By the fourth day in busy Havana, we'd decided we needed some air. And one of the joys of visiting another country is seeing the contrast between urban and rural. So we decided to pay some cucumbers to pay a taxi for the day to take us out of Havana and about 60 miles away to a place called Sierra del Rosario, in the Artemisa province of Cuba. To our knowledge (or to my knowledge), it had a hotel, some birds, some mountains, nice scenery, and some baths (the natural kind).
So we asked our Mama Maruchi if she could hook us up with a ride. Naturally our first choice was Julie, firstly because we knew her, secondly because she spoke English, and thirdly because negotiations might be easier because of reason one and two. However, Julie was not up for it that day. However, Mama Maruchi and Julie knew of someone else. The cost was some Cucumbers and we agreed (I'm not sure comparatively how much a taxi would cost for this distance and this amount of time in the US, but I have to believe it would be at least twice as much). Apparently his name was Ramon and he would be there in an hour.
In a little over an hour, Mama Maruchi looked out the window and said our ride was here but she held up a hand to us as though telling us to wait, kind of like when your prom date arrives but your dad is like, "Naw, he'll come to the door and knock and meet your parents like a grown-ass-man." That was the look and feel Mama Maruchi was giving us. So Ramon knocked and walked in with his sidekick Hami. We all discussed where we were going, faces were made by all Cubans in the room about why and where we were taking this trip, but all agreed it would be a nice trip, and we departed.
We got into the classic car (a Ford Fairlane, very cushiony seats, roomy, the kind of place you could go parking with someone, but that's neither here nor there). Ramon explained that he spoke a fair bit of English but Hami did not. Then Ramon signaled to Hami to drop him off and Ramon said Hami had it from here. I found this a little...strange? Since we'd been hooked up with Ramon initially and Ramon was the one who spoke a language more relatable to us, but no one else made any mention of the weird behavior of Ramon hopping out blocks away from Mama Maruchi's unexpectedly, so I ignored it as well.
Hami chatted a little, but it was kind of like Mama Maruchi and me trying to chat, one of us would eventually make a face and wave our hands at each other in resignation. So all three of us resolved to look out the window more or less as the scenes of Havana faded away and the rural scenes took over.
A lot of it was highway surrounded by trees and fields. But that did not discourage the presence of *many* hitchhikers, people on bicycles, horse drawn carriages, a full on cowboy with leather chaps on horseback with a dog following behind, and, my favorite, a man appearing from the side of the road with a line of roasted chickens hanging from a spit (for sale). I'd love to see someone speeding by on the highway and scream to their father or wife, "Hon! We gonna stop! That's some damn good lookin' roasted chicken back there! Hang a u-ey!"
Nevertheless, we eventually arrived at what I could only desipher was some sort of nature preserve, given the appearance of the signs and the look of the uniforms the people were wearing at the gate when we arrived in Sierra del Rosario. Hami spoke to the gate person for awhile (the first question I'll ask St. Peter when I arrive at the gate is what Hami said to any of these people when he'd talk for five freakin' minutes and then just turn to us and say, "He said it's two CUC's." And I'm like, "He talked all the time and that's it? Are you sure he didn't just tell the guy he's going to go dump our bodies and he'll be right back?" Mrs. Blue assured me that she was pretty sure he was just telling the guy he didn't feel it necessary to pay as he was only driving us. I still feel the length of time of his talking in relation to the response as enormous.)
Anyway. We continued onward and eventually pulled into a place that housed a couple of restaurants, a hotel, a series of apartments that I still express some confusion as to their purpose of, and miles away, the baths. Hami gave Mrs. Blue a short synopsis of the area, however, she only gathered some of it and even after repeating, I think just gave up and decided to explore for herself, speed walking style. We *walked* *uphill* to the hotel and got a summary of the various hikes available. There was a bird watching hike but it was a couple of hours away and cost quite a few Cucumbers, which was a hard hit after the cost of the taxi to get there. We weighed our options and Mrs. Blue decided that walking to the baths might suffice instead. I think my *initial* agreeableness to walk to the baths stemmed from an if/then desire to negotiate: "If I walk to the baths, then maybe I can negotiate out of the bird walk." Mrs. Blue asked Hami if he wanted to walk with us to the baths, he shrugged and nodded.
We walked back down the hill and walked to the beginning of the trail where the baths are. Now, at this point, Hami started to call us crazy. Actually. Hami may have called us crazy the minute we suggested walking to the baths. But when I saw the entrance to the trail and that it was a road, not a trail, and that it was winding and hilly and not straight and flat, I began to reflect back on all the times Mama Maruchi told us something that turned out to be true and thought about what Hami was saying and wondered...are we being crazy? I asked if it was too late to walk to the car. Hami said something and I asked Mrs. Blue what he said. "He said, it's too late. We're walking now." But he repeated "You're crazy" multiple times. He also explained that he's a driver and he doesn't typical do this kind of walking in his daily life, he just sits. I explained I'm just a sitter in my daily life, and I just sit, so this was abnormal for me, too. This was also not a breezy, cloudy, Cuban day. It was upwards of 90 degrees, bright, and sunny. I was melting, Hami was calling us crazy, and Mrs. Blue was trucking along.
