The Island Nation - Journeys from Holguin

May 5

He was an old man who fished alone in the stream near the hotel, and he had gone 14 days now without catching a fish...

I get up at dawn, and walk 1 block down to the bridge. Alex is gone, and his beer stall is empty. But the fish are still rising in the pool upstream. Alex told me that the fish here would not bite on pollo - only on smashed lizards or frogs, but I know better. I think that any fish with whiskers will bite on meat from the cafeteria.

I head up, far past his beer stall, past where I went yesterday, past where Alex warned me not to go. Like Hemingway's hero Santiago I know that to catch the truly great fish you must go out past where anyone has gone before, where the water is deep. I bait my hook with chicken from the hotel, and throw my hook in. There is a roiling swirl. Fish! I pull back, but the fish is gone. I bait up with more chicken and throw it into the left bank. Fish on! But I pull back too quickly, and the fish is gone again, with my bait. As a bass fisherman I never fish with bait. I must learn patience.

I am channeling Santiago now. Be calm. Take your time. Do this exactly right. I bait up again, and throw into the right bank. But this time I wait, like Santiago did with his giant marlin. "Take it fish! Take it deep!" I wait a bit longer, and then pull back. Fish on! But this time the hook is set in its jaw, and it comes thrashing to the surface, rolling and diving, fighting hard. Soon I have it up on the bank. My first ever Cuban pesca!　

This is a claria. Clarias garepinus. Native to Africa, now transplanted to many parts of the world.

Long and thin for a catfish, and puts up a good account for itself on the other end of a rod and reel.

Introduced to Cuba from the Phillipines in 1999 for commercial aquaculture, but escaped into the wild. Frighteningly adaptable, it is an invasive species on steroids. It has a number of advantages over other more familiar invasive species like the largemouth and small mouth bass, bane of fisheries biologists in BC. First, it has a big mouth, it swims fast, and it will eat almost anything it can see or smell that fits down its throat. Second, it can tolerate warm, muddy, polluted water, like in this creek. And third, it does not need to swim to invade new habitat, nor does it need the help of a person with a bucket. It can walk. That is why it is often called the African Walking Catfish. Actually it does not walk, it crawls. And it can breathe air while it is crawling. In rainy weather it has been know to up and crawl out if its home water and crawl for over a mile, looking for something new. In less than 15 years it appears (from what I learn on the internet) that claria have taken over almost all the rivers in Cuba.


I found this info about the claria on the web:
　
HAVANA TIMES, May 20 — Known for devouring anything that crosses its path, and even "biting people," the claria (Clarias gariepinus) is stirring great controversy in Cuba, but when transformed into a fillet, it is eaten with pleasure on the family table.


The species, also known as the African catfish, was introduced in Cuba in 1999 with the aim of breeding it in freshwater ponds. However, the abundant rains that fell in 2001 and 2002 from hurricanes Michelle, Isidore and Lily caused the fish’s dispersion throughout the entire country. From that time on, a thousand stories feed its bad reputation.


The allegations against the fish range from its being "tremendously ugly" to "it eats anything." Moreover, people are frightened by the fact that it can slither across land, taking advantage of its rigid fins and slithering body. The worst and most serious accusation is that it can wipe out other species, thereby placing the ecological balance in danger.


Something like that may have occurred in a lagoon on the El Retiro farm in Cárdenas, some 150 kilometers from Havana. Since the arrival of the claria, there are no other fish, nor even ducks or geese for that matter. Workers on the farm accuse the invading species of having eaten those birds’ hatchlings.


Note the trash lying around on the bank in the pics of the fish - standard riparian substrate for urban streams in this country. Rags, plastic cups, old flip flops and socks. I suppose they mix in with the leaves and eroding banks and biodegrade after a while.


I pull out my pliers, flip the hook out quickly, and watch the claria flop back down the bank into the water. The whole thing has taken no more than 15 minutes, but when I turn to walk back to the hotel I see a military jeep with 2 soldiers in it pulled off onto the gravel past Alex's beer stall, watching me. Tourists are required to have a fishing license to fish in freshwater in Cuba, and I don't have one. This could be embarrassing, or worse. Not that I haven't tried. But not one of the many Cubans I have asked has any idea of where I could purchase one. Freshwater fishing is not a big deal here. The jeep pulls away as I approach. The CDR will hear about this, if they don't know already.


