Back to the States & Cuba Reflections

This morning we awoke to the pungent aroma of exhaust as we slept with the windows open to make sure the natural gas didn’t kill us in our sleep. And in fact, the gas didn’t kill us in our sleep so that was a plus. I can’t say we were super sad to pack up. I can say we were super excited to get back to the U.S. and once again eat food that’s not soaking in vegetable oil. The vegetable oil burps are getting really old. We had arranged for breakfast to be made for us at the apartment and Brandon very reluctantly turned the gas line back on so Finita could use the stove. Our breakfast was ok. Nothing exciting. And eating is a challenge for both our GI systems at this point. I had hoped to have time to walk down to the US Embassy and check it out before we left but as we got moving this morning I had already resigned to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.

Given our existing arrangement with him, Julio was to pick us up at 11am for our airport return. We settled our extras tab for the week with Finita, for the waters we had drank and the breakfast. The amount didn’t add up to what I expected but whatever. She didn’t speak English and I didn’t care enough over a $10 discrepancy to try to push it. We did a sweep of the apartment for anything left behind (turns out just our carbon monoxide detector but oh well) and slipped on our shoes to head out.  A note on shoes; at the risk of sounding like a commercial, I have to mention by Allbirds!  I have been casually wearing a pair of the wool Allbirds for a couple months now and they are the comfiest shoes I have ever worn.  But being wool they are a little warm so I decided to buy a pair of their more breathable Tree Runners for this trip.  I basically did not break them in at all, only wearing them once before we left for a walk with the dogs.  But those were the only tennis shoes I wore the entire trip, NEVER with a pair of socks and I loved them.  They never rubbed or left a blister, they didn’t smell, and they were comfortable.  Even walking along the beach I was shocked at how little sand got into them.  I am going to order more pairs when we get home. But I digress.

At 11am sharp we were out the door and headed down to Julio. Except he wasn’t there. Hmm. He’d been waiting for us our other trips with him so this was odd. We had his number but had already checked out of the apartment and it wasn’t worth trying to call from our cells to the tune of $3/minute IF a call would even go through. A taxi driver approached us and asked if we needed a ride.  He had a pretty crummy car though and I did not want our last ride in Cuba to be in his jalopy.  We waited a few more minutes for Julio and then decided to walk down to the Malecon and hail a taxi.  (After we got back to the states, I did get an email from Julio apologizing for missing our pick-up. He had car problems and didn’t have a number to get a hold of us.)

It was easy to find a car and within a minute we waived down a neon green mercury convertible. Perfect!  The driver’s shirt was also green and I’m going to bet that was no accident. As is common throughout the streets of Vedado, there was a pile of dog crap on the edge of the sidewalk.  Right by where our car had pulled up.  Brandon didn’t hear my repeated warnings to watch his step and as he grabbed one of our bags to put in the trunk, splat.  It only seemed fitting that our time in Vedado would come to an end with dog shit on the shoes. We drove through the city seeing our last sites of the beautiful buildings, feeling the sun, and taking in our final breaths of exhaust and oil.

As we arrived at the airport, the taxi driver went right by the terminal we had arrived in and headed to the larger terminal.  We had told him we were flying Southwest and the sign for the terminal he was headed to said “International” so I figured maybe they had weird customs where we deplaned in one terminal but boarding was in the other.  But no.  As we walked through the terminal there was no Southwest counter to be seen.  We finally approached the Delta window and they confirmed what we suspected, we were in the wrong terminal.  And the terminals were a solid 1 km apart.  Too far to walk with all our bags and there’s not exactly a sidewalk.  I was very thankful we had allowed three hours at Julio’s recommendation.  Back outside, a jalopy taxi was dropping off folks and we caught his eye.  We explained the situation and he agreed to drive us.  I appreciated this driver not only for saving our butts and driving us, but also because when we told him what happened he was so exasperated that our taxi driver had dropped us off wrong. “Southwest has always been in terminal two. What was he thinking?!  Ay ay ay.” His camaraderie in our frustration was charming.

The terminal wasn’t the least bit busy.  We exchanged our leftover CUCs back to USDs and I was pleased that they did not charge us another large fee.  We went back through customs via the same type of narrow little booths we had arrived through, and made it through security in minutes.  Shoes had to come off but nothing else had to come out of our bags.  Nice.  The little terminal had three or four boarding doors and was practically empty.  The duty free shop contained the first cigars we had seen for sale our entire time in Cuba.  There was a little cafe and we decided to get some lunch.  But the pollo asado would take 45-60 minutes to prepare!  What airport has food that takes an hour to prepare?!  We settled for two chicken breasts and our last experience with Cuban pricing. amazed that at an airport we were able to get two chicken breasts, fries, two bottles of beer, and two bottles of water for $15. The food was terrible. Awful. And the first sip of beer made my heartburn run off the charts.  Brandon felt sick as well. We choked down about half of our chicken, watching the oil swimming on the plate, and gave up; taking our indigestion to rest in comfier seats.

