Moving Around Cuba

Moving Around Cuba

Transportation in Cuba is unique and very strange to Americans or to others in the western world. We have mental pictures of the 1950's cars kept running by Cuba's street mechanics for all these years, but because they once plied our streets, they aren't really so foreign to us. If we think of them as strange, we may be too young to remember when they were common here. For the 50's cars, strangeness is more of a time warp effect.

But the first time I saw a camello, an old fashioned Cuban bus, I thought, "that's really weird." I've mentioned camellos before in these blogs. They are basically tractor trailers where the trailer is fitted out as a bus. The center part of the trailer is lowered to make the step up from or the step down to the street surface easy. The front and back of the trailer are raised to give head room to the passengers riding above the wheels. This gives a two-humped (camel-like) look, and thus the Spanish name, camello, or camel in English.

When I first visited Cuba, camellos were common. They could hold a prodigious number of passengers, and you might guess one was coming when a busy corner on a main artery would be packed with a couple hundred commuters. The old tractor would limp to a stop and pandemonium would ensue as one hundred who wanted to leave the bus had to get by another hundred trying to get on the bus—all through the same set of doors. When finally everyone was on or off as he wished, the tractor would accelerate, grinding up through its gears to repeat the drama at the next bus stop.

Thankfully camellos made their last runs a few years ago, and today a fleet of sleek Chinese buses get people where they are going.

Cuba's intercity buses and trains have some of that weird flavor too. You can ride them and pay in the old Cuban Pesos or pay for a higher class of service in CUC's, Cuba's convertible currency, mostly used by tourists. If you use the old Peso buses, you have a much lower class of service. If you pay in CUC's, you ride in a different train or bus, generally with well-to-do people. This was being discussed recently in our email, and I quote Nora's words to describe the low class service:

Dear Les,

Of course it is much cheaper, but for this very reason it is a very difficult way to travel. Normally they are problematic—as much for the schedules, which are not respected, but for the people who operate them and the people who use them. I would not recommend this option—much less for a vacation in the eastern part of Cuba. As a Cuban, I would never use those trains or regular buses (paid in Pesos).

Nora

Of course many third world countries have trains and buses most of us would avoid, but Cuba may be the only one with two classes of service paid for with two different Cuban currencies. Adding to the transportation weirdness are Co-co taxis, basically a motor scooter for three, Asian style human powered pedicabs, and bicitaxis, a strange cross between a bike and a pedicab.

It's all part of the fun of being in a strange place.

Les Inglis

Rebecca's Cat House

Rebecca's Cat House

After a few trips to Cuba, I had seen a few dog refuges, so I asked Nora to arrange for us to visit a cat refuge. Aniplant does not operate an animal refuge, but they help several with rations of food and some veterinary care.

Nora chose Rebecca's cat refuge, and after not finding her at home the first time, we found her the second time. Rebecca is an older woman, perhaps 80, and she lives in what was once a very luxurious house not far from our hotel and a stone's throw from the Florida Straits, which border Havana to the north.

Rebecca's house is a fairly large one floor home with a front porch all across the front face. The ceilings are high and the windows are huge. All stand open as there is no air conditioning, and the cats move from the inside to the porch by jumping through the windows. The porch roof is supported by Corinthian columns. All around the house is a tall wrought iron fence, and the lower eight feet of the fence is covered by sheet iron wired to the fence. That sheet iron is what keeps Rebecca's 30 or more cats inside her yard.

Rebecca's family was once wealthy as you might expect from the large house and the proximity to the water. She told us that when she was a little girl there was no Malecon (Havana's waterside Esplanade, and the sandy beach (now nonexistent) used to extend the two blocks up to her house. Rebecca received us on her large front porch, so I never got to see the inside of the house, although I could peek in the windows and through the screened front door. Years of deferred maintenance, chipped paint, and rusty iron sheets on the fence told me that her situation was more pressed now than when she was young.

And the cats? You ask. Well, they were everywhere you looked--front yard, inside, outside, porch. Frankly, they didn't look too healthy with their fur ruffled and dirty and many with ticks and fleas. At least Rebecca feeds them and water bowls were visible in several places.

Nora tells me Rebecca is very headstrong and doesn't easily accept suggestions about caring for the cats. After many decades of keeping such a collection of cats, she believes she has most of the answers. Nora knows differently, of course. Not every cat is neutered, which means the population will never decline. Once in a while Nora can get her to neuter her females or use a flea treatment on them. Nora knows she has to bring up suggestions for better care slowly and in a spirit of helpfulness. If Rebecca took offence, then the whole refuge would become worse off, so Nora displays her considerable patience and tries for gradual improvements.

Rebecca may have no money at all, but she can't be moved from her house. Until last month, all Cuban real estate was owned by the state, but now this is changing, and Cubans can buy and sell real estate. Rebecca inherited the right to live in her house from her parents, and she will undoubtedly stay there with her cats until she dies.

Then will come the hard choices of what to do with the cats. Not many people are ready to accept a cat or a few cats into their home. They may be killed by the crews of prisoners who patrol the city picking up stray, sick or ownerless animals. Who knows?

All I can say for sure is her cats are one notch better off than homeless. At least they have food and a safe place to sleep.

Les Inglis