As I hed back to the hotel, the only other people up before breakfast are the cab drivers. Every morn they lovingly wash down and polish their rigs.

　
Word has gotten out already about my great claria. Around the hotel people I have never met are pointing at me, and making reeling motions with their hands, and calling me pescador. Even Willie, our stern and aloof cycle cop, is asking me questions in Spanish that I do not understand, except for an occasional word like pesca or claria. When I first met him I thought he might be the kind of guy who would shoot stray kittens for fun. But he is beginning to lighten up. Fishermen are alike everywhere.

Up to now we have only been in and around Holguin. Today we will begin ranging around the eastern end of Cuba in our bus, visiting places of cultural and political significance.
　
　
After breakfast we load up and head out to the Rio Nipe watershed and a visit to Biran, once the personal fiefdom of the Ruz family, and birthplace of their sons Fidel and Raoul Castro Ruz.

As always, our cycle cop Willie leads the way. Willie does not fuck around. You can tell he loves to ride, and he is very good at it. With the big bus behind him rolling down the narrow bumpy 2 lane highway, he waggles down the centerline, flashing his lights to scare oncoming traffic off onto the shoulder.

Pulls up beside slower traffic in front of us and forces them off onto the right shoulder. Che Brigade comin thru!

If oncoming traffic does not get out of our way he peals over into the left lane, playing kamikaze with oncoming buses, flatdeck trucks and semis.

Take your choice. Which would you prefer? Get out of our way, or smash a Cuban cycle cop head on? Nobody ever challenges Willie.

　
I love riding the bus. I get to see places I have never seen before, and may never see again. I am glued to the window, looking at rock formations, trees, old farmers with oxen, birds, cane fields, and of course always looking down into every creek or river.

In this respect I am very different from most people on the brigade, who live in a world of theory and abstraction. It is all about the revolution to them, and the reality of the country before their eyes seems (to me) to be irrelevant to them. They spend the bus time reading, or holding long theoretical discussions about socialism or feminism or communism, or singing protest songs. But they seldom look out the window.

I have already examined this whole section of Cuba from Google Earth before I left. I have made screen caps from GE so that I can look at aerial imagery of the places we might visit. Most of the other brigadistas could care less about the geography of Cuba. They are interested in revolution and theory – not physical reality. There are some comments that I must be a CIA agent, cuz I have aerial pics. Must remember Thomas Pynchon’s Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If you get the people asking the wrong questions, you don’t have to worry about the answers.

I see Google Earth as one of the great advances in human consciousness. Whatever sins the parent company might commit, this application, which is free and tiny enough to fit on any computer, allows anyone with access to the internet to look at any place on earth and learn about its geography, hydrology, geology, roads and urban areas, forest and crop cover, and much more. But not about abstract political theory, so it is not popular here on the Che Brigade.

For the benefit of the geographically impaired, like my next door neighbor in Nanaimo who asked me "Where is Oregon?", I am including this overview pic of Cuba and the Caribbean.

This pic shows the places we visited on last year’s brigade (red) and the places we are going to visit this year (yellow).
　

I know that Biran is over on the other side of the range of hills to the E of Holguin, that define the edge of the Cauto watershed. We will be in the Rio Nipe watershed, which flows N into Bahia Nipe, the largest bay in Cuba. Biran, the ancestral home of the Castro clan, is about 30 km up the Rio Nipe from the bay.

Papa Castro owned a lot of land around here, and I see that there is a small embalse right near Biran. Looks fishy.

Could well be some lunker trucha in here. Did Fidel’s dad have his own private bass lake. (This is important, Remember that when George Bush II, fresh from rousing Afghan and Iraq "victories", was asked what his greatest accomplishment was during his first tenure as president, he replied: "Well, I caught a 7 lb bass from the pond on my property." Just a few km downstream is the much larger Embalse Nipe, a known bass lake, and one that was recommended to me by my friend Ismael. Perhaps I could become and even greater man than GBII, if I could throw a scum frog around this presa at dawn.

We leave parched Holguin behind, crest the divide between the Cauto and Nipe, and begin dropping into a fertile plain that is much more humid than Holguin. Perfect for growing sugar cane. And there is lots of it around here. Some is young, some ready to harvest, and some fields are already cleared.

We come to a rail crossing. This is one of the old narrow guage "cane train" railroads that still operate in many parts of Cuba. Willie has already turned right towards Biran, as we will too.

