Mambo de la Luna Day 3+: Havana still
Today the tour started. Part of the deal for transiting through the US was the requirement to show that my time in Cuba was to support the Cuban people, i.e. getting out each day with an itinerary and not just sipping mojitos in a resort. Today’s mission involved a tour of the Havana Club rum museum, just around the corner from our Casa. So we met our guide for the tour, Beberli, and went for a walk.
Cuba and rum go back a long way, as the first things the european colonists did was wipe out the local indigenous population, chop down the trees, and plant sugarcane. As with all things, once any culture finds itself with a surplus of molasses/barley/grapes/wheat/etc, it works out how to turn that surplus into booze. The colonists achieved this great sugar surplus through a booming trade in the import of slaves.
Historical oversimplification aside, Cuba has a fascinating rum history going back several centuries, though really getting organised only in the last 200 years. There are currently two main producers of rum on the island: Havana Club, and Ron de Santiago.
Another aside, ron is the Cuban word for rum, so there apparently is no person called Ron Bacardi, it’s just marketing bs.
No prizes for guessing where each rum is produced, and while it’s only possible to tour the Havana Club distillery with mucho government approval, there’s a wonderful tourist experience to be had in Havana. It’s fairly simple, a quick video, a wander through the various stages of production, a super groovy train set (can’t fault when the detail includes a pretty decent miniturisation of barbed wire), a chance to meet some empty barrels, and a tasting of the 7 anejos at the end. The 7yo, or 7 anejos, is a pretty smooth drop, good flavour, and easy to sip. I’d be happy to keep a bottle stocked. After the tasting is the giftshop, where they had the core Havana Club range for fairly decent prices, given it’s a tourist shop. So there’s a bottle of the Seleciones de Maestros coming home with me (which I’ve tried to buy in Australia for the last six months but no one is stocking this for anything close to a reasonable price, hence giving my money to an overseas business).
The rest of the day was free time to wander, so we did, walking too far, sweating too much, and dodging a hundred calls of “taxi”. Lunch was at a restaurant that had a band playing, which isn’t saying much in the old, touristy part of Habana where every restaurant has a live band playing. I ordered the creole pork, which was tasty but didn’t seem to have the complexity of spice I was expecting. After a couple of days here I don’t feel I’ve got the hang of what Cuban food actually is. While we’ve been dining at the tourist restaurants, so only being exposed to the more commercialised version of the cuisine, there isn’t really any common strong flavours coming through. I just hope it’s not the case that they have totally dumbed down their cuisine to appeal to tourists, and there are bigger, more challenging flavours waiting.
Then it was nack to the casa for a bit of a siesta, before heading out again to Vitoria, a restaurant at the edge of the Plaza Vieja recommended by Javi. Pros: the food was good, the service friendly; Cons: the live band was too loud for any conversation. I have nothing against live music, and love seeing bands, but when I’ve had a long hot exhausting day, I’d prefer to have a fairly quiet, relaxing meal with friends, without sonic bombardment and a tip basket being waved under my nose the minute we actually get a little peace.
Disculpe, lo siento, the hot weather, overly tourist surrounds, noise, and possibly a lack of quality sleep have given me a few moments of grumpiness.
After some fine tapas type appetisers, we went in search of something else, maybe icecream. Crossing the Plaza Vieja involves running the gauntlet of several gents touting the various restaurants, so after getting a vague possible promise of icecream from one, we wanteder up to Cafe Azucar. It turned out that icecream was all gone, but they do make frozen fruit daiquiris that are impressively tall, so we settled for these before back to the casa, blog, then bed.