More Cuba Nostalgia

I should commit to this blog for the record.

 Our our first trip was 1990 or 91 and we went for two weeks at the Sol Palmeras in Veradero (lovely bungalows), arriving just a couple of days after a speedboat from Miami when down the beach at Veradero firing a .5inch machine gun at hotel lights.  We thought the searchlights dancing on the waves off the beach a light show until we chatted with the armed women soldiers operating them.

Wish I could find the photo I took of the monument to hotel workers killed by Los Gusanos over the years.  The days of film…I lost a lot of fine snaps.  It was to the right (east) of the main entrance to the old (1950's classic) Hotel Internacional.  Kinda hidden behind some bushes as though it was wanted to honour the dead workers but not wanted to scare the tourists.

Back then a regular event, along with planes dropping pig bait containing viruses that killed the animals and made the meat unsafe to eat, small bombs dropped on farms and bigger bombs in airports.

Also, same trip, are my memories of me exercising my non-existent Spanish, which I started studying mebbe a week before we left, and trying to get us into the CTC (union) offices for a visit.  Cabbie argued with me, seemed to say it was being reno’d and so was closed.   

One of our party thought the CTC politically off-limits and probably guarded by armed police, that this was just his excuse for not taking us there.   

Turns out I had been asking to be taken to the aquarium, which was indeed being reno’d.  LMAO.  We went to a bar instead and spent the rest of the day having a drink everywhere Hemingway ever had a drink.  Which, as it turns out, was a lot of places.

 

Bar-generated Cuba Nostalgia

This bit of nostalgia comes courtesy of Geri Sheedy.  We're just back from a couple of weeks at the Melia Cayo Coco and were telling folks in bars etc. what Cayo Coco was like back in the early 1990's.  Hard to believe it but there was for a time just the one hotel, The Colonial, on the whole island.  No airport either, but a long interesting drive from Ciego de Avila's airport out over the causeway.

Some of you may have heard this one. Apologies but it is a fun little anecdote. 

 In 1993 we were down the beach at the only resort on Cayo Coco at the time. 

On Wednesday a navy patrol boat anchored off the beach about noon. Much chat amongst the tourists. Most of it quite silly or just downright stupid. They are going to arrest people or just line folks up and shoot them, that sort of thing. Goofy at best.  The same type of tourist in Cuba who thinks they can't use their US credit cards because the Cuban government has banned them, that all the Blockade is the result of Cuban policies not USian.  Not that they think about such things much at all.  They're just off on a cheap holiday with lots of beer.

Around sunset the crew got off the ship and motored ashore in a dinghy. 

More consternation amongst the guests. 

Wednesdays were Beach BBQ Party nights at the resort. Crew danced, ate, drank (rather enthusiastically) and worked hard at flirting with the younger women guests. 

Thursday morning the ship was gone. 

Next Wednesday...

My guess is that the Cayo Coco posting was rather popular amongst Cuban sailors. :-)

It's the sort of informal fun thing that is unimaginable these days. Like going for a guided tour of the back end of the resort you're staying at or staff using your room for a party and bringing a case of tequila. You

PS  It seems that this post, shared in the Melia Cayo Coco guests-run FB group, seems to have gotten me blocked. Ahhhh, social media. :-)

Musings on Holiday Thieves

Vacation theft tactics come in waves, go in and out of fashion I think, and, of course, it is always the staff that get blamed and the holidaymakers who are either responsible or, if the victim, never think to apologize for their accusations.

Every few years it seems the arrival bus scam gets popular and this seems to be one of those years. Opportunistic: You find yourself on the airport bus on the way to your hotel.

 

When the bus driver and guide are (deliberately ) distracted you grab a random suitcase off the bus, take it to your room or, get a bellhop to do that, keep what you want and dump the rest in some bushes. 

 

Bar convo with other guests about their travel/arrival days...  Here this year, the bus finished its run, went back, guide and driver talked to other resort bellhops with a description of the missing bag (I take photos to feed my stream of consciousness fetish but now I have a real reason). The thieves in this case were caught in their room with the bag open and its owners right behind the security folks and the bellhop who remembered the bag and where he had taken it. I would buy a ticket to that. 

 

That story started a discussion and someone else had one from a few years ago. Clogged airport and long lines at incoming security. You get your stuff after it comes through the scanner, mill around a bit and then go to the scanner and grab a likely-looking bag as it comes out of the machine and off you go. Empty it and dump all but the cash, which most people carry in purses or bags. Grabbing wallets too obvious apparently. 

