LITMIR.BIZ

      Cuba is like licorice or reggaetón: you love it or hate it. Sound extreme? Maybe, but not to those who know the island—a place fueled by melodrama and gossip (what I call the national sport), plus burning hot passions from baseball and tattoos to illicit trysts and ice cream. For such a lively, colorful country, the Cuban palette skews heavily towards black and white when it comes to outlook and opinions. Descended from globetrotting Spaniards, swashbuckling pirates, and strong, brave African slaves, with some Chinese, Haitians, and French thrown in for good measure, Cubans are among the most resilient, rhythmic, humorous, and yes, extreme people I’ve met in my travels. This “in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it” attitude is refreshing in our passive/aggressive, PC world—invigorating even—but can be frustrating to the point of tears as well, believe me. Sometimes I’m loving and hating this place at the same time.

      My Spanish was pretty shoddy when I arrived in Havana on a hotter-than-Hades afternoon in 1993 to volunteer alongside Cubans in the countryside, and I didn’t speak a word of Cuban—a Spanish vernacular unto itself. Slowly, like a five-year old learning the alphabet and butchering basic rules of grammar, I started to drop the final letters of words and incorporate the Spanglish peculiar to this island, which has been occupied militarily, culturally, and politically to some degree by the USA for centuries. Take language, for instance. Here, laundry detergent is called “Fa,” for Fab, the brand favored by Cuban housewives before the Revolution; a double in baseball is a “two base” (pronounced “tu bay”); and a beer is universally called a “lager.” Facebook, meanwhile, which is taking the island by storm, is known as “Feisbu.” Another peculiarity of the Cuban idiom is the liberal use of terms and phrases that traveled with the 1.3 million slaves forced to these shores from Nigeria, Angola, Benin, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and elsewhere; by 1841, almost 45 percent of the island’s population were enslaved blacks, complemented by another 10 percent of free blacks. A day won’t pass without you hearing “Asere! qué bolá?!” in the streets, a phrase with African roots. The equivalent of “Hey man! What’s up?,” Cubans went wild when President Obama threw it out during his historic visit to the island in March 2016.

      It’s not only the local lingo that can drive you loco. The two currency system is maddening at first but becomes second nature after a little practice—and is a great way to jump into daily life here; when you see a pineapple costs $10, that’s moneda nacional, also known as MN, pesos cubanos, and CUP (four interchangeable names for one currency; talk about confusing!). The other money, the so-called hard currency, is the Convertible Cuban Peso and has even more monikers: CUC, “kooks,” divisa, fula, caña. Many people, yours truly included, still refer to CUCs as dollars—a holdover from when USD was the hard currency used here. Plans to unify the CUC and CUP, announced more than six years ago, have yet to be realized and seem a long way off given Cuba’s perennial economic crisis. Until the ship can be righted and the currencies united, that 10 CUP pineapple costs about 35 cents CUC at the official exchange rate. Transportation is another realm wrought with frustration since schedules for local bus departures and routes are non-existent, long-distance bus tickets must be bought in person and often sell out, train travel is only for hardy folk with time to burn, and planes on domestic routes are often grounded or re-routed due to mechanical problems. Nevertheless, when you approach a Cuba trip with good will and humor, remain open to serendipity—a very real and useful travel tool here—and embrace the classic axiom, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” you’re sure to have transformative, perhaps even transcendental experiences.

      Two recent encounters drove this home and to the heart. On a brilliant sunny Havana day, Olivia walked up to me and two Cuban friends outside the arrivals area of José Martí International Airport. Traveling solo and carrying one small knapsack and a body full of tattoos, she asked if we’d be willing to share a taxi into the city center. Traveling alone, light, and on a budget, willing to approach strangers with a question and offer: Olivia was my kind of traveler. We said we would take her ourselves, but had arrived by motorcycle with sidecar and were full up. Sin problema, we told the young woman from New Orleans who had only a single hour of Cuba experience under her

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