There is a big sugar cane factory off the hwy. On the way back it was belching black smoke from the big stack.

In Biran we come upon one of the few big industrial machines used in Cuba – a cane harvester. Probably built in China, or Russia before the collapse of the USSR.

Not so long ago they grew a lot more cane here, and harvested it all by hand, and eager young people from the US and Canada would come down to help with the harvest. No more volunteer cane chopping in Cuba.
　
In the distance I can see Embalse Nipe, but we go on a big loop around it and never get near. We are under a range of big hills or small mountains to the E, which must catch a lot of water. Whereas Holguin was dry, and had not had rain in 6 months, this place is damp and steamy and lush. There is some dense forest near a river – first decent sized forest I have seen here. The trees must get bigger the farther up the mountain you go. Wonder if they do any logging around here?

Soon we arrive at the farm, which is a national heritage site and almost a site of pilgrimage for Cubans, as Mecca is for Muslims. A water tower looms over the forest, and the soil is rich and looks incredible fertile. So different from the barren scrub around Holguin!

The grounds are immaculate. No garbage blowing around here. The entire place is restored and/or rebuilt to match the original.

This house is a recreation. Papa Castro fell asleep with a lit cigar, and burned the original house to the ground. Here you can relive the youth of Fidel and Raoul, touch the same counter where their mother prepared their meals, look at the same toilet they peed in, enter the same school they studied, with the same desks, including a label for the desk Fidel sat in.

Fidel’s father was a poor Spaniard, drafted in 1895 to fight against Cubans who were revolting against Spanish rule. This war ended with defeat of the Spanish, and with US intervention (the Spanish-American War) and US conquest. I learned about this war in school. Teddy Roosevelt was a great US hero in it, and I remember stories in my family that my grandfather may have fought with TR in Cuba. Could it be that my grandpa may have fought against Fidel’s father?

After the war Fidel’s father Angel moved to Cuba in 1899, and worked for the United Fruit Company. His job was to cut the native hardwood forests down, so the land could be planted with sugar cane. Angel was good at this, and eventually had over 300 men working under him, clearcutting Cuba for the benefit of cane and the UFC. Eventually Angel became a big planter around Biran, and owned over 11,000 hectares of land. After separating from his legal wife he began living with his servant Lina, who was 30 years younger, and who bore him 7 children including Fidel and Raoul. His empire expanded to sugar mills, cattle, logging (15 truckloads per day at the peak), and a chromium mine.

Angel died in 1956, shortly before his sons returned to Cuba and began the invasion that made them famous. He and his common law wife Lina Ruz Gonzalez, parents of Fidel and Raoul, are buried here, a short distance from their ancestral home.

Here is the school Fidel attended.

I tried to sit in his little seat but I was shooed off by a guard. Everybody wants to do that, I guess.

The family house was built high off the ground, for a number of reasons. To escape floods (it is right near a creek), and escape bugs and ants, to get up in the wind where it is cooler, and to leave a protected area under the house for cattle. They used a special native hardwood for these pilings, some of which are getting chewed by termites.

In one area, they have saved the old stubs of the original house pilings as a sort of religious relic. Like fragments of the True Cross.

Here is the old diesel generator that gave then light.

Fidel (left), Raoul (center), and their older brother.

Bedroom

Bano

Kitchen

There were little fire grates built right into the tiles of the kitchen counter, where they did their cooking.

Life was good here.

There was a cockfighting ring, where people would come to bet. And Fidel also fought as a boxer in this ring.

And around the main house are much smaller houses for workers.

Made of palm husks and thatch, they remind me of the house that Hemingway’s hero Santiago lived in.

In the afternoon we head back to Holguin and the hotel and a late lunch. Those who are inclined go downtown to climb the steps of

Loma de la Cruz. Not me. I don’t even like to go outside in the afternoon sun.

　

In the evening after dinner most of the brigade head over to a meeting with a local CDR. I stay at the hotel. Not because I am opposed to the CDR concept - although I am very skeptical about it - but because I attended one of these block parties last year and it turned into a drinking mishmash with megablaster speakers blaring out the same headbanger music they play at the hotel swimming pools. Lucky for me that I could escape and take a quiet walk along the malecon in Cienfuegos. But this nite turns out different, with the brigade splitting up into small groups of 4-5, and each group visiting a different house. Wish I would have gone, cuz these are the situations where you might have time to ask a lot of questions. At least I will be ready for tomorrow, and the beach.

