Miami to Havana

It is four days after US-Cuba policy changes have gone into effect and I am in a meeting room at the Miami Airport Marriott Courtyard with a group of photographers who are going to Havana tomorrow morning. Kip, our coordinator, is giving us the briefing – in summary: “It’s Cuba; it’s complicated”. Currency (two different national currencies), street manners (feel safe, but be mindful of your wallet), phone/internet prospects (minimal), daily itinerary (soon to change, more than once). Two main hazards to avoid – a) twisting an ankle on ancient sidewalks or falling into a hole, and b) getting hit by a car; it seems that Cubans are not inclined to stop for pedestrians unless in a marked crosswalk.

There is excitement about the changes and more than a little uncertainty about how they will affect us. We are each given us a license granting us permission by the US to visit the country, but it seems that this is no longer needed. Some rum and cigars may be brought back but nobody knows how picky US customs will be about receipts documenting total cost is under $100.

It is now morning and we huddle as a group to check in for our charter flight at the American Airlines counter. Our flight is an American Airlines plane and crew, Chartered by ABC charters which has a license to fly to Havana. The crew is bi-lingual and good natured with a lively sense of humor. After the 45 minute flight. we Land in Havana at a separate terminal dedicated to charter flights from the US and quickly get to customs. The young lady in a uniform notices on my passport that I have been to Africa and she asks if I have been recently or been in contact with friends or relatives from Africa recently – I can see where this is going and the answer fortunately, is no (Ebola is still a cause for concern – although there is none in Cuba). The baggage claim is a free for all, with bags arriving on both conveyors – A and B, with no hint which one will spit out my bag. I eventually come to think that identifying my bag can’t be so hard because 75 percent of the luggage is bundles of stuff in blue shrink wrap – brought in my Cubans and their relatives returning from the States. Mostly soft stuff like clothes, but I see boxes with big screen TV's, microwaves, and other electronics not available here. Among the piles of luggage, I also notice a neat pile of NBC News camera equipment and it is only now that I realize that the US Assistant Secretary of State, Roberta Jacobson, was on our flight – arriving for diplomatic talks with the Cuban Government along with Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell of NBC. Later tonight, we will see our group on TV, boarding the plane – so that’s what the lady with the iPhone was filming!

After slight worries about finding my bag, I hand in paperwork declaring that I am not sick and am not bringing weapons, illegal drugs or pornography into the country and head out of the terminal into an uproar of relatives greeting arrivals (and their shrink wrapped bundles). The area outside the terminal has the sweet smell of cigar smoke and vintage Chevy cars cruse by looking for passengers, and I know I am here.

Tonight the city sparkles outside my hotel.

Prepping for Cuba

I am certainly fortunate to be traveling there at this time - Leaving Jan 17th with a few days in Florida first, then to Havana and returning on the 28th. I planned this trip about four months ago to travel with a group of photographers led by the Santa Fe Photo Workshops. In December, when I heard about the changes in the US / Cuba travel policies, I had no expectations that they would be in place by the time I traveled - I just couldn't imagine government moving that quickly, but now it looks like they will be put in place tomorrow! Four days before we land in Havana - that means that we will be one of the first groups of Americans to take advantage of the relaxed rules regarding personal purchases. I never liked cigars, so I don't expect to bring any back but I will have to try one when I am there. Rum, however, is a different story.

We will be a group of 12 plus our American photographer guide plus two Cuban photographers. I am feeling a bit of pressure to take perfect images, but I remind myself that the goal is to have fun and to learn something at the same time. No different than any other trip.
I will try to update with posts from there, but we will see how that goes. Our hotel has wifi, but you never know...

What Wikipedia has to say about the Cuban Flag–

The Cuban flag was created by Narciso López in June 25, 1848, and put together by Emilia Teurbe Tolón. The flag's origins date from 1848, when various movements to liberate Cuba from Spanish rule emerged, mainly among Cuban exiles in the United States. Anti-Spanish Cuban exiles under the leadership of Narciso López (a Venezuelan) adopted a flag suggested by the poet Miguel Teurbe Tolón (a Cuban). His design incorporates three blue stripes, representing the three parts that the country was divided during the independence wars, central, occidental, and oriental areas of the country, and two white stripes symbolizing the purity of the patriotic cause. The red triangle stands for the blood shed to free the nation, which is placed where the star is, symbolizing the sky turned red from the blood shed in battle. The white star in the triangle stands for independence. López carried this flag in battle at Cárdenas (1850) and Playitas (1851). Although López was not victorious, this was the first instance of the flag being raised in Cuba.

