Las Papas y El Papa

What an interesting week in Havana. Firstly potatoes are officially in season! It is pretty great, I can now get all the French fries (papas fritas) that I want, and I have also been enjoying mashed potatoes at dinner. I have also become acutely aware of the difference between the word LA papa and EL Papa, the first being potato and the second being the Pope. As I’m sure you have all been made aware by the press the Pope just made his tour through Cuba. It seemed to be a really crazy week of lead up to the pope’s arrival here in Havana as well as the day he was here must have been the strangest day in Havana by far. It is interesting to have seen a bit of what the NY Times has had to say about the Pope and what the official newspaper (the Granma) here has had to say. For example there was a group of protestors that were arrested out of a church a few days before the Pope came to Cuba. The NY Times had an article about the arrest… and the Granma had had an article with the letter written by the church requesting the removal of the protestors…. For sure the police have been on extra alert, there has been way more police on duty, it seems they wanted to prevent any unwanted problems. The actual day of the Pope was very strange, The entire city was basically shut-down; the busses only ran in the early morning and the late evening, most taxis weren’t operating, almost all stores besides cafeterias were closed. The Mass was supposed to start at 9 and under the impression that everyone in the west side of Cuba was going to be there. My roommate and I headed out from our house at 6:30 am,to make the 10 to 15 minute walk to Plaza de la Revolución, we were in a standing section near the middle section of the plaza, and waited for close to 2 hours for the Pope to arrive. However, this was probably the most interesting part because I was able to talk to some people and observe the crowd that had assembled, something that was way more interesting to me than the actual Mass. When the Pope arrived we got to see him drive around in his ludicrous Pope-mobile
(basically a glass box that he sits in on top of a Mercedes.  Finally the Mass started and we got to hear an old germen man (he is german right?) speak Spanish (surprisingly well) – sorry if that sentence was too sacrilegious. To be honest I didn’t get much of his Mass, it was very hot by this time and very hard to pay attention. My roommate and I left about halfway through. So impressions…. First of all, there were not nearly many people there as I had originally thought that there was going to be, there was still a lot of people but it wasn’t even close to completely filling the Plaza and I figured that it would be bursting at its seems. Furthermore, after the mass started a large group of people left, not just us. It seemed like a lot of people came (like me) to say they were there but didn’t really care to hear the actual Mass. It seems like a testament to how much less religious Cuba is in comparison to other Latin American countries. Second,  I found the juxtaposition of the pope and the plaza that he was in to be really striking. The Plaza de la revolucion is comprised of a giant plaza at one side there is a giant obelisk like structure that you can go to the top of, it is the highest point in Havana, under that is a giant statue of Jose Marti, who is the most beloved figure of the first Cuban revolution and an academic whose writings are quoted constantly; on the other end of the plaza are giant cold-war era buildings with giant pictures on them, one a giant representation of the famous Che picture with the often quoted phrase, Hasta la victoria siempre (until victory always), and on another building a giant picture of Camilo Cienfuegos (another comrade of Che and the Castros). It was just a really strange feeling to be in this plaza that celebrates the revolution so strongly and then the pope in front of it all…. It seemed to be like complete opposites mixed together almost haphazardly.Well anyways, that is more or less my experiences of the pope in Cuba. Until next post.

March already....

I’m very sorry about the long time since I’ve posted, there is a decent amount to tell here though now. Over the last few weeks I have had a really terrible cold, so for about a week I was pretty out of commission, so I hadn’t really done anything of interest during that time. Luckily Francisco, the owner of the house that I’m staying in was very helpful and gave me lots of advice for how to get better. One piece of advice that I followed and, actually I think it worked pretty well, was to drink a concoction made of oranges from his orange tree (these are sour cooking oranges, not oranges for eating), a splash of water, and a spoonful of sugar. It worked like magic on curing a pretty nasty sour throat. I still have a bit of a cough but I’m feeling much better now, I think the Havana air is not doing anything for my cough (the downside to being in a city that still runs cars from the `50s). Luckily I was able to get out of the city for the weekend. This last weekend we all took a bus down to a rural town called Viñales. It is a really beautiful area of Cuba with an indescribable landscape (although because I can’t post pictures, I will try). Mostly it is farmland, Tobacco mostly, although many of the other foods we eat here we were able to see growing there. There was also incredible mountains that looked like nothing I had ever seen, they are not very tall (for a mountain that is) and they are super steep, like almost vertical, and in places the top is actually farther out than the base. They would be a rock-climbers dream.  The tops of the mountains are rounded so they just appear to be hills raised on super steep walls…. I’m doing my best here to describe it but not that successfully…. I’d suggest just googleing Viñales, Cuba to see some pics of the landscape. Another really gorgeous part of the place was the color of the ground; some patches were bright earthy red, others almost orange, and some yellow. On the first day that I was there I went with a small group with a guide to a cave that was a good 3-hour hike out of town. On our hike the guide taught us a lot about the environment there and we made a few pit-stops at interesting places. The first was at a tobacco farm, where the farmer taught us how they grow tobacco, dry tobacco and finally how to roll the leaves into a cigar. After the farm and almost at the caves, we stopped at another guys farm for refreshments, he gave us fresh pineapple slices, a full coconut, and a glass of freshly squeezed sugar cane juice (which was incredible! And we got to help squeeze the sugar cane in the machine). Everything was super good, and in the end the guy only asked us to pay what we thought was fair, which I thought was very nice, although I imagine that a general tourist would give way more than necessary, especially with the different currencies. After this guys farm we went to the cave, it was super incredible, we had to pay a guy to show us into the cave, which was pitch black dark without his light. Once inside the cave we were able to swim in a large pool. The water was freaking freezing though. We explored a bit deeper into the caves and then turned around and went home for the evening. The night-life of Viñales was pretty interesting, it all revolves around a single plaza, but basically same as any small town. The next day I went horseback riding around the country side with another small group it was really amazing and I feel like I got to see a whole different side of Cuba. Anyways that is in a nutshell my trip to Viñales, it was really a great weekend, but it has made me very tired for this week. Well ‘til next post,