HAVANA — Cuba was everything and nothing that I’d imagined.
On my first trip in March, with my daughter, Madeline, I expected remarkable art and architecture, cigars and rum, faded ’50s-era casinos and T-shirts bearing the likeness of Che Guevara. I looked for evidence of defections and detente, of clampdowns and compassion.
We found all of it – on the cobblestone streets and back alleys of Havana, in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and in the Museo de la Revolucion, in private restaurants and tobacco farms.
We also found it in the stories told by the people we met, from a tour guide who was contemptuous of the current regime and a museum docent who told us the Cuban Revolution had led to her emancipation from colonial society.
But many of our experiences bore no relationship to our expectations: Tourists, including Americans, were everywhere. Restaurants that cater to those tourists frequently doubled as galleries, some with remarkable paintings and sculptures. The rituals of Santeria are not merely the stuff of pop culture, as we discovered when we walked down a short strip of street known formally as Callejon de Hamel, with its shrines and galleries and murals devoted to the Afro-Cuban religion that combines Yoruba and Catholic beliefs.
When we were planning the trip, we didn’t take geography into consideration. Cuba is a Caribbean island, which means beaches and palm trees and tropical fruit, right? But the terrain is richly diverse: Parts of western Cuba — the postcard-worthy mountains and valleys of rural Pinar del Rio province two hours west of Havana — resemble a Chinese landscape painting. Nothing prepared us for the contrast of apartments on the verge of ruin next to seemingly well-preserved buildings slathered in Wedgwood blue or pastels.
Cuba’s story unfolded through its food, its flora and fauna and, of course, its people. They introduced us to the art of hand-rolling cigars, 12-year-old rum and orchids the size of salad plates. They were curious. Welcoming. And voluble.
That included our guide for 5½ days, who greeted us each day with great enthusiasm, even though he undoubtedly had squired tourists through Meyer Lansky’s Hotel Havana Riviera and the Plaza de la Revolucion dozens of times. He shared his life story, his opinion of Fidel Castro and his love of ‘80s pop music. When he dropped us off at Jose Marti airport, he embraced us like longtime friends.
Then he added, “You can quote me, but please don’t use my name.”
His Cuba, and the Cuba we experienced, remains a beautiful mess: welcoming, beguiling, ravaged by neglect. It’s a real-time current events course, where change seems certain – but the outcome never is.
Old Havana
Cuba has more than 3,000 species of plants unique to the island, but it’s unlikely that horticulture will come to mind while exploring the streets of Old Havana.
When my daughter, Madeline, and I left that neighborhood, we encountered a little more green – magnificent banyan trees near the University of Havana and the lush landscaping that surrounds some of the embassies in the Miramar neighborhood.
One day we drove to Vinales, two hours west of Havana, where we finally were surrounded by sights often associated with the Caribbean. The landscape started to look verdant and at times out of control. Flowering plants popped up everywhere: Bougainvillea spilled in front of tiny homes, and red-blossomed vines snaked around palm trees.
Our first stop was the Soroa Orchid Garden, which is maintained by the University of Pinar del Rio, part of a larger park and botanical garden and home to hundreds of varieties — cymbidium orchids, tiger lily orchids and cattleya white orchids among them — about 30 of which are housed in a small building at the entrance. I could have spent an entire day in that structure, but we had a schedule to keep and a tobacco farm to visit.
About 20 minutes later, we stopped at a private tobacco farm where young men, stooped over in the fields, were harvesting, by hand, the second crop of the season. Tobacco is one of the mainstays of the country’s economy and a major moneymaking crop, thanks to worldwide fascination with Cuban cigars. Manufacturers produce tens of millions of cigars each year, and a few of them ended up in our suitcases.
We dutifully inspected the leaves of a mature plant and the drying barns where the first crop, brown and wrinkled, awaited the rolling process. The farm seemed relatively prosperous, with its well maintained buildings and nonagenarian owner observing visitors from a rocking chair, but its homespun charms couldn’t compete with the exotica of the orchids.
The next day, we stopped at Finca la Yoandra, an organic garden about 25 minutes west of Old Havana and an example of Cuba’s urban agriculture movement, which according to a 2014 report in the Guardian newspaper supplies about “70 percent of the fruits and vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Santa Clara.”
The 2-acre garden is attached to an Italian restaurant called Il Divino, a popular stop for tour buses and groups. The well tended garden, including a lime tree and row after row of vegetables, was a peaceful respite from our nonstop learning.
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