Day 20. Encounter: From Canada with Love (Cancun)

2011.12.31 – Cancun: From Canada with Love

“I’m Sexy and I Know It” pounded faintly in the distance, and with every step the ‘Authentic Mexican’ restaurants where the waiters serve margaritas balanced in a stack on their heads were becoming fewer. A twenty-something couple, both smoking cigars, walked slowly and a little unsteadily ahead of me away from the hubbub, slowing my brisk pace. It was reaching the late-early time of night, the paltry New Year’s fireworks having fizzled over the beach two or three hours earlier.

As I made to pass them, the girl turned to me abruptly and asked: “Where are you from?” It was an unexpected query, coming in the middle of the night in a North American accent from a blond pony-tailed lass in jeans and a t-shirt with a half-puffed Cohiba in her hand. “Depends who’s asking,” I replied. “I am,” she muttered, followed triumphantly by, “I knew it! She’s American!” They were both Canadian, having moved to Montreal from Alberta and “VI” respectively to train with the Canadian National Wrestling Team.

“Do you think men with salt-and-pepper hair are sexy? She does, and I don’t have it,” the young man burbled. “There are ways of remedying that,” I responded drily. But she persisted, “Do you? Do you? I think they’re so hot.” Relenting, I replied, “Well, my last boyfriend had salt-and-pepper hair; so I guess I do.” “Where are you from, really” she asked again. “I’m American and Dutch and grew up in Switzerland.” “Wow, really? Do you speak German? They speak German, right?” “Well, in Holland they speak Dutch...” Coming to the rescue, her friend interjected: “Or Swedish; Swedish, right?”

Shifting the conversation to safer ground, the young athlete turned to his colleague and told me she was the top-ranked female wrestler in the nation in her category, and had come close to beating the top Russian contender. “Getting to be number one in the Russian nationals is harder than winning any international competition!” he exclaimed. He was the talkative one, pumping her up, and himself too a little. “My roommate went to the Beijing Olympics. I almost went, but I didn’t make the cut, just.”

Moving right along, he told me eagerly, “The reason I’m walking funny is I broke my ankle.” “Yeah, I noticed you were limping a little; what happened?” I sympathized. “Coach says I just have to keep walking on it, it’s the only way for it to get stronger. ‘Don’t baby an injury,’ he says. It’s not a load-bearing joint, he says.” “Seems like it takes a lot of weight to me,” I couldn’t help remarking. “He’s Russian and he’s sixty-five,” came the answer. “This fourteen-year-old girl showed up to practice one day with a cast on her arm, and he took the scissors and cut it right off. ‘Don’t baby your injuries! You have to be strong!’ That’s Coach for you.” “Sixty-five” I mused, “I guess he trained when it was still the Soviet Union, I’ll bet he’s pretty hard-core.” “He sure is! I take six weeks’ vacation during the year, two of two weeks and then some days here and there. This trip here is two weeks. Coach says, ‘Two weeks! How can you take two weeks off at a time! That’s how much I take in a whole year!’ It’s true, I came back once and I was so out-of-shape. I was wrestling this other guy and wasn’t doing so good, and Coach came over to me and got me in a choke-hold and just sat there choking me. My opponent was good, no doubt about it, but I’m more afraid of Coach than of any opponent.” After a short pause the girl chimed in: “You should have seen him: he took this roll of regular tape and just wrapped it around his ankle!” “Like, duct tape?” I asked. He picked up the story: “No, no, just regular scotch-tape, the thin see-through kind. He said, ‘This is how you tape your ankle, I show you’ and just wound it round and round, like this” – and he made a big circular motion in the air with his arm. “I went to a physio who looked at it and said it was all wrong; in fact it made it worse!”

