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Outside Magazine July 2001

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Free Cuba Now (cont.)

"I LOVE THE EMBARGO," said Bob Walz as our bus hurtled east out of Havana. "As soon as it's lifted, it'll be an Oklahoma land rush that'll result in a lot of Cancún-like commercialism."

It was several days before we'd get to escape in kayaks, and the sportsmen were going fishing. Walz sat next to Trey in the front of the bus, his voice booming over the rattle of the engine. The 15 others, most of them badly hungover from a long night of rum and $100 Partagas cigars, lit up morning stogies. I was awed by their stamina.

Walz is lumbering, white-bearded, with the red and richly corpuscled face of a conscientious drinker, the sort of man who signs his e-mails "Be seeing you, Old Boy." He's got the living-on-borrowed-time charisma of a disenfranchised nobleman, and he's a magnificent storyteller. He was in one of the early battalions of marines sent into Vietnam, where he fought one extended tour. His mother, Pat, followed him there in 1967 to write a series of acclaimed articles for the Associated Press called "War Is for Mothers." After the war, Walz worked for a time as a labor relations-manager at a container-ship company in the Bay Area, and then opened two contemporary-art galleries in Seattle, one of which was the first to exhibit John Lennon's erotic-lithograph series in 1982. He's been to Cuba 212 times. He's lunched with Castro.

We drove along the coast, past Cojimar, where Hemingway kept his boat, the Pilar, and jostled down a rough road through the settlement of Tarara. Rows of small brick bungalows marched beneath the palms, and our pretty government interpreter, My Lai—named after the Vietnam massacre—explained that Castro had built them to house orphans from Chernobyl. We crunched down a crushed-shell drive to a low concrete building at the water's edge, whitewashed and blinding in the early sun. A dock lined with 35-foot fishing boats jutted into a sheltered cove.

Apparently, paying guests were a rarity at Marina Tarara, because a group of important-looking Socialists was waiting for us on the covered terrace. They sat at a long table in business clothes and introduced themselves. There was the director of the marina, the provincial director of sportfishing, the local director of tourism, and several others whose Spanish titles I didn't understand. The director of the marina stood and announced that since we were such special guests, we would not just go fishing, we would have a marlin tournament. He smiled and paused for the applause. Most of the guys were still in a stupor, so it took them a second to respond. There would be four boats, the director explained, and we would use 80-pound test. There would be prizes for the boat that caught the biggest fish, as well as for the boat that caught the most fish. We would have three hours. Captains, start your engines!

Toto, my captain, headed straight out several miles until the coast blurred into a green line and we could see the point of El Morro, a fortress guarding Havana Harbor. The tall downriggers vibrated, and the big squid lures churned the water white. I love to fish, anywhere, and it was good to be on the open ocean. Sometimes I could make out Trey, in another boat, moving excitedly about the stern.

I asked Toto if he ever thought about sailing straight on, to Key West. He shrugged. "I have my work here, and my family," he said. "Also, there are already many private fishing boats in Miami." He said that sometimes he comes upon the empty rafts of the balseros, Cubans attempting the crossing, and he feels sad. I asked him what happened to the people on the rafts and he shrugged again. "Storms. And tibur—nes, sharks. And maybe a bigger boat has picked them up," he said hopefully. According to Toto, about 30 percent of the balseros make it to Florida alive.

The Gulf Stream out here is a dark, rich blue; it takes the sunlight deep and holds it. I could look into it all day. But now we were fishing. Toto headed for a squadron of circling birds and told me that it was a good day for marlin and that we should have some luck. We didn't. We trolled for two hours without a hit. Then I heard the boat's mate, Jorge Luis, shout, and I clambered back to the stern. In the bright sunlight I could see the blue and yellow shadows of a school of dorado. Jorge Luis frantically baited a hand line and threw it astern. I did the same. We each hooked a fish and hauled them in. They were a couple of feet long and iridescent aquamarine. As they died, their color faded. Jorge Luis landed a small pargo. Trey's boat chugged up alongside us, and I watched Trey madly baiting and throwing hand lines. He whooped when he got a dorado. It wasn't a 500-pound black marlin, but it was a fish.

As we docked the boats, a five-piece band struck up loudly on the terrace. The directors and a dozen of the marina staff waved at the rail. We jumped ashore and hung our four little fish at the top of the dock. The Cubans were immaculately polite as they presented our prizes: more rum.

Back in Havana, the sportsmen disbanded to nap and prepare for another evening of carousing. Our group stayed at the Hotel Nacional, the grand old hotel of Havana, and the vaulted, marble-tiled lobby looked like a mini United Nations. Adventure travel may not have arrived in Cuba, but old-time tourism is flourishing. Havana teems with Italians, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch. An estimated 173,000 Americans come every year, flouting the embargo. Lanky Russian fashion models on photo shoots mingled at the hotel with Japanese businessmen and Spanish debutantes. A fleet of new black Mercedes taxis, along with Batista-era Cadillacs and Chryslers, waited for tourists out front. A block away at the Bar Sofia, a line of teenage girls were selling themselves for $30. Since monthly food-ration coupons usually last for just 15 days and monthly salaries are rarely more than $20, many Cuban daughters turn to prostitution to help their families get by. Some of the sportsmen didn't seem troubled by that at all, and after dinner would regularly partake of this final course.

"I'm married," said one of the sportsmen, "but now I've got a Cuban 'wife,' real young. And anyway, I think my wife knows what I'm doing down here."

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