 

Then came security cameras. But a third discussant said last year someone grabbed her bag, she went after them, made a fuss got it back. Best bit: The thief later showed up at her resort claiming it was an accident.

 

We contributed lots of memories of people raising a loud stink about staff stealing jewellery etc and then not saying a word when it is found under their socks in a drawer or some such thing. Mildly embarrassed when asked why they were wearing the ring or whatever again a day later. 

 

Only personal story we could contribute was re. the time a plane load of Brits arrived and, true story, their plane had the luggage meant for another and it had theirs. Airline of course wouldn't let them raid the luggage on their plane. 

 

They stripped the hotel shop of every item of clothing. Also the one next door. But it was an isolated resort halfway between Veradero and Havana so that was it. 

 

Dumb or drunk or both they then started stealing anything any of the other guests had left on their patio furniture to dry. Then wore those clothes in public the next day. 

 

That was just about the most entertaining day I have ever had in Cuba. Much as I, surprisingly, love the floor show at the Tropicana, that was better.

The Four Eras of Reading Whilst on Holiday in Cuba:

1.  1990-2010. Read a lot of paper books, one, sometimes two novels a day, swapping what we brought with what was in the hotel's large library. English Granma widely available. Read a bit of French and tried out Spanish from the library offerings. Even when we coordinated our book selections for a trip we often had books comprising a third of our luggage.   Complete break from Canadian News's other than RCI if we remembered to bring the portable shortwave receiver. Which we mostly did (forget i mean). Slow internet cafes at hotels pricy. 

2.  2011-2020.  Kindle.  In early part of this era still reading some Cuban stuff but availability fades.  Still at least looking over the hotel library for interesting stuff. Consumption rate steady though the format now 90+% digital. Slow internet connections mean home news and weather checks are a weekly event. Wifi appears but have to pay for and limited coverage. Typically you have to sit in the lobby to get a connection. Spend as much time dealing with dropped connections as online. 

3.  2021-2025.  With news and magazine sites accessible via fast internet connections reading long-form fiction and non- drops off steeply.  Able to keep up with news from home so relaxing effect of holiday declines sharply and nearly disappears. Facebook usage as at home underlines this. 

4.  2026-????.  Reading patterns will be identical to those in play at home. VR will mean living in the same imaginary world as when at home only difference being you can tan while playing.  Desire to holiday in Cuba will end when someone invents a safe tanning sun lamp.

Do the World and Yourself a Favour - Not Just Tourists

If you're headed south this year please consider the following.

With tourism now still well below pre-pandemic levels, countries dependent on the industry are feeling the pinch. Now more than ever is the time to consider taking a suitcase of urgently needed medical supplies with you on your trip.

 

Not Just Tourists has chapters across Canada and will provide you with a FREE suitcase full of medical supplies and equipment that it has selected because they have either been requested by healthcare workers at your destination or because they are known to be in short supply.

 

They also provide the paperwork needed for customs and a contact to whom you can transfer the suitcase(s).

 

They can provide smaller bags like knapsacks if that's your preference.

 

My partner and I are longtime (since 1990) travellers to Cuba and for many years went 3 times a year. Since we discovered NJT we have been taking bags with us, usually two per trip. Always a smooth experience and a great feeling.

 

And, selfishly, a great tourist experience visiting hospitals and clinics, meeting Cuban healthcare workers and seeing the look on their face when they open a bag and see a gizmo whose use you can't even imagine but which is going to make a lot of lives better and longer.

 

NJT has contacts across the Caribbean, in Mexico and Central America, South America, the Philippines and parts of Africa.

 

If you are travelling to a resort you can often simply transfer the bag(s) you brought with you to the on-site medical staff. But I prefer to pay for a cab, if needed, and use the money I might have otherwise spent on a snorkelling trip or similar and visit a hospital or clinic.

 

If you're staying in a Cuban casa particular/hostal or similar elsewhere, you're likely within walking distance of a hospital or clinic, making it even easier and cheaper to drop a bag or two.

 

Give it a try. And consider treating yourself to a seat upgrade and get early boarding, a glass of fizzy wine, some less terrible food and a bigger luggage allowance so that you can fit in another NJT bag. LOL

 

https://njt.net/

Cuba Post-COVID 19

Last year, for Christmas 2023, we returned to Cuba for the first time since our time in Caibarien and Remedios in early 2020.  We had such a good time we returned to the Melia Cayo Coco again for Christmas 2024.

