ozweaver – Page 38

Moving On…Chivirico

March 14, 2016 | Leave a Comment

We stayed in Santiago de Cuba for six days. It was such a bustling place that we were quite exhausted about halfway through our stay.

I don’t believe I mentioned that after we were cleared in with the health official from customs, we moved Pandora into the part of the harbor for pleasure boats. As we were getting ready to take the health official back to shore and go to the custom’s office for our interview, we noticed some young men calling to us from shore. We both waved to them all, and that seemed to be some kind of signal for all of them to jump in the water. I swear they were swimming out to us! We quickly locked up the boat in case they were planning to board while we were ashore. Once ashore we asked the customs official about them, but he said they were harmless.

We already knew that no Cuban may go onboard a private boat without written permission from some government bureau issued 24 hours in advance. I did not think these young men would board our boat right in front of customs and immigration officials. But shortly after we sat down in the customs office one of the officers came in and asked Bob to escort him out to our boat in our dinghy so he could scare off the young men (they ranged in age from teens to early 30s). He assured Bob that they meant no harm and most likely would not actually get on our boat. But they had surrounded the boat at this point, and a couple of them were climbing the anchor chain. I was very glad to realize it was Sunday and at least for the next few days they should all have to go to school or work.

Drivers and taxis are quite an experience. On the one hand there is an official fare that cannot be changed so you will always pay the same fare for the same route. In our case, that was to and from the marina and the center of the city. Noel was recommended to us as a good driver with excellent English. Many people who work with tourism want to have lots of practice with their English. A few English people come here, but not enough to help the locals practice on a regular basis. So any English speaking people are popular targets. Noel really was as good as his reputation. Other taxi drivers get $10 each way (and remember this is $20 each way for us since we had Canadian money) to pick up or deliver people to the marina which is well outside the city. Noel would spend time with us after getting into the city, waiting for us at the Cadeca to exchange money, taking us to the large local produce market where he changed our tourist pesos (CUCs) for local pesos and then helped us pay for our goods!

Yet there was a downside. The first day we used Noel he helped we arranged for him to come back at a certain time to pick us up. He gave us his mobile number and told us to ask any Cuban on the street to make the call. When we did that later, Noel told me he was not free to come get us. His transmission had malfunctioned and his car was not drivable. Okay….time to try a local taxi. It all went fine. It was just a hassle to brave the phalanx of taxi drivers at the Parque Cedespedes to get one. Each taxi has two men: one to walk the streets hawking you to take his taxi, and one who stays with the car and is actually the driver. There is a sea of the taxi hawkers and it’s a bit overwhelming to try and approach one while at least 10 others are vying for your business. I know they don’t get into fights over it, but it looks like they come just shy of fighting for customers.

Due to Noel’s transmission problems, the next day we used a ‘friend’ of Noel to drive us into the city. He did not speak one word of English so it was too difficult to do any of the shopping we had hoped to do. Anyway, I spent at least half the day at the Women’s Federation, so it didn’t mater that much.

Meanwhile, Noel dealt with his transmissions problems, not by taking his car to a garage….there aren’t such services here. He hunted around for a part off another car that would do the trick. It certainly didn’t have to be from the some make of Czech Rebublic car either. The part he found did not fit his car so he just drilled new holes in it to make it fit. I wonder how many times that happens before your car is no longer sound due to having so many holes drilled in it?

On day three, Noel was back in business. He offered to take us to a Cadeca again, to a bakery and then to lunch overlooking the harbor and then to the Castillo de Morro—a perfect plan for a beautiful day! He had our jerry jugs for diesel in his trunk, and at the end of the day would take us to a gas station to fill them. But we were barely out of the marina and still outside the city when a policeman pulled us over, and in checking Noel’s papers found that his license was 15 days expired. Noel said that he has 30 days to renew, but clearly that is not what the policeman thought. He allowed Noel to drop us in the city, but then Noel was required to go immediately to the police station. So there went our carefully planned day.

Fruit at the large market

At the end of the day Noel returned, but still without the proper papers so he was not allowed to have us as passengers in his car. He brought a friend (no English!) to drive us to the bakery and to a gas station, but not out to Castillo de Morro that we’d been looking forward to seeing. Noel was very insistent that he keep the jerry cans in his car, while his friend drove us. I think he wanted to keep us as his customers rather than loosing us to his friend. Anyway, these predicaments seem to be the fabric of life for the Cubans. Noel was not put out at any time over his car problems or his license. He said this is just the way it is in Cuba.

