Greetings from Havana, Cuba!
Last week I booked an impromptu flight to Cuba. This morning I took it. I'll be joined happily by Big Mike on Friday and joined begrudgingly by Dickie on Saturday. But until then I explore Cuba alone.
I'm spending the night here in Havana before driving South tomorrow morning to the small sugarcane town of Trinidad. On Friday, the crew will meet up back in Havana, where we'll fritter around until flying back home on Tuesday. The theme for the solo leg of my trip will be introspection. The last time my roommates left me alone for a week, I lost my marbles and started printing rapper puns on pillowcases. I'm hoping a focus on introspection will keep my marbles in tact while I venture alone for four days.
So here goes... Cuba: so close to the States but so different. The trade embargo has made the 90 miles separating Cuba and Florida feel like a chasm, deep and wide. This is obvious to anyone once in Havana, where '57 Chevy's rule the streets and wifi is mostly unavailable. But the careful observer (me) notices the outdated character of the country long before the wheels even touch down in Cuba -- the immigration form they pass out on the plane says it all. Cuba, it seems, requires first-time visitors to announce their arrival in song. How charmingly outdated!
I must have done something right, because with a scowl and a nod, the customs agent granted me access to CUBA!
After the applause died down, I shared a cab with two Americans to downtown Havana. I checked in to my Airbnb then left to explore the ocean-side boardwalk, peeling my eyes for food, cerveza, and above all, introspection. I found a lovely outdoor restaurant whose waiter said that, today being Valentine's Day, they had a lobster special I may be interested in. "I'll take it" I told him, knowing that nothing is more introspective than Valentine's lobster alone. A closer look at the menu prompted my first introspection, denoted henceforth with parentheses.
(...Ordering solo Valentine's lobster is sad, but what kind of menu advertises solo Valentine's lobster? I wonder if lonelies are a highly profitable segment...) To kick things off I ordered one of their cocktails -- the one the restaurant was famous for -- carefully avoiding blended drinks as the ice and water here isn't safe to drink. (...Can Cubans drink the water here? Do they know I can't? Do they think that's strange? I suspect they do think it weird -- what would you think if Germans got diarrhea if they ate something mundane like Wonder Bread when they came to America?...)
My drink came out chock full of ice. Time was ticking. As the ice melted, it was slowly poisoning my carefully crafted cocktail. Thinking quickly, I slammed the damn thing at lightning speed, unfortunately catching my waiter's eye as I did do. No quicker had he set my drink down than it was gone. He gave me a look saying (probably in Spanish), "I know we cater to lonelies but get a grip."
My lobster came with a choice of light or dark beer. I wasn't in the mood for something Guiness-like so I chose the light. The waiter came back with a frosted mug and my beer. Hand behind his back, he presented the beer, explaining its Cuban origins. He cracked the beer and served it with vigor, shaking the beer out of its can as if it were a Shakeweight. After the dust settled, I had the foamiest beer of my life. "Enjoy" the waiter said, before returning to the kitchen, presumably to shake up some beer cans for the next customer.
I capped off my meal with the dark beer option, which is clearly the same as the light beer option, before retiring home to rest up for an early trip to Trinidad tomorrow.
^ in case you missed it, that's the dark beer -__-
* Writing from my iPhone -- please excuse any sloppiness
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