The Cuban Missus Crisis

By David M. Addison

In this humorous travelogue round Cuba, the hapless author suffers from both urban myths and his Missus (aka the Drinks Police). The first he debunks as they occur; the crises his Missus causes, or would have caused but for his timely intervention, are a more serious matter.
Acutely aware that Cuba is certain to change in the near future and probably radically, award-winning author David M. Addison was anxious to experience the country as it is now, under communism and Castro. Apart from describing what daily life is like for ordinary Cubans, he also delves into Cubas past from the original inhabitants and post-Columbian conquest to the Wars of Independence and the Bay of Pigs and its aftermath.
On the literary trail, Addison pays homage to Hemingway as he follows in his footsteps. And if that should necessitate a visit to a bar or two, that cant be helped. Its not a lame excuse for a bar crawl despite what the Drinks Police may think.
It goes without saying that in Cuba you cant avoid classic cars and cigars but the author also takes a close look at Cubas art and architecture, flora and fauna and not least, the countrys other most famous product rum. Another cause for a crisis as far as the Missus is concerned.
A mine on all aspects of Cuban culture both past and present, this is useful background reading for anyone intending a visit to Cuba as well as being a handy accompaniment to your guidebook when you go. Or, if armchair travelling is more your thing, pour yourself a glass of rum or mix a mojito and learn and laugh your way round Cuba.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504942959

David M. Addison

Born a long time ago in a place far, far away even from most other places in Scotland, David M. Addison grew up, at least in the physical sense, and moved away from his native north-east and began travelling the globe, though he does make occasional returns to his native soil to visit old haunts and haunt the old relations who have not disowned him. This is the fifth book recounting his travels and once again he has been drawn back to Italy for which has a particular fondness. For more information on the author and his books visit his website www.davidmaddison.org or http://www.filedby.com/author/david_m_addison/1371971/

Book preview

The Cuban Missus Crisis

David M. Addison

53643.png

AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© David M. Addison. All rights reserved.

This is book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/24/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4293-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4294-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4295-9 (e)

Back cover images and author photograph © Fiona J. Addison.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Book Designer: Tom Christie

Contents

Chapter One Pre-departure Crises

Chapter Two Mid-air Myths and Missus Crisis

Chapter Three Meeting the Drakes and More Crises

Chapter Four Mr Martí and the Bacardis

Chapter Five Cars, Capitol, Camilo and More Mr Martí

Chapter Six Much ado about the Vedado and the Malecón

Chapter Seven A Bit of a Rum Do

Chapter Eight Shopping Cuban style

Chapter Nine Squares, Statues and Strange People

Chapter Ten In the Plaza de Armas

Chapter Eleven In the Plaza de la Catedral

Chapter Twelve A Little Night Music

Chapter Thirteen A Missus Crisis Averted

Chapter Fourteen Tobacco Road

Chapter Fifteen Tobacco Factory

Chapter Sixteen Another Rum Do at the Rum Factory

Chapter Seventeen Mogotes and my Guts

Chapter Eighteen Trouble in Paradise

Chapter Nineteen Through the Cave to the Biggest Pig in Cuba

Chapter Twenty Caves and Slaves

Chapter Twenty-one Santería

Chapter Twenty-two Sketches of Viñales and Pictures of the Past

Chapter Twenty-three Tobacco Farm Time Capsule

Chapter Twenty-four Fears and Phobias

Chapter Twenty-five Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Chapter Twenty-six On the Way to the Bodeguita