A very odd situation cropped every day when we arrived in downtown Santiago. Men would approach us and say that they recognized us from the marina. These were people we had never seen before! Some men would even say they knew we were on the ‘dark green boat.’ The first man who did this really conned us. I wrote about him in the first post about Santiago de Cuba. He said he recognized us because he was on duty in the customs office when we checked into the harbor. Believe me, I was so nervous and enthralled by that first check in to this forbidden country, I would have remembered him…yet I didn’t. Still, he was very convincing. The paladar he took us to was more expensive than any other place we’ve eaten during our entire stay, although it was very good. And, since we walked past the custom’s office every time we got off the boat, we realized that the man who took us on this little farce has not turned up there during our entire stay.

How could so many people know about us? The marina was a long way from the city center—15 -20 minutes by car. It felt like there was a pipeline of information being passed around about each tourist. And I can only imagine in a country where ‘one hand washes the other,” and “who you do and who you know” might mean that everyone involved got a little piece of the pie.

Also, I think I might have indulged in one too many ice cubes. I seem to be a bit under the weather and experiencing a general malaise. Bob is feeling a bit less than stellar as well. We have each indulged in a couple of lemonades and mohitos during our stay, in spite of my determination not to have anything with ice. Ah well…

So we are now spending a couple of days in a small harbor called Chivirico, a few miles to the west. It was quite a leap of faith to get in here, following the waypoints that Frank Virgintino gives in his guidebook—though we think his final waypoint is a mistake. All went well. We had to navigate through a very narrow cut between two coral reefs, with breaking water on both sides of us (that’s a sure sign that the water is very shallow! And coral reefs are very sharp and dangerous!). Once in the tiny harbor, in calm water, it felt like we’d really accomplished something to arrive here.

Wouldn’t you know that within the first hour of arriving we were barraged by a gaggle of young boys who swam out from where they’d been playing along the shore. One boy was bold enough to begin climbing up onto our swim platform at the stern. But the moment Bob said, NO, you don’t!” the boy slid back into the water and shortly after they all swam back to shore. In spite of knowing that this is a very friendly culture with a social distance much closer than I am used to, I still can’t help being a bit unnerved by all this…what to call it? Exuberance? Opportunity? There is very little privacy! …even in such a small harbor!

We had a relaxing late afternoon and evening watching men fishing with hand lines from the shore, watching the same group of boys jump from a tree into the water, and some men in dories throwing round nets. There were men who worked in groups to stretch gill nets or seine nets completely across the entrance to this harbor. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon for us and for the boys, but not for the men, and likely not for the women either.

Late at night while we were watching the stars a boat arrived flying the Norwegian flag. There was no way to signal them about the nets, but they seemed to enter the harbor easily and left just as easily just after dawn this morning. I have no idea when the men might have taken down those nets! We did not see them do it.

There is always some chore that needs doing on a boat, just like at home. During the past few months our sail cover, which protects the sail from damaging UV rays, has starting to deteriorate. Just like the sail itself, it is also affecting by UV rays, and the stitching that it was sewn with has come apart in places. No problem for Bob, who brings his heavy duty sailrite machine with him everywhere we sail. Here he is with the sail cover spread all over the foredeck, mending away.

Here is Pandora sitting pretty in Chivirico.

As I write this I am high up on a bluff in Chivirico called Hotel Brisas. It is a stunning spot, and hopefully we will have photos by te next time I post. We are here for the internet and some lunch.

There is a charming town here in Chivirico that looks like it was frozen in time during the early 20th century. Plenty of old cars here, but even in more abundance are mule drawn carts. From the boat we can hear the clop-clop of their hooves as they trot through the streets. People here have tidy little houses with immaculate gardens. The shop fronts along the main street are also very charming and neatly kept. I´m looking forward to buying some Cuban coffee when we leave here in a bit.

The Democratic Women’s Federation for Handcraft

March 9, 2016 | Leave a Comment

Does that sound like a bureaucratic department in a communist state? Bingo. I am sorry to report that my visit to the Women’s Federation was a bit different than I expected. Yes, it was exciting…but it was also heavily overshadowed by some restraint on the part of the women I met. They had a reserve that was a bit unnerving to me, and none of them showed the enthusiasm for the handwork we had in common that I expected.

I met Noelis at the shop where the traditional clothing is for sale. Maria Estar was again on ‘display’ in a window making a small crocheted embellishment that would be attached to some item of clothing when finished. Noelis was happy to see me and led Bob and me on a walk for several blocks to the building of the Women’s Federation.

The building was a lovely old thing—I’d guess it was once a 19th century residence, one storey with a lovely front porchl. From the street entrance we cold barely see into a large, dark front room with a hallway running back. Beyond this was a wonderful view of the inner courtyard that had a lathwork ceiling draped in a bounty of magenta bougainvillea blooms.

