Despite our initial romantic visions of setting up camp beneath a palm tree and waking to the lilt of the moving tide, we found shelter in Casa Andres, a two-room casa particular, or Cuban guesthouse, on your right as you enter the town. It was “almost” the idyllic setting we had imagined – we had a door right onto the beach and a raised terrace that looked right over to Boca de Miel, a fishing village a few kilometres up the sand of which we had heard enchanting stories of white sand, luscious plantations and an artisan chocolate maker. But as they say, in Cuba, if things seem too good to be true then they most likely are…
Enter Vic, the guest in the second bedroom – a 68 year old Canadian pensioner, white haired, brash and half drunk at 2pm in the afternoon. He was the first insight that we had into the rife prostitution in Cuba. He told us that each year he leaves his hometown deep in snow and heads to Baracoa where with his relatively small pension he can live the life of Hugh Hefner, making use of his “schwonze” and indulging in a bit of the “pow pow” with prostitutes as young as sixteen. He almost seemed a caricature – his comedic brazenness, his walking around in just a pair of shorts as if re-living his youth, a can of Cristal beer permanently in hand and an infinite number of tales to tell of his experiences with prostitutes in Cuba. He too offered us his backdoor if we ever wanted to bring someone home and access to his gigantic supply of condoms… great, thank you Vic.
It was our first night in the town and Vic invited us to meet him and his “buddies” in the centre for a drink. Not ones to turn down the possibility of a good story we obliged and thus began perhaps the oddest night of my life. There was something positively sickening about seeing two old Canadians with their hands draped over the pubescent bodies of young Cuban girls clad in tiny skirts and bikini tops despite being supposedly of a legal age (yeah, right!). The girls had such vacant expressions, smiling every now and then and playing the role of flirty tease well, beckoning the pensioners to dance, showing off their well-honed salsa skills only for their old partner to become a little wheezy and have to take a break after each dance. It was an early bedtime, or bonk time, for the Canadians who soon left before midnight, leading their chosen girl away, where from our previous conversation I knew would be used for her purpose and paid the equivalent of $10 Canadian dollars.
As the night progressed we began to experience the dark under world of Baracoa to which I have previously alluded – a world of fights, conflict, pimps and lawlessness. Isaac had attracted the attention of a young Cuban girl who had been part of the initial group. She was incredibly beautiful with an innate sense of rhythm whilst she danced. We spoke to her about this “profession” that the Baracoa girls seemed to be part of and she denied having any part of it but celebrated having two young tourists with her who were intent on getting to know her mind and personality rather than her body.
It was then that the night took an odd turn. Some type of jealousy or territorial war had been sparked; another Cuban girl, intimidating and glowering and most likely a prostitute, started to fight with the girl we had been socialising with. Hair was pulled. High pitched guttural sounds emitted. Limbs flailed. High heels left scattered on the floor. Once the action had died down, we all left, Isaac carrying the one high heel as if a warped, Caribbean version of Cindarella was taking place under our very eyes.
We bundled into a bicitaxi and asked the cyclist to take the girl home which in hindsight was a very daft idea. Trudging down a dark, uneven street of typical Cuban dwellings (pictured below) Isaac told me to turn around. In my rum slumber, I remember seeing the other girl, walking stridently, arms in the air and shouting. She soon broke into a run as Isaac shouted to the cyclist to hurry – “¡vamos, vamos!”. It was all a bit of a blur after that. I remember the sting on my neck as the girl slapped her hands at whatever she could get. We attempted to bundle our friend between us, get her head down and protect her from the enemy and a man (pimp?) who had joined her. They persisted, the male trying to pull her out of the side of the rickshaw whilst the girl just attacking from the back. According to Isaac, at this point he threw a punch at the Cuban’s face and he backed away. My lasting vision was the girl now stood still as we pulled away, shouting something in incomprehensible Spanish and those arms still flailing with anger. And suddenly it came it to me… I had my retort: “¡Somos turistaaaaaaaaaas!” I yelled. “We are tourists!” Perhaps I haven’t watched many action films. It seemed like a good thing to say much to Isaac’s amusement who still recounts the story with the same desperate tonality of my voice and elongated vowel sounds.
We got the girl home safely albeit bloody from a torn nail, tender skin where they had tried to beat her from behind and a painful scalp from the pulled hair. She told us a story, that she wasn’t from Baracoa and that she was visiting from Guantánamo. We will never know what the real story was. We left in the bicitaxi and asked the guy to take us back, wondering how a night out with a few pensioners had escalated so quickly.
In true pathetic fallacy form, the Caribbean sky above us opened and raindrops the size of guavas battered down, turning the streets into muddy rivers.
The Road Less Travelled. 