9th of May - arrival to Havana (part 1)

Rodrigo de Triana, a southern Iberian like myself, from Seville, was very likely a tired man that night. He had sailed for months in a small caravel towards the unknown end of the world and, like the amount of vitamin C in his blood, the hope of ever returning home was diminishing rapidly. But then he saw it. "¡Tierra! ¡Tierra!", he screamed. A beautiful and pure New World laid ahead. What thoughts must have crossed this man's mind! The first European to see the American continent. The first European to see the Bahamas.

A hundred and eighty nine thousand and thirty one days later, on the 10th of May 2010, we too saw the Bahamas. Little stripes of land emerging from the dark blue Atlantic. We knew then that Cuba was not far.

As we descended into Havana the land progressively morphed from an anonymous mass to the characteristic Cuban countryside with its red soil, wrinkled roads and extensive green patches of wilderness like nothing I had ever seen in Europe. Several times we looked at each other smiling and asking "Are we really going to Cuba?"

As scheduled, we landed at 8 pm Cuban time. On our way down we had filled and signed all the documents necessary for entry, declaring that we were not carrying illegal materials such as weapons, drugs, global positioning systems, pornography or literature that could cause social unrest. For a moment I feared Orwell's anti-Stalinist views would get me into trouble. Our Tourist Cards were at hand, close to the passports.

When the aircraft door opened we were smothered by a chunk of hot air. Coming from grey Britain, followed by 10 hours of controlled atmosphere, the Cuban air was the first abruptness we experienced. We then went to the passport control area where strict-faced border officers photographed us and confirmed our paperwork. Our address, a casa particular (private house) called casa Ana. A recent change in Cuban tourism laws was that private citizens could rent their spare rooms to tourists if they had the conditions to do so. This still involves the citizen paying a high tax to the government and being closely inspected by the immigration services. During our two weeks in Cuba we only stayed in private houses.

After showing our documents the remaining security checks were quite relaxed. So relaxed that there was no security near the metal detectors at all. One man passed through the detector and made it beep. Because no one was around to check him, he voluntarily went back, removed a few more metallic items from his body and crossed the detector again.

As we left the departure area with our bags, Rui and I realised that no one had asked us about our health insurance. The Cuban Embassy website had made it clear that passengers without an insurance would have to purchase it at entry. Joana and Rocha were covered by their German insurance but Rui and I weren't. We didn't dwell much about this issue and just went ahead. Without insurance.

We crossed the no-return door into a large pavilion of the airport where a crowd of Cubans awaited. I expected a claustrophobic wave of people trying to rent us rooms or take us in their taxis but that didn't happen. Little did I know that this would be the only place in Cuba where such approaches didn't happen.

But before anything else we needed money, which in Cuba is slightly more complex issue than anywhere else. Since the 90's the country has two currencies running side by side: the Cuban peso (CUP) with which Cubans live, get their wages and buy non-luxury items and the peso Convertible (CUC$), a currency created for tourists and luxury items worth 24 times more than the Cuban peso. This double currency means that, at the eyes of a Cuban, a tourist becomes a walking wallet full of the eagerly desired CUCs. From this currency-driven mirage a series of little scams and annoyances were born, like the one where you buy something in CUC and change is given to you in CUP. Fortunately this never happened to us.
Rocha traded 200 € at the airport's Cadeca (Casa de Cambio, the exchange house) and got 220 CUC$. Lonely Planet advised to have some Cuban pesos in the wallet as a way to infiltrate the true Cuban "economy". This means being able to buy street hamburgers of doubtful origin for the equivalent of 5 eurocents, books for 20 cents, bus trips for 5 cents and, as it will be narrated later on, 27 balls of ice cream for less than 2 euros. Thus, Rocha traded 10 CUC$ for Cuban pesos and got 240 CUP in notes of 10. After this exchange he returned to us with a big smile and waving the thick bundle of notes he'd just received. We all thought it was quite entertaining until we realised that it could be interpreted as a chauvinistic gesture. Or even worst, a capitalist gesture! After this episode, whoever was holding the money (we took turns to withdraw cash) was nicknamed "the sugar daddy".
Out on the street we were once again slapped by the wall of tropical heath. We entered a state taxi and made our way to central Havana.