Noelis took us in to the first room where about a dozen women were sitting in a circle practicing their crochet. There was a man who was monitoring who came and went from a desk at the entrance. Noelis asked us to sit down near the desk while she got the ‘manager’ to come out to meet us.

Some of the women looked up from their work and smiled at me. I was very excited at the prospect of getting to see what they were doing! I was right near them, but I already had the sense that I needed to stay in my seat as Noelis had instructed.

The manager was a woman about my age. She looked very approachable, and I think we could have had a great conversation if we had not needed a translator. Noelis was our translator, and I trusted her, but she had such a deference for the manager that I think she translated my words very formally. Certainly what she told me the manager was saying was also very formal. I was not speaking formally to these women, and I have a feeling from the friendliness in the manager’s eyes that she was not speaking formally to me either. I think a LOT was lost in translation.

They told me the purpose of the federation was to keep the techniques used in traditional textiles alive and make sure the traditional garments of Cuba continued to be valued and worn, if not for everyday use, at least for use in life’s traditional ceremonies, such as weddings and other religious events. The women pay to go to this school (60 pesos for 3 months of study and including a hot lunch), and then have the opportunity to make money with their handcrafts after reaching a certain level of proficiency.

There was a class going on in the lush courtyard and there was a large studio with sewing machines where women were sewing various items of clothing. The machines were all Jukis. The only clothing being made that I recognized with certainly was the men’s wedding shirt, called a guayabera. Noelis told me there are many traditional women’s costumes that have the same details as the guayabera.

The manager’s office was a cramped space with no window. The four of us—Noelis, the manager, Bob and I—were quite challenged in the space. At one point another woman came in and joined us. I know that Bob and I created some curiosity, but it seemed that most of the women did not feel comfortable showing it.

While I could see that all the sewing was being done with commercial white fabric (and I had felt the shirts in the shop, and they were not traditional 100% cotton, but some kind of cotton/polyester blend), I still felt compelled to ask if anyone in Cuba was weaving traditional fabric. Noelis did not recognize words ‘weaving’ and ‘loom’ so while we chatted Bob searched the photos on my phone for images of my looms and some of my handwoven fabrics. Once he found these both the manager and Noelis confirmed that no one is weaving in Cuba. They do not have the equipment, but they said some women ‘do this with a needle.’ Hmmm…. I wonder if they meant some kind of needle lace. They saw some photos of my tapestries (tapisaria) and said that is not done in Cuba either.

We talked for a while about bobbin lace, tatting, knitting and crochet. Bob asked if we could take some pictures, and this is when things got noticeably awkward for the women. The manager said (through Noelis) that we would have to go to the Federation headquarters in Havana to ask for permission to photograph. Hmmm… They seemed a bit leery of us from that point on. I tried to explain that women in the US who do handcrafts are very interested in knowing what women in other parts of the world do. That did not go well either. The manager gave me a brochure about the Federation and told me to visit Havana for permission. Bob attempted to tell them that we are living on a boat ….that this method of travel means we will not get to Havana until mid April and we will not get back to Santiago de Cuba, but they said they could not do anything without permission from their headquarters. So, very sadly, that photo at the beginning of this post is all I have to show.

Noelis took me on the rest of the short tour. It was afternoon at this point and almost all the women were sitting together in the courtyard, all eating the exact same lunch on plastic trays with molded dividers to separate the food items—very 1950s. Lunch was white rice, some kind of meat, and some vegetables. As I looked to the side of the courtyard, along the hallway we were walking down, I saw there was a large kitchen where lunches were prepared. So some women work at the Federation as kitchen staff.

Noelis took me to a group of women at a small table just at the back of the large front room we had entered first from the street. Behind a room divider separating them from the space where the crocheters had sat in a circle for their class was a large Spanish carved colonial dining table (and large, ornately carved Spanish china cabinets along that back wall) where women were sitting practicing their tatting…or frivolite. Noelis introduced me to the teacher and then asked me to show her my tatting. I was a bit horrified because of all the textile techniques I do this is the one I am most UNproficient at doing! I did not want the teacher to think that my work represented the quality of work done by women in the US! I asked Noelis to explain to her that I am very much a beginner, that I only started doing this when we left on our trip a couple of months ago, and that this was my second attempt at a trim of rings and chains for the neckline of a blouse.

Naturally, the teacher found all my mistakes in a moment! She had Noelis tell me that I didn’t always have the same number of stitches between my picots, and I must strive to always have the same number. Well, yeah… I do know that even though I haven’t managed it yet. Wish I could have explained that I did this work while bouncing about on a sailboat, usually sailing in gale force and near gale force winds…but I realize that would have been just looking for reasons to explain my faults! Then she said my picots were rather good but there were still tiny differences in sizes, and I needed to get more consistent with that as well. At the end she said that if I was a beginner I was doing very well. Still, I left feeling pretty mortified that of all the things I could have shown a teacher in this school, wouldn’t you know it would be the one thing I barely know!