“I’ve been to Australia and Great Britain,” the young man sallied on. “For wrestling competitions. Have you been there?” “Yes, I lived in London for ten years.” “Ten years! You must have moved there when you were six or something!” the girl exclaimed. “So do you travel much?“ he asked. “Yeah, I’d say I travel quite a lot,” I replied. She jumped in: “What’s a lot? Like, how many countries have you been to? Have you been to ten countries?” “I’d say I’ve been to, maybe, eighty countries.” She looked like she didn’t know whether to take that seriously – and rightly: I’ve since counted and it’s only forty-six – but she didn’t miss a beat. “What’s your favorite country? I’ll bet it’s Switzerland; is it Switzerland?” “Switzerland certainly is a beautiful country; the thing is, each place you visit you experience through the lens of who you are at the time,” I answered, not particularly helpfully. “I loved Great Britain!” he interjected. “And there’s a third place I’ve been, I can’t remember right now. Oh yes – Ireland, I’ve been to Ireland! Have you been there?” “Yes, I was in Galloway…”

“Where are you staying?” she asked. “At a hostel just up the road,” I answered. “Really? Is that safe?” She looked worried. “Sure, hostels are plenty safe!” her friend said reassuringly. “There are plenty of young foreign travelers,” I remarked, as though that were a criterion for safety, before turning the question back to them: “And you, where are you staying?” “At the Oasis Hotel. We walked two and a half hours to get here!” I suggested they might want to catch a bus or a taxi back, and said I’d show them where the bus stopped near my hostel. “Though I’m not sure buses will be running this late; on New Year’s too.” They had nine US dollars between them, and asked me, “How much will a taxi back to our hotel cost?”

Their cohibas were smoked down almost to the wrappers by now and we had reached the flag poles which marked the spot where people waited for the bus. “If we don’t see a bus in five minutes, I’d flag a taxi if I were you,” I remarked. “Hey, there’s the Revolution Dancer!” the girl said, having caught sight of a skinny guy in a panama hat and red t-shirt, stumbling down the side-walk. They’d seen him dancing in the fashion of the floor-game Revolution Squares at the club they’d just left. “How did HE get here so fast?”

Day 19. Chrono - Cancun

07.00 Breakfast not open yet but my buddy Andres at the front-desk put on coffee for me. Proceeded to have an impromptu Spanish-English lesson with him from 07.30 to 09.00 in between interruptions from other guests. 09.00 At breakfast met Swiss-Germans Andrew and David, a smart and funny duo who have traveled together in Costa Rica-Nicaragua-Panama and Peru-Ecuador-Bolivia, and are off to Chiapas tonight. To my surprise, recommended Cancun's hyped-up Coco Bongo; said it puts on a spectacular show. David & Cavia are off to Chichen Itza today; the English trio are snorkeling off Isla Mujeres. 10.30 Starbucks. Skyped with S, who arrived in Islamabad on Dec 2nd and is settling in nicely. Also connected with V on his flight to Atlanta; how novel! Posted 2 slide-shows for Day 1 & Day 2 of the blog. 

Day 19. Encounter: One Degree of Separation (Cancun)

2011.12.30 – Cancun: One Degree of Separation

Hostel Mayapan, in a disused shopping mall, is the only budget accommodation in Cancun’s ‘hotel zone,’ otherwise the purview of high-end chains like Intercontinental and Ritz-Carlton. These hog the white sands along the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea, but city planners did scatter a few public beaches in between, with access points cleverly disguised as truck loading zones. Hostel Mayapan proudly proclaims on its web-site: ‘Only 200m from the beach!’ That beach turns out to be 20m of sand next to the ferry terminal to Isla Mujeres; but 800m further on, Playa Caracol is indeed a slice of paradise: meter-high waves of an unimaginable blue roll in rhythmically, gently buoying surfers waiting patiently for that occasional high crest. And the temperature is perfect, no wet-suits required -- though the boys all look very cool in their black neoprene muscle-shirts.

On the main street nearby is Coco Bongo, which puts on a nightly show to rival the Cirque to Soleil if the advertising is to be believed. Some sober Swiss-Germans at the hostel shelled out for it, and related the next morning over a breakfast of Special K and filter coffee that it was in fact ‘unbelievable’ – so now I am a believer. On big party nights the clubs on the remaining three corners of the Coco Bongo intersection collude and offer common access and an open bar to wrist-band wearers.  Electronic rave music pumps out into the street and six-inch stilettos dominate the dance floor. Revelers don’t leave until dawn.

I returned to the dorm-room one night about midnight to discover that my British bunk-mates had checked out, and two new boys were getting ready to go out and party. They were speaking something that sounded like Spanish with an Italian twist (or Italian with a Spanish twist), so I was amused to learn from Mauro that he was from Buenos Aires born of an Italian mother, and his friend Nicolas was also Argentine but of German and Italian origin: “I feel like I know Europe, you know; even though I’ve never been there.”

