And, we were told, this is true even if you speak Spanish. So I wouldn’t recommend Cuba if you just want to relax – unless you go on an organised tour (and see nothing really) or just slump on to a beach at Varadero (in which case you might just as well go to Ibiza). There were moments when I said to myself that at 67 I’m getting a bit old for this sort of thing. But that mood always passed. It’s the price you pay for going to somewhere unspoiled – for now – by mass tourism.

Camaguey, church of San Juan de Dios

So, on to Camaguey – another bus journey through an uninteresting landscape. According to the guidebooks the narrow streets of Camaguey are laid out so that they intersect at unpredictable angles, so as to confuse intruders. It’s true that there’s no discernible grid, and it’s easy to get lost. We were staying on the south side of town, close to the Plaza San Juan de Dios, which was one of most atmospheric and unspoiled of all the squares we saw in Cuba.  (Great restaurant.) Beside the main square, the Parque Ignacio Agramonte, is the cathedral.

Camaguey, sculpture by Martha Jimenez

Apart from all the picturesque side streets, the main highlights of Camaguey were the churches. Two stick in my mind, for very contrasting reasons. Close to the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen is the studio of Martha Jimenez, who specialises in fat ladies. One of the sculptures displayed in a garden behind the studio is unusual – see above. I suppose it's the original of that little boy in Brussels.

The church of Santo Cristo del Viaje has a cemetery with some over-the-top funerary monuments. I quite like cemeteries – there’s nothing depressing about them, unless they’re designed and maintained in a depressing way.

All over Cuba, you see colonial architecture with elaborate arcades at street level. Many of the columns are cast iron, with elaborate classical ornamentation. The main road leading north out of central Camaquey has a particularly good array of these. Some of the buildings are run down, their glory days behind them, but the effect is still there. I think that’s how urban architecture in a hot climate should look.

Columns (and lunch) in Camaguey

Shopping in Camaaguey

Cuba Part 4: Santiago de Cuba

Town centre at night, Santiago de Cuba

Trinidad–Santiago was the first of our two legs on the Viazul buses. It was fine, apart from starting too early, and lasting 15 hours. The buses are a bit worn, but comfortable and quiet, and they have toilets. There’s not much reason to stay awake – the Cuban landscape is pretty uninteresting. I read that once it consisted mainly of sugar plantations (coffee and tobacco are also traditional crops in some areas). But the sugar industry’s in decline, and a lot of the land seemed under-populated or unexploited. There are some ranges of hills or low mountains, but most of it’s flat, as far as the horizon. We went through small towns and villages, obviously poor, and past derelict industrial plants and small farms where horses are still important. All a bit depressing. There’s one major highway, a dual carriageway running east-west along much of the island. The traffic on it moves fast, but the surface is terrible, and drivers perform chicanes at speed around the potholes. You overtake on either side, according to your whim. Fortunately, the traffic’s sparse.

Santiago was the most easterly point on the trip. When we arrived at the Casa Particular, we got chatting to a couple. One of them was a German architect interested in heritage. I asked him which place in Cuba got his vote as a ‘must visit’ – and he said ‘Santiago’. So I had high hopes.

View from the roof of the Casa Particular,  Santiago de Cuba

We were staying 15 minutes’ or so walk to the north of the historic centre. As in many Cuban towns most of the streets are built on a grid pattern, and walking to the central square, the Plaza de Marte, was straightforward, although the streets are much narrower and less grandiose than what we saw in Havana. And of course, among the buildings that have been maintained, there are others on the verge of ruin or in urgent need of attention. Quite a lot of the town is quite hilly, which is visually interesting.

Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, Santiago de Cuba

Refugees in the basement, during restoration of the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion

The Plaza de Marte’s impressive, dominated by the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion. The cathedral’s being restored. Peeking through a dirty window at street level I could see all the moveable statuary, moved there for safe keeping, an eerie, inanimate community. A number of the public buildings around the town centre have been done up and look very impressive. The 16^th-century Casa de Velasquez, named after a colonial governor, is said to be the oldest house in Cuba. It looked to my (uneducated) eyes about as Spanish as you can get, which means there’s a dose of Moorish influence in the architecture.

During the day several groups of street musicians were keeping things lively, and after dark there was a band concert in the square. Vibrant, as the Singapore Tourism Board say.