9th of May - Madrid to Havana

As arranged in the previous day, a coach picked us up from the hotel shortly after breakfast and took us back to the airport. Once more we had to queue for check-in and go through security checks (Rui wasn't even wearing a belt anymore). Although there was still some suspicion and disgruntle amongst the Havana-bound passengers the moods were definitely better than the day before. Our flight was schedule to departure at 3:45 pm.

The forced co-existence caused by the cancelled flight meant that we kept bumping into the same people over and over: in the coach, during the hotel check-in, at dinner, at breakfast and now once again, in the airport terminal. Inevitably, we began to mentally register some of our fellow passengers. There was the Polish girl and her summer hat (despite the rainy weather in Madrid), the Spanish girl with a diamond-encrusted tooth, the Cuban girl with a tie made of fake diamonds and her chaperone, the man who wore two hats on top of each other all the time and, of course, the Portuguese scaremonger that loved to spread fake rumours about the flights. At the time we wondered if we would see these people again once we landed in Cuba but the size of the country and our commitment to avoid the tourist track dictated that we would not see any of them again.

Due to the cancellation, the airline (Air Europa) had to spread the stranded passengers amongst other flights bound to the Caribbean. Ours had a double stop, first in Havana and then in Santo Domingo.

After the aircraft took off and the excitement of finally being on our way diluted itself in the boredom of   a 10-hour journey we began looking for alternative sources of entertainment. The choice of movies on board was limited and poor. I tried to watch an American romantic comedy at one point but there is only so much gender cliche one man can take and had to turn it off after 15 minutes. Fortunately we brought several books for this trip. Here is a list of what we had and who brought them.

• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell) - me
• Caim (José Saramago) - Rui
• A Ofensa (Ricardo Menéndez Salmón) - Joana
• Tres historias de amor (Manuel Vázquez Montalbán) - Rui
• Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges) - me
• Nuclear organization of the genome and the potential for gene regulation (Peter Fraser, Wendy Bickmore) - Rocha
• Narziss and Goldmund (Hermann Hesse) - Rocha
• Lonely Planet's guide to Cuba (Brendan Sainsbury) - Rocha
• AA Spiral Guide Cuba (Andrew Forbes) - me

Of these, the most read during the two weeks was, without any doubt, the Lonely Planet's guide to Cuba followed by Caim, Saramago's grumpy collection of attacks on the bible and Christianity, read by Rui, Joana and Rocha (in this exact order). My main read during the trip was Orwell's digressions on class division and Socialism in 1930's Britain. This book would often haunt or illuminate me during our explorations in Cuba.

And so we went, flying West faster than the speed of Earth's rotation where the borders of today and tomorrow are distorted. At one point, I recorded in my diary, it was 9 pm in Spain, 3 pm in Cuba and we were flying 9000 meters above the Atlantic. In my ear phones Tracy Chapman was singing "Talking about a revolution". A few hours later we landed in Jose Marti International Airport, in Havana.

8th of May - London to Madrid

Eyjafjallajökull: the unpronounceable nemesis of the flying Europeans stroke once more.

Back in mid April, when the Icelandic beast started spewing its ash over the skies of Europe, I was amongst the distressed citizens that had to fly (I had a job interview). As the desperation grew so did my plans to reach Barcelona by any means. At one point this included a train to London, then another one to Portsmouth, a ferry cross to Cherbourg followed by an online-arranged carshare from a stranger to Barcelona. Fortunately the loss of profits spoke higher than safety and the flight ban was lifted.

Rocha had also suffered with this geological regurgitation. He was stranded in Portugal after a short visit to the family but managed to find his way back to Berlin by getting a 3 day lift from a lorry driver.

We thought all of that was gone.

However, after rushing to Gatwick and through the security checks we found that the ash cloud had made its evil return. Oddly enough, the cloud had shaped itself as a thin barrier covering merely the north of Spain, that is, our way to Madrid. Whilst waiting for an alternative route to go around the ash we began an Odyssey of card games with Rocha and Rui against Joana and myself. This clash of titans continued throughout our Cuban trip and ended, as a perfect circle, two weeks later in that same airport. Eventually, we boarded the aircraft and made our way to Madrid already fearing a misconnection with our second flight.

