A Cuban Christmas: Excepts from The Handsomest Man in Cuba

The Handsomest Man in Cuba, a travel memoir by Bike Friday Customer Evangelist Lynette Chiang was favorably reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. First released by Random House Australia in 2003, self published in 2004, then launched in the USA by Globe-Pequot in 2007, this is a personal account of what it's like to eat, drink and be cautiously merry among ordinary Cubans, in a country everyone has a "second hand opinion" about.

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I'VE LANDED in a small kitchen, somewhere in Havana, Cuba.

I should have brought food.

The kind señora has offered me dinner: a toasted bread roll, fried egg on top, glass of orange soft drink. I swallow the snack whole on its way from frypan to table. My stomach clamors for more. There is no more.

I'd read all about the scarcity of food in Cuba, where people are depicted as having barely enough to feed the family, let alone dollar-waving tourists. But in my eternal quest to travel light, I have allowed a very important item, especially for a bicycle tourist, to slip to the bottom of the list. The only thing I’ve stashed is a jar of pumpkin jam lovingly cooked up by my Dutch beau in Costa Rica, whose love for me would sadly sour, just like the jam, in my three month absence.

THE IDEA of setting out on a bicycle came to me when someone showed me a map of Great Britain with a little dotted line going from the bottom to the top. Land’s End to John O’Groats, one of the classic bicycle journeys. Until I saw that map I had never traveled alone. I was fearful of roaming outside my own postcode. I had only ridden a bicycle with a group of people on a day ride. My sense of direction was appalling. But, the map was about two inches tall. I thought: I can do that.

Soon after someone told me about a curious, small-wheeled folding bicycle that looked like a cross between a child’s BMX, an old lady’s shopping bike, and something distinctly hi-tech. It was called a Bike Friday, so named "in honor of Robinson Crusoe’s trusty sidekick … unobtrusive, yet always ready and waiting …" said the blurb. It promised that the bike would be custom-built to fit my five-feet-nothing frame perfectly and, for all its compactness, would feel similar to a regular ‘big wheel’ bike.

The bike was only available mail order from some obscure little town called Eugene in Oregon. The company sent me a persuasive video and guarantee that tried its best to convince me to order a bike without actually needing to sit on one. The video showed how it packed into a Samsonite-like suitcase, and the makers had cleverly designed a small chassis and wheels so that the suitcase itself could be towed behind the bike like a little caboose. The footage showed rider, suitcase and backpack arriving at the airport, the check-in clerk blissfully ignorant of the wonder concealed within. On arrival, the bike came out of the suitcase, the backpack went in, the trailer wheels were attached and voila, rider, steed and stuff pedaled off to some guidebook destination together. The best feature, claimed the video, was that it would fold in thirty seconds.

I thought of my as-yet underdeveloped calf muscles and knew this feature would make it easy to accept a ride, if necessary, on cars, buses, trains, or boats.

The poor Aussie dollar made the bike an outrageous extravagance, but they would prove to be Aussie dollars well spent. It would be my Cadillac, Porsche and U-Haul, all rolled up into one, without the noxious fumes. And I would be the engine.

A PROUD and feisty Cuban woman, my hostess Maruca is clearly one of the lucky ones. The triangular blue sticker on her door identifies her apartment as a bona fide casa particular, or licensed guest house. Without a license a house that accepts paying guests risks being raided and the owner slapped with a fine of ten times the $100 monthly licence fee. Put another way, that’s 100 times the annual wage of most ordinary Cubans.

Maruca sits beside me and produces a large appointment book in which to record my name, passport number and country of origin. She shuffles a large folder of papers and forms, designed to keep the people honest, socialist and just a little bit scared.

IN THE SWEEPING, half empty plaza, a man is taking photos with a contraption built from found objects. He’s worthy of a photo himself: an old, stringy codger with faded ball cap, matching red sneakers and lips permanently contorted into an ‘O’ shape by the stub of a fat cigar.

To take a picture, he covers the lens with a detergent bottle lid, removes it for a few seconds and then replaces it. The developing process involves clipping the negative to a board with the word CUBA written on it in reverse. He then dips the whole thing into a rusty tin of black liquid. Minutes later the tiny Kodak moment appears, looking like an page from your great-great-great grandmother’s brag book.

He must be doing well - he has a nice belt buckle. He sells us three copies of the shot for a dollar. It seems to fade even as I admire it.

UPSTAIRS in Tito’s apartment Emparo, the landlady, invites me to join in their Christmas dinner, and I accept. It’s a simple affair of roast chicken, boiled yuca root (a dense, potato-like vegetable), rice and beans and salad, all prepared with a healthy scoop of pig fat, which Emparo’s son and cook gleefully waves under my nose. The lard is stored in a large, screw-top jar; it is grey-white and resembles the melted wax of cheap, smoky candles. He scoops it out with a spatula and spreads it thickly on almost all the ingredients of the meal. I kinda wish I hadn’t stuck my nose in the kitchen.

The seven people in the room swiftly polish off all the food in sight, while glued to the blaring television set. They finish with a slice of torrón, a delicate sweet made from ground almonds which Tito brought all the way from Spain. I wish I had something edible to bring to the table. But I don’t.

At around 9:30 pm the room suddenly empties.

People have left the table mid-mouthful to view the currently running soap opera known as la novela, the treacly, Days of Our Lives of Latino TV, churned out nightly from Mexico or Brazil. Almost every Cuban watches it as if it’s the story of their personal destiny. In Emparo’s sitting room the volume is turned up to an eardrum-perforating level. I step out onto the balcony and look down at the previously bustling street. It is deserted.

The Cuba I had read about tasted of fine cigars, smooth mojitos, beans and rice and tropical sea air, with a backing beat of Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club. The Cuba I am tasting now is a stomach full of greasy chicken, an ersatz pizza disk, and a slice of chewy guava jelly. And yet, I am eager for the next course.

Aussie cyclist Cheryl pedaled her New World Tourist up the steps of the Capitolio in Havana to give this well known local a copy of The Handsomest Man in Cuba. "He was flattered to say the least!"

RELATED LINKS

A Loiter Too Far another sample chapter

Handsomest Man in Cuba Webpage reviews, images and more sample chapters

Buy the book from Bike Friday, Amazon, or your favorite bookstore

Invite Lynette to speak about Cuba or other adventures at your next event

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