The Monumento Maceo, in the Plaza de la Revolution, Santiago de Cuba

The more ‘political’ part of town was a little way out. The Plaza de la Revolucion (there always has to be one) is close to the bus station. The modern equestrian statue of Antonio Maceo says it all – understated it’s not, although it’s arguably less gross than the political statuary at intersections all over the more touristy bits of Bali, say.

Santiago wasn’t the highlight of my trip, but it was worth making the (considerable) effort to get there. I wish we had had time to check out Guantanamo (yes, the US base is not far away), and Manzanillo, both of which were important commercial centres in past years.

Street scene, Santiago de Cuba

The message

Cuba Part 3: Heading east to Trinidad de Cuba

Trinidad da Cuba

How to get out of Havana? The way most tourists get around Cuba is to use the Viazul bus system, a state enterprise aimed squarely at visitors. In Havana, the terminal is a long, expensive taxi ride out of the city centre, and we never made it there. Through an agent at the Hotel Deauville (not as glamorous as the French resort once was), we finally got a shared minibus ride to Trinidad de Cuba. That was the good news. The bad news was that the hotel she booked us into at Trinidad was the VASTLY EXPENSIVE Iberico. Nice building, good breakfasts, unfriendly service and only one bottle of free drinking water on check-in: everything after that paid for. Not generous. Not worth the money. Still, averaging out the daily cost taking into account the dirt-cheap Lincoln, we didn’t feel too hard done by. At least I could catch up on emails (very few places in Cuba have wifi, and not that many have Internet access).

Musicians near the Plaza Mayor, Trinidad de Cuba

On the minibus we met a very nice guy from Curacao and his Dutch girlfriend. He spoke Spanish, obviously, and he was an expert on the ‘casa particular’ system. Cubans with an entrepreneurial streak, a suitable house and the resources to do up their spare rooms with a basic en-suite shower, can rent out to tourists. So that’s how we found accommodation for the rest of the trip, until getting back to Havana. All the owners we met were friendly, spoke just enough English (it varied), put nice breakfasts on the table, and offered dinner too. Sometimes we ate in, sometimes out. Once you’re in a Casa Particular, you can ask the owner to phone up his or her contacts in the next town, and help you book your next stay. It works. Just don’t expect luxury, or quiet, effective air-conditioning.

Urban transport, Trinidad de Cuba

Trinidad de Cuba is the star turn in the guidebooks – small, unspoilt, UNESCO Heritage Site. Sure, it deserves that status. But it turned out that Trinidad was just the best known of a whole series of towns with beautiful historic centres, and to restrict a Cuba trip to Havana and Trinidad because of their guidebook ratings would be a big mistake. We went to eleven places in three weeks, from Havana in the west to Santiago in the east; although they were all different, not one of them was a disappointment. No, we didn’t go to Varadero, which sounds like Hell on Earth. From Trinidad we did day trips by taxi to Sancti Spiritus and the somewhat bigger Cienfuegos, distinctly different from one another but both with bustling town centres packed with historic architecture.

Tower of the Iglesia de Santa Ana, Trinidad de Cuba

Cienfuegos: Catedral de la Purisima Concepcion

Sancti Spiritus: Iglesia Parroquial Mayor del Espiritu Santo

Cuba Part 2: Havana

Gigantería, a street theater ensemble who perform a dance show on stilts

Havana lived up to my expectations, in fact it was better than I expected. We focused mostly on ‘Old Havana’ as far west as the Avenida de Italia (Galiano), where the Lincoln is. As you walk around (the distances are easily walkable) you can’t help trying to imagine what the city was like in its heyday. Over decades it got more and more dilapidated – I read somewhere that even in the Batista days, it was neglected and the intention was ‘comprehensive redevelopment’, the approach that ripped the guts out of many British cities at that time, in the 1950s and 1960s, and is still favoured by many planners and developers.  Anyway, perhaps before the revolution, and certainly for much of the period since, a lot of the city has been allowed to go to wrack and ruin. It’s only recently that restoration has really got going – and it’s happening on a massive scale.

Cast iron columns with classical detailing, as seen all over Cuba

Old Havana’s laid out quite formally, mostly on a grid pattern. You’ve got the grand public areas, around the Capitolio and the Parque Central. There are the cathedral, great churches and leafy squares, presided over by statues of revered personalities. In the evenings hundreds of locals turn out to stroll along the Malecon, which runs along the shoreline; or along the Paseo de Marti. Narrow, pedestrianized streets such as Obispo and O’Reilly (!) are picturesque and full of interesting shops, but to the extent Havana has a tourist trap, that’s where it is. 

Havana Cathedral (you can go up the tower for a view)

As I said in the previous post, the areas I enjoyed best were those hadn’t yet been done up, where the grand apartment buildings are occupied by many more people than they were designed for, and life is happening on the streets. In New York or Rio you wouldn’t dream of wandering around such places late at night with a camera. In Havana, perhaps naively, I didn’t sense any threat at all, and people were friendly and keen to chat. I bet that won’t last long after money and tourists start to flood in from Cuba’s neighbour to the north, and the party’s grip on society loosens.

Not many people speak English, even in Havana, and my understanding of Spanish is based on the Latin I learned at school, the French I learned at university, a bit of Italian picked up on trips, and some basic Spanish spoken by my travelling companion of many years, Michael Hill. Signs and newspapers were OK, conversations not.

My guidebook had quite big sections on parts of the city that had grown up more recently than Old Havana, in the 20^th century, areas where development was driven to a great degree by dodgy money from the States. There wasn’t enough time to get to know them properly, apart walking up past the imposing university buildings in classical style to the Monumento Jose Marti, and the huge open space where Castro has traditionally harangued Cubans in their tens of thousands. But a two-hour bus tour, not the sort of thing I usually enjoy, was enough to persuade me that we hadn’t missed a lot.

Evening on the Malecon

Buicks must have been big sellers in the early 1950s, although Chevrolets of the same era are everywhere

While we were in Havana we did a quick trip to Matanzas, a provincial capital with a characterful old town centre. As in other towns in Cuba, there aren't a lot of star sights exactly, but the whole place is a cheerful blend of streets and squares and old churches not yet buggered up by insensitive development – definitely worth the half-day we spent there. It had a most elegant fire-station in the Palladian style, and a sort of museum, including a horse-drawn Merryweather fire engine. The old pharmacy in Matanzas is more interesting than the one in Havana.

Friendly natives in Matanzas – not quite what I expected

Cuba Part 1: Heading for Havana

Old Havana in the evening

For a long time I have been planning to go to Cuba. I’m old enough to remember the TV coverage of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the 1962 missile crisis, when we all got close to being incinerated in an atomic war. Fidel and Che hypnotised the more deluded of my generation. More recently, I read how, following the Soviet collapse, Cuba was frozen in time, and as a heritage nut I wanted to see this place where, for whatever reason, most of the old buildings had not been swept away in the cause of urban renewal (as many of them have been in Singapore, where I live).

As a nerdy child in the 1950s I was fascinated by American cars, and knew every fact and statistic in the Observer’s Book of Automobiles. I had the first edition (1955), the only one in which all the photographs were etched out – and two or three later editions too. Famously, cars of that era are still in daily use in Cuba, although all is not as it seems mechanically. I shall write about the cars in a separate entry later. Be patient.

Anyway, it was obvious that, with the Castro era nearing an end and contacts between Cuba and the US on the up, the time to see the place was NOW, before everything changes.

The Hotel Lincoln as it once was

So on 20 March, this year, my friend Michael Hill and I arrived late at night in Havana. The outer parts of the town seemed deserted as the taxi took us to the Hotel Lincoln. You have to be impressed by the scale and formality of the colonnades lining the streets – larger, Spanish-colonial equivalents to Singapore’s ‘five-foot way’. When, well after midnight, the driver said we had arrived, I was doubtful. Were we at the right place? We seemed to be in a dodgy part of town. In the run-down street around the hotel entrance, people were hanging around, drinking and chatting.

The Lincoln Hotel as it was when we arrived

The Lincoln was grand when it was first built, in 1926. It makes a big deal of the fact that Juan Manuel Fangio, the racing driver, was kidnapped here in 1958 by followers of Fidel Castro. Now it’s run down (‘timeworn’, as Lonely Planet puts it politely), only one lift works (and that very slowly), the rooms are dingy, and the breakfasts are dreary and communistic. I learned not to look closely at the ham slices. In the restaurant (which has a fantastic view over the city) customers are often outnumbered by the staff, who like gossiping and watching local pop videos on the wall-mounted TV.  For a whole evening there was no water supply in the hotel. But the Lincoln’s cheap, it takes credit cards, and it’s within walking distance of the historic centre.

By day the area’s better than it looks at night, although that walk takes you through some areas untouched by restoration, where people live their lives on the streets once the heat of the day dies down, the kind of places you might avoid, say, in New York. In fact, I sensed no threat at all – people seemed either positively friendly or, at worst, indifferent.

The streets of Old Havana – no sense of a 'no go' area.