Chapter Twenty-seven La Bodeguita del Medio

Chapter Twenty-eight On the Hemingway trail again

Chapter Twenty-nine Dining in the rain, I’m unhappy again

Chapter Thirty A Little Nature Study

Chapter Thirty-one At home with the Hemingways

Chapter Thirty-two Cojímar

Chapter Thirty-three Following in more famous footsteps

Chapter Thirty-four The Prado Lions and the National Pride

Chapter Thirty-five A bird’s-eye view

Chapter Thirty-six Crocodile Farm

Chapter Thirty-seven At Home with the Taíno

Chapter Thirty-eight The Bay of Pigs and the Road of Rice

Chapter Thirty-nine Dying Of Hunger

Chapter Forty The Jagua

Chapter Forty-one On Matters Vegetable, Animal and Mineral

Chapter Forty-two Near Crisis in Cienfuegos

Chapter Forty-three Chez La Casa de Changó

Chapter Forty-four The Crabs, the Stinking Fruit and the Sparrow

Chapter Forty-five Confrontation in the Palacio Cantero

Chapter Forty-six The Tipple, the Temple and the Traveller

Chapter Forty-seven The Birdman of Iznaga

Chapter Forty-eight A Short History of Number Plates in Cuba

Chapter Forty-nine Storms, Saints and Stories

Chapter Fifty Curiosities, Coincidences and Crises

Chapter Fifty-one A Desire to see a Boxcar

Chapter Fifty-two Santa Clara, Marta and Che

Chapter Fifty-three A Grave Disappointment

Chapter Fifty-four The Final Crises

About the Author

By the same author

An Italian Journey

A Meander in Menorca

Sometime in Sorrento

Bananas about La Palma

Misadventures in Tuscany

An Innocent Abroad

Confessions of a Banffshire Loon

The%20Cuban%20Missus%20Crisis%20-%20Internal%20Map.jpg

Chapter One

Pre-departure Crises

It got off to a very bad start. The first crisis happened even before we left and it was, unusually, all the Missus’ fault. Nothing to do with me. But of course it really was my fault, as you shall see.

Oh my God, we’ll never make it! said she staring in disbelief at her laptop.

What?

She had been checking us in online for our flight to Gatwick on the first leg of our trip to Cuba.

It’s just not possible! I could tell she was on the cusp of tears without having to look up from my own laptop.

What isn’t?

We’re due to land in Gatwick at 10.25 and the flight to Havana leaves at 12.30.

So?

So there’s just not enough time!

Two hours. Bags of time.

"To get our luggage and get to a different terminal. And what if something goes wrong? What if we’re delayed? Pause while the enormity of the situation sank in deeper. It’s just not possible! she reiterated with a tone of finality. Then in bewilderment, How could I have made that mistake?"

But worse was to come. She had booked the return flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh for the 18th and although that was our day of departure from Cuba, inexplicably she had failed to take into account both the time difference and the flight time. Put it this way: by the time we landed in Gatwick, the connection to Edinburgh would have taken off the day before.

So that is how we ended up having to fly down the evening before the flight to Havana and book a hotel room at Gatwick airport, not to mention the slight matter of £35 each to change the flights both ways and, to add insult to injury, the Gatwick-Edinburgh leg came with a surcharge and the added bonus of an eight-hour layover. And then there was the taxi fare to the hotel and the extra day the car would have to be in the car park at Edinburgh airport…

Huh! I couldn’t help but grumpily remark, we could have had a holiday for all that – what we’ve spent just getting to Gatwick and back!

Well, if you had got your head out of that laptop just for five minutes and not left me to do everything maybe this wouldn’t have happened, rejoined the Missus testily.

So you see that is why this crisis really was all my fault. Because I did nothing.

To anyone who believes that the gods have got it in for you at every available opportunity, what other people call fate, it was clear to me that this was a bad omen and we would do well to proceed no further in this business (as Macbeth tried to tell his wife when she had her mind set on something much more nefarious), not that pulling out of the trip was a serious option for us. We had been trying to get on it for the past two years but it hadn’t gone ahead due to lack of numbers. And it’s only happening now because we have paid an additional premium to make it viable for CTS, our travel company. There are only four of us: the Missus, me and another couple. What if we don’t get on? I have never knowingly bugged anyone but I annoy the hell out of my wife even when I don’t do anything – what if I unwittingly do the same to the Drakes?

That’s all we know about them, their names. For the best part of two weeks we will be living in each other’s pockets as we explore the island from north to south and from end to end, practically. After it’s over we will be decanted at the beach resort of Varadero for a bit of R&R (where the second R stands for Recovery as we are expecting the tour to be rigorous) and where we wouldn’t have to have anything to do with each other unless we wanted to. But two weeks’ enforced company with each other in the close confines of a mini-bus might be more than any of us had bargained for.

The portents are bad but there’s no turning back now. Apart from disappointing the Drakes, somehow I can’t see the travel insurance coughing up just because I have a bad feeling about it.