I shared that I was at the beginning of a longer journey through Central and South America, and Nicolas’ face lit up. “That’s awesome! I drove my motor-bike from DC to Argentina a couple of years ago; that was an amazing trip!” I said I was thinking of catching a boat from Panama to Colombia, since I’d heard it’s unsafe for travelers to cross by road a border area dominated by narco-traffickers. Mauro, already very drunk, launched into a diatribe about gun-ownership, and how regular people should all carry arms to balance ownership by criminals. Nicolas, his eyes alight with memories of his adventure, steered the conversation back to the logistics of making the crossing by water. “Take a boat, but don’t let them drop you off at any old island along the way. There’s this one island – I’ll remember the name in a minute – where some German guys got dropped off, and it was like a week before another boat came by and picked them up!” I pulled up Google Maps on my laptop and Nicolas pointed out the village as far south as I could go on the Panamanian coast, and the village I’d arrive at in Colombia. “They charged us about $900 to transport our bikes. I was travelling with these two other guys, another South American and this Gringo we met on the road. We all had to get our bikes to Colombia on the boat. They weigh a lot!”

Once you land in Colombia, you’ve still not arrived. You’ve got to take another boat to a town where there’s a border post with immigration police to get your passport stamped and file papers for any vehicle you’re taking into the country. “Then we walked back. Me and the Gringo. He was hard-core. He was bare-foot, and we walked through the jungle, over this mountain.” Nicolas was glowing, re-living the adventure. “This Gringo, he was tall and blond and had blue eyes. There was no mistaking him for a Gringo. And he didn’t speak Spanish. Wherever we’d be with local people I’d say ‘He’s with me, he’s cool, don’t worry about him.” Nicolas waxed on, “We were like brothers. I liked the other guy we were with just fine, but me and this Gringo just clicked. We liked the same stuff. Like, when we were camping on the beach one time, we decided to go spear-fishing to catch our dinner. The other guy, he just wasn’t into it.” Nicolas recounted how the Gringo had come to stay with his family for about a month once they got to Argentina. “I come from a family of mechanics. That’s why I love bikes so much (he shrugged at this). By this time, the Gringo’s bike was all fucked up.  The steering wheel didn’t point straight anymore – he’d be trying to drive straight but his arms would be way over here (he mimed the awkward driving position). My uncle took care of it. Like I said, he was like my brother; that’s the reason I invited him to stay with my family.”

Mauro was getting bored and said something in Span-lian (maybe it’s just that he gesticulated like an Italian and was all wound up like a Napolitan caught in traffic). “Yeah, we’ll go, we’ll go, in just a minute –  let me show her some photos on Facebook.” Nicolas logged in to his account and found the album of his motorbike trip and flipped through a succession of photos of guys and motor-bikes against various back-grounds. Then there was one where the Gringo was standing upright, full-length, in the right side of the frame. I leaned in closer. It wasn’t a super clear shot, but I couldn’t help asking, “This Gringo, his name wasn’t Trale, was it? Trale Bardell?” Nicolas paused to remember, then missed a beat as he subconsciously consulted some probability charts buried in his brain against the evidence of this name hanging in the air. “You know him? You know this guy?! Yeah, Trale, that was his name. But we called him Tomas coz Trale was too hard to remember.” I said, “He’s my cousin.”

Trale Bardell. The son of my cousin Patti Bardell-Leininger. He grew up on a farm outside of Rock Island, Illinois, was home schooled through middle school, and was elected valedictorian of his graduating high-school class. After college he worked on oil-rigs in Siberia and Indonesia, and saved up money. When he got home, he bought a motorbike and rode it all the way from Rock Island to Patagonia. In my mind Trale is a Lone Ranger, capable of tackling any eventuality in the wild, surviving winter blizzards and parched summers, mending any piece of machinery and tending any kind of farm animal. I’d met him twice, once in 1988 on the farm when he was a bleached blond boy of five, and again in 2010 at a family reunion when he was twenty-seven, a seasoned veteran of overseas adventures, but a reticent conversationalist.