Photos of  2023 HERE and of 2024 HERE.  And for comparison purposes, our last pre-COVID stay in Caibarien HERE.

In 2023 we enjoyed ourselves but had chosen to return to resorts, as opposed to casa particulars and hostals, for mobility and other health reasons.  

But as a result of these last couple of trips we're re-thinking our travel enthusiasms.  Life changes and all that messy stuff.  Last year we were enjoying our first mid-winter break in three years while in the past, for 30+ years, we went two or three times each winter.  Typically once to a casa particular, a Cuban bed and breakfast, and twice to a resort to decompress from work by lying down and reading for two weeks before getting up and going home.  So I guess we were just so pleased to be there and enjoying the weather that we forgot all about how tired we were of resort holidays.

This year we kinda returned to where we were when we swore-off resorts and moved to more (very mildly and just in comparison to resorts) adventurous travel in Cuba.  We were bored less than a week in and even a day spent delivering some surgical equipment to the hospital in Moron didn't help, much as we enjoyed time in a red 1952 Ford Crown Victoria convertible.

Photos of the drop are HERE .  How and why we came to have two suitcases full of medical stuff only healthcare workers usually have access to can be found in my post re. Not Just Tourists which is HERE.

The resort, both trips, was fine, some wiggy shortages like one set of salt and pepper shakers set for the entire poolside snack bar, but the fries were good so who cares?  LOL

Portugal is definitely on for April, but that's less travel than a cottage experience really.

We are exploring, or will do if I get my shit together, a reunion trip to Florence with friends we shared an apartment with fifteen years ago.  Might work better for us.

But we're also trying to get the grand-kids interested in some travel and one of the possible enticements is a subsidized trip to the Cayo Coco hotel we loved for a decade starting in 1993 when it opened as the first resort on CC, so who knows.  But if that does go ahead it may just be our last trip to Cuba, hard as that is to believe.  

 

Bit of a shock to the system just thinking about it really.

Matewan Massacre Re-enactment 2024

Attending the Massacre re-enactment has been on my bucket list for a few years.  Since retiring I have managed a World Science Fiction Convention (Dubblin 2019) and the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival (2022).  Up next are the Mother Jones Festival in Cork (2025?) and the Cumberland BC Miners Festival, especially Ginger Goodwin Day (2026?).

 

Turns out it really isn't, thankfully, a re-enactment. It's a play with lots of segments (soliloquies???) in which a character addresses the audience and provides explication of what's going on or background to the character or events. Written, directed and organized by a local woman with an interest in the area's history.  Miss Donna is how she is referred-to.

 

Hugely enjoyable and very well-done (writing and performance), my buddy, a retired union in-house solicitor, and I went to both shows. The second show a bit of a disappointment only because it lost a scene and some other bits as the event before it ran long. 

 

Mebbe 110 in the bleachers for the first show and 200 the second.

 

Sociologically interesting too. The mix of proud Hillbilly culture, fundie Christianity, and, I have to say it, cringy USian patriotism with a dollop of Trumpism all rolled-up in a ball with a very powerful local union culture was very, very interesting to experience.

 

But as Gavin, my travelling buddy has noted, there wasn't a lot, other than two of the soliloquies, if that's what they are, in the play and one display re. a relatively recent West Virginia teachers strike in the Mine Wars Museum, connecting the historic struggles by local unions with what's happening in the present.

There also wasn't a big UMWA presence at the re-enactment.  Mebbe twenty retirees, one of whom stood and shouted "God bless the United Mine Workers of America" when the play ended.

 

The Mine Wars Museum small but lovely and growing. Great to see a union making a commitment like that to its history.  Plus it gets funding from foundations etc. for things like oral history projects and a 'Black Music of the Hollers' project that is currently under way.

 

The town (village really, pop. 394) interesting in a bunch of ways.

 

Altogether I would highly recommend all of it save for the 11 hours drive getting there and the 13 hours back.

 

Here's a few stills and some video samples of the play:

https://www.flickr.com/.../dbla.../albums/72177720317158684/

 

Here's my entire photoset, categorized in albums but not yet really edited:

https://www.flickr.com/.../collections/72157722809936707/

 

Random thoughts and musings:

 

1.    Guns, guns, guns.  58% of the population of the state of West Virginia owns a firearm.  58% of the entire population, including children.  Pay $75 and you get a permit to carry a weapon in public, openly or hidden.

