Bienvenido a Cuba!

Repeat after me: ‘Cooo-bah.’

And, yes, they still serve the first illegal cocktail I ever drank: a Cuba libre. And, yes, rum is the drink of choice: at the Tropicana nightclub, we were served a one-liter bottle of rum for four people. I’ll do the math for you: that’s 8 shots per person. One member of our party took the unfinished bottle home with her and promised we would do shots on the ship in the Wintergarden (where they normally serve high tea) but I haven’t seen her, or the bottle, since. Havana looks much as it did when I was here seven years ago. Crumbling buildings. Stray dogs. Musicians everywhere. People trying to make a little extra money however they can to supplement their government salary of around $25 per month. The tour guides are quick to point out that ‘the people,’ many of whom had been living in dirt-floored, palm-thatched houses, supported Fidel in 1959 because he promised three things: literacy for all (they say their literacy rate today is 99.7%), health care for all, and redistribution of land. Today health care is free, and so is education up to whatever level you care to pursue. If you want to switch careers late, say to become a doctor when you’re in your 60s, you can do it. And all students are guaranteed a job when they graduate. A plumber and a doctor make the same monthly salary. A tour guide or a waitress make out better because they get the salary + tips. Our excellent guide was a teacher of English turned tour guide. We tipped him well. I highly recommend Carlos Eire’s autobiographical Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, about his childhood immediately before and after the revolution. Carlos went on to become a professor at Yale. His brother did not fare so well. I’d give you the link, but WiFi in the middle of the Caribbean Sea is woefully slow.

< At El Morro Castle, the 16th-century fortress built to protect Habana harbor, a dozen vendors plied their wares — cheap souvenirs and bad art.

Special note to Cantemus:

One was selling wooden

puppets, like El Monigote:

Vendo este monigote

Se lo vendo por dos reales.

Y si no tiene dinero

Me lo paga con un baile.

You all know about Cuba’s classic American cars. What you don’t know is that this is almost the family car that I drove when I was 16. A Buick Special. Mine was two-tone green, but a different year — and it wasn’t a convertible. Other than that, it was this car!

And, speaking of classic cars: Dozens pulled up to our Havana hotel* to take us to dinner at a government-run restaurant, which was completely mediocre. The next day, we had lunch at a paladar cubana, a privately-run restaurant, which was so much better. Private enterprise is slowly creeping into the Cuban economy... as our guide explained, they like to take the best parts of capitalism and mix them with the best parts of socialism.

After dinner, on to the Tropicana, one of Havana’s most famous nightclubs from the good old days, when Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and the rest of the Mob were entrenched in Cuba.

*About the hotel: Viking originally planned to dock in Havana but couldn’t make the arrangements. Because so many people came on this leg of the trip in order to visit Cuba, and especially Havana, Viking put us all on buses for the 3-1/2 hour ride from the dock in Cienfuegos to Havana, put us up in hotels, and rummed and dined us (that doesn’t rhyme). Thus endeth Day 1 in Havana. #