　

May 6

Today there are no work bees or cultural events to attend. Instead we will be heading 60 km N to Guardalavaca, and famous tourist resort on the N coast fronting the open Atlantic. Viva La Revolution! And Viva La Playa! We are off to the beach. I load the kayak into the luggage bay of the bus and we are off

There are some very picturesque conical peaks and mountains with sheer limestone bluffs in the distance, but we have no time for pics, nor for geology. Must get out on that sand and party.

There are zillions of tourists going in and out of Holguin airport, mostly Canadian. Most of them might stay a day or 2 in a landlocked city like Holguin, and then they are off to one of the big beachfront tourist hotels that are the joy of snowbirds everywhere. Guardalavaca (the place where you guard the cows) is a resort complex along the open Atlantic, almost due N from Holguin. Stupendous coral reefs fringe the white sand shoreline, and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream flow by off the coral heads. This is my kind of revolution!

　
The beach is as spectacular as it appears in the tourist postcards. Crystal blue water studded with coral heads, and a 1/2 mile of gleaming white sand backed by a few enormous tourist hotels.

The beach is even more attractive cuz it supports a number of big gnarly flowering trees that provide shade as well as scenery. So you can hide under these when your skin starts to peel off and burst into flame, which takes about a half hour if you stay in the hot sun.

Most of the brigadistas are gathered to plan some political action.

Mike, my roomie on last year’s brigade, has found a new Cuban girlfriend, and has brought her along today.

And of course, the IKN Navy is preparing to launch.

A stiff SE wind is blowing along shore. If you look in that direction the nearest land is Africa. I launch the kayak and paddle out into the breeze and choppy whitecaps with my crippled and broken paddle. There is a deeper section and then another shallows. On the outside edge of the water gets deeper and darker, studded with coral heads that rise up to within inches of the surface.

I am probably a 1/4 mile out now before I decide to turn around. This kayak sits much higher in the water than my last one. Twice the freeboard - which is better - to see but it catches a lot more wind, and skates along like a sailboat in the breeze if I stop paddling. Without a paddle I would blow along shore for along way before I could get back. But it is so beauteous out here, skating over the shallow coral reefs. I am way out now, but it still looks like I could stand and touch bottom if I bailed out of the kayak. And here and there big coral heads are actually breaking the surface. I am a quarter mile out now, and still there are breaking coral heads farther out. But the water around me in between the shallow heads is deeper, and dark blue. Can’t see bottom here any more.

And I have heard that there are great big fish around here with great big teeth, called sharks, that might want to eat the entire Inflatable Kayak Navy in one big gulp. Cannot let this happen, so I paddle back in to the beach. In the shallows there are hundreds of bathers, and one of them has is holding a plastic bag that has something in it he does not want anybody to see. Except me.　

Fishermen are alike everywhere, and he senses that the guy in the kayak might be the person out of all these frivolous touristas that might have and interest in the marine world. He winks at me, and points to his bag. What has he got in there? I paddle over, and he shows me. It is a spectacular conch shell, which he wants to sell me for $10. Hell yes! I run in to get my kit and wallet, and soon I am proud owner of a big dead snail.

At another place we come to some conchs for sale that are only $4, but they were only half this big.

I try snorkeling near shore, but the chop dumps right down the inlet of my snorkel. Need to come here on a calmer day. Then it is time for lunch, where we are serenaded by live music. Live Cuban music is as good as the canned headblaster pool music is bad.

Pizza, always a Cuban favorite!

The beach is rockin’ now.

The fun machines are coming out. Little rental catamarans and kayaks, beach chairs in the surf, and people fishing in the coral beds out of plastic rental boats.

Rare sea turtles sometimes crawl up onto this beach to lay their eggs here. Sometimes they make strange geometric patterns in the sand.

But the coolest toy of all is the sailboard. Soon a couple big sails float out over the shallows. There have been kids flying kites all day, but these are bigger.

Then I see that there is a little man under and behind each sail, shredding.

This is way cool! I must give this a try some day.

Must hook one of these sails up to the inflatable kayak. These guys are ripping along at incredible speed, then going airborn at the end of each tack, flipping their grip on the harness, and suddenly the are ripping right back in towards shore.

They scare the hell out of waders in the shallows.

