December 25, 2006
Rosa R. Garcia Hernandez
Versalles, Matanzas
I flew overnight from Cuba and landed in Toronto around 1:30am, celebrating New Year’s Eve on the plane with a couple of hundred sleepy, sunburnt Canadians. That was the only time I saw tourists — at the airport and the plazas of Havana. An English fellow asked me to take his photo in front of the Capitolio, and the rest of the time I commingled with Cubans. I consider it one of the benefits of travelling solo: it forces you to speak to the locals instead of just your travelling partner.
I stayed in a casa particular with a family in Central Havana, and travelled with Cubans on buses that buckled under the strain of too many passengers and a train that was delayed by five hours on Christmas Day. I could tell by the way they stared at me that the locals all thought I was crazy for taking an ancient, rickety electric train that was forever blowing fuses when I could be in a comfortable air-conditioned bus that took less time. I had nothing close to the facility to explain in Spanish that I wanted to take the historic Hershey train (built by the Hershey family of PA) because I used to live in Pennsylvania and my late husband loved trains.
I spoke in terrible Spanish which made them laugh, like this woman here in Matanzas. I managed to convey to her that I would mail her the photos and I needed her address. I took photos of ordinary life: kids playing soccer, baseball, handball and basketball, old men sitting around the domino table, grandmas hanging up the washing on the clothesline. And when I was able to, I asked for their addresses so I could mail them their photos. I hope they like them.
Cuba was an incredible experience, and my photostream is going to be Cuba, Cuba, and more Cuba for a while. I shot 18 rolls of film and more than 2 GBs of photos and video!
But now that I’ve downloaded the digital files to my computer and burned them to disk, I’m going to get some sleep…
Technorati tags: Cuba, digital photography, Canon A80, portrait
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Oh my god what an amazing portrait!! You did an amazing job on that one!
I’m so glad you had such a good time in Cuba, I can’t wait to see the rest of your photos
Dear Gail,
Would you be willing to provide us with copies of your photos (or give us the permission to reproduce them from your webpage), so that they could be displayed, at random in our web page. Of course, we will acknowedlege the source. We are just constructing our Cuba-L Direct page which will contain information on Cuba in English and Spanish. We also intend to include photos, video and audio. It is our intention to become the archive-of-record on Cuba.
Our webpage [not yet announced to the world] is:
cuba-l.istec.org
Best regards,
Nelson Valdes
Director
Cuba-L Project
PS: I am a university professor in the Socilogy Department at the University of New Mexico.
That’s a New Year smile, Gail! I don’t know what you told that lady to make her smile like this but it must have been wonderful.
Yes, I want more Cuba, please.
Happy New Year, Gail!
Happy new year Gail, what a lovely new years day portrait. So glad you had a wonderful time in Cuba, looking forward to sharing your experience, viewing the photographs and video.
Sounds a splend trip, G.
Have a fantabulous 07!
Looking forward to sniffin through your Cuban imagery.
Happy New Year, Gail
Glad you had a good time in Cuba. Hope you got some good pictures of the spectacular Caribean sunsets.
Did you talk to the locals about what will happen when Castro is gone? I’d be very interested to hear what their opinions are about that.
Pete
Happy New Year, Ate Gail! Looks like you had fun on your trip
Happy 2007! Glad to hear you had such a wonderful trip.
Hi Gail.
I am so happy you are back safe and sound from Cuba. I can read your Web site again. I HAVE A NEW COMPUTER. I wanted to write an E-mail, but the AOL told me your adress was to long. Please write to me that I can put your E-mail adress back in my adress book. Your work E-mail adress too. My new adress is hoepken5
Helma