Here is my first recollection of the Cuban flag -
a Throwback Thursday thing:

When I was a Cub Scout, living in New York, our pack played a part in the ceremony that lights the Christmas trees which run the length of Park Avenue. One evening in early December we marched out of the Brick Presbyterian Church where our pack met, and circled the first tree at the north end of Park Avenue with the flags of the United Nations. The mayor said a few words and pressed a button, and TaDa! One year I remember wondering what flag I was carrying. Getting home, I looked up flags of the World in our fat Webster's Encyclopedia and, finding the Cuban flag, realized that it was slightly scandalous to be seen with it. So naturally I thought that was cool - this must have been 1959, or there about, when Cuba was first shunned by the US.

Photo thanks to Tommy Wolfson (sitting next to me) and Miss Bergan.

Davey Freidberg, on the far right was in my pack too.

Ercolano

I am on the Italian A3 autoroute, navigating some perplexing highway interchanges. Lisa is driving and I am manning Google maps on our way to Ercolano.  We are actually planning on visiting Ercolano's ancient relative which lies buried below the modern town. Herculaneum was obliterated nearly two thousand years ago, during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that also buried nearby Pompeii. We are in a sweet, little white Fiat 500 convertible - it seems that Hertz had run out of bad cars, and we are lucky to have the tiny car when it comes time to work our way through the insane, narrow surface streets of Ercolano.  It takes some adjustments to local traffic conventions, but Lisa soon determines when best to stop, and when it is better to speed up. The challenge comes from cars, delivery trucks, dogs, children leaving school with pastel colored schoolbags, motorbikes, and people stepping off curbs with cell phones to their ears.

Safely to the excavation site, we park in the new underground parking structure and are comforted that other cars are nearby - safety in numbers. It would be bad to loose our luggage, piled in the back seat - too large for the trunk. 

Looking at the site from above, we see layers; from bottom to top, we look closely and see the skeletal remains of the citizens who took refuge in the vaulted storage warehouses at the ancient waterfront. Above them, the buff stone structures of the town extend maybe a quarter mile to the rear of the excavated area. Above all that, on top of the ashfall that buried the landscape, are the modern, more colorful residential areas. In the distance is Vesuvius, which is still active and may someday bury the whole area again. Walking the ruins without a guide, it is easy to make up stories about what we see, but most is easily identified. Public baths are enclosed by vaulted stone ceilings with mosaic floors decorated with nautical gods. Residence walls are richly decorated with frescoes or glass mosaics. Public water fountains grace the streets. Small single rooms facing the street were individual shops, selling goods to the citizens of Rome. Where frescoes or painted surfaces have survived, I am surprised by the bright colors and I imagine how proud the owners might have been to outdo their neighbors.

 When we finally leave this amazing place, we are back on the A3 heading to Ravello. I check my phone and Google Maps and see a road that looks like a bowl of noodles, heading up the hill. Lisa calmly mentions that some advise not taking one of the roads around here because of the terrifying drop off, but we continue. Buses! There are huge buses on this narrow windy road - they take the whole road on the hairpin turns. And trucks! There are trucks the size of small houses on this road. Clearly this is not the road that was warned about because everyone is using it.

.

An Unusual Flag

In two days, I am going to a part of the world that flys this strange flag. I look at flags as a way to gain some understanding of a culture, but this is a strange one, and may take some explaining. 

• That remarkable thing on the middle is the triskelion (with the legs), the head of Medusa (with wings), and three ears of wheat (for the fertile land). The symbol has represented the region for thousands of years.
• It is not an independent country, but is a separate autonomous region of a larger country.
• The region has been ruled at various times by the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Normans, French, Moors, Byzantines, and Spanish. I’m sure there were others.
• The flag was first adopted upon unification of the island after the Vespers Revolt of 1282, which took the lives of 5,000 French settlers after a French soldier made an unwelcome advance on a woman during the holiday festivities. 
• The flag is bisected diagonally into regions colored red and yellow, representing two primary communities that formed an alliance during the Vespers Revolt. Red - for the current capital of the region, and yellow - representing a what is now a smaller town but was a primary agricultural region at the time.