Friday January 9, 2015

An interesting start to the day. We chatted to our host at the casa. He had some interesting insight into the proliferation of casas, business in general and the Cuban people thinking that America is going to solve all of their problems. His thoughts werethat Cubans need to work and be paid well for that work. Then they can afford the things that they want. His opinion was that most Cubans think that the Americans will give them the products for free, they do not realize how much things cost and how many hours you have to work to get the stuff that they see in the stores.He said people in the US have topay taxes, rent, gas, electricity, hydro etc. nothing is for free.This is an amazing insight from a Cuban. Most Cubans do not realize how much things cost in the rest of the world and how hard we have to work to get those things.

He told us about the amount of theft that happens in the tourist areas, not from tourists but from the hotels. For example, the hotel may have been given 3 different cheeses to serve to their guests, one cheese gets put out for the guest, the remaining cheeses disappear – the chefs take it, the waiters take it and they give some to the guards so that they can have their share as well. We had noticed at Brisas the amount of alcohol that was being taken. Idalia our host said it is part of the culture. The government steals from the people – one example was a hotel consortium (e.g. Spanish/Cuban) the Spanish pay the workers CUC 500 per month, but it has to go through the government. In turn the government pays the workers 20 CUC per month. The same thing happens to the Doctors and Nurses who are working on the missions. The country where they are working pays the Cuban government and they pay the Doctor or Nurse about one-third of what the foreign government has paid the Cuban government.Why do they go on missions, because even with the Cuban government cuts they can earn more than what they would earn in Cuba.

Idalia said things have to change but it will be very difficult. Fifty-six years will not change overnight, it has to be gradual and well thought out. This doesn’t happen in Cuba. He said that Cuba gave Venezula the technology for a new chocolate factory. Why? We need the money for our chocolate and for our factories, just so that we can say Cuba had the technology.

It was a very interesting conversation and consequently we did not get out on the road until 8:45. That was o.k. the weather was not too windy and not very hot and we had a short day ahead of us.

We stopped at the Mirador at the bridge and then carried on to Jibacoa.

We are staying at the same casa as we did on the way out. They recognized us, which is always nice.

There isn’t much to see in this area so we walked up to the restaurant and had lunch. We had a great chat to the waitress. She was a very intelligent woman whose profession was a music teacher. I asked her why she was waitressing if she was a music teacher. She explained that after her university she did a one year placement at a school where she was told to teach guitar. The school didn’t have a guitar, so how could she teach guitar. She asked for a guitar, she sent requests to the education department in Havana for a guitar and didn’t get one. At the end of her placement because she hadn’t taught guitar and had complained too many times about not having a guitar, she got an R in her review which meant that she would get less money during the next term. She decided to quit at which point her teaching certificate was taken away from her and her University qualifications. She is not allowed to teach anymore. She can only get it back if she goes back to school and completes the whole course again!

If you say too much the government can still shut you up. She is working in a restaurant and as she said is better off. She works 15 days a month for twice the salary that the government paid her, and she gets tips.

We met up with the German couple that we had briefly seen in Las Mulas (the campground near Santiago de Cuba). We chatted to them throughout the evening and went down to a little bar for pina coladas with them. As we walked back we could see lightening lighting up the skies around the coast.

On our penultimate day of riding we had some interesting conversations today.