La Habana Vieja

January 7, 2016

Tired today so we are all moving a little slow.  The good news is we have discovered the bus which, in addition to being free, allows you to hop on and off all day long.  At the bus stop we met a Canadian couple (Dan and Darlene) who like many others decided to come see Havana before "the change".  Darlene it turns out is a vegetarian who has been having a hard time finding good food to eat.  So... as I am sympathetic to fellow vegetarians we decided to invite them over for dinner this evening.  Our day started at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes - Arte Cubano.

This is the courtyard at the Art Museum.  Although, I really enjoyed the museum the art was truly dark and depressing - no gay dancers here.  There were however many paintings of anguished, starving people. There was a particularly disturbing photo exhibition by Peter Turnley called The Human Condition.  Many, many photos of starving, sad and desperate refugees.  Of course, the whole idea was for you to be disturbed and we certainly were.  Job well done, Mr. Turnley.  Perhaps the photos were the breaking point for the rest of the crew - they now seemed to be on the verge of major depression. 

Sculpture at Art Museum -Christ being run thru with sickles.  Interesting commentary on the Revolution.

Time to move on.  From the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes we walked over to Plaza de la Catedral in the center of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana).  All of Old Havana is a Unesco World Heritage Site.  Catedral de San Cristobal was completed in 1787 and is one of the oldest cathedrals in the Americas.  The Catedral is made of coral taken from the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico.  A unique feature of this Catedral is the asymmetrical towers.  Apparently built asymmetrically as water would pool in the plaza after a hard rain, this configuration allowed the water to drain off back into the ocean.  At one time time the inside of the church was as ornate as the outside but in the 19th century it was "cleansed of excess ornamentation".  Someone obviously thought that was necessary.  Regardless of the "cleansing" it is still breathtakingly beautiful.  And after the sadness of the Cuban Art Museum church felt good.  Peaceful.  

Catedral de San Cristobal

Bell tower on the Catedral - bells are a mix of gold, silver and bronze (for a sweeter tone)

Lots of windows for natural light

Sun peeking in thru stained glass window

There were tombs of Cardinals next to this alter - buried inside the Church

Beautiful with all the gold and marble

Next to the church is a little restaurant "El Patio" so we decided to stop and have some lunch.  This view is down a typical narrow brick street - it is next to the Catedral.  

View from El Patio

The weather was perfect and the company and food were great.  Another perfect day in Havana.  

Santeria ladies

These ladies are of the Santeria religion - an Afro-Cuban religion that grew out of the slave trade.  There is some mixing of Santeria and Catholicism.  Not sure what they were doing here outside of our little restaurant. 

Musicians playing for the diners -notice how the buildings in the background have been restored

After lunch we headed to the Plaza de Armas and the Castillo de la Real Fuerza.  The fort sits on the western side of Havana Harbor and is the oldest stone fort in the Americas dating back to 1558!  It is complete with drawbridge and moat.  Built by slaves and prisoners it ended up not being a useful fort (too small and poorly positioned) so it became the residence of the Governor of Havana.

Plaza de Armas

Castillo de la Real Fuerza

A Moat - How cool is that?

Michael, Roger and the Cuban lady working at the fort

View of Havana from the top of the Fort

After touring the amazing fort we were too tired to walk back to the bus stop so we hailed a taxi for a ride back to Marina Hemingway.  Our new Canadian friends came for dinner and we had a great evening discussing all things Canadian and American.  Amazing the misperceptions that exist between the two countries.  Tomorrow we have scheduled a day of rest! 

Plaza de la Revolucion

So we arrived on 1/4/16 (our intention was to arrive on 1/3/16!) and here we are tied up at Marina Hemingway!!  As we were having coffee in the cockpit on the morning of the 5th when the folks on the Catamaran tied up in front of us came over to visit.  They apparently watched us coming in on the morning of the 4th and wanted to come and meet the "crazy people" who were out there in that storm.   From here unfortunately my posts will be a little out of order as I am missing my pics from the 5th and will have to make up that day later!  Sorry!!  So fast forward to the 6th - a lovely day!  Woke up that morning and after changing money decided to to head to the Plaza de la Revolucion which is the base of the Cuban Government.  Several folks in green army uniforms around - decided it would not be a good idea to photograph them!