Noelis escorted us out of the building, and as she left us to return to the shop where we met her (in the historic district) once again she said that she hoped we’d come back with permission from Havana, and that she ‘would be waiting for me.’

This incident put a quite a damper on my enjoyment of the rest of the day, I must say. I always get so excited to meet other textile makers, and I usually feel that it is a language we all share and a place where we can all have the same enthusiasm and ability to teach and to learn from each other. The whole proletariat attitude really took the wind out of my sails–sorry for the dumb pun–but I really felt deflated. Here were a group of women I would love to communicate with about subjects near and dear to all of us, and there was this terrible pall over the whole thing. There was a definite sense of propriety that these women exuded, and they seemed to be weighing their interest in talking to me against the rules of what was expected of them in representing this federation.

After a short walk back to the historic district, we were standing in the main parque when we were approached by someone who said he knew we were staying at the marina… I did not recognize him, although he said he works for the customs department at the marina. He remembered us from when we checked in, but I knew I had not seen him. He offered to show us some sights and find a place for us for lunch. In my newly deflated state I wondered if there was some agenda to his offer….

Well, there was, of course, but also he was generous with his knowledge. He took us to a local restaurant that I’m sure was owned by his family or friends. That was okay because it was a great place, and we would have no idea of how to find such a good local place on our own. ‘Paladares’ are family owned restaurants that the Cuban government has now sanctioned. There are many rules for running one of these: a limited number of customers may be served (I think it is 12), and they cannot serve foods that are reserved for gov’t run hotels and restaurants which includes lobster and the better cuts of chicken. Paladares may serve pork, some chicken, and local fish. We let the waiter choose our meal for us, and it was excellent! This particular place was on the 3rd floor balcony of a small residential building (typical Soviet block cement structure), and up on the balcony was an amazing view of the decayed apartment buildings all around that could have been anywhere from Kabul to Cairo with a backdrop of the stunning harbor.

Some of the surrounding buildings had no roofs, or had makeshift roofs of corrugated tin with many holes and many repairs. All the buildings had windows with no glazing. On one rooftop balcony near us there was a dog that looked very much like our son’s dog Bobi. This gave me a little tinge of homesickness on the very day I was missing my son’s birthday. Well, I was certainly thinking of him.

Our customs official cum tour guide offered to get us things—cigars, rum…from places that tourists cannot visit and therefore much less expensive. He admitted that he had some ‘relationships’ with these places that would give him a commission for what he sold. It was all a bit overwhelming for me. He said he got his very good job working for the state because of who he knew. He used the phrase “Who you do, who you know,” which sounded like everything was based on what you do for someone and who you know that can improve your own situation. I got that, but he must have wanted to make certain I understood because he added, “one hand washes the other.” –he could not possibly know that I learned this phrase in Latin in high school, about a million years ago! I guess I was too hot and too disappointed in my visit to the handcraft school to enjoy this information. Now, a day later Bob and I have discovered that he does not work for customs at the marina. He’s not the first person to recognize downtown in Santiago de Cuba—every seems to know who we are. I think we were had, but it was kind of fun anyway. Boy, these people know how to turn a trick.

The day was hotter than the previous day, and when we returned to Pandora we had a very cold gin and tonic and a simple dinner of cheeses from France and Italy, and crackers from the UK , that we bought in Nassau. After washing a local mango in a basin full of water mixed with hydrogren peroxide, we ate it. No ill effects today. I might also add that I had a mojito at the paladar and a lemonade at the Casa Granda Hotel, both with ice cubes, and I am still alive. Whew!

Bienvenida de Cuba!

March 8, 2016 | 4 Comments

We are here! We arrived in Santiago de Cuba early Sunday afternoon, a full day ahead of our plans. Plans are always a wish and a prayer on a boat. Our brilliant weather router, Chris Parker, warned us that we’d better get through the Windward Passage before mid-Monday, and now I’m so glad we tackled that nasty bit of water even earlier. The sea state in the passage reminded me of what you see when you lift the lid on your washing machine and watch it agitate your clothes, only on a far, far greater scale. As you can imagine, in the dark, this was a terrifying bit of the trip for me. Maybe it’s a good thing that our first night out was about as idyllic as any landlubber could wish. I spent a good deal of the first night watching the stars. For the first time in my life I followed the course of Sirius and Orion completely across the sky to watch them set in the west at about 3am, just a short time before the moon rose.