“Oh my god! Oh my god!! You’re his COUSIN!? That’s unbelievable! He’s like my brother and here I am with his cousin! Now I see; you do look kind-of like him.” And we both laughed in disbelief and delight, and clapped our arms around each other.

More unbelievable than the Coco Bongo nightly show. 

Day 18. Chrono - Cancun: Blogging & Swimming

DEC 29, THUR: CANCUN - Blog (Day 2) & Swim 

09.00. In my 4-bed pod, British girl Anna suffered stomach upset and nausea all night; her two pals left for Isla Mujeres in the morning. Met San Francisco couple David and Cavia over breakfast of Special K and coffee. He writes software for medical devices, like the gizmos that oblate arteries clogged with plaque. He used 'oblate' as a verb and said it's a nice way of saying 'burn the hell out of'... google says 'oblate' is an adjective and means 'having the shape of a squashed sphere; anyhoo, it sounded like these squashed sphere shaped things rotate through an artery and scrape (or burn) bad stuff away, and David writes the programs that control them and creates the GUIs for medical professionals to control the programs. He's also the product manager for a plasma-based device that burns away the uterus. Sounds horrible, but he pointed out it's distinctly preferable to having a hysterectomy if you're a peri- menopausal woman who won't stop bleeding. Fascinating. 10.30 Up and running at my Starbucks office. Wrote 1 1/2 entries. Skyped with V, who leaves for South Africa tomorrow. 14.30 Hungry. Huge chicken burrito at my 'local', around the corner from the hostel. Only one there, and chatted with Alberto (the waiter) and Jesus (the cook) in (very) broken Spanish. 15.30 Headed on foot direction Playa Tortuga, on the recommendation of Jesus. Turned out to be a 2km walk, along the golf-course. The beach was cramped, and the swimming area cordoned off with buoys so that the ferries departing to Isla Mujeres wouldn't run over waders. Packed with Mexican families, kids feeding the seagulls, swimmers in shorts and t-shirts; no seaweed collection here <ref: Cayo Lavisa>. Disappointed, I made my way 2km back to Playa Caracol for a serene swim with the surfers, as the sun set. 18.00 Showered at the hostel, met my two new German pod-mates (Tobias und Thomas), and returned to the Starbucks. Skyped with MB&H, who saw P&N&X off at the airport this morning. Finished off second entry. Did some photo admin.

Chronology (ongoing)

CUBA (Dec 12-26, 2011)
DEC 14, WED: HAVANA - Walk around HABANA VIEJA 

tbc


DEC 26, MON: CANCUN - Beach-day with A  


DEC 27, TUE: CANCUN - Read & Swim 


DEC 28, WED: CANCUN - Blog (Day 1) & Swim 

Day 2. Step by Step around Vedado (Havana)

DEC 13, TUE: Walk around the VEDADO neighborhood

     Woke up to rain and no hot water and brightly painted 1950s US cars (fins 'n all) cruising the street outside and an old man smoking a cigar on the stoop next door (yes, for real). Our abode is opposite the Estadio Latinoamericano, the home stadium of the Industriales baseball team, the Cuban equivalent of the Yankees. The flat is on the ground floor of a tall apartment building painted in blue and white (the colors of the team) with 'Industriales' written in large italics down the facade. Maida came by with breakfast - meat patties with cucumber and tomatoes sandwiched between light white bread, and coffee in a thermos. 'Hamburgesas,' they're called, though they bear only the faintest resemblance to their American cousins; and the coffee was dark and sweet, prepared in a stove-top espresso maker at her flat -- not quite the thimble-full of 'Cuban' deliciousness you can get at trendy establishments in San Francisco or Ann Arbor. She sat with us at the table and fed Alison and talked of her daughter (with the circus in Venezuela) and her various ideas for fixing up the flat. 

