Sister in Santiago

One of the reasons that we got talking to Alicia was that she has a sister in Santiago. "Oh my sister, she's so talkative," Alicia told us. "You can't shut her up!"

Well, Sandra, the sister, wasn't all that talkative. She only had two or three topics of conversation - all sob stories. How sad and lonely she is to be a widow. How she wants her daughter, studying to be a psychologist, to marry a foreigner and leave the country. How broke she is and how hard life is in Cuba.

"Do you like Cuba?" she asked me, with genuine curiosity. Well sure I do. Cuba's great - unless you're a Cuban who has to live there. "What's not to like," I said, trying to be diplomatic. Sandra smiled sadly, wonderingly. She can only imagine what it is to experience Cuba the way we were seeing it. Eating a good restaurants, sleeping in comfortable hotels where everything works, going to the beach in taxis, paying street musicians to entertain us - even on the beach, drinking cocktails made freshly by obsequious bartenders, going dancing every night to the country's top live music spots. There is only one way for Cubans to get this kind of life - via foreigners.

Alicia and Giovannis had enjoyed the 'good life' with us for a few days in Havana. They managed to keep a straight face when they saw that the bill for our lunch at La Bodeguita de Medio was around 2 weeks wages for most Cubans. They didn't ask us for money - ever, not even by hinting.

Sandra was different. Maybe she's much poorer - she isn't a primary school teacher, but ekes out a living taking in clothes to repair on an ancient olf sewing machine. She wasn't all that interested in being treated by strange foreigners. Her 'sob stories' were immediately focused on the bottom line - money. No money to visit her sister - only a 30-dollar bus ride away. No money for her daughter's glasses. Yes, the wonderful free health system wouldn't deny anyone glasses. But in Santiago no optician had functional equipment. So everyone had to go to Havana.

I offered her the money for the bus ticket. I know what it's like to miss your family. Only later did I think through the implications - how would Alicia react to hearing that I'd given her sister money and not her?

Sandra's daughter is dating a gorgeous, 24-year old music student, Yulieski, with the sharpest cheekbones I've seen on a Hispanic man. He must have some genes from one of those tall African tribes. Yulieski put some salsa music on the restaurant's music system and we danced a little. His girlfriend isn't much of one for salsa, but Yulieski wants to be a salsa singer. That's his plan for how to get out of Cuba and see the world.

Marry a foreigner, work for UNESCO or a foreign embassy, or become a star of the Cuban salsa scene: these are some of the only routes by which young Cubans can do what young people all over the world take for granted - travel.

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is home to many of Cuba's most famous musicians, like Compay Segundo. We were told that in Santiago you can't walk around the old town without hearing live music being played or practiced. It's completely true. Within minutes of being there we heard what sounded like a scrummy salsa band playing acoustic salsa in an old methodist church hall. We'd just been taken to a paladar for lunch - a private restaurant run in the home of Cubans.

Unlike Hotel Sevilla in Havana, our hotel in Santiago was a modern chain hotel - the Melia, catering mostly to tourists from el mundo latino. Very comfortable, lots of attentive staff, delicious sandwiches and cocktails by the three pools. It reminded me of being in Acapulco or something, but with old Cuban music piped everywhere. Boleros sung by Beny More by the pool during the afternoon - lovely.

There were no taxis at the Viazul bus station, but a couple of bicitaxis were quick on the uptake and had our cases loaded precariously on their old rickshaws before we could protest. What the heck, we thought. The hotel was just up the street. Up being the operative word - the poor cyclists were dripping with sweat by the time they got us up there!

"I'm Daniru," the boss of the three told us. "She's my niece," he said, pointing at my five-year old daughter. "We're your family here in Santiago. We'll take care of you, make sure you have a good time."

Right on, companero. For a price, I'll bet...

La Guagua pa' Santiago

This is not a guagua...this is a camionetta.
They sing about 'la guagua' in lots of salsa songs. It turns out to be not a baby (Chilean slang), but a bus. I thought it was the crummy kind of bus they pack people into and that spews pollution. But no. That, in Cuba, would be the el camionetta.

La 'guagua' is a coach, the kind of luxury affair tourists and fortunate Cubans use to cross the island. Equipped with on-board loos and video screens that work some of the time, the VIAZUL buses are reckoned to be the safest way to travel in Cuba. (Until recently the British foreign office advised against internal air travel in Cuba). Safe because they are sleek and well-maintained and the roads are good?

Nope. Mainly because they travel slowly on the pock-marked main Cuban freeway that even in Mexico would be a B-road, and where other cars are rare.

Our overnight guagua was making excellent time between Havana to Santiago de Cuba - on target for 14 hours. In fact, at 7am I was feeling rather sheepish at having dreaded the trip. I had to see the Oriente, to research my next book, but I was feeling a bit guilty, like it was too much to have asked of everyone else. But at 7am, we'd all enjoyed top-notch cat naps throughout the night and were looking forward to arriving within another five hours.

And then the bus stopped. In a little, teeny little town named Marti, between Ciego de Avila and Las Tunas, we passengers were emptied onto the pavement.

We were the only non-Cubans on the bus. There wasn't a peep of protest from any passenger, nor the tiniest hint of apology from the bus driver.

Hey, this is Cuba. It's understood that a long bus journey might take longer than anticipated. We all settled down on the roadside, to wait.