That second night, approaching the eastern coast of Cuba and then entering the Windward Passage was exactly what I’ve always tried to avoid.

When dawn arrived on Sunday morning we were awestruck by the huge mountain range on the southern coast of Cuba. It is monumental!…like some of the island chains in Greece, or in Southeast Asia. What a view to discover as dawn flooded the horizon.

Passing Guantanamo in the morning kept me thoroughly riveted. It is a much more impressive compound than I ever imagined. It is far more than just a prison, and has large buildings dominating the shoreline, along with gigantic wind generators high up on the nearby mountains. Clearly, the US Navy has to supply all of their own needs here. As we approached the no-sail zone a high speed navy skiff rushed toward us. I was worried that perhaps we had crossed into the off limits area, but the navy boat stopped about half a mile inshore from us and then matched its speed to ours to shadow us all the way down that 100mile excluded zone of water. I wanted to wave to them, but wasn’t certain how they’d react. Surely they could easily our large American ensign flying at our stern, but still…. In the end I opted for not waving. The entrance to the harbor was quite amazing, a real natural wonder, being narrow and long and deep. All these mountains rise up for a couple thousand feet, and plunge into the water even deeper so that even a couple of miles offshore we were in very deep water. I guess I always imagined Guatanamo being a bit of backwater. If it is, the other US Navy outposts must really be something! When we passed the final border of the no-sail zone the navy boat stopped and watched us for a bit before returning to their post.

Finding Guantanamo so impressive should have prepared me for the first sight of Santiago de Cuba, but I was again unprepared for such a dramatic sight. This is one of the earliest settled areas of Cuba, and on the bluff that overlooks the entrance to the harbor is the thoroughly magnificent Castillo de Morro, built by the Spanish around 1587 to protect the settlement from invasions by pirates, who had sacked this city in 1554. Santiago de Cuba was the capitol of Cuba until 1607, when Havana took that role. In appearance, Castillo de Morro is the big brother of that fort in St. Augustine, Florida. In modern history, this is where Fidel launched revolution.

Santiago de Cuba was founded in 1510 and became the capitol of the Spanish settlement around 1515, after Barracoa had been the capitol for some years. Santiago de Cuba is actually closer to Haiti (across the Windward Passage) and to Jamaica than it is to Havana, so it has a mixed Caribbean culture that differs from other Cuban cities. I’m looking forward to discovering a bit about this.

Entering the harbor under the view of such a fort made me realize just how far we’ve come on this journey to visit the ‘forbidden gem of the Caribbean.’ It’s all been speculation and endless bureaucratic forms. Passing under that early colonial fortress suddenly made me realize that our long planning and speculating had become a reality! I’m really here!

This is a stunning harbor, with mountains rising on all sides of the harbor, mostly undeveloped. In the pleasure boat part of the harbor, which is the first part as you enter, there is a jolly sense of decayed luxury: a charming marina that must have once been quite a bit more than charming. The same kind of small mildly decayed hotel and two restaurants are adjacent to the marina. It is a lovely spot. Further down the harbor is a large commercial port that has more ships than I can count at any given time. These ships are constantly coming and going, so as we sit at anchor in our idyllic spot of the harbor with mountain views all around and just the few little vestiges of some previous luxury now run to disrepair, we’ll suddenly find our quiet view completely obliterated by some behemoth ship passing in or out. It is quite a sight!

The check in process was quite an experience. In one guidebook I read that Cuba is a very confusing place for Americans, and the best way to handle it is to just ‘go with the flow.’ Clearly that writer for Lonely Planet thinks this is a challenge for many Americans. Hmmm… Well, that has proven true on our first experience with dealing with customs and immigration. I did try to find out as much as I could before arriving so that we would have the appropriate things ready and not cause any concerns with officials. But of course I know that no matter where one travels, you simply cannot prepare for everything! So it is only a little surprising to me that nothing I read matched what actually happened! And it was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit confusing, experience.

We’d read that dairy products and chicken are not allowed in Cuba. Some sources said that no meat of any kind could be brought into Cuba. We’d been told by some cruisers in the Bahamas that we’d also have to give up all our fresh produce. Great…I’d be trying out the procedure of washing the local veggies in silver nitrite, to avoid the possibility of Hepatitis A which we neglected to do, sooner than I had hoped. Well, we have a freezer full of meat! In preparation for at least having all our chicken confiscated, we have been eating nothing but for about three weeks! We’ve even had a couple of dinner parties onboard that featured chicken in order to get rid of as much of it as possible. We’d also read that in the larger ports the officials would speak English, so I was very glad that Santiago de Cuba would be our first stop. More time for me to learn Spanish in preparation for the rural stops in the future.