On the Ministerio del Interior is the famous mural of Che Guevara - revered in Cuba for his part in the revolution.  On the mural it says "Until Victory, Always".  And then in 2009, they added another mural on the telecommunications building of Camilo Cienfuegos.  Another hugely important revolutionary who apparently once famously replied to a question by Fidel  "You are doing well, Fidel".  And so those are the words below his mural.

Across from the Plaza de la Revolution is a huge Carrara marble statue of Jose Marti - yet another revolutionary.  Likely the most revered as he fought for years for the independence of Cuba and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence".  He led the Cuban War of Independence from Spain and later his writings inspired both the Castro brothers and Che.  After our visit to the Revolution Plaza we decided to walk to the Necropolis Cristobal Colon.  At 56 hectares it is the largest cemetery in the Americas.  It was founded in 1876 and is noted for its incredibly beautiful sculpted monuments.  Most are sculpted out of Carrara marble (imported from Italy) by Italian masters (also brought in from Italy).  As it turned out the fellow that we paid the entry fee to offered to be our guide (for nothing more than a tip) - Alex's english was perfect and we were so glad to have him show us around. 

This is the main entry gate to the cemetery.  And below is the beautiful sculpture on the top of the

gate - the sculptures are of faith, hope and charity.  Below is one of many family vaults.  The family are just laid one on top of another as they die in the vaults.  When another family member dies they are just added to one of the vaults.

Whole generations of families are in those four tombs!!  Below are pictures of one of the most famous monuments in the cemetery .  It is a monument for firefighters who died trying to save a hardware store.  Only the owner of the store failed to tell them the hardware store was filled with explosives.  They all died.  Every part of the monument is symbolic for example the upside down torch signifies death.  Along the base are the images of the firefighters, but they were missing one image so the sculptor put his own image under that firefighters name!  Clever. 

Another stunning monument was to the students who were killed in the 1957 attack on Batista's presidential palace.  I loved the simplicity of the row of Cuban flags and the way their tombs are stair stepped.  Just beautiful!

We decided to top off our great day roaming around the cemetery with a mojito at the Hotel Nacional and then dinner at a paladar called El Laurel - very near Marina Hemingway.  It had started to rain a little and we were walking out of the cemetery in search of a taxi when this old 1957 Chevy pulled up and stopped.  A fellow got out of the back seat and someone said that looks like Ozzie Osbourne.  When he heard his name he looked up and Michael said - well hell that IS Ozzie Osbourne.  At that point Ozzie ducked down and headed to his car - hoping to not be photographed I suspect.  We continued our search for a taxi.  Below are photos of the Hotel Nacional - a historic and stunning hotel in Havana overlooking the Malecon (Havana's famous seaside road).

Lobby of the Hotel Nacional

View from the Alfresco Bar at the Hotel Nacional - waves breaking on the Malecon

 Famous guests here included: Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Mickey Mantle, Errol Flynn, John Wayne and the list goes on. 

Sipping a mojito at the Hotel Nacional

Grounds of the Hotel Nacional

The Hotel is so beautiful now that it is easy to imagine how incredibly beautiful it was back in its heyday.   After the mojitos - which were pretty perfect- we headed to dinner at the paladar El Laurel. In 2011, when Raul took over he allowed people to start restaurants in their homes (paladars) - the Cuban people had no problem adapting to "private enterprise" it seems as there are many paladars now.  El Laurel was recommended to us by the lady on the Catamaran.  We started out eating outside on a little terrace - but then the rain came.

Inside of El Laurel

  

Our original plan was to walk back to the Marina - but now the rain was just poring down.  Unfortunately, we had not anticipated the difficulty of getting a taxi at that time of night to go to the marina.  And... taxis are not really allowed in the marina after dark!   After about 45 minutes the fine folks at El Laurel did manage to secure us a taxi and we took our short ride to the marina.  In the couple of minutes it took us to run to the boat we managed to get completely soaked.  We could not stop laughing at our foolishness.  Such a fun day - loving Havana!

