Trinidad

We made it to Trinidad!
Managed to fit tandem on bus in the evening and arrived early in the morning and have enjoyed beautiful town...

Recently we were approached by a distinguished looking lady who came up to us.
Unlike many others she didn´t want anything from us. She just wanted to talk, which she did for about an hour. She was a retired University lecturer, in town to visit her husband who was being treated for cancer in hospital. She explained her husband´s pension and their food ration weere not enough to live on. She has to buy food on the black market to supplement it (unbelievably, sugar is more expensive on the black market than in England!). For clothes and shoes she has to save for months.
She had walked into town to save the bus fare. She lives with her son and 2 daughters and their families, her son who is a doctor and both daughters who have university degrees, but none of them have a house of their own. She has a relative living abroad but no hope of visiting them. The Cuban medical system provides free medical care but because of the shortages it has become corrupt, much queue jumping for those who can pay bribes. she never goes into shops for tourists because they only have things she can´t afford.
She was distressed and understandably aggrieved. She is one of many older people living close to the poverty line.
The Cuban leadership is still focusing on the communist ideology which we see on billboards everywhere (no adverts here! but as someone commented, their billboards aren´t as successful as ours...)
As in the UK, the current generation take for granted the freedom and stability their grandfathers gave their lives for. The American embargo that followed the revolution drove Cuba into the arms of the Soviets, whose system they adopted and enjoyed 30 years of huge subsidies. During that time they failed to develop a sustainable economy and in the 90´s they decided to introduce tourism to avoid economic collapse. This has resultetd in a 2 tier system. Those who benefit from tourism and those who don´t. It creates the sort of anomaly our waiter was telling us the other evening. He makes more from the tips in his evening jobs than his monthly salary for his main day time job.
Our budget is $30 A DAY each and most tourists probably spend 3 times that! The average Cuban salary is $20 $25 A MONTH!
The irony is the WWF declared Cuba as the only country in the world with a sustainable lifestyle, but how do you placate the rising tide of discontent of Cuban people who are denied many of the disposable goods we regard as life´s necessities, for example washing machines, computers, mobile phones, cars and foreign travel? Many want to visit relatives in Miami, only 80 km away, but are unable to do so. It s hard to put a price on the pace of life that they enjoy. They ahve time to talk to each other, play dominoes in the street, dance to music and enjoy their families in a way we haven´t seen since before the war.
Cuba indeed stands at a cross roads.
Benevolent dictatorship has brought 50 years of relative freedom and stability in marked contrast to the previous 50 years of corrupt democracy. Dervla Murphy concludes her book "The island that dared" by quoting the remarkable Cuban Juan Antonio Blanco he said back in the economic crisis of the early 90´s
"Cuba has the human and material potential in spite of the crisis to become a successful social laboratory for a new model of authentically human and sustainable development. If it is possible to "re invent" socialism anywhere, then the conditions for doing so exist on this island"
When we are cycling, we think this must be small comfort to the Cuban in his horse drawn vehicle force off the road by the tourist in his shiny Japanes hired car passing at 70 miles-hour