*

Can you spell her name yet?

What’s her nickname for you? Sauerkraut?

I can’t help but overhear the banter among some blokes who have evidently come back from a stag somewhere and are homeward bound for London. They have probably been to Prague or Krakow. They are definitely on their way back, drinking coffee, not beer.

It’s 6.23 pm and we’re passing the time in Wetherspoons at Edinburgh airport on our way to Gatwick. I shouldn’t begrudge the prices, but just like the bride and groom will shortly be saying – I do. £3.50 for a pint of real ale. Not like my local Wetherspoons but cheap compared to the Missus’ Aspall’s cider at £4.40. Good grief!

But thanks to these moneys we have a seat. Chance has it that our departure gate is right across from the pub and I can see a throng of people hanging about. Our flight is so badly delayed that the passengers for the following flight, scheduled to depart two hours after ours, had begun showing up ages ago and have now turned into a multitude. That’s why we’ve been forced to pass the time here.

Do you want another drink? I ask, hoping at these prices she’ll say no, but will let me have one.

I should tell you that my Missus, as well as answering to her real name of Iona, has a litany of others, one of which is the Drinks Police. I also call her my German wife, Frau Ning, when she looks at me disapprovingly for something or other I have done wrong, or when I have committed a graver crime, Scow Ling, who is of course, my Chinese wife.

"Well you can have one more, she says wearily. Her eyes are Viagra hard. You needn’t think that you are going to sit there drinking until departure time – whenever that may be."

I choose to treat the remark from the constabulary with the contempt it deserves. I certainly wouldn’t dream of doing that, not at these prices. She should know me better than that. Instead I merely ask sweetly, And what would you like, dearest?

I’ll have a half pint of cider. And don’t call me ‘dearest’. That was my German wife. After more than forty years of marriage, she sees this endearment for the servile remark it really is.

After the drinks are finished, and a decent interval, I manage to persuade her to let me have a half pint while she has a hot chocolate. £4.50 for that little lot. This holiday is getting dearer by the minute and we have only got as far as Edinburgh.

But it just goes to show you that the Missus was right to change the flight to this evening. What if this had happened tomorrow morning? But then I am sure as I can be that it wouldn’t have. This is just the gods having a bit of a laugh at my expense.

Chapter Two

Mid-air Myths and Missus Crisis

No delays on the flight to Havana but one drawback as far as the Drinks Police is concerned – we have not been allocated seats together. This is not because she wants the companionship but because she wants to stop me availing myself of the free drinks. One of her problems is she’s just not an economist. She can’t grasp the idea that the more drinks you have, the more you reduce the cost of your ticket. I know she will let me have one drink, possibly two, but a third would be a no-no. You’ll just have to trust me that I would not, left to my own devices, have spent the whole flight trying to decimate the airline’s profits, but two drinks in over nine hours seems a very meagre ration indeed to me.

It takes some time to get half a thousand people on a Jumbo and on every plane I have ever been on before, they play nice soothing music such as you might get on Classic FM but the cacophony this outfit is playing is driving me up the wall. Someone should tell whoever compiled this playlist that just because it’s the sort of rubbish that you might hear on Radio 1 that the number has nothing to do with quality.

Ah, thank God, an announcement and then a video on safety. I never knew such a thing could be so preserving of one’s sanity, never mind one’s life and limb, then this: Ladies and gentlemen, at high altitude the effects of alcohol are exacerbated and we reserve the right not to serve you any alcohol even although your behaviour does not show any signs of being adversely affected.

A tap on my shoulder. The Drinks Police is seated directly behind me.

Did you hear that? There is no mistaking the smugness in her voice.

Yes I did, I growl. It’s an urban myth, and I untwist my neck to face the front and what now looks like being a very long and severely alcohol-deprived flight. The little screen in the back of the seat before me tells me just how long.

4,675 miles to Havana. Arrival: 18.28 local time. It’s 9.06 in the morning there at the moment. Lazy lie-a-beds will just have got up or are still in bed, whereas I have been on my hind legs for hours. It’s an easy sum but I don’t have to work it out, the screen tells me: nearly nine and a half hours confined in this less than coffin-sized space. At least in a coffin you get to stretch out and what’s more, you get it all to yourself. Some stupid grey box is occupying half my foot space.

