With Paula Vidal, but everyone calls her “La China”. The only way I could get a photo of her was to put myself in it!
I arrived in Havana close to 10pm on Christmas Day with no reservation for a casa particular because many people in Cuba don’t have telephones, and almost no-one has a computer or internet connectivity. I was supposed to get there in the afternoon, but I took the Hershey train from Matanzas and it was five hours late!
I took a chance that I’d be able to find a place to stay in Havana somehow.
When I got off the train at Casa Blanca around 9pm, I wasn’t sure if the ferry was still running to Habana Vieja, so I followed a bunch of people who were running up the hill. I didn’t know what they were running for, but EVERYONE was running so I ran, too… It’s a good thing I travel light, otherwise I would’ve never been able to run up a hill to catch anything.
I got on a bus that was packed to the gills, but someone recognised me from the train station at Matanzas and gave up their seat for me! That was only one of many instances of kindness shown to me by the Cuban people.
To make a long story short, I ended up in Regla by accident — trying to get away from a frisky guy who followed me off the bus to show me the cemetario. While he ducked into his friend’s house, I jumped into the first taxi I spotted.
That was, by serendipity, the way I found the only English-speaking taxi driver in all of Havana. He took me to a place in the city centre that turned out to be full, but the proprietor took me upstairs to this casa that belongs to La China. I was shown around, and I decided to stay for three days. Then the rest of the week.
I highly recommend this casa — for the location, cleanliness (it’s spotless), price, but especially because the family is incredibly helpful. La China lives there with her daughter Xiomara (who’s camera shy) and her grandson. She speaks even less English than I do Spanish (which is hardly any), but we did just fine.
Every morning La China provided lots of bread and butter and made me a pot of espresso that was strong enough to stand a spoon in. In the evening when I got home, she gave me plates of these marvellous butter cookies called tortica. (She calls her casa "Edificio Super Cake" — edificio means office.) Xiomara and I would sit in rocking chairs and watch the news and the telenovelas (soap operas) and La China would gab on the phone. It was like my home away from home, and she was my adopted granny.
Technorati tags: Cuba, travel, casa particular, portrait
Recent Comments