Five trips to Cuba from 2001 to 2003 revisited by heart 20 years later

I had taken cubanite, I was unable to travel elsewhere for three years and still today I have concluded that Cuba is the country that caught me and I liked best among the 70 visited. Why? for various reasons, above all its people who excited and involved me on various occasions, often made me extremely angry and you can understand this by reading certain comic and dramatic episodes that I have told separately (the moped, Alena, the crazy taxi driver ) the first time I went there by chance, I had found a convenient trip to Varadero, for little money they gave me an all inclusive in a 4-star hotel, alcoholic drinks included and intercontinental flight it was the penultimate hotel in Varadero starting from the border bar with 4 restaurants, a garden with pink flamingos, impeccable service but after a few days I felt the desire to go out and see something outside that paradise I walked along the beach until I reached the border, meeting some Cubans on a small beach who had somehow managed to enter that semi-prohibited area, but it wasn't enough for me, I wanted to go to Avama a group of Italians with whom I had made friends rented an old car from the 1950s but there was no place for me so I went out and hitchhiked like so many Cubans and was picked up by a truck that took me after about an hour to the beautiful capital with its abandoned but fascinating colonial buildings, the seafront or Malecon with the waves breaking it, the Ofelia al Vedado ice cream parlor made famous by the film "Fresa y Chocolate" which tells the story of a gay who rebels against regime, meets and falls in love with a loyalist of the regime and spoils him by offering him juicy lunches until he gives in, but only briefly, until he flees to the USA I strolled in the center along the tree-lined avenue that leads to the Parliament and the theater then in the square with the cathedral and the nearby Boteguida del Medio, the bar where Hemingway tasted the famous mojito or another more luxurious bar where he drank another cocktail. I saw the ancient fort, a market that sold souvenirs and then I hitchhiked back to Varadero and comparing myself with the group of Italians I realized that I had seen much more than them without spending a dollar the second time I arrived by plane in Santiago, the second city of the island, the Cuban Naples famous for its carnival, for having been a rebellious, i.e. revolutionary city and for being the capital of the east which is perhaps the most beautiful and greenest part together with the other extremity, the western one of the province of Pinar del Rio and Vinales which I visited later the center of the island as long as Italy but with only 11 million inhabitants is less green, more barren, it rains less but there are the splendid colonial cities of Trinidad my favorite (with its low houses and its alleys that converge in the beautiful colonial square with the cathedral and a museum) and then Santi Espiritu very elegant with its completely restored circular square and its houses with colorful facades, the hotel with a panoramic terrace on the coast which was the home of an extravagant rich and that it is of a Moorish style going back to the east of Santiago there is another of my favorite cities: Baracoa which until a few decades ago could only be reached by sea until the construction of the road from Santiago, Christopher Columbus also arrived there and in fact Baracoa dedicated a statue on its extreme tip to him- The city is not particularly beautiful, indeed rather neglected, it has a seafront or Malecon where I stayed in a casa particular (private rooms rented by Cubans to tourists), but outside Baracoa there is a beautiful black beach and the mouth of a river and so much green in the evening I attended a disco in the hills and I met a group of young boys who adopted me, in the sense that in the following days they acted as my guide and I paid for their drinks, so we went on a nice trek along the river, bathing and diving into it I had an affair with a beautiful young girl whom i met in a disco but then I discovered that she was a prostitute and that the police were looking for her, my landlord told me, i warned her, she got angry thinking, I explained to her that I was only trying to help her and I advised her to leave Baracoa before being taken to the re-education camps, I never saw her again the third trip was focused on Camaguey a colorful city in the central north not particularly interesting, I had the impression of being besieged by local girls who aimed at my money, better Santa Clara the city that houses the mausoleum of Che and the railway carriage, historical relic because it was what the few rioters derailed to take possession of the weapons of the army of the dictator Batista the fourth trip was one of the best in the west, I stayed in Vinales a simple but very lively village, I had found a room in the central street in front of a club where salsa was danced in the evening, my landlords were a fat couple and very nice, she was a great cook who spoiled me (she prepared me an excellent dinner with cake and Cuban wine on my birthday) and they got me a guide, a surgeon who showed up with a very old but solid Russian car with which we toured throughout the province of Pinar del Rio, famous for the cultivation of tobacco, for the beautiful green valley, for the mountain with the gigantic and colorful murals that reach the top where a community called the aquaticos lives, who believe in the healing properties of their water in addition to the various excursions with the doctor, not particularly interesting (an orchidarium without orchids, a abandoned spa, an insignificant cave), I decided to rent a bicicross and went on an adventure in search of meeting campesinhos or peasants who in fact invited me to drink coffee, they offered me tropical fruits like coconut and papaya in that period during an excursion I met Alena a Slovakian girl who lived in Cuneo,Italy and it was a crazy story that I refer to other passages written here, with her I made various excursions by bicycle, in caves, by boat, a visit to a spa where they applied healing mud to us the last trip was perhaps the worst, the one that took me away from Cuba, perhaps I was in an unfavorable period, I returned to Trinidad, but above all I lived in Santiago where I made excursions to the mountain where Fidel and his group had taken refuge, I visited a kind of park with vintage cars and dinosaur statues, the best day was the last when I was adopted by a group of young Cubans during the party I noticed that the Cubans had become more and more aggressive with the tourists due to their extreme poverty and since the VHS cassettes with American action films had arrived, they stayed at home all day watching those idiotic films, for example this happened to me in a beautiful place on the northern coast where I had found a room by a young fisherman's house who went fishing for lobsters at night to sell them to restaurants, on the weekend his parents and brother arrived with bags full of VHS tapes and I didn't see them more, I was outside swimming or looking at the sky with millions of stars and they didn't understand my absurd tastes, the grass is always greener on the other side who knows if I will go back to Cuba again, perhaps only after the fall of the Castro regime which I do not approve of even if I recognize certain good things they offer, free healthcare and education, they lost most of the teachers and doctors ended up in Venezuela in oil change I could write a novel about the truth of Cuba heard from the mouths of Cubans, young people all want to escape to Europe, the elderly say that before the revolution it was worse, but I read that at that time the GDP of Cubans was higher than that of Italians at the time of my visit a fairly good salary was 10 dollars a month and a good beer cost a dollar, the famous libreta, i.e. the foodstuffs that the state passes to the Cubans, already ran out in the first week and after that they had to make do, above all by stealing from the state or doing services to tourists I believe that Cuba has returned to being the brothel it was before the revolution, all for nothing because of the absurd idea of ​​the Castros that everything must be controlled by the state and this means that no one works enough and consequently everything is missing and the little is expensive given that the law of supply and demand can not been defeated with a dictatorship What a pity!