As we walked towards empty seats we spotted a dog.  A dog in the airport!  Surely, these were the seats we must take.  He was an old spaniel and such a lover.  He belonged to one of the bathroom attendants.  Speaking of bathroom attendants, there were still no toilet seats in the airport bathrooms but the attendants did hand you a couple squares of toilet paper when you walked in.  A luxury compared to the other public restrooms we’d experienced.  But anyways, we communicated in broken English and broken Spanish with the attendant. Our friendly little guy’s name was Duke (pronounced do-kay). When his mama came over he gently rose on his hind legs to love against her.  He loved his mama and it made me think of my Zeus at home.  The attendant spoke in Spanish but we could understand what she was saying; she didn’t need a husband because she had Duke. He was a smelly boy but we forgave him and he happily accepted Brandon’s pets. Someone brought out a plate of lunch and set it down for him.  And I do mean a plate of lunch; this was an actual meal you would feed a person complete with salad, rice, beans, and chicken. The attendant asked if we had a dog and Brandon showed her a picture of Ducky.  We were missing our pups.

We waited anxiously for our flight to arrive.  The reader board indicated it was still coming on time but we watched as plane after plane came in for a landing, none of them the familiar Southwest cobalt blue. Finally, 40 minutes late, our chariot touched down.  There was no understanding amongst folks of the Southwest boarding process so we made sure to get to the front of the boarding area to get on the plane before boarding turned into a clusterf*%#.  The flight was FORTY minutes late and we watched, with extreme annoyance, as the flight attendants stood on the top of the steps taking selfies.  It would have been nice if they were the least bit worried about saying farewell to the deplaning passengers or, I don’t know, servicing the plane for the LATE flight.  The crew wasn’t much better once we were on the flight.  In fact, they were actually pretty rude and racist with one proclaiming, “Oh you speak English!  Are you going to help me throw some of these guys off the plane, preferably over water?” as we indicated we would be taking seats in an emergency exit row.  I was stunned they would say that.  We were not sad to leave Cuba as our plane ascended into white clouds poking out through the thick dank gray layer of smog that hung over Havana.

Cuba was quite an experience.  When I think of what defines the country; the main sense I’m able to invoke is smell. The smell of exhaust and oil defines the smell of La Habana. By the end of each day our clothes and hair reeked of oil.  Walking down the streets, the smell of the exhaust is overpowering. We literally could see the heavy smog sitting atop the city as our plane flew away.

On this trip, we learned a lot about just how insanely widespread Cuba propaganda is. Everything from where to stay, the price of taxis, private vs government businesses, local economies; none of it factual per our experience. Sure, some stuff was, like the sex industry. I had read that prostitution is legal in Cuba and, sure enough, we saw many a deal being negotiated and many a lady being picked up as we walked along the Malecon in the evenings.

I’m also unclear how the majority of the Cuban people really feel about Americans.  We felt like we got a lot of dirty looks when we walked through Vedado, like folks did not like us obvious strangers in their neighborhoods.  We also heard from guides that when Cuba was open for American tourism the onslaught was overwhelming and made trying to get anything done or get anywhere in the city take way longer.  Lines in Habana Vieja can already be long and the hoards of Americans made it worse. I was understanding as they complained of the congestion caused by American tourists. One of the reasons I have been so antsy to get to Cuba now was for that reason, I know that once it is opened up again it will be crazy busy and the Cubans will probably adapt to a less authentic audience of tourists.

By the end of the trip I was so ready for the basics in life again.  Like toilet seats!  Literally the only toilet seats we had seen in the country were at our AirBnBs.  Even at private homes (the Babawlo and our Playa Larga lunch) there were no toilet seats. And ice!  I don’t even like ice and I was excited for ice on the plane ride back to Florida. I also totally understood why the woman at the Fabrica de Arte Cubano our first night was so excited to see Americans, to have a conversation in her native tongue.  It’s a challenge and mentally exhausting being in a country with such a language barrier.  Though we do both want to learn Spanish now.

Did I fall in love with Cuba?  No.  My heart filled with love while there, but not for the country.  Just one year and one day ago I was flying home from a different trip, my first trip to New Zealand.  What a difference a year makes!  On that trip, on all my adventures of last year but really on that one, I learned so much about loving myself.  That adventure taught me about me and I needed those lessons.  Those adventures and that time to myself made me a better person and made me find more love and respect for myself than I could have imagined.  They made me stronger and I needed those teachings to get me to where I am today.  What I learned about myself last year and the peace I found with myself was necessary to get me to this point where now I could be on a trip with a remarkable man and see what this trip taught us about us.

This was a difficult adventure for me to write about.  I am not used to writing about an us and I had to be sure to include Brandon in a way that I wasn’t projecting my feelings of our experiences on him.  Yes, I do feel that we were pretty much always in sync but it’s not my place to tell his story.  Plus, the significance of so much of this adventure was about us and not just about Cuba,  I mean, talk about trial by fire! We both went out on a limb deciding to do this trip together and it paid off, in droves.  You really learn about someone (their character, their heart, their quirks, their bathroom habits) when you spend six days together in a foreign country, far outside your comfort zones, where neither of you speak the language!  Yes, there will still be some times when I adventure alone, but I am excited for my future adventures with Brandon. We are already talking through our next few passport stamps together.  I am always sad when an adventure is over; not just for the adventure to end but also for my purpose in writing to end.  Time to get the next adventure booked…