     Walking distance from the Plaza de la Revolucion, we set out on foot in that direction. Vedado turns out to be a neighborhood of grand town-planning statements in what is otherwise a largely residential neighborhood: people waiting on the sidewalk for buses, one or two entrepreneurs selling a scant selection of vegetables (onions, sweet potatoes) out of wheelbarrows, young children in maroon-and-white uniforms on their way to or from school accompanied by their parents, small shops selling shampoo and little else. We stumbled upon the art deco Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti (closed for renovation) with the names of great thinkers etched on the walls (including Washington), and the Terminal de Omnibus (the main local, rather than tourist, bus terminal) where we stopped to admire a roadside vendor's roasting hunk of marinated pork and bought a couple of delectable 'lechon asado' sandwiches for 5NP (that's 20c US). Across the road much squeaking emanated from a dilapidated concrete Startrek-spaceship-inspired structure, and we discovered the Sala Polivalente Ramon Fonst (the Madison Square Garden of Havana, perhaps?) and youths practicing their lay-ups in one corner. 

     Finally we completed our loop 'round to the piece-de-resistance of Vedado, the Plaza de la Revolucion itself, reminiscent of a North Korean parade ground, with a 109m tall modern monolith visible from miles around, fronted by an oversized parking lot ringed by a 5-lane highway-boulevard. The monolith is part of a memorial to national hero Jose Marti (1853-1895), and backs an 18m high statue of him in Rodin-Thinker pose. The elevator that goes up the tower to stunning views was, regrettably, out of order, and the museum on the ground floor didn't look compelling. It turns out that though only constructed in the 1950s, the plaza and memorial were designed in the 1920s by Frenchman Jean Claude Forestier and were intended to echo the Place de l'Etoile in Paris with avenues radiating out from the center.
    Across the parking lot from Jose Marti are two nondescript squat ten-story 1950s buildings -- one the Ministry of the Interior and the other the Ministry of Informatics and Telecommunications -- interesting only for the eight-story-high wrought-iron 'line-drawings' of the faces of Che Guevara and fellow guerrilla commander Camilo Cienfuegos that adorn each, added  respectively in 1995 (based on Alberto 'Kordo' Gutierrez' iconic 1960s photo of Che and made from steel railings donated by the French government) and 2009 (another 100 tons of steel). At night the faces are lit up, so you can still read the "Hasta la Victoria Siempre" ("Always Toward Victory") and "Vas bien, Fidel" ("You're doing fine, Fidel") stencils that accompany each. The square is inhabited by non-tourists only during political rallies, and speeches by Fidel Castro (given every year on May 1st and July 26th), and the odd visit by the Pope (John Paul II visited in 1998, a first after the 1959 Revolution, and Benedict XVI is due to visit in 2012) -- when over a million locals gather here.