And it’s a fact, it is a myth, that alcohol affects you more at altitude. If it were true, it would mean that people in the mile-high city of Denver (5280 feet precisely) could save a fortune on booze compared to their poor pals in Chicago (about 580 feet) before they reached the same level of inebriation, or feeling of wellbeing, as I would prefer to put it.

But don’t just take my word for it. I first came across the myth in a magazine in the dentist’s waiting room and thinking it might be useful ammunition against the Drinks Police one day (like now), I looked further into it and discovered that in test after test conducted for the Federal Aviation Authority, scientists measured the BAC (blood alcohol concentration) of people at sea level and high altitude – and found no difference at all.

The myth began way back in the 1930s with a psychologist at Columbia University whose name is Mud to me but known to the scientific community by another name bestowed upon him by fond parents. After a series of tests, he came to the conclusion that two or three drinks would be the equivalent of four or five at an altitude of between 10,000 and 12,000 feet due to the rarefied atmosphere.

It has been circulating ever since, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it being used by an airline as an excuse to drive up profits by refusing to serve alcoholic refreshment to their customers. And don’t let them fool you by letting you think that the higher you are, the more pronounced the alleged effect must be. It doesn’t matter whether your plane is at 30,000 feet or higher, for typically, airlines set the cabin pressure at between 6,000 and 7,000 feet. That’s the real height and amount of oxygen in the cabin, not what it’s like at the top of Mt Everest.

*

Our bounteous airline is magnanimously allowing us a drink of our choice with our meal, which amazingly, includes an alcoholic drink. But no such thing as a civilised pre-prandial apéritif as I have been accustomed to with other airlines. I elect to have a beer and a whisky with ginger ale. And here’s another cost-cutting ploy. Instead of those little bottles that contain a good dram, this lot pours you a measure from a bottle whose label I can’t see, but is probably a cheapo that they get even cheaper as a bulk buy.

It’s hard work juggling my drinks with my indifferent and mercifully small midday meal on my even smaller tray, but I somehow manage it and it’s only fitting after such exercise and such a fine repast that I should wash it down with a fine cognac. The one good thing about this seat is, since it is opposite the galley, the attendants must come back to base and all I need do is catch the eye of one of them rather than press the call button as that would also draw the attention of the real Drinks Police.

Yes, sir? Finally an attendant has noticed me.

I’ll have a cognac please.

Cognac? What’s that?

Is she serious? She’s a waitress, if only a glorified one and she’s never heard of France’s finest product! Imagine what the French would make of that and how in hell did she manage to graduate from waitress school? Unbelievable! No, frankly, I just can’t believe it. This is just another ploy to keep the millionaire who owns this airline in the style to which he is accustomed.

Brandy. It’s a kind of brandy, I explain patiently. And no ice, I add in precisely the same sort of tone.

Off she goes, though her journey is but a couple of steps. The second her back is turned, I feel my seat being shaken and then the top of my head being battered by what I presume is a rolled-up in-flight magazine. I try to ignore it. I know who it is and exactly what I have done to provoke this reaction. My failure to respond incites the Drinks Police to even greater anger. She grabs the only bit of flesh that she can reach and sinks her nails into my upper arm. She used to do that to her sister when she was a little girl. Before she became the Drinks Police and all those other names I bestowed upon her, her sister used to call her Nipper.

Leave me alone! I snarl over my shoulder. I swear to God, if she is going to continue behaving like this in the land where the mojito and the daiquiri were invented, murder will be done. But which one of us will turn out to be the killer I wouldn’t like to say.

Here you are sir, your brandy. It’s the last in the bottle, she adds ominously.

Oh yeah? Isn’t that an amazing coincidence! And she makes it sound like it’s the last bottle too. I will grant you it’s a larger helping than I would have expected from this measly lot but the message is clear: That’s your last.

I see this as nothing less than a challenge or a declaration of war even. Although I know I am heavily outnumbered and caught in a pincer movement (in more ways than one) I am determined to engage battle. I’ll divide and conquer. I’ll choose a different attendant each time I ask for a drink. That way perhaps they’ll not be able to keep track of my consumption. And as far as the other Drinks Police is concerned, I’ll sit lower in my seat, keep my arms in and put my faith in the hope that she will not wish to make a spectacle of herself by leaving her seat and berating me or beating me up in public.