Nearby, from a window, a woman sold omelette and fresh cheese sandwiches, and cold cola drinks. I took my only small bills - 3 single CUCs. "How much for a sandwich?" I asked. "One peso," she said, raising a finger. "Not dollars," another customer told me, flashing a wallet full of Cuban moneda nacional. "Cuban pesos."

There are 24 Cuban pesos to the CUC. "Okay," I said. "How much do you want from me for the sandwiches? I only have dollars." The woman shrugged, blushed. "I dunno..."
"Make it up," I advised, thinking it a good lesson in capitalism. It was, after all, a seller's market. The woman gave me a small heap of egg and cheese rolls and then insisted, "Take some sodas too." She refused to take more than 2 CUCs.

A Cuban guy wearing an old-fashioned, gentlemanly beret offered to change some money for me (it's forbidden). So I bought 25 Cuban pesos and we had enough money to eat and drink for the next 8 hours. Four of those hours were spent just waiting in Marti. Watching boys practising baseball on the diamond opposite the bus stop, and talking quietly to the Cuban passengers from the bus.

Somos Cubanos

We met our very first new Cuban friends within minutes of sitting down to a drink in the secluded patio of the Hotel Sevilla.

All tourists to Cuba (especially those who speak Spanish) will find themselves at some time being asked for stuff - spare soaps, toiletries, clothes, makeup. Everything except food is in very short supply in Cuba and therefore sells for often outrageous prices on the black market or in dollar-only shops. Actually, even food is in short supply - anything but bread, rice and beans. The minimum salary - which most people earn - is equivalent to 225 dollars per month (paid in Moneda National, not actual Cuban Convertible Pesos -CUCs). Tourists are the only route whereby Cubans can earn precious CUCs - known as dollars, to which they are equivalent.

A very Spanish-looking woman started talking to my daughter, asking her in Spanish if she was someone whom the woman had been told to meet. Well, it was probably a ruse to start talking to us. But I was in the market to meet Cubans - we had brought plenty of spare toiletries and clothes to exchange for company and tales of life in Cuba. So we started up a conversation.

The woman, Alicia (not her real name - I'm not going to use real names for any Cuba,s cos they can get into trouble for talking to tourists), was nervous about approaching us. The ubiquitous hotel security guards who try to stop ordinary Cubans entering hotels and talking to tourists had their beady eyes on her. She looked Spanish, rather than Afro-Cuban, so didn't attract immediate attention. But she was still anxious, so we invited her to sit down with us for a drink. She accepted readily and then brought in her much more Cuban-looking boyfriend, Giovannis. They turned out to be from the eastern part of the island - Guantanamo and had relatives in Santiago de Cuba. Lucky for us -we're in the market for making friends in the Oriente, where we'll be in a few days.

Was Alicia a hustler - albeit a more sophisticated one? She is a primary school teacher, on medical leave in Havana where she's having some treatment. Yes, the wonderful health system of which Cuba boasts requires people to cross the island (a 18 hour bus trip) for basic treatments, after you've endured horrendous queues at the consultants office. 'There is hardly any tourism in Guantamano province', she told us, 'so I'm using the time in Havana to try to pick up some spare stuff from tourists...whatever you have left over.'

I got on rather well with Alicia - a well-read woman who quietly despaired to me about the trials of life in Cuba. We invited her and her partner to join us for a few days, going to the beach, around Havana, dancing at the world-famous salsa dance hall, Casa de La Musica.

'I'm rubbish at dancing casino,' Alicia admitted, shattering the illusion that all Cubans can dance salsa (casino is the Cuban term for partner-salsa). 'I prefer reggaeton. But Giovannis can do it really well.'

Giovannis and I danced to the small Cuban-jazz band (Akana.com) who entertained us in the patio. He dances like someone from the Oriente (east end of Cuba) - small movements, more ballroom-style than the funkier Habaneros.

Behind the archways, the young sound technician danced alone, giving my teenage daughter the eye - any chance of a dance? Daughter gave her sleepy disinterested look. So I danced with him. Only eighteen but he had the confidence to stop me mid-dance and correct my style. 'Loosen up', he said. That's how you have to be to follow Habaneros in casino. Everything is shaking.

Oh-oh, La Habana!

So this is the city they sing about in all those salsa songs which cry out - 'Oh-oh, La Habana'.

We're on the sixth floor of the Hotel Sevilla with a view towards the sea and the Malecon, with the National School of Ballet next door. In the morning we can hear Chopin tunes being bashed out on a piano as the students are put through the paces. It's the only time of the day you don't hear the sound of salsa, rumba, conga or son.

Being here is something like living out a fantasy of being in Cuba. Here's me looking out over the skyline of Havana - the same skyline that appears at the beginning of the Carol Reid film of 'Our Man in Havana'. Here's me leaning out of a window and watching a salsa disco on the rooftop of a lower building. And now here we are walking along the Malecon being serenaded/ripped off by some charming old soneros who incorporate our names into an old song...here we are sipping mojitos in La Bodeguito del Medio, where Hemingway enjoyed his afternoon tipple (after the morning's daiquiri in La Floridita)...singing along to 'Son De La Loma' as we're serenaded over fish, beans and rice.

As Larry David might say, prett-eh, prett-eh, pretty good. After all, how often do you get to live out your fantasies?