Our first guest onboard from the customs and immigration department was a woman who would check our general health and then go through our food. She was not in the least bothered by our frozen chicken. Perhaps she might have confiscated any fresh chicken if we’d had it. She barely spoke English, although her English was certainly far superior to my Spanish. With the assistance of the various Spanish books we have on hand I think we mostly understood each other. She was not concerned about our horde of cheeses or our two half gallons of milk (one in the freezer for future use).

We’d been told that no one asks for beer or alcohol anymore, but that we should have some soda on hand…there are no American products in Cuba, so having a Coke is quite a treat. We were ready with that, and when we offered our visitor a cold drink she promptly agreed. But then stashed the can of Coke away in her purse! Somewhat later she asked for us to “salut” each other, and although her attempt at describing what she meant sounded like we were going to take her to a bar on the dock, eventually it became clear that she wanted a beer onboard Pandora in order to welcome us to Cuba! She must have really wanted that beer because it took Bob and I an age to understand what she was trying to convey! So we gave her a beer and listened to her tell us about her family, show us photos of her young daughter who is her ‘princess,’ and answer her questions about our life in the US and our children. When she asked for a little money, we were happy to oblige. The whole process was rather enjoyable, and after all she’d just let us keep a staggering array of wonderful cheeses that we brought from the US and Nassau, milk for our morning coffee along with my precious herb plants and pretty pink geranium and my newly sprouting avocado seed!

We lowered our yellow “Q” flag (for Quarantine) and raised the Cuban flag on our starboard shroud and up anchored to head for the marina. There was no room for us at the dock –perhaps a good thing…time will tell—so we anchored yet again. We still had the young lady health official onboard, and she was surprised to see me take the helm while Bob dealt with the anchor. She asked me if I was the ‘Capitan,” and I laughed and said no! But I believe she may have said something the customs official when we all arrived onshore, because he had already put me down as the captain. I find this hilarious, and now for our entire stay in Cuba the officials will all be talking to me rather than Bob.

So it fell to me to be interviewed by the Customs and Immigration official while a tv in the background (hanging from the ceiling) played a Cuban soap opera and then an old episode of “Flipper.” Through that cacophony of noise I tried to understand his Spanish and attempts at English. He was far better understanding me than I was at understanding him! And he was clearly more used to the distracting tv noise than I was. After the interview and paperwork, he came onboard to inspect our boat and look for contraband –guns, drugs, pornography. But before he began the search (no dogs involved in this search, although we’d been warned that larger ports would use them) he sat down at our dining table and asked for a beer. Luckily we had one more chilled beer. (We will be challenged to have enough beer for all the ports we will be visiting….we certainly didn’t get accurate information about this!) He did not make as much small talk as his predecessor, but seemed to go into a relaxed state to enjoy his beer. It was a Yuengling, and he told us it was much stronger than what he was used to having. I asked him if knew of the US city Philadelphia, and when he said he did, I told him he was drinking a beer from that city. He recommended we try a very strong rum called Havana Cru. I guess Bob will be looking for that soon.

Once we were cleared in to Cuba we realized that no one had collected the fees for all the various things we’d heard would be charged. It should have cost us somewhat more than $25 for entering the country, and we’d read that we’d be paying $2.50/day for Cuban health insurance. But all we did was serve some beer and give a small tip.

So we awoke today, our first full day in Cuba, to a cool breeze coming down from the mountains and hot sun in this beautiful harbor. On one side of us is boat with a Norwegian flag, and on the other side is a boat flying a Swedish flag. The dock has several boats flying the French flag and one boat from Denmark. We do not see any US flags here, but then we are not flying our own. We’d been warned by the New Zealanders who gave us lots of information back in January, that a couple of ports, and Santiago de Cuba (the home of the Rebellion) for sure, would not be happy to see the US flag in their waters. If we had thought to bring along a small, discreet ensign we might have flown it, but what we have is an embarrassingly HUGE US flag given to us by our son Rob. It’s a wonderful sight flying off our stern, but not worth causing insult or injury here.

What to do first??? See the castle? Go into the city of Santiago de Cuba, about a 15 minute cab ride from here? Time to immerse ourselves in the local scene. It’s hard to believe we are finally here.

National Day for Women in Cuba

March 8, 2016 | Leave a Comment

Our first trip into downtown Santiago de Cuba happened to be a national holiday for women so the city was hopping. Men and women clogged the streets, children were not in school, street vendors were selling flowers and candy, and there was such an air of festivity all around us.

The streets are old and narrow, and the sidewalks even narrower! It’s a given that pedestrians do NOT have the right of way, so you step into the street at your own risk. Very few intersections had traffic lights and even fewer had the little walk/don’t walk signal. The sidewalks were so narrow that many times you had to step out into the street just to move through the crowds of pedestrians. It was a great day to see this city in full swing!