Our first crossing of the Gulf Stream and the Straits of Florida

It is 90 miles from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba.  We certainly have traveled farther in a night - but this was the first time we had ever crossed the Gulf Stream.  The Gulf Stream is a tremendously powerful ocean current - the strongest in the world.  Essentially, a huge river flowing with considerable speed and force in the ocean.  The plan was to leave Marathon around 1000 and arrive at Sand Key Light just off the coast from Key West right around sundown and then set our course for Cuba. The day started out beautifully - hot and sunny with the wind blowing at around 10 knots.  As we were traveling from Marathon, Florida down to Key West it was raining on shore.  We were treated with a gorgeous double rainbow.  Of course, we felt this was a sure sign that our trip would be a good one. 

Double Rainbow off the coast of Florida

It is a little hard to see the second rainbow in the picture as it was fainter than the first - but trust me its there.  As planned we reached Sand Key Light right after sundown and changed our course for Cuba.  Quickly, we were in the Gulf Stream and suddenly we slowed way down - trying to move forward against the current is not easy.  Our speed dropped to 2.75 to 3 mph!!  Not good!  The winds were light which did not help.  We also encountered engine problems further slowing us down.  Fortunately, we were able to solve that issue and had no further problems with the engine.  If that wasn't enough we had a squall come up suddenly producing a bit of a headwind.  All in all the problems we encountered served to slow us considerably - in the end by 0600 we had only gone 35 miles!  Now that was a problem for several reasons - one we were tired, two we had a seasick passenger, three we were unlikely to make it to Marina Hemingway before dusk and worst of all the forecast was for gale force winds in the Gulf that evening.  We were now out of the Gulf Stream - but we had another issue to deal with.  Suddenly, we were faced with a headwind (wind out of the South).  It is impossible to sail directly into the wind so we either had to tack east to go south or north to go west.  Of course, the direction we needed to go was both south and west.  We decided to wait till 1500 to see where we were and make a decision.  At 1500 it was clear we would not reach the Marina in time (Marina Hemingway will not allow boats in or out from dusk to dawn).  The decision was made to make headway till 1700 and then hove to in order to eat and rest a bit.  For you non-sailors when you hove to the intent is to basically stop the forward movement of the boat.  It is a known storm tactic as well as a way to just stop for a bit.  So... at 1700 we hove to and fixed some food.  We knew the gale was coming and we would have to ride it out offshore.  We were now about 10 to 15 miles off Cuba's shore - we could see the Cuban coastline.  At 2100 the gale arrived, the wind shifted north and drove us off our hove to position.  The boat was still relatively stable so we just drifted for awhile.  The wind was blowing at a sustained 35 to 40 knots with gusts much higher - waves were at least 10 feet and the sea was "rolling".  At midnight we checked our position and saw that we were now 20 miles east of where we needed to be.  We decided to quit drifting and try to set a course for Havana.  So... we unlocked the wheel and raised the staysail.  For a couple of hours Michael hand steered but fatigue was setting in.  In the last hour he had 3 accidental gybes - a very dangerous situation.  We dropped the mainsail (which we should have had down hours earlier) set a course and set the autopilot.  Michael then went down to sleep and I tried to stay on the boat!!  We were being thrown around the cockpit and had to have a good hold to keep from falling.  Talaria did settle down once the mainsail was down however - the ride got a little better, a little safer.  The gale raged with incredible ferocity all through the night and into the morning.  At one point we completely lost sight of Cuba as the rain was poring down.  By 0930 we were getting close to Marina Hemingway and started trying to hail the Marina.

Havana, Cuba dead ahead

The folks at the Marina were slow to answer which was making us a little nervous.  Finally, they came on the radio and gave us specific directions for getting through the channel.  The channel into the Marina has reefs on either side and the buoys are not necessarily in the right spots.  So... you have to set a course for 140 degrees right at the light and stay on that course till you are through the channel.  Even though the seas were still rough we made it through the channel without any problems.  After dealing with customs, the dept of health, the dept of agriculture and the dockmaster we were able to re-prime our air conditioner and head to our berths for a much deserved nap.  The sleep of the dead ensued - none of us rose again till late afternoon!  We made breakfast and went right back to bed.  Tomorrow Cuba beckons but today we must recharge and recover from the night from hell.