I will take this brief interlude to describe our surroundings. We were on a road. Rare were the passerby walking, there were typically taxis or tour buses passing us by. The road was surrounded by dense forest, rolling hills, and occasional shanties and shacks with cows, horses, and other farm life. It was like...rural forest life, Cuban style.
A little while later, Hami was on the phone, and the only word I caught was "Caliente" -- hot. He talked for a bit and then hung up. And then COINCIDENTALLY a short time later, a taxi came from behind us and, unlike all the other taxis that whizzed by us, this taxi stopped beside us and Hami asked us if we wanted to take it to the baths, that he would take us. I jumped in so fast I almost knocked the car over. The fact that this car "appeared" so shortly after Hami's phone call, that the driver didn't ask for Cucumbers...I swear Hami called him. Mrs. Blue disagrees. She believes it was a coincidence. They dropped us off at the entrance to the baths, Hami talked for five minutes to the gate keeper, and we continued through.
There was a drought during this time, so though there was water in the river, the baths were not as full and plentiful as they usually were. We opted not to swim and just take a rest. Shortly afterward, we decided to head back. Much to my dismay, the car that had brought us there had gone. And so we walked. All. The. Way. Back.
Don't dismay. I looked up the milage from the baths to where we walked back to. It was 2.3 miles. Not flat. Not straight. Not cool and breezy. I gained a bright red nose that to the moment I write this is peeling. I am not amused. Hami stopped multiple times as I slowed on the hills. Mrs. Blue sped up, only fueled by the heat. When we finally got back and collapsed in the car, Hami looked back at me in his rearview mirror and, I kid you not, just laughed out loud. I didn't need to translate that. He was taking in my bright, red face, my entire body dripping with sweat, my haggard, half-dead appearance. He was amused.
We headed then to a scenic restaurant. The guard at the gate explained that we couldn't head up the hill until he confirmed that there was no one coming down because the road was very narrow. We waited quite a few minutes and then a tour bus finally came down the hill and it was our turn to go up. The scene at the top was very beautiful, a view for miles of rolling hills and greenery.
We each got coffee and rice pudding and I also got chicken skewers. I saved my leftover chicken again for the dogs. We took pics at the top of the vista and then headed home (Hami was VISIBLY exhausted). He dropped us off at home but didn't leave before getting our picture with our ride.
We had a lie down then took a cab to central Havana back to the marketplace with the tchotchkes and got a few for ourselves and others. Then we took a cab to Me Gusta and partook in our favorite food. Then we remembered seeing an ice cream place a few blocks back every time we went to Me Gusta so we thought we'd try to find it. We walked more blocks than we thought it was distance wise and finally found it but it was closed. So we got a cab with a guy named Carlos. Immediately after we got in his cab someone approached and Carlos explained he was selling his car and had a quick conversation with the interested buyer (who happened to be a rickshaw driver, maybe upgrading trades). Anyway, we asked Carlos to bring us to some ice cream. He said he knew of the best ice cream around. He drove us there. It was closed because it was Monday. So he said, I know another place, it always has ice cream. We drove there. The ice cream freezer was literally empty. So then we drove to Cafe Bohemia, a place I'd read was worth visiting. Carlos decided to sit and eat with us and Mrs Blue and I ordered coffees and she got a milkshake to satisfy her ice cream craving.
We also learned important Cuban facts/info tidbits from Carlos during our time with him. For instance, when he mentioned he was selling his car, he explained that cars in Cuba are difficult to come by due to the historical embargo. So (new) cars hadn't really come to the island so they just made do with whatever cars they had and kept them in circulation, fixing instead of putting out to pasture and reselling instead of buying new. As a result, a POS car like Carlos' (sorry, Carlos) was worth $16k. And the only newer cars you could get were the government cars which the government ordered new and then sold when they were done with them in a couple of years. Those were $80k-$100k. I found an interesting article on this after I got home:
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141858419/in-cuba-a-used-car-is-no-bargain
Carlos also told us about housing in Cuba. He said typically you just inherited housing from your parents or grandparents and didn't go sniffing around for new real estate, since your "legit" salaries are so low.
Mrs Blue didn't like Carlos too much. She thought he hung around too long and talked too much "politics". I thought his information was interesting and informative. In any case, she had him drop us off a couple of blocks away from home to be safe. Better safe than sorry.
We continued the huge ass crossword.
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