Although they probably were not made from sour grapes, I’d certainly not want another of those brandies anyway, but I could use another of my national drink to while away the time to make this endless journey more tolerable. I wait awhile, a long while after the brandy is gone, whilst I screw my courage to the sticking-place. Now resolved, I fix my eye on a stewardess and will her to stop. That takes a lot longer as apparently I have forgotten to divest myself of my cloak of invisibility. When I do eventually manage to ensnare one of the Drinks Police’s recruits, she is obliged to stoop really low in order to hear me.

I’ll have a beer and a whisky and ginger ale, please, I ask politely enough. There is no point in being openly hostile even although I am conversing with the enemy.

I’m not allowed to serve you both, sir. Which would you rather have? She is the epitome of politeness, but she doesn’t fool me. I know she is lying as did I not have both with my unlovely meal?

In that case, I’ll have the whisky please, I tell her, deciding not to make an issue of the point. She would just say that had been a mistake.

The very second she goes, my seat suffers some not unexpected air turbulence and the pincers creep round the side of my seat but only manage to connect with my shirt. First round to me I think smugly.

But my waitress doesn’t come back and the real turbulence begins (but much less than I had just experienced), the fasten seat belts sign comes on, followed by an announcement: Ladies and Gentlemen, due to air turbulence, the seat belts sign has been switched on. No chance of being served any time soon, by which time I am sure, my server can pretend she has forgotten all about me. The turbulence, I notice however, does nothing to halt the supply of rations on the other side of the curtain to those in the posh seats or those up the stairs. And quite right too. After all, they have paid even more than I have.

Ping! The warning light goes off. I start eyeing up the attendants again, only with a view to the one most likely to bow to the modest request of a respectable senior citizen of course. Not for the first time I wonder if it merely helps for a man to be gay to get a job as a cabin assistant or whether it is a job requirement. I prefer to put my trust in exercising my charm on the gentler sex (so-called) but when they all seemingly fail to notice me, I decide that regardless of sex, if I don’t manage to stop the next two, like the Ancient Mariner, I will stop the third, come hell or high water.

It happens to be one wearing a skirt. I repeat my order.

I’m afraid I can only give you one or the other, sir.

They’ve got their act together as far as that is concerned anyway and I was just on the point of challenging it, when like a deus ex machina, reinforcements for the opposition suddenly appear in the form of the Drinks Police. She has thrown off the surly bounds of her seat belt and is towering over me.

You don’t need any more! she commands, her eyes blazing.

The stewardess looks shocked at this sudden intervention, not least because she felt she was doing just fine on her own. And as if she knows she has overstepped the mark, Scow Ling suddenly disappears from sight and takes her wrath out on her innocent seat by plonking down on it with the full force of her weight. God knows what her companions made of this performance but the stewardess gets down on her hunkers, like you do when you are comforting a child who’s had a disappointment of some sort.

Yes, sir. What would you like? Her tone is calm and soothing. If I didn’t know not to trust her, I would have said she was feeling sorry for me.

This time I only order the whisky and ginger. It comes soon enough, but not with the ginger ale in a can as it was before, but already mixed. Who does she think she is kidding? If there’s any whisky in here it was drowned at birth, too weak to swim for its life. But I don’t believe there is any at all.

This is all your fault! I mutter angrily over my shoulder. But for all I know she could have her headphones on and I’m just wasting my breath.

The entire staff will have heard of me by now, the alcoholic in 18C with the devoted wife who is trying to cure him of his habit. What the poor cow must have to put up with! But for the love of a good woman, God knows what he might end up like. Drinking meths and sleeping in shop doorways most likely. The drunken unappreciative sod just doesn’t know how lucky he is.

I know it will be useless to ask for another drink. I foresee that to do so would provoke a deliberate refusal to serve me, invoking the urban myth aforesaid. That would be embarrassing beyond words, while the wrath of the Drinks Police would be terrible to behold and all the worse for having to nurse it to keep it warm until she got me on my own in a quiet place somewhere.