We had been advised to change our money at a Cadeca (a money changing facility) because the lines at any bank would be frightfully long. As it turns out there were lines at the Cadecas as well, but they were somewhat shorter. It was all very 3rd world and communist. The lines form outside these establishments, on the hot and narrow sidewalks. There is a guard who lets someone into the building each time someone leaves the building. Inside there is a shorter line, and another guard signals the person at the head of the line to move to next free teller. It took us about 20 minutes to get to a teller, and when I saw a couple of banks later in the day I can see that we made the right choice.

Now here is the funny thing about money—the exchange rate seems to be whatever the Cuban government wants it to be. The US dollar is .87 to a Cuban CUC, and I feel quite certain this not supportable in the world market. We had read in two guide books that there was an extra ‘tax’ on US dollars and it is better to have either Euros or Canadian dollars to exchange. We opted to bring CAD with us. Well 1 CAD is .55 a Cuban CUC, so we have only half the money we thought we had to spend here. Yikes! We should have brought Euros, which have an even exchange rate. Because we are from the US we cannot get any funds from our banks, and we cannot use our US credit cards, even the one that we got for use outside the US. When we returned to our boat last night, we took a hard look at what we have and made a budget. I think we can just get by!

Like many old cities Santiago de Cuba has a public park every few blocks running up Aguilera Boulevard from the harbor up the steep hill that eventually leads into the rural Sierra Maestro range. This is the oldest part of the city, crowded but beautiful, with old colonial architecture. Santiago de Cuba is known for having the unspoiled colonial architecture, along with the oldest surviving building in all of Cuba, the house of Diego Valazquez, built in 1522.

And it is also known for having the most motorcycles in Cuba, and this is what pedestrians must take care to avoid when walking about the streets. It is amazing how many motorcycles there are, most with no mufflers. They dart in and out of traffic, so that you can never be sure when you step off the curb that one might not suddenly cross your path. The streets were full of interesting vehicles and all seemed to love honking, all day… old American and European cars that had been repainted many times. We’ve heard that the engines are most likely no longer original, but a mixture of whatever can be found and refurbished. Many of these cars have Russian or Eastern European engines. There were plenty of small Russian Lados on the streets, and our driver, Noel, shuttled us about in a car with an unrecognizable name from Czech Republic that was 30 years old . Many of the American cars, being so much larger, had been converted into ‘buses’ by removing the back seat of the car and adding on something like a pickup truck bed on a larger scale. There were benches back there that could hold 10 or 12 people, and these vehicles seemed to be getting a lot of business. I was very glad to have a driver with a car! He’d been recommended to us by a Canadian couple who were just leaving this port when we arrived.

This Carmen Ghia is now a taxi. Tempting…but quite small for taxi, don’t you think?
We had planned to spend our day walking through the historic district, having lunch at the Casa Granda Hotel, then touring the Casa de Diego Valazquez. But just walking around took longer than we expected, and by the time we got to lunch—roughly 3-ish—which also took longer than we expected, we decided to relax on the balcony of this stately old hotel at a table overlooking the square with a delightful breeze blowing straight up from the harbor. So we never made it to Valazquez’s house. We will definitely get there before we leave.

Earlier in the morning we stopped at a café and had a wonderful Cuban coffee with steamed milk. After that we walked along the Jose A Saco Boulevard, which is for pedestrians only (thank heaven!) and has many shops and street vendors selling crafts from woodworking to leather work (very little textile handwork). It was fascinating to us that so many shops sold exotic birds. I wonder if Cubans keep birds for pets the way we keep dogs and cats. I’ve never seen so many colorful parrots and lots of other beautiful birds that looked like variations on quail or guinea hens.

The shop entrances are a bit high off the street, maybe just above knee height, and there are the tiniest little cement block steps to enter these shops. There are no railings to hold on to, but sometimes a metal bar in the wall that you can grab if you are feeling unsteady on your feet. I am always feeling unsteady on my feet! Only one person at a time can go up or down these tiny steps so that seems to manage the flow of who is coming out or going into the shops.

The highlight of my day—and probably the biggest reason why we did not have enough time to see the Valazquez museum—was that I saw a woman sitting in a large unglazed window doing some very fine crochet work. Her window was next to a shop full of men’s wedding shirts. I went into the shop thinking I could access the room she was working in from there….but no. There was a door that probably led to where she was, but it was closed. So I went back out on the street and talked to her from there.

