Today in Havana, Rosie and The Operator want to tour the the cigar factory, the Partegas de Fabrica. This is a factory that employs 400 people to roll cigars. Apparantly, they sit at brown school desk type tables and roll cigars all day. Apparently, one of the most coveted jobs there is the person that sits in front of the lines of workers and….reads the daily newspaper to them. Rosie dosn’t actually know if this is true, or just urban myth, but she wanted to find out.
So you buy tickets to visit in a very limited daily window, on the day of visitation only, from a ticket booth in a nearby hotel. Rosie and The Operator had forged out early so not to miss out. We strolled past the Capitola building, yes, a direct but smaller replica of the one in Washington DC. This grand beauty used to be the seat of the new revolutionary government during the reforms but now is the National Science Museum. Rosie would have loved to have a peek inside…but it was closed due to renovations. Unlucky.
We got to the hotel, the people there said the ticket booth had been changed to another hotel, the one at the other end of the street. Yes, the one we had just walked past. We went back, but had to pass the cigar factory again so we thought we would drop in and ask. Lucky, the factory itself is closed to the public as they too, like everything in Havana, are renovating. A temporary working factory has been set up miles away. No visitors and no photos…I think that’s what they said. Double unlucky. Will look out for another cigar factory elsewhere on our travels.
Spanish is the language of Cuba and very few people we came across spoke English, it was hard work and Rosie’s Spanish phrase book was very well thumbed. There were no signs anywhere saying about this closure…so many tourists were flooding in and asking the same questions as us while we were there, lets face it every visitor to Havana wants to visit this place.
Welcome to Cuba. This has happened a lot over the last couple of days…restaurants in particular we wanted to visit being closed for no specific reason. Monuments and sights being closed for no apparent reason. Let go of the frustration Rosie, this is a Cuba thing, it is what it is, better get used to it.
Off for a stroll down the Paseo del Prado we went instead. It is a marble paved, tree lined, pedestrian only promenade built right down the middle of the main drag, stretching from Havana Central to Old Town Havana.
Grand old buildings line the road on either side of the Prado and one lane of belching classic cars roar up one side and down the other. It is a fab place to people watch and stroll, there are places to sit in the shade and enjoy ice creams from roving vendors, art stands to peruse and impromptu dance classes where people just seemed to join in. Kids bought their balls and strap on roller skates here and played while their Mums gossiped in the shade.
On one of the days we were strolling this main thoroughfare a random guy came up to us and explained, in perfect English, that today was the day all of the artists could display their art works for sale and they could keep the full profits from any sales they made and not have to give the government its commission. This happened on one day every month and today was the day….you would have thought the artists would have been doing a bit more of a sales pitch for the tourists….but we were not asked to buy or look at anything.
The breeze on our balcony in the evenings was bliss, the action below us never stopped just slowed down a little during the hot times. We had a mosquito net over our bed but we never once saw a creepy crawly or got bitten…there was a ceiling fan to move the air at night and a rickety noisy air conditioner which was good for a blast just before bed, but too loud to keep on all night.
Our building was made of concrete with wooden shuttered louvers over the windows…no glass. Most houses did not have glass only these shutters. Some of the other casas/B&Bs we stayed in had swinging glass window panes retro fitted on the inside of the rooms…the shutters were always fixed on the outside. The rooms were always dim, cause the shutters were always shut, thus keeping the houses nice and cool. We also had no hot water for two days in Havana. Just before bed on the third day, as Rosie was resigned to another flannel bath we dutifully turned on the taps to test the temp…Hola, it was warm…into the shower we jumped, we were not wasting that opportunity.
The tap water in Cuba is not drinkable…even the locals do not drink it and the sewerage pipes are not up to having paper flushed down the toilet. We were given strict instructions to NOT put paper down the toilet, everywhere you go in Havana there are rubbish bins next to the toilets….you wipe and put your paper in the bin….oh, yes, even in restaurants and some do not have lids for the paper waste. Ponder that for a minute…..
It does not seem like a big thing, but you try to break a habit of toileting lifetime and remember to NOT drop your paper into the toilet…Rosie did a couple of times at the apartment…she did a sneaky flush….the wees disappeared but the paper would not even go down the pipe….the paper will break down said the Operator…just wait a bit and then flush again…it didn’t. It stubbornly sat in the bottom of the bowl…The Operator put his hand in and squeezed it out…thank you my love…Next time said The Operator, you will be doing it yourself…Lesson learnt.
