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Dust, caused by the construction of a new hotel, and the daily fumes from the nearby petroleum refinery hung heavily in the air. Old Havana was its usual mix of camera-toting tourists, camera-friendly classic cars and street hustlers. He clapped eyes on me and came bounding over.
"Hey, Fren...", the familiar Cuban street greeting, "You wanna buy cigar. Montecristo number four. Very good price?"
"No, gracias. No fumo"
"Ah, you speak Spanish" thus followed a familiar Cuban street scene, "Aleman? Italiano? Frances?" "No, Ingles" "Ah, Ingles, very good. You wanna buy rum?"
"No gracias, no tomo"
"Hablas Español, pero no fumas y no tomas - Entonces, eres practicamente Cubano!" (You don’t drink or smoke - then you are practically Cuban!) This was, of course, a joke. I don’t look Cuban. I dislike cigars and, although I do love rum, I perform the salsa about as adroitly as Glenn Hoddle handles a press conference. My Spanish is passable, although I mistakenly pronounced the letter ‘s?which marked me out as definitely non-Cuban. Furthermore, I don’t have a ‘brother?who works in a cigar factory, which seemed to be the acid test of non-Cuban origin.
I was also not in the best of moods. For two days we had tried to rent a car to drive out to the tobacco-growing, agricultural region of Viñales. It was New Year’s Eve and every rent-a-car office was harassed and devoid of rental cars. Some operators even adopted the "You must be joking!" smugness of attitude that often prevails when bureaucracy confronts reason and reason comes out the sore loser. "Next year, we have more cars", explained the least confrontational operator, "We are importing many from Korea". I couldn’t deduce whether ‘next year?was just an ironic reference, or whether a purchase order had actually been placed and a shipment of spanking new motors would arrive in Havana for the end-of-millennium celebrations. It mattered not.
Then, I made a mistake. My newly found Cuban hustler friend had been engaged in conversation and, having offered to sell me, for one dollar, the ubiquitous 3 peso coin with Che Guevara’s head on it (actually worth 15 cents), wasn’t going to leave me alone. "I am having trouble", I erred, "I want to rent a car to go to Viñales, but there are none". His eyes rolled and his mental cash register probably opened and closed a number of times. He stood, mouth agape, before seizing the moment, "Wait here" he said "I will bring my uncle. He has a car". Good, old fashioned Cuban nepotism was about to strike again.
His ‘uncle?was a nervous looking young man of approximately the same age. His car was a patched up grey Lada, whose bodywork appeared to lean heavily to one side. I expected no more and wasn’t disappointed. Viñales would be a 2 ?hour drive and there seemed just enough room for four passengers. It looked to be another ‘rucksacks-on-the-knees?Cuban car journey.
Some things are not easy in Havana, and negotiating a price with an illegal, and particularly twitchy, taxi driver on the main plaza - with police officers on every corner - is certainly far from simple. A host of ‘negotiators?joined the fray, mouthing prices and journey times with abandon. One of my travelling companions had now joined us, totally exasperated from his fruitless trawling of hotel rent-a-car desks. On the cusp of completely losing our tempers, we were dragged to each corner of the plaza to re-negotiate the price and departure time. Each batting of a police eyelid endangered the deal. After thirty minutes of ‘negotiating?(during which we said very little) the deal was struck. It was disconcerting to be simply the object of the deal, when the crucial bargaining was actually between the posse of drivers, hustlers and middle-men, haggling over their percentage cut. We were simply bystanders, not negotiators, and although fascinating it was rather Beadle-esque.
The whole episode was a curiously Cuban episode involving melodrama, pathos and some slapstick. The driver, now visibly irritable, was itching to whisk us out of Havana as quickly as possible. We agreed to meet, with rucksacks ready, twenty minutes later, opposite the Sevilla hotel (a former casino that counted Al Capone amongst its regulars). Everything was settled. We could now address the serious business of sorting out our hangovers and preparing for a New Year’s Eve party.
Only, we couldn’t. One of our friendly ‘negotiators?came running after us to change the pick-up point once again. He appeared apologetic, desperately scouring our expressions for confirmation that we were not going to renege on the deal. Tourism has visited an insidious ‘dollar-grab?upon Cuba, and it can be distressing to watch the way it totally consumes the energies of local people. The sad fact is that the ‘greenback?breathes life into an arthritic economy and Cubans with access to tourists work, and bargain, very hard to secure invaluable dollars. Four blocks away in ‘Little China?- and seemingly miles from Havana’s dollar world of rum cocktails, Che t-shirts and illegal taxis - battered and insalubrious tenement blocks stand on filthy streets filled with stench and stagnant water. Few tourists venture to this corner of the capital where shop shelves are as empty as a visiting vegetarian’s stomach. It is a salutary reminder that the greater percentage on this beautiful island has no recourse to dollar bargaining. Theirs is a peso existence devoid of Uncle Sam’s currency and, very often, devoid of dignity.
Our still-nervous driver hastened our Lada out of Havana, beyond the vast Plaza de la Revolution, and the billboards advertising Castrol and DHL (yes, advertising does exist in Cuba). As our thoughts turned towards the green pastures of Pinar del Rio we began to realise that Havana is far from being simply the exotic, colonial hotbed dripping with music, culture and dance that tourist brochures and television producers would have us believe. It is a complex, multi-layered city that defies definition and is too often taken for granted. Scratch the surface and the ‘real?Havana is as emotive and disturbing as it is alive and energetic. It was only when we (eventually) left that this true picture slowly developed.
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