And when the sailboards leave the beach resumes it peaceful languid pace.

Well, the IKN Revolution is stymied due to the broken paddle, but the information I have gathered here will more than make up for this minor delay. The next iteration of the inflatable kayak will be hooked onto one of these sails. Then we will be able to circumnavigate the entire island of Cuba in a few hours.

　

Late in the afternoon we load back onto the bus and head back to the hotel in Holguin. Everybody is blasted by sun and beat from the beach experience. Time for a good sleep.



May 7

　

We have a van driving along with our bus. The driver is named Ovidio, and he obviously gets a kick out of my obsession with fishing and boating. Always wants to know where I went and whether I caught anything. Chatting at dinner one nite I learn that he used to be a lancelor (baseball pitcher). He is a big man with big hands, and he shows us different grips and wrist movements, and then makes gestures to imitate breaking balls zooming off in different directions. Curves, sliders, cutters, sinkers. Seems to know his stuff.

Well, I guess so. He is no ordinary Ovidio. He is Ovidio Duran. El Lancelor (The Lance Thrower). Won 131 games for Santiago in the Cuban league before retiring 15 years ago. All the beer drinkers I meet around Alex’s stall know about the Lancelor. And all the hitters in Cuba feared to face the Lance Thrower when he was in his prime.

The in the Cuban League is much shorter than in the US Major Leagues. So the cumulative lifetime stats for Cuban players do not compare with players in the Majors. They do not play as many games. I later learn that among all the active pitchers in the Cuban League, the one with the most lifetime wins has only 123. Ovidio won more games than anyone pitching today! He is also a fisherman, always interested in my aquatic explorations. And I got his autograph!

pic

Of course, in the US a pitcher who won 131 games would be a multi millionaire. He and his family would never have to work again. But in Cuba even star ballplayers have real jobs. And a famous ex-baseball pitcher is just another working guy, now driving a van for the Che Brigade.

　

We head back to the construction site. They have completed a new foundation. Notice the minimal use of steel rebar, as compared to Canada/US. This is fine unless there is an earthquake. In a quake the concrete crumbles, and only the steel holds together.

Here is the building we helped build.

Today we will be wheeling gravel over to fill a ditch. The ditch has a pipe in it.

I know from my experience working for Ashland Engineering Dept that this must be a sewer ditch. No one else on the brigade seems to care about what kind of pipe it is, or what it might connect to. Just knowing that we are working to help the revolution is enough. I get Alejandro, our portable interpreter, to ask the construction jefe.

"What kind of pipe is this – sewer, correct? And where does it go, to a treatment plant or into a river?" He smiles and says, thru our translator, "You ask a lot of questions." Yes, I do. A bad habit I have never been able to shake. He says that this is indeed a sewer main, and that it will be connected to a treatment plant. But there are many old sewer mains that discharge directly into streams.

I corner one of the engineers who are walking around. Yes, they do have plans and build to engineering specs. Much different standards than in Canada, but they are not building palm thatch huts from memory either.

Pretty soon, our weird bunch of old farts and young intellectuals have filled in about 20 meters worth of ditch. Bueno!

Now back to the hotel for a shower and swim in the pool. The pool should be the nicest spot around, but I cannot hang around here more than a few minutes, cuz of the retarded headbanger music blasting out of the pool speakers.

　

Tonite is the grand finale of the week long Las Romerias festival in Holguin. Supposed to be a big shindig at Calixto Garcia Park behind our hotel. We are invited of course, but I am already partied out, so I decide to stay in the hotel. Of course, the Holguinians (Holguineros?) have been partying steady for a week already, but they are just getting amped up for tonite.

In honor of the event, the hotel proprietors crank up the pool speakers to deafening, fearsome levels. Didn't know they could be cranked up any higher than they have been all week, but now the whole building is shaking. The hotel is built to withstand earthquakes up to 7.5 on the Richter Scale, but new cracks are appearing in the concrete tonite. The speakers are pounding like sledgehammers.

Normally they have been turning the volume down after 8-9 PM, but tonite they blast on and on. 11 PM now, and I can't take it any more so I flee the hotel to go, away, anywhere but here. Must walk 2 blocks before I can stand the noise, and 3 before it is quiet. Now what? Don't want to lay down on the grass anywhere, cuz I may be suspected of being drunk, or dead. I finally find a big tree limb shaped like a hammock, and lie in it for a while. I can’t sleep, but at least it is quiet and the split pieces of my skull are starting to grow back together..

