6/16 - Woke up excited and energized after last night. It was really fun and totally kind of them to throw that party for us. It’s times like that when the frustrations about how bad and broken everything is here just wash way. The people's kindness and happiness convince you that everything is ok and that things aren't as bad as they seem. Good night. Other good thing? Two more days until I get to see V again! Yay! I woke up early this morning - around six for some reason - so I got up and went for a run on the beach and then watched the sunrise while swimming in the ocean. Not a bad way to start the day, I must admit.

Today we're off to Cienfuegos and I must bid adieu to our all-inclusive hotel where everything's included, but most of it is broken. (Yesterday we had two long power outages, no cable, and water that was still not working. (It was off for a day and a half, came on for twenty minutes so I could shower by eyedropper (seriously -- NO pressure), and then promptly went off again for the rest of the time. paradisical resort, indeed. (Although I will miss the giant cage of lovebirds sitting outside my room. it's about fifteen to twenty feet high, ten feet across, and has fifty or so lovebirds in it, all chirping away in a series of duets. it's quite nice.))

So after a short bus ride we arrive in Cienfuegos, Cuba's second smallest province and one of the original seven cities built. It was founded by the French, surprisingly, and later by Americans from Louisiana. (There’s a definite New Orleans feel to things on the Paseo del Prado, their main street.) The city is rather modern (for Cuba) or normal, comparatively, to cities we know in the US -- shops on a ped mall, nice town square, a bustle of activity, etc. It's a big port town (or was) and was one of the country's biggest exporters of sugar when that was booming. We start our quick tour in Marti Square, a nice plaza with the old city hall (a grand, red-domed building), the town's famous theater and its cathedral (rundown, inside, but pretty. Better exterior.), and then bop along the Paseo del Prado to meander a bit.

I take this opportunity to pop into an electronics store to price check and see how effed up things are. First, they are only selling three or four things -- stereos, TVs, fans, fridges, and laundry machines (ok, five.) Second, the prices on these items will AMAZE. Price range for the stereos was from $200 to $670 with the great majority falling around $450-500. (To illustrate, there was only one at $200 but there were six or seven between $450 and $500.) TVs -- 24/5 inchers, approximately, were $600-1300 and 18-inchers cost $300. Fans -- oscillating floor fans -- cost anywhere from $30-70. For a FAN! Crazy, huh?

Next we go grab a quick lunch at the town's yacht club before heading off to Giron. (Am I on the right trip? all-inclusive resorts, lunches at yacht clubs? I feel like I’ve been mistaken for a middle-aged tycoon and not the dirt-poor grad student I actually am.) The club was nice, but apparently it was only for the boats of native Cubans. How did this rule manifest itself visually? There were six boats in the entire club. Booming!

Giron is on the edge of the planet and you can feel the years of the calendar ticking backwards as you drive there as all modernity slips slowly away until you're left at its basest, most rudimentary levels in the swamplands of the bay. The roads are empty of the usual bikers and hitchhikers, trees and plants tower unkempt and overgrown along the roadside, houses appear only occasionally. It’s as if you're delving back into the country's natural pre-civilization state and left with only rare occurrences of population. It’s interesting to see.

We finally arrive at the hotel and are excited to do some snorkeling -- one of the island's best reefs is supposed to be located nearby -- but quickly find out that -- of course -- it is closed for the day. ("The guy who runs it didn't come in today." and why would he? it IS Wednesday, after all. Probably wanted to get a jump on his weekend. RRR...) Instance #514 of things being closed for stupid (or no) reasons on this damned island. (I TOLD you no one works in this country. It's not as though they're lazy (though that's got to be part), it's just that it doesn't matter if they work or not. The state will continue to employ them, so what does it matter? Socialismo, yeah!) I try to go to the beach, but it starts pouring as I walk down there and it has a scenic view of this crumbling sea wall. I try to play pool and they want to charge me $4 an hour. I try to get a drink and she tries to charge me three. So apparently we've moved from an all-inclusive resort where everything that's included is non-functioning to one where nothing is actually included. Super.

We finally find the bar where drinks ARE included -- it's buried in the back, natch -- and sit there getting wasted in the rain until dinner. (Viva Cubatas fuerte!) The question we all have is this -- why come to Giron? The answer -- I have NO idea. It is a divebomb of a town with NOTHING to do and I have absolutely no idea what people who live here to prevent themselves from braining each other with coconuts. Maybe they count the millions of tiny crabs that cover the sidewalks (of the floors of your room, if you're lucky) like swarms of invading soldiers. Or fuck each other until they’re bodies are desiccated prunes. I don't know.

Eventually we get dinner and buy some boxes of cigars from Dodgy Dan, this cat that was riding around the grounds on his bicycle (with a basket and a bell) trying to hawk puros to the tourists. (We were actually the among the few tourists here -- the rest of the cabins were populated by Cubans granted housing by the state. Shoutout to the rest of the gringos keeping it real in the Cuban PJ's!) We hold a lengthy negotiation with him and get to smoke several of the cigars to verify their authenticity, eventually buying four boxes between the five of us, two Cohibas and two Montes. 100 cigars for a little over a dollar a piece? Not bad!

After this the Cuban Five continues our Cubata binge and watch the lightning spark in the blackened sky for a bit before turning in in a series of frustrated piles. I look forward to seeing the Bay of Pigs tomorrow if for no other reason than it means we're leaving this god-forsaken town (and its giant, relentless mosquitoes) in our rearview mirror. Night, all.