First I should say that I had already questioned a few people, and then tried to confirm my knowledge with Noel, about the Spanish words for various types of handwork. Crochet is crochet, ‘tejer’ is knitting, ‘bolillo’ is bobbin lace. Noel, our driver, said that many women do handwork but that he is not familiar with names of all the things they do. He said his grandmother had been doing ‘tejer’ for about 75 years, and he confirmed that it is knitting by saying it has two needles rather than one. I said that I had been doing ‘tejer’ for over 50 years, and he found this amazing. It made me think that his grandmother is probably only a bit older than 75, and that he did not realize how young many women are when we learn these techniques.

So I tried to have a conversation with the woman doing crochet in the shop window. I asked her if ‘muy mujeres’ did crochet in Cuba, and she said yes! Most women do lots of ‘projects’ in their homes. I was quite enthralled to learn this. I took out my tatting-in-progress and asked her if this called ‘frivolite.’ Yes, it is.

After a few more minutes of struggling to communicate, the crocheter called another woman over who spoke English very well. Her name is Noelise, and the crocheter’s name is Maria Estar, and they both work at a local school for textile handwork. I immediately thought of the lace school in Via de Conde, Portugal, and thought that I may have hit pay dirt here in Santiago de Cuba.

Noelis asked to see my tatting and said something like many women in Cuba want to learn this. I was not certain if that meant that no one knew how to do but want to learn, or if it is a popular thing to do. She said the handwork school was closed for the national holiday celebrating women, but that it would be open today. She has invited to come to see it this morning , so that is the focus of my day! She said she will wait for me at the location where I met her yesterday, and she’ll take me to the school. Her last words to me were, “I will wait for you tomorrow!” So charming!

So I don’t plan to dawdle this morning! I have a lot to learn!

Never Give Up!

March 4, 2016 | 2 Comments

The past few weeks have taught me just how determined Bob is to get to Cuba. There have been a number of setbacks, and I thought the jig was up yesterday morning…and again this morning….but NO! Yesterday morning we still had no boat insurance in effect, and I cannot possibly describe how persistent Bob has been at working through this. Insurance is a long, boring story, so I’ll skip it. I’ll only say that it was yesterday afternoon when things finally fell into place.

I will also skip the details of learning that we should have had a 6-month course of Hepatitis inoculations that would include Hepatitis A which can be a problem in Cuba due to bad water and fresh produce–along with a course of medicine to prevent cholera. The doctor at the Georgetown Clinic said her family goes to Cuba all the time and never takes these precautions. Bob was just fine with that… Me, not so much!

So, this morning was farewell to Georgetown! Last night we enjoyed a gathering on Monument Beach, affectionately called ARG (alcohol research group) and said our goodbyes to cruising friends. I sure wish someone were going with us, but no one got their paperwork in order like Bob…no surprise!

This is the sunrise panorama that Bob took on our penultimate day in Georgetown. These last few days have been the calmest days I’ve ever spent anywhere in the Bahamas! Almost like the gentle summer days on Long Island Sound.

I took advantage of the calmness to work on my latest tapestry. Bob took a photo of me working, but I cannot access it right now. Just one of the many small frustrations of living off the grid!

So we left Georgetown at dawn this morning (about 6.15 am), and headed out the inlet toward the northern tip of Long Island. It wasn’t long before our plotter which shows our charts, our location (GPS), and radar and AIS malfunctioned and quit! Well, again, I tell you I gave up. I thought for certain this was it and we’d be heading back into the harbor.

Not so for Bob. He took apart the housing that holds these electronics and began to see if he could deduce what was wrong. After a good hour’s effort he called Raymarine and spent another hour on the phone following a techie’s instructions. Bingo! We were back in business. Now we are rapidly approaching sunset and have motor/sailed 70 miles, out of our 350 mile passage. We are just off Clarencetown at the southern end of Long Island, and tonight we will head offshore to Great Inagua. We need to maintain speed of 6.5 knots or more in order to get to Great Inagua before sunset tomorrow. So far, so good.

Tonight Bob and I will spell each other in 2 hour watches, with some overlap time at each change. There is a small swell this afternoon that is making me a bit green, and writing this post isn’t helping! Hopefully I’ll do well overnight.

Our friends George and Nancy, aboard Trumpeter, say we must get to Great Inagua in time to go ashore tomorrow because there are so many parrots on the island! They say that you hear lots of parrots calling when you go ashore and then soon after see them in all the trees. There are also flocks of pink flamingos on this island. That’s why we are determined to keep our speed up! Next stop after that is Cuba! Hoping for a gentle passage…

Author name: ozweaver

Moving On…Chivirico

The Democratic Women’s Federation for Handcraft

Bienvenida de Cuba!

National Day for Women in Cuba

Never Give Up!

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