May 8

I rest in the tree until 1 AM. They must have turned down the pool speakers by now, so I head back to the hotel.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that they have turned off the speakers by the pool entirely. The bad news is that they have blocked off the street in front of the hotel, and brought in a big flatdeck truck with mega mega blaster speakers and amps. An Australian rock band is up on the truck wailing, and a thousand drunken Cubans are milling around shouting and cheering. I hang around for a while. The band does not seem to be very good, but they more than make up in volume whatever they may lack in musical skill. Another band is playing in the park behind the hotel, and a third in the street at the end of the block. My hotel room is at the harmonic convergence of all of them.

3 PM now, and the sound has gone far beyond music into pure white noise, underlaid by a continuous volcanic rumble of drunken revellers shouting and screaming. No hope for sleep any more. By 5 AM it is just a matter of survival for me. One side of my head buried in a pillow, the other mashed with a folded blanket, but there is no possible way to dull the roar. These Cubans sure like to party. This will have to die down with the sunrise, but they are still jiving at 6 AM.

Finally, around 6:30, the party breaks up, and I stumble out onto the balcony. The pool is empty, calm, no speakers blasting.





In the afternoon we are back on the bus, headed back up to the N coast, to visit the fishing village of Gibara. I am pretty wasted, did not get any sleep last nite, my head is still ringing from the giant party. And I make a rookie mistake. Forgot to recharge my camera battery. So I know I have only a shots left before my camera dies. Too bad, cuz this trip was the most scenic of all. I could hite a taxi for a day and just get out and take pics all along the route. But I only was able to get a few.

Gibara is W of Guardalavaca, located on a bay that is the mouth, or boca, of the Rio Gibara. In 1998 Hurricane Ike made landfall at Gibara. Ike is the costliest hurricane to ever hit Cuba, and its remnant later became the second costliest hurricane ever to hit the US. Gibara took the first and higgest hit from Ike, and the little city was devastated. Although no one died, thousands of people lost their homes. The buildings we are helping to construct in Holguin will probably end up housing refugees from Ike's nasty business in Gibara.

We head out on a different road, Willie the cop out in the lead, forcing traffic off the road, Ovidio driving the van, and the big bus rolling behind. There is some really interesting geology in the distance. From many highways I can see islands of steep rock lifted above the plains. It is very hard to get the most fuzzy shot out of a speeding bus window. What kind of lost worlds might be on top of those jutting limestone mountains? Would love to get some slow time to discover and appreciate this strange land.

This is rural farmland.

Not a tourist trap like Guardalavaca. No giant resort hotels at the end of this road. Not every day that they see a stately cop leading a busload of Che-loving Canadians through town. We always have our Che Brigade banner lashed across the front of the bus, so it is not hard for them to figure out who we are.

Also, rural as they may be, almost all Cubans have electricity, and TV. And the Che Brigade has been on TV news every nite since we have been here. It is worth the trip just to see the faces of little kids and old people looking out of windows and open doors, or staring from the sidewalk, waving at us as we wave back at them. This is spontaneous, instantaneous unscripted mutual affection. And it never grows old.

We pass a small embalse or presa built along Rio Gibara. In the background you can see the dam. And in the far background more of those strange, steep sided-limestone mesas.

May be a bass lake, hard to tell out of a speeding bus. This lake is drawn way down now at the end of the dry season, and it is muddy too.

We follow the Rio Gibara until it reaches the ocean. Here is where it flows into Bahia Gibara.

This is the top end of the bahia. The top end of the bay also had some kind of traps set across the mudflats, and men were wading out over the flats harvesting some kind of seafood.

Gibara is a fishing town. Unlike its nearby neighbor Guardalavaca, it never cashed the tourist cow. It has always been a town of fishermen, and people dedicated to the sea. Hurricane Ike smashed into town in Sept, 2008, and destroyed a lot of waterfront housing and commercial buildings in Gibara. The open, flat land in this pic used to be all houses. No more. In the distance is part of the hulk of a Brazilian ship that broke up and was washed ashore and destroyed by Ike.

Looks like they are rebuilding some of the old houses.

Used to be waterfront houses all along Bahia Gibara. Now rubble and open space.

