A dying Soviet-era speaker system wheezed and spluttered itself into life, blasting the Cuban national anthem with all the grace and charm of a screaming migraine. My head throbbed. My eyes wobbled. Against both instinct and biology, I rose to my feet like a hungover patriot to salute the noise.
Out on the balcony, Felix was already there—smoking what looked like a honey-glazed Cuban cigar roughly the size of a large churro.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said, exhaling a cloud that smelled faintly of caramelised communism.
Our casa particular overlooked Havana’s hulking Latinoamericano baseball stadium—a gigantic, electric-blue slab of socialist optimism that could only have been built by a welding team working under the influence of state-sponsored rum. Every day, it erupted with the sound of hundreds of people cheering for reasons that may or may not have been sport-related. Now I merely suffered from an emotional variant of Stockholm Syndrome—the kind cured only by conga drums and flying baseballs.
Our host laughed from the doorway.
Our host appeared in the doorway, laughing the universal laugh of someone who has seen far too many tourists destroy themselves with rum.
“Too much?” she asked sweetly, already knowing the answer.
“Sí,” I whimpered, clutching my skull like it might roll off and start a new life without me.
Felix announced, with the reverence of a monk preparing for enlightenment, that it was time to search for Wi-Fi.
This was no casual errand. In Havana