6/17 - Buenos! How are you this morning? I’m virtually certain it's better than me, or we're in trouble. The bad night continued into a bad morning as we had a somewhat disastrous departure -- I was up all night tossing and turning, getting eaten by mosquitoes, so I woke up tired and covered in itchy bitemarks, our toilet had no seat (yay, Cuba!) and so I had to shit with my ass cheeks hovering on the rim, and we left 45 minutes late because the people in our group couldn’t get their heads out of their asses and get ready on time. (Amazingly, though, my roommate was not one of the causes for delay this time.)

We FINALLY get to leave and head to the museum of the Bay of Pigs, and it's tiny, but incredibly interesting -- all about the CIA's training of 1500 Cuban exiles (guys who fled when Castro took over), the invasion on the beach (the beautiful one I was swimming on yesterday), and their ultimate demise once air support was called off. (This had to be done since an overt display like that would have led us into a direct confrontation with the Soviets. Thus the mission was a total disaster and a HUGE black eye for Kennedy and his boys.) You look at the pictures and the old weapons/maps and are amazed at how bungled an effort it was, at how WAY off our intelligence was with its expectation of popular support for the invasion (Iraq, anyone?), and at how we BARELY dodged going to war with the Soviets over this place, only to REALLY come close a couple of months later with the missile crisis.

After this it's off to Guama and a croc farm, a tiny tourist trap in the middle of the cienaga, the Caribbean’s largest wetland. (Sorry if I’m really cranky-sounding or bitchy these past two days, but Giron really is just a shithole place that you would never visit if not for the museum and the historical significance of the beach. It makes you mad at our government -- not so much for botching the invasion so badly and failing to topple Castro (though that's undoubtedly part of it), but it's more for making Giron an obligatory stop for Americans when they come to Cuba. Talk about the high price of ineptitude. Everyone's fuses are short, people are tired, itchy, and irritable, and everyone's ready to go home, or at least to get the fuck out of Giron. But I do apologize for my tone -- it's probably not that much fun to read. I’ll find my tranquilo-side soon. Say Saturday night around 11? :)

Having been to alligator farms in St. Augustine, FL since I was a kid, this version is rather lame, but I get to hold a couple of crocs (a 4-year old and a baby) and get a good meal out of it. (Some good pics, too. and the pollo asado here is the best I’ve had. Croc's not bad, either. Saves the day...) After this it's back to Havana (yay!), which means I only have ONE MORE DAY where I wake up knowing I’m not going to see V. WOOHOO!!! (Oh, boy. I cannot wait!) We’ve still got some daylight left to burn when we get back, so I head off to the last thing I want to see in Havana, the Necropolis Cristobal Colon. This cemetery is enormous -- it holds one to two million people, depending on who you believe (the guidebook for the former, the guide himself for the latter.) -- and is chock full of gorgeous white marble sculptures. There are ex-presidents here, ex-revolutionaries, and regular Cubans all mixed in with one another.

High points are the graves of the former President Cespedes with its BEAUTIFUL iron door with the heart in the middle, the grave of La Milagra, a pregnant mother who died during childbirth and was found to be holding her baby in her arms when the body was exhumed years later (the grave is COVERED with flowers and is a site of pilgrimage for the religious), and the domino grave, a tomb whose cap is a double-three domino since that was what the owner was holding back to win a seven million peso game of dominoes, finding himself killed shortly thereafter for cheating.

The other interesting part of the trip is the giant firepit and the rows of cajitas. First, the pit. We’re walking along and I smell burning wood. Strange in a cemetery, I think, and then see why. As we turn the corner there's this giant crater filled with burning, smoldering coffins that have been exhumed for lack of payment. It’s bar none the creepiest thing I’ve seen (it still wigs me out weeks later as I’m typing this up) and then it gets worse. I ask, well if this is just the coffins, what happens to the bodies? The guide then points to the iron-plated floor we're standing on next to the pit and says, "Mira." He then lifts the floor and shows me the sea of exhumed skeletons all mixed together lying just beneath our feet. HOLY SHIT. This is some sick shit.

I then point to these plain concrete buildings filled with row after row, twenty feet high, of these little concrete boxes. "Ah, the cajitas," he says. As we get closer I see each box has a name on it and realize, well, this is what happens if you can't afford a large grave anymore. Sure enough, if you get booted from the yard, you can still make payments to keep your loved one separate in this tiny box, humble and just a notch above being stuck in a shoebox, but well marked and still separate from other people's remains. If you don't pay, you have one year before your last, last chance, which is the two to three months before you get tossed in the pit. And then as if I don't believe him, the guide opens one of the cajitas and shows me the skeleton. HOLY SHIT! This is why I want to be cremated -- I don't want to become some scarring tourist attraction for gringos, even if they're of my caliber. Yikes.

Later, it's off to dinner at Dona Caramela near La Cabana, the big fortress next to El Morro, for the best dinner I’ve had in Cuba. I get crab in tomato sauce and the whole table gets plates of roasted eggplant, malanga in garlic, and black beans and rice, all three of which are the most amazing things I’ve had since being on the island. Honestly. Sounds like hyperbole, but I eat myself to near sickness alternating between the three -- I cannot help myself. They’re that good. And then I try the flan. This might actually be the best I’ve EVER had (sorry, Mom Vron...:( ) and I must force myself to stop eating, otherwise I will get sick. We head back to the hotel, fat and happy and ready to sleep. Alright, only one more time do I have to do this knowing I won't see V sometime when I wake up. Adios…