We arrived to Barajas airport with just enough time to run (once more) to our second flight but fortunately it was also delayed. Adding to this relaxation we were offered the best thing someone can offer to a Portuguese: free food. The flight had been post-poned until 6 pm. We continued playing cards and making fun of each others grasp of the Spanish language.

The bored passengers became stressed when the flight was again post-poned to 10 pm which quickly turned into anger when it was post-poned to midnight, and finally turned into a lynching mob when the flight was cancelled. We were told the ramp (!) of the aircraft was damaged. What happened afterwards was a boring sequence of people yelling at airport employees, scaremongering amongst passengers (particularly by a middle-aged Portuguese man) and general confusion until we were told that we were going to spend a night in a hotel.

"A night in Madrid", we thought, "brilliant!". I envisaged myself eating tapas in a boqueria, drinking beers and living the life in Madrid.

No.

Instead we were rushed into an aberration of architecture called Hotel Auditorium. This thing, 10 minutes away from the airport, is supposedly the largest hotel in Europe but I would rather describe it as a chicken farm or a warehouse turned into kitsch accommodation for stranded passengers. The place was decorated with a mixture of all possible things that dumb people imagine as classic: renaissance-type paintings with naked fat ladies, Victorian clocks, your grandmother's sofa, Greek and Roman statues and things alike. The pain was eased by yet another free meal.

We were promised a replacement flight for the following day.

Rui, Joana and Rocha in one of many card games.

Passengers stranded in Madrid Barajas.

Joana explains the situation outside Barajas airport.

Entering Hotel Auditorium.

7th of May - still London

I'm inside bus 171 towards Peckham. Transporting oneself, a full backpack and a three-person tent at peak hour from Hammersmith to south London is something that should be avoided at all costs.

London reminds me of a tumour. An expanding dirty little tumour aggressively reaching out to the countryside. As I stood in the platform at Oxford Street station, the epicentre of this malignancy, I could taste the hypoxia. These electrified tube lines, these congested roads, these overpopulated pavements, they are the blood vessels sequestered to keep the tumour alive.

I'm inside bus 171, surrounded by the pale faces of the undead, looking at the metal-coloured sky and wondering how many of these people have tumours growing in them right now, when a voice grabs my attention.

"Are you goin' campin' mate?"

I was miles away.

"Are you goin' campin'?" she repeated.

Oh yes, the tent. I nodded. You don't expect this kind of interactions in a London bus.

"Where'bouts?"

"In Cuba." I answered promptly.

"Oh...".

I left the bus in Peckham where Rui was waiting. He cooked salmon for dinner and later told me about his own car-accident story, the increasingly famous story of the "mattress man". He had bought new shorts.

The plan was that both of us would wake up at 1 am and go pick up Rocha and Joana (or simply the Rochas according to Rui) from Victoria station. When the moment arrived I had fallen into deep sleep in Rui's living room and chickened out letting him do the job alone. For this, I was proportionately mocked by the three of them when on their arrival at about 3 am. The gang was finally together, albeit sleepy. While Rui slept in his room, Rocha, Joana and I shared the living room mattress for a few hours before waking up again at 6. It was time to start moving.

6th of May - London

On the 5th of May I had taken the train from Birmingham Moor Street to London Marylebone and arrived there fairly late. Twenty-four hours before I had landed in Birmingham International from a short trip to Barcelona. Before that I had been in Portugal for a week after finally submitting the thesis. This entangled series of events forbade me to realise that the Cuba trip was really going to happen. In Birmingham I had just enough time to throw the dirty laundry in the basket, grab a couple of clean t-shirts and underwear and head down to London.

Besides my backpack I also carried a three-person tent as requested by the others in our long series of email exchanges (make a mental note of this omnipresent piece of luggage, a 4 kg cylindrical bag).

So, on the 6th of May, I woke up at my friend's place in Hammersmith, left the house and met Rui outside Holborne tube station. From there we headed to the Cuban Embassy to buy our Tourist Cards (the homologue to a Visa, I guess). On the way there we became aware of our feeling of unpreparedness. Rui didn't even had a pair of shorts to bring.