Simmering at being outflanked and outmanoeuvred, I sip my ginger ale and stare with dismay at the small screen. After all this time in the air, can it really be true that we are not even halfway there yet? And one little can of beer, one whisky of dubious provenance and one cooking brandy is all I’ve got to show for it, the sum total of my spoils in the war against the cabin crew. No wonder the owner is a multi-millionaire with his finger in many pies. Well he’ll never make another bawbee out of me. I’ve got to come back with this airline but I swear I will never fly with it again.

As for the other Drinks Police, that’s not so clear-cut. I don’t want it to end in tears but if there are going to be any more drinks crises like this in Cuba, I’m not sure if the marriage can withstand it…

Chapter Three

Meeting the Drakes and More Crises

So this is Havana.

It had taken three-quarters of an hour to drive from the airport to our hotel through the dimly-lit streets, where even the headlights of the cars seemed to be groping their way through the darkness. And it had taken more than an hour of us standing forlornly in front of the rickety and protesting carousel before it surrendered our luggage. There had been only one carousel to begin with but after a while another had churned into life, someone shouted something and like lemmings, we made a mass migration to the other carousel.

At least they were moving and only looked as if they might conk out at any moment, but in Gatwick, the spanking-new, state-of-the-art carousel which silently and apparently effortlessly delivered the luggage from the ceiling then down a chute onto the conveyer belt at ground level, ground to a halt without any warning.

That was the next crisis as the clock ticked inexorably towards the time of the last (and prepaid) shuttle bus to the hotel and still the damned thing looked as dead as the dodo’s granny without the least hint of it ever being restored to life. Sweat began to bead the brow at that. Just think how it would have been bleeding if this had been tomorrow morning and we had been making a mad dash for the Havana flight! Which just goes to show you (once again) that Drinks Police though Iona may be, she is not always wrong.

At least, in Havana, this second carousel did give a certain cause for hope. But after a long time passed in which it too failed to come up with the goods, we were now worse off as no-one knew now which carousel to stand at. No helpful screen to tell us. We decided to split up.

Are you sure you know what our cases look like? Iona asked, giving me a dubious sort of look. That’s because on our last trip, on the ill-fated holiday to Tuscany, I had picked up what happened to be an identical bag from the carousel and it cost us no end of trouble to return it to its rightful owner whilst in the meantime, our luggage was held hostage.

Of course I do! I snorted. But I knew she’d have a good look at them should I be the one to pick them up first.

There was sweat on my brow this time too but only because of the humidity. And I wasn’t the only one as the sweat of human bodies mingled with tobacco smoke. No smoking restrictions here. I hadn’t thought about that: here in the land of the cigar, why would there be? But these were merely the cigarettes of those dying for a fag, literally. It had been hours since they had had their last cancer stick. That’s even worse than the regime I had been under. It must be a serious undertaking for a smoker to commit to a trans-Atlantic flight.

Eventually both bags arrived, were confirmed by Iona as being ours, and we were off at long last. Would our travelling companions, the Drakes, be waiting for us or were they still here somewhere amongst the thinning crowd?

Through immigration and into the arrivals hall. So, was there another couple looking lost and abandoned? They could be the Drakes. But there wasn’t. And what was worse, there wasn’t, as I expected, a representative from CTS holding up a board with our name on it. I felt like an orphan.

Iona fished out our documents. In the unlikely event of the rep not being there to greet us, we had to contact Cuba Tours, our courier. Phone number provided. And just how were we expected to do that, pray? You can’t get any Cuban currency before you leave, never mind coins. So where is the currency exchange? And where do we find a phone and how much should we put in it and would the person at the other end of the line be able to speak English? If anybody answered at all at this time in the evening, long after normal office-closing time.

Great! Precipitated into a crisis from the first moment, practically.

But then I noticed a group of women wearing bright-yellow polo shirts standing not far away. Reps for Cuba Tours. Thank God for that! Iona showed the nearest one our documents. The CTS rep, she said, couldn’t come (no reason given) and she had been deputised to meet us. Not only that, but she introduced herself as our rep for the entire trip. Well, well, what an amazing coincidence! So we had tracked down our rep. But how, in the name of the wee Man, was she going to find us?

