I woke up today feeling the full force of my cold. Sore throat, runny nose, the works. So, even though I had another day in quiet Cienfuegos, I didn’t really mind.
Cigar factory tour
After an early breakfast, I went to the small cigar factory in Cienfuegos for a tour. Cigars are one of Cuba’s main exports, and the industry is really important here, so I thought it would be interesting.
To tell the truth, the factory tour was quite depressing, even by factory work standards. Inside the old building, rows upon rows of women (mostly women) sit all day hand-rolling tobacco leaves into cigars to exacting specifications. They work eight hours a day, sitting at low tables with photos of Castro and Che Guevara staring at them. They can’t look up from their work, so they pay a reader who reads them the news in the mornings and soap operas in the afternoons. They make government salaries, i.e. a pittance, paid in national currency. Meanwhile, the cigars they make are nearly all for export, and sell for upwards of $500 a box — money that the workers will never see. The plantations are all required to sell 90% of their harvest to the state-owned company. They can keep the other 10% for local sale or consumption. I don’t smoke and have never been particularly interested in buying cigars, but even if I were before, after today I doubt I could.
After the factory tour, I wandered around Cienfuegos a bit. It’s a small city and there isn’t all that much to see; I walked to the marina and through the small market of souvenir stalls, and back to the main square. I had a glance inside the Thomas Terry Theatre, and went up to the spiral rooftop turret of one of the museums for some panoramic views of the city. Unfortunately I got stuck behind a German tour group off one of the cruise ships. Since only one person could climb to the viewing platform at a time, it took ages to get up there. Waiting in line is the Cuban national pastime, so I guess it was fitting.
Botanical gardens, Cuban style
In the afternoon, I met up with the two Irish ladies at the casa and we paid a taxi driver to take us out to the Botanical Gardens, a good twenty minutes from the city. Well, I’m not sure what we were expecting, but it turned out to be just a small trail through a forest-looking cluster of trees. There were no signs or explanations of any of the species there; I recognized palm and bamboo easily enough, but most of it was a mystery.
We spent about twenty minutes wandering around before going back to the small bar area for a drink. So much for that. Oh well, at least it was peaceful.
Aimless evening
Back in town, we stopped off at a paladar on the main stretch for some lupper. It was quite good actually, by Cuban standards. One of the better meals I’ve had this week. One of the Irish women was vegetarian, and we commiserated about the difficulty of finding any decent food in Cuba that wasn’t meat.
Back at the Casa, I had a rest and a shower. I wasn’t really hungry for dinner after the late lunch, but the Irish ladies and I decided to wander back into town for a drink. The whole city seemed really quiet at night, and it took us a while to find somewhere with life. We went to the malecon where a small bar was serving cocktails with no alcohol, or beer with alcohol. We opted for beer, and sat drinking it and looking out on the water.
Eventually we ended up back at the same restaurant where we’d had lupper, for more beer on the rooftop terrace. The waiter told us he was a doctor of engineering and taught at the university in Santa Clara as his main job. At night he waited tables, because even university professors can’t make enough to survive on their salary. He has to spend two or three hours each way getting between Cienfuegos and Santa Clara, due to the slow and cumbersome transportation. The more I hear from Cubans about their lives, the more I am forced to conclude that the public system won’t survive much longer alongside the much more lucrative private system. After all, how much longer will people tolerate taxi drivers making twenty times as much as doctors?
We had a couple more drinks, then went back to the casa and went to sleep. My week is almost over; I’m leaving Cienfuegos tomorrow to head back to Havana.