Fortunately, Google Street View didn't lie and the Embassy was right where promised. We walked straight to the main door in High Holborne and rang the bell. Almost instantly a Cuban looking man who was just hovering nearby approached us and said, in a very Hispanic accent, that for Tourist Cards we needed to go to the door in the nearby alley (Grape street). This mixture of creepiness and helpfulness, a trademark of the Cubans, would soon become trivial to us but at that time the situation created some comedy effect.

We entered the Embassy, a small cramped room with four or five people inside, and waited for our turn. Proof of a booked return flight, proof of booked accommodation, a valid passport and £15- "all good but we only take cash". After a trip to the ATM we returned to the Embassy only to find that we had been overtaken by another person.

This woman, a British blonde middle-aged woman, was loudly sharing her passion for Cuba with the two ladies behind the counter. She would go into intricate personal details to explain her love for Havana, how she wanted to live and die in Cuba and so much more, to great boredom of the two ladies and the remaining costumers. At some point she mentioned being married to a Cuban man, that eventually got arrested and from whom later she got a divorce. Her only comment to this was a protest on how difficult it is for anyone to become a Cuban citizen. "I'm sure there are Cubans who would love to exchange lives with her", I whispered to Rui. The woman went on yapping and yapping.

One of the ladies behind the counter asked if she wanted her ashes to be spread across the Malecon. I think this was her subtle way of wishing her to die. It certainly was mine.

Eventually the woman left (and went on to find another Cuban husband, probably) and we managed to get our Tourist Cards. These are separate sheets of paper so that you do not get a stamp saying CUBA on your passport. This is particularly important for those, like myself, who plan to move to the US.

Rui and I parted ways. He returned to his flat in south London, I went to Shepherds Bush Market to buy groceries and later cooked dinner for my friends in Hammersmith. Rocha and Joana would meet us the following day, flying from Berlin to London Stansted. From there we would go to Gatwick. Then Madrid. Then Havana.

How it all began.

It was the morning of the 7th of August 2009, Friday. I was sitting in my office in Birmingham (the laws of probability suggesting it was very likely another rainy day) when a Google chat window popped up.

"What about Cuba in October?" said Pedro Rocha from his office in Berlin.
I have no idea how long this idea had been brewing in his head but it sounded perfectly reasonable. Still, I felt the need to joke a bit. "Cuba Cuba, or Cuba in Alentejo?", I said.

Over the last 5 years and for professional reasons I had travelled across Europe with this guy. Finland, Holland, Austria, Germany, Spain, you name it. Hotel booking misunderstandings had us once sharing a double bed in Rotterdam when Rocha was a biological flu threat. In the end the hotel billed us as Mr. and Ms. Rocha. Small stories like this could fill another blog.

In the previous year Rocha and Joana organized a holiday trip to Croatia. Together with Caiado, Hany, Lontra and myself (all biologists, all University of Lisbon mates) we planned a road trip from Venice to Dubrovnik. The trip was abruptly ended by a first-degree encounter between our van and a road-side rock near Senj and four of us were sent to a nearby Hospital with minor injuries. I often say that if did had to have that car accident I'm glad it was with those guys. Instead of reaching Dubrovink we ended up exploring Dalmatia.

So when Rocha proposed a trip to Cuba it seemed like the natural progression of our seasonal ambition to explore the world. But above everything else, Cuba presented itself as a greater mystery, a forgotten island ruled by an anachronistic regime or a well-succeeded experiment shrugged by US propaganda? Whatever it was, we wanted to know. The stepping down of Fidel, the progressive changes we heard about on then news like the liberalisation of small businesses and the introduction of mobile phones, the apparently receptive Obama administration, all of it suggestied the imminent end of Castro's Cuba. If there was a time to go there, it was now!

For this trip, Rocha, Joana and I attempted to get together the "Croatian-six" but the lack of time, much catalysed by the writing of PhD theses, and the lack of money left Caiado, Hany and Lontra out. Instead Rui, a London-based historian and long-time friend of Rocha and Joana, stepped in. In addition to the natural excitement of visiting a country like Cuba, Rui had the particular interest of being a Cold War historian.

After bringing our four schedules together and probing several airlines for the cheapest flights possible we ended up booking the trip to May.

Date of departure was set: 8th of May 2010.