2.  Town of 394 has two police cars and no fire service.

3.  Great ribs at a BBQ place across the street from where stayed.  They have their own smoker.  But can't serve booze as legislation prohibits the sale of alcohol next to a church, which the restaurant is.  

4.    Lots of plastic. Cups, straws etc. that are banned here.  And I can't remember the last time I saw styrofoam cups but they were everywhere.

5.    Little tourism related to the Museum and the re-enactment.  Lots of people in big expensive ATVs racing along the trails in the area.  Not even much for the Hatfield-McCoy feud stuff.  But since coal mining has slowed tourism is the one reason the town still exists, such as  it is (two streets).

6.    Lots of far-right politics of various kinds in evidence.  From signs close to declaring Trump the Messiah to t-shirt and ball cap slogans.

 

7.    Everything starts and ends with a Christian prayer.

 

8.    Our new friend, Lester, wasn't drinking anything but water but sat with us on the porch while we killed a few beers.  The more we drank the drunker he got.  A self-described 'liberal' (in the USian sense), he owns five rifles and four handguns and says he is the only person we me in Matewan who won't be voting for Trump this year.

 

9.    I got a good chunk of the cast of the play to stand behind the Trade Union Football and Alcohol Committee flag that I brought (TUFAC folks collect such photos).  The star and best actor, save for Miss Donna, who played the police chief, refused as he will not stand behind a red star.

 

10.     The play doesn't take place where the actual events did.  That's a two minutes walk away.

 

11.    After several attempts at flagging down a server one stopped to ask if we had been served.  We said no. She said "OK then." And walked off.  LOL

 

12.  The music night at the UMWA Community Hall was great and deserved a much bigger crowd.  Guess all the ATV riders were in the town's one bar or working on their buggies.

 

13.    A nice thing about staying in a small town like this is that you can use your hotel's wifi connection just about everywhere. LOL

14.    The Matewan Massacre was part of the lead-up to the Battle of Blair Mountain.  More HERE.

 

15.    Had a bit of a union nerd geek-fest.  Museum's gift shop really needs to be a LOT bigger.  :-)  I even bought a camo Museum hat and tee.

 

16.    Despite their enthusiasm for Jesus these people are godless. No brown sauce and no pickled onions in both restaurants and shops.

 

17.    Folks astoundingly friendly. Buying stamps came with a great 5 minute chat with the village postmaster.

 

18.    The Matewan Historic House is highly recommended if you need a place to stay whilst in Matewan.  Dave and Helen own it.  He is descended from the Police Chief who sided with the miners and was later assassinated on a courthouse's steps, by the mercenaries hired by the coal mine owners.  With impunity I should add.

 

19.    The only unpleasant moment was when the US border guard listened to where we were going and why and then lowered the barriers on us and closed his door to consult with someone by phone. Bit tense.  Otherwise the long drives there and back a great chance for Gavin and I to catch-up on things.

20.    Love the accent there. Regulars in restaurants updating staff on how their kids are doing etc. Lovely, friendly people, UMWA supporters each and every one, and likely all Trump voters.

 

21.    Radio snips from the journey here. Church guy explaining how Biden has forced the banks to release all transactions to the FBI that have the key words "Holy bible" in them. So send cash. LMAO.  Creative Concrete advert:"The lord has blessed us with beautiful weather so it's time to repave your driveway".   

Advert from a uni that goes on and on about how conservative it is.  Talk show panel which reaches agreement that (a) the feminists are taking over the republican party and (b) vaccinations can result in positive drugs tests causing the loss of employment and of driver's licence.  Advert for the heapest colorectal screening clinic in northern Ohio followed by one from a lawyer who specializes in malpractice lawsuits.  Way more loonie political talk shows than music all the way down there.  On the way back we listened to pods.

 

22.    Server when I asked about the Matewan Massacre Burger: "Darlin', dont matter what side yer people wur on in the Massacre or whether you are a Hatfield or a McCoy, we're all on the side of tourism now." [She laughs]

 

23.    Condom dispenser in wash warns only for disease prevention and not birth control, reminds us all that abstinence before marriage and monogamy afterwards is the only sure way to proven the spread of disease.

 

24.    "Do you follow Jesus this close?" a popular bumper sticker. 

Lots of billboards advising us that 'beyond a reasonable doubt' he lives.