She said her name was Alice and together we watched for the Drakes. Amongst all the pieces of paper she was clutching, I managed to catch sight of a sheet of foolscap on which was inked in Biro: Mr John Drake. There was no corresponding one for Mr David Addison. Never mind leaving the wives out of it, such a thing wasn’t doing my inferiority complex any good.

Maybe it would be a good idea if you held that up for them, I suggested helpfully.

She did, although it seemed to me a trifle unwillingly as if it were the sort of suggestion an inferior sort of person might make. Then a light bulb went on in my head.

We don’t know them you know. We’ve never met them. We haven’t the foggiest idea what they look like.

Alice’s eyebrows shot up above the black frames of her glasses. Her mouth opened but no words came out. She plainly was thinking we must be mad to travel in a small group like this with complete strangers. My thoughts entirely, Alice. And I also thought if she had assumed we were together, since alphabetically speaking, my name comes before John’s, how come she had not chosen mine? His is less to write, but all the same, it’s not good for my paranoia.

Alice soon abandoned holding up the notice, apparently preferring to put her faith in some sort of instinct or our powers to recognise our prospective companions amidst the hordes still streaming through the gates despite her knowing that we knew them not from Adam and Eve.

Iona spotted them first, a couple about our age and obviously looking for someone looking for them. Are you the Drakes? she boldly asked stopping them in their tracks.

One of our cases was on the other carousel, John explained.

Yes, we got one case and so we assumed the other would be on it too, Janet added.

We spent ages waiting for it and when no more cases came, we went back and tried the other carousel, John felt it necessary to add.

There was time to get to know something about them in the minibus on the way to the hotel. Although I could barely make them out in the gloom, they sounded all right, the sort of people with whom we would be able to get along, a bit younger than us, still working, but looking forward to retirement. We heard about their family and other travels they had been on and the more I heard, the more I began to relax. It was going to be all right. I needn’t have worried. We were going to get along just fine. I sat back, my eyes peeled for my first vintage car.

Chapter Four

Mr Martí and the Bacardis

It’s a dull grey morning as I look over the cityscape from our hotel room, eight floors up. From this eyrie I am looking down on the flat-topped roofs of buildings which seem to be a repository for all sorts of rubbish. As far as the eye can see, squalid-looking houses spread out in every direction, grass and weeds sprouting from cracks where great chunks of plaster have long since fallen off. The overall impression is one of shambolic neglect and decay. But not everywhere.

In the middle distance and straight ahead of me so there was never any chance I could fail to notice it, stands an imposing cream-coloured building that would not look out of place in New York. This, at least, is well maintained. I can’t tell how many storeys there are altogether since I can’t see the bottom but there are seven I can see. The top two have some sort of decoration on the pillars between the windows, too far away to make out the detail and scarcely visible at all from ground level I would have thought. But what does catch the eye is a tower with curved balconies and balustrades looking for all the world like an Italian campanile. I can’t be sure from this distance, but I think there might actually be a bell hanging there. And then with a sudden shock that sends a shiver down the spine I realise, bell or not, there definitely is a bat in this belfry.

I nearly missed it, set as it was against an ugly bruise of a sky that promises not just rain but a downpour. Perched on the pinnacle of the spire, its massive wings hanging out to dry like a cormorant’s, is the biggest bat I have ever seen. It astounds me how some people find bats, with their hideous membranous wings, cute and cuddly, and far from avoiding them like the plague, they actually go out at dead of night deliberately seeking them out. But of course this is not a real bat but merely the Sign of the Bat and the times I have sought that out in the supermarket are beyond number. It seems a peculiar choice of logo to me, but this, without doubt, must be a building belonging to Bacardi.

Off to the left, on the edge of vision, is another impressive building but so fanciful it could have been transported, spire by shimmering spire, from Disney World. There is a huge black cross on the highest, so it’s obviously a very grand church of some kind, possibly even a cathedral – but so new, and here in a Communist country? Hopefully the guidebook will have the answers.

Looking straight down, and so far beneath my feet that it makes me feel giddy, is a dilapidated building with a roof of red tiles, many of which are missing. There is a parapet of stone blocks which had been glistening white once, but many now turned sooty black, and beneath that the legend CVARTEL DE BOMBEROS inscribed above a huge and ornamental wooden door, the sort of grand entrance I have seen on stately Spanish mansions.