     Crossed a messy boulevard intersection to promenade down Ave. de los Presidentes which leads down to the Malecon (Havana's seaside drive), and is flanked by sheer limestone cliffs and punctuated by a grand circular mausoleum-like platform-with-statues at the 'inland' end (which turned out to be a monument to Jose Miguel Gomez (1858-1921), second president of Cuba (1908-1920)). The street had a pleasant boulevard feel to it, with greenery separating the directions of traffic and two-story classical-style dwellings along either side, and one or two eateries with outdoor plastic seating. Ready for a drink, we happily found at the corner of Calle 23 the refreshingly Cuban-looking Cafe Literario del 'G' with ceiling fans lazily circling, palm shaded alcoves, and dark-wood shutters. Definitely an upscale student hang-out, just around the corner from the Universidad de la Habana, with CUC 2 (approx USD 2) mojitos, a shelf of untouched revolutionary books (qualifying the place as 'literary' no doubt), and a young well-heeled crowd.
     Calle 23 (previously known as La Rampa), though perpendicular to Calle G (the new name for Ave. de los Presidentes), also carries on until it hits the Malecon, with the seaside drive forming an arcing hypotenuse between the two. Within sight from several blocks away already was the 27-story tower of the 'most symbolic hotel in Havana' (though by no means the prettiest): the Habana Libre Hotel. Built as a Hilton under Batista and opened in March 1958 by Conrad Hilton himself, the hotel was commandeered by Fidel Castro in January 1959 and became his headquarters for three months. It's a block of concrete, steel and glass, its most memorable external feature being an immense blue-on-white Miro-like mural forming a band across the main facade. Turns out it's actually a mosaic, created by Cuban ceramist Amelia Pelaez (1896-1968), and titled 'Carro de la Revolucion' (the Revolutionary Car) -- a somewhat confusing or potentially misleading title, as it was erected before Castro's 1959 uprising. Across from the Habana Libre is the Yara cinema, purportedly Havana's most famous cinema, but like most of the cinemas we passed, its doors were closed and its marquee still announced the 33rd International Festival of New Latin America Cinema, which was held at various venues around the city from December 1st to 11th.
    We successfully located Bim Bom, an ice-cream parlor at the corner of Calle 23 and Calzada de Infanta just before the Malecon (it's always nice to have a destination), and ordered 'one' to try the condensed milk flavor; no single scoop cone here, rather a five-scoop coupe appeared for each of us. Having whet our appetites with dessert, we sought out a 'paladar' for dinner, which is to restaurants what the 'casa particular' is to hotels. Same-same but different, really. Similar in that they are purportedly family-run, operate privately while paying a monthly tax to the government, and were also first licensed in 1995 during Cuba's 'special period' as a way for locals to benefit from tourism. Different in that they are not exactly a bargain -- in our sampling, a meal for two came to between CUC 27 and CUC 57 (which equates to about 10% more in USD). We selected Paladar Los Amigos from the Lonely Planet based on proximity and the comment that it was 'enthusiastically recommended by locals.' Reached by descending a narrow walkway along the side of a house, the setting was camp-cute enough, six or so tables on a patio (or was it an entryway?) closed on three sides, decked out in Christmas lights and fake plants which give it an indoor-outdoor feel. The menu had the standard offerings which we were to see repeated across the country, and the food was indifferent. I had the 'carne asado' (a pleasantly flavorful roast, a little dry), and A the 'Uruguay-style' pork (with ham and cheese, what in America often gets called Milanese); both came with rice and black beans (standard fare), a few slices of cucumber and tomato (what in Cuba largely makes something count as coming 'with vegetables'), and five or so limp green beans (a real treat, in retrospect).
    On our way to dinner we walked along a portion of the Malecon, where we had to side-step a fervent sea spraying over the low wall, and stumbled upon the Callejon de Hamel, a treasure of a community art project with mosaic-ed streets and mural-ed walls and inventive embedding of sliced-up bathtubs as seats. Tobias, on neighborhood watch, invited us in for a drink and told us that he'd helped out the artist with construction.
   Back at our casa, we heard cheering coming from the stadium; A turned on the television and tuned into the baseball game, for good stereo effect. Unfortunately, the home team Industriales lost miserably that night.

Day 1. Arrival Havana & First Night in a "Casa Particular"

DEC 12, MON: SAN FRANCISCO to CANCUN to HAVANA

     Up most of the night packing and taking V to the St Francis emergency room to diagnose, and get Benadril for, his allergic reaction to walnuts in a cookie he ate after performing in the SoVoSo Christmas Concert at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. V dropped me off at SFO for my 08.15 Virgin America flight to Cancun. Met Mike-from-Denver at exit baggage screening; he was headed for the world-class rock climbing in Vinales and reported the beaches at Cayo Jutias really are tropical-island beautiful. <We ended up going and can attest to this too>. A picked me up at 15.40 (he'd arrived from Miami at 09.00) and we had a fajita-enchilada-cerveza dinner at the airport waiting for our 22.30 Aeromexico flight to Havana. Bought a visa for Cuba at the Aeromexico window in Cancun for USD 20. Landed Havana at 01.30 (now Tuesday), changed some Euros to Convertible Pesos (known as CUC or 'kook') at the airport, and caught a van-taxi into town with Mike. Got dropped off in Vedado at the 'casa particular' A had booked online. Maida Silvente came out to greet us (now 02.30) and then took her sleeping 1 1/2 year old grand-daughter Alison home to her own apartment in the building next door.

     We found we had a ground-floor apartment all to ourselves, with two bedrooms (each with small bathroom attached) giving off an open-plan living room and kitchen area. The electrical wiring in the kitchen was hazardously exposed, the air-conditioner labeled in Russian, and the enclosed patio a small jungle of neglected plants and disused car parts. The TV in the bedroom did work, though fuzzily, and the shower's dribble was sufficient to wash in, though only sporadically the right temperature (when the pressure in the building dropped, the hot water ceased; when it came back on it was scalding).

Slideshow. Our First Experience of a Casa Particular: Casa Silvente & Maida, in Havana