CubaTrade-April2017-FLIPBOOK

Holguín boasts five main plazas with traditional parks and Spanish-style churches. Students from Montreal, Dana Moshaev and Dennis Mirne Guardalavaca lifeguard Carlos Medina, proudly displays his tattoo
private eateries like TripAdvisor’s top-rated 1910 Restaurante,
where we dined three times for octopus and other treats. Tourism
is taking off, with more hotels planned along the province’s white
sand beaches including Guardalavaca.
To be sure, many things remain the same. I was the first
American woman that many of my new acquaintances had ever
met. Most people I talked with had never been outside of Cuba,
and many hadn’t even visited Havana, some 500 miles away.
Holguín is still a distant province in a once-isolated nation,
but it was clear as soon as I touched down at the airport that it
was a long way from 1997. For starters, we flew in from Miami
on American Airlines for around $200 round-trip. U.S. commercial
flights to Cuba began just last year after a half-century hiatus;
charters before that had often cost more than double. Holguín’s
Frank Pais International Airport, named for a leader of the
Cuban Revolution, used to be smaller, and I recall a mural on the
airport wall of Fidel Castro and other revolucionarios with thick
beards. Now, I saw only tourist posters.
Our taxi driver, José Serrano, turned out to be an agricultural
engineer who used to run a state enterprise overseeing hundreds
of workers. He said he now earns more money working fewer
hours with fewer headaches driving tourists and others in his
1980s Russian car. José dropped us at one of the city’s five main
plazas next to a traditional park with a Spanish-style church.
We rented rooms in a 1913 house that hosted a private medical
practice before the Revolution. The family, who inherited the
house and now lives there, calls it Casa Don Diego to honor their
young son. They’ve been renting to travelers for three years.
Greeting us was friendly and efficient Sahily Fernández, the
wife and mom who holds a degree in economics and worked 13
years in banks. She offered us fresh guava juice as she filled out
government paperwork required for rentals. Her husband, a doctor
named Nestor Mendez, had spent five years in Venezuela on a
medical mission that paid better salaries than those in Cuba. He
saved up that money and invested it in appliances and improvements
to the house. He never could have afforded the upgrades
and entered the tourism sector, we found out, if he’d relied only
on salaries paid in Cuba. Specialist doctors in Cuba typically earn
less than $90 per month, even after recent raises.
I paid 25 CUC, or about $28, per night for a clean, spacious
room upstairs, with gorgeous Cuban floral tiles, a 13-foot ceiling
and a view overlooking a clay-tile roof to hills in the distance. I
had my own bathroom just outside in the hall. Breakfast cost less
than $5 per day for a fruit plate with fresh guava, mango, banana,
and pineapple, plus eggs, ham, cheese, toast and all the café con
leche I could drink. In Havana, the room likely would run 30-50
CUC and breakfast 5 CUC or more.
To stay in touch with the United States, I bought a card
from the office of state telecom company ETECSA in the city’s
main plaza, and either stood or sat there to use wifi at a cost of
1.50 CUC per hour. Around me, locals chatted over video-apps
with family and friends overseas, and some children called out
“Papi.” Wifi connections were much better than in Havana,
possibly because there were fewer users at each wifi spot. Even 10
years ago, the idea of public wifi would have been unthinkable.
In all, more than 1 million people now live in Holguín province,
including some 300,000 in the municipality that hosts the
capital dubbed “the city of parks.” The place gets its name from a
Spanish military officer who founded a settlement there in 1545.
A world-class bronze mural spanning an entire block next to a city
park depicts the area’s history, starting with the indigenous Taino
Indians, the Spanish conquistadors and Holguín himself, slavery
and abolition, and Cuban independence. It’s only part of the
extensive street art added around the city in recent years, including
clay sculptures that resemble trees and life-size bronze figures.
Still, for many visitors, the real attraction isn’t the town but
the province’s largely undeveloped beach. We headed out one day
to Guardalavaca, a favorite among Canadians for its powdery
white sand. There we met lifeguard Carlos Medina, 39, who has
family in Canada and Italy, but prefers to stay in Cuba where he
earns a decent living in tourism. He proudly wears a tattoo that
says in English, “We may not have it all together, but together, we
have it all.”
Sunning on beach chairs were two college students from
Montreal: Dennis Mirne, 22, and Dana Moshaev, 23, who both
speak Spanish. Mirne was on his third trip to an all-inclusive
resort on the beach and encouraged his friend to join. The price:
About $700 each, covering round-trip airfare on Cubana Airlines
from Canada and a week-long stay with food, drinks, and even
alcoholic beverages. “It’s safer compared to Mexico or other places,”
said the finance major, who had traveled outside the resort
to hang out in a city nightclub, among other spots. “And price to
quality, the value is very good.”
A student of history, I couldn’t forego a visit to a Taino burial
site near Guardalavaca. Excavated by a team from the University
of Holguín, it’s been made into a small indigenous museum,
Chorro de Maita, that also exhibits relics such as coral-bead bracelets
and ceramics. Across the street there’s a somewhat touristy
recreation of a Taino village, which does manage to convey the
basics of life before Christopher Columbus, including the round
palm-roofed huts called bohios, the hammocks used for sleeping,
and the many plants used for medicine.
For sunsets, we were advised to scale the Loma de la Cruz, or
Hill of the Cross, for an expansive view over the city. José took
us by taxi, but many locals climbed the 365-plus stairs to the top,
some in exercise gear. Visitors from near and far happily snapped
photos.
Driving past sugarcane fields, farms, a baseball stadium, and
even a hotel that boasts the renown beer-drinking donkey Pancho,
you can work up an appetite in Holguín. I heartily suggest
a visit to the 1910 Restaurante, run by Hugo Pupo and his wife
Marisol Corpas in a family home. Pupo said few Americans
come, but he welcomes them: “They tip the best.” And definitely,
if you like seafood, order the octopus, grilled. H
94 CUBATRADE APRIL 2017
APRIL 2017 CUBATRADE
95