If the legend is to be believed (not to mention my rudimentary Spanish), it’s the Fire Brigade HQ and in confirmation, there in the courtyard, is a gleaming, bright-red fire engine – only it looks like something from a bygone age. If that represents the state-of-the-art fire-fighting equipment in the capital, God knows what it’s like in the provinces.

I’m intrigued by the huge amount of stains on the pavement as if all the dogs in Havana had come along here to mark this out as their territory. Whatever it is, it gives the area a distinctly unsanitary appearance. And here we are in our room, far above all that squalor, in the height of luxury.

I was impressed the very moment I stepped inside the hotel. Around the atrium I noticed a mezzanine with a balustrade running right round it, reminiscent of Spanish Colonial architecture, not at all like what you might expect from the modern frontage, so it’s undoubtedly faux. Then a grand flight of marble stairs sweeping up to it, squishy-looking sofas and chairs, potted palms and other exotic plants, and a bar at the far side with cane chairs and glass-topped tables.

This impression of laid-back luxury was enhanced by the sight of several young ladies dressed like maids from the Thirties: black frocks with white bibs and a silly little lacy tiara sort of thing in their hair. But these maids’ frocks were scanty and they had white bobby socks and trainers which spoiled the effect somewhat, but they are still welcome to come up and clean my room anytime.

Our room has two king-size beds, a sofa at the end of each, his-and-her sinks in the bathroom and a fluffy white robe each. I am the first to admit that I am hardly sylphlike but the only people these garments could comfortably fit would be the Japanese guests – not that I have seen any so far but there’s bound to be hundreds of them. I meet shoals of them wherever I am abroad.

It was to a far, far, better sleep I went to last night than I have known for a long time, thanks to that marvellous bed which I had all to myself. And plenty of time to enjoy it too, for in what was music to my ears, Alice had informed us before she left that she would be picking us up at 9.30.

That’s why I have time to spare before breakfast and feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to consult the guidebook about those buildings. That curious modern-looking church turns out to be the Iglesia del Ángel Custodio built in – wait for it – 1693, originally as a hermitage before it was transformed into a church in 1788. The guidebook agrees with my opinion of it: it is far too white and unreal, the victim of too vigorous a restoration. Ironic really. Apart from the Bacardi building, all the others seem to have been left to decay. Half as much attention to them would have been twice as good for the look of the city.

It was in there, the guidebook goes on to inform me, that José Martí was baptised. Every child in Cuba learns about Mr Martí at his mother’s knee but I had to Google him. Poet, essayist, journalist, translator, politician and revolutionary, to which you can certainly add – enfant terrible. I had noticed a bust of him in the atrium last night. Well actually, I assume that was who it was, a face so famous that no nameplate was deemed necessary. There are not many men you can recognise by their busts alone (unlike some women).

He was born in 1853 to Spanish parents but even before he went to secondary school, his anti-Spanish tendencies were beginning to emerge. For his pains, he was imprisoned before being deported to Spain in 1871 where it was hoped total immersion in Spanish culture would cure him. He was only eighteen. He studied law and continued his writings in support of Cuban Independence. When he graduated, and banned from re-entering Cuba, he lived variously in Mexico, Guatemala and New York. He travelled widely through the United States, Latin America and the West Indies, fomenting revolution. In January 1895 he drew up the order for an uprising. Next month, the first skirmish in the Cuban War of Independence took place. In April he made an armed landing in Cuba; in May he was killed at the battle of Dos Rios. Thus ended the life of Cuba’s most famous son but his name will endure there forever.

All this I learned in my preliminary reading and my guidebook now informs me that the dilapidated building and antediluvian fire engine does not represent the state of present-day fire fighting in Havana after all but is, in fact, a fire-fighting museum, formerly the stately home of some Spanish aristocrats.

As for the Bacardi building, once the HQ, it has now been turned into offices. Built in 1930, it is regarded as one of the finest examples of Art Deco in Havana. No wonder I liked it. I’ll get the binoculars out later and have a closer look at that decorative detail.