There are some nuns in white, under little palm thatch mushrooms. Many people think that religion and Christianity are outlawed in Cuba. Not true. But religion does not take an active role in directing government policy, as in the US.

Now we head out along the shore past the city. This is one of Cuba’s first windpower developments. They oldest machines were built in Spain, and the newer ones in China. Cuba still produces by far the majority of its electricity by burning expensive and dirty fuel oil. They are planning more windpower developments. But of course they cost a lot of money, and Cuba does not have the benefit of the enormous subsidies paid to wind farms in the US and Europe.

There is enormous wind potential at this site – as long as the wind keeps blowing, which it does steady and strong all the while we are there.

I get to talk to one of the guys at the wind station about the fishing in town. They catch prawns & shrimp, lobster, clams, and all sorts of fish.

　

Back in Gibara again, we tour a new housing development, similar to the one we were working on in Holguin. Nearby are a bunch of new houses built out of recycled plastic. This is my last pic before my camera dies. There is enough plastic trash across Cuba to build lots of these houses.

Now is the time I need a camera. We stop along the waterfront in town.

There are working fish boats anchored in the bay. A fishplant juts out from shore about ½ km away, upwind, and upcurrent too, cuz the beach below where we are standing is full of chunks of big fish and big fish skins.

I would love to check out that fishplant. But we have a schedule. Then we are back on the bus, twisting up tiny streets through the ancient part of town. No tourist resorts here. I can almost see Hemingway looking out of one of these windows, checking out the wind over the Bahia, closing the lid on his typewriter for the day, and mixing a cold drink. We climb to the top of a hill to a lookout, with the entire city below us, and the bahia and the whole N coast spread out in the distance. A beautiful part of planet earth, with beautiful struggling people who took the landfall of the biggest hurricane in Cuban history dead center and lived to tell about it. Definitely my favorite place I have ever seen in Cuba. I could spend a day just walking around this town with a camera. But maybe, like the Eddy Lake Lodge, some things are not meant to be photographed.


On the drive back the little cabins on the farms and houses in town and sidewalks along the street are full of curious people, waving at the Che bus. It is cool to be popular, and we are, here on the road to Gibara.

　

In the evening we attend a movie about Cuban megahero Jose Marti. Unlike the countless movies about the Cuban 5, which are fairly blunt and crudely made propaganda at best, this movie is a brilliant piece of cinema on its own, regardless of its value. Sensetive and perceptive, full of dark nuances and classy acting, it delivers a moving portrait of life in Spanish colonial Cuba, with its racism and class structure. It is a powerful piece of work, even for me who cannot keep up with the English subtitles. The main theme is: How can a man of principles live a life of honor in a vicious and repressive world?

Before the movie starts I am down at the pool with my computer, processing images for the blog. The brigade this year, as always, is loaded with union people. And we have decided to form our own union.

But then we decide this is too restricive for a modern and politcally correct organization like ours. So we modify the name to: International Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Rum Tasting Technicians and Associated Alcoholics. Much better, but now we need a new sign.

I am in favor of funding a non-profit subsidiary. One that will deal with terrorist groups that are trying to take away our freedom. Rum is a basic human right here in Cuba, right between water and sex. And we don't want any US terrorist groups getting a foothold here. You all know what I am talking about: Alcoholics Anonymous. Sniveling do gooders, holding their prim little noses up in the air. We will form our own group, Alcoholics Ostentatious, and blockade their silly meetings. We will subvert their members, lure them with cheap booze until they defect, organize them in solidarity with our goals. My amigo Alex will be the leader. Almost superhuman. Able to smash lizards with a stick after a hard day of drinking tequila. Finally there will be no more dissent, no questioning, a one-party state dedicated to the pursuit of rum.. Alcoholics Unanimous!

I ask the bartender for a mojito. I need one to stay awake during the movie. But he says that there is no hielo. Blech. A mojito without ice is degenerate. I think about it for a moment, and then decide I don't want anything. A minute later he comes back. By strange coincidence, they just found some ice in the other room! He proceeds to make me the most giant mojito I have ever seen here, in a big glass instead of a tiny plastic cup, and a double shot of ron. Sometimes it pays to stand up for what you believe in. Normally I can knock off a couple mojitos from the pool bar without much consequence, but I can hardly finish this one in 2 hrs + until the finish. The movie is very long, and I regret having watched it at a time when I have been 40 hours now without sleep.