Of horses, bicycles, sugar cane and lots of cake

Cienfuegos’ main square is Parque José Martí, which has some very fine restored colonial buildings, the city’s main tourist attractions, and our favourite internet-and-mohito-enabled café. But we also have our own square, round the corner from our house. Parque Villuendas is a nice place, with pretty buildings round the outside, and trees and benches in the middle. It’s pretty much off the tourist track, and a sort of a microcosm of Cuban life.  

For a start it’s a setting-off point for the ubiquitous horse-drawn communal taxis that are the main mode of transport both in the city and the countryside around. We haven’t worked out how the system operates, because as soon as a tourist approaches they switch to offering a personalised (not a communal) service and won’t hear of you joining the crowd. But it seems as if the drivers wait in a queue with their vehicles, fill up with passengers, and then head off. A cross between cab rank, with horses, and a bus depot. Once they set off, they go at a brisk trot – even with six or eight people on board. No plodding nags in Cienfuegos. Which is all very picturesque for a tourist, though they make quite a clatter outside your room at 5 in the morning!

The other most common mode of transport is the bicycle, which often has a second person side-saddle on the cross bar. Scooters are even more flexible – you can get granny or the kids on as well. (Though it has to be said the Cubans are less creative with their scooters than the Vietnamese were when we were there. We haven’t seen any carrying large panes of glass, or with half-a-dozen live chickens dangling from the handlebars.) There are also bici-taxis (cycle rickshaws, Cuban style), old American cars, Lada taxis, ancient buses, converted-truck buses. Everything you could possibly want, really.

Drinking smoothies with the in crowd

On the catering front, Parque Villuendas doesn’t have much for the tourist trade, but has three tiny (2-3 table) cafés serving the Cuban speciality, rice with black or red beans, pork escalope or fried fish, and salad. You pay local prices too, so it’s the equivalent of only about a dollar a plate. Then there’s a stall selling sugar cane juice, and another place with smoothies – most days it’s guava, but if you are lucky they might have mango. You order, pay your 10-20 cents, stand on the street and drink, and then hand the glass back. Delicious. Next to the smoothie place you can buy a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. Whereas in Havana and Guanabo, pizza was the fast-growing snack food of choice, here it’s toasties. They are good too.

And sugar cane juice with the others...

Finally, the square has Cienfuegos institution Doña Neli – a cake shop selling a small selection of seriously over-the-top, fake cream-covered delicacies that are very popular with the locals – and Sam. In case you aren’t hungry, you can also buy rum and beer.

It doesn't look much, but you should see the cakes!!

Oh, and there’s Wi-Fi too. What more could anyone want?

Settling in in Cienfuegos

It didn’t take long before we knew we didn’t want to spend a lot of time in Havana. It’s beautiful – in the areas that have been restored anyway. But it’s a big city, and has the hassles associated with any tourist centre – people trying to get you into their taxi, restaurant, shop, horse-drawn vehicle etc. Wormold, the main character in Graham Greene’s wonderful espionage spoof novel Our man in Havana, had the same problem in the 1950s, though the services he was offered (beautiful women and dirty postcards mostly) have apparently changed with the Castro regime. Or perhaps it’s just that we look too old and dull.

Anyway, we decided we would choose a smaller centre for our pre-Emma-and-Ben arrival month, and settled on Cienfuegos, a city of 160,000 inhabitants on a large, attractive bay (apart from the chemical factory and abandoned nuclear power station) in the south of the country. It’s a nice city, newer than many of the others in Cuba, having been first settled in the early 19th century, rather than the 16th, as with many of the other towns. This mostly means it is less dilapidated. The centre has a sort-of French feel to it, as it was founded in 1819 by a French émigré from Louisiana, and was originally settled by 40 French families from New Orleans, Philadephia and Bordeaux. And while you do get the odd guy calling “taxi”(without much hope, it must be said) as you pass by, it’s largely hassle-free.

After a bit of searching we have found the almost-perfect casa particulare: roof terrace with a great view over the city, windows with a great view over the street, some cooking facilities, so we can start being a bit self-sufficient, and a friendly family running it. I served up my first pot of the Cuban staple, beans and rice, last night - with a bit of help from Carmen, the owner.

The view from our window

The only slight drawback to the street is that it’s round the corner from bus station, and on a slight incline, so the aging buses and trucks rumble past from about 5.50am and pour diesel fumes into our bedroom as they rev their way up the hill. But you can’t have everything.

A home from home – with nick nacks

Cuba doesn’t have backpacker accommodation – not as we know it in New Zealand, or we found it in Chile or Peru. Instead the only real alternative to a big, beautiful, expensive, normally government-owned hotel is something called a “casa particulare”, or private house. A B&B, I suppose, with tropical fruit and no bacon. It’s a new concept in Cuba, having been allowed only from 2008 as one of Raúl Castro (Fidel’s brother)’s economic reforms. But it’s one that’s rapidly catching on, as Cubans jump at the chance of earning almost as much for a night’s accommodation as they do for a month’s salary.

As with most things in Cuba, the casa system is highly regulated. All visitors have to be immediately registered with the police, and rooms are vetted for quality. Not in Cuba the hit and miss of private accommodation elsewhere in the world. Instead rooms come with ensuite bathroom, air-con, TV and fridge as standard. If you are lucky you also get your share of the house’s nick nacks – at no extra charge. Cubans are great collectors – of cute stuff. Statuettes of animals and children, wall plates with little pictures, plastic flowers and fruit. If you are particularly lucky, you might get a gnome.

Actually, I realised today this isn’t a new trend – in fact it may be several hundred years old. I went to a museum in Santa Clara that’s basically a Spanish colonial home, furnished with bits collected from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The house itself was beautiful, with lovely furniture in airy rooms around a central courtyard. But it was full of the most hideous (to my taste) nick nacks. Shelves full of ceramic babies, painted vases, cutesy statuettes. All, I assume, collected lovingly and at vast expense, from Europe and America by the house’s owners over the years.

No gnomes though.

What we did before the internet...

Early in our stay in Cienfuegos it poured with rain in the late afternoon. Bucketed down. Along with half the population of the town, I sheltered under the main plaza’s wonderful “portalos” (no, not “portaloos”, but the wide covered walkways outside shops protecting pedestrians from sun and rain.)

Cienfuegos portalos, but without the pouring rain

And as I watched, teenage boys started appearing from all directions. Running into the pedestrian shopping street which leads into the square. The drawcard: tiled pavements, whose smooth surfaces turned into skating rinks with the downpour. The cool kids skimmed upright on their bare feet, but you could get more speed sliding on your stomach. Think a water park without the entrance fee.

It looked fun. Still, you can guarantee if you came back in a post-Wi-Fi era, no teenage boy would dream of leaving their bedroom in the rain…

If you aren't 14 and it's not raining, there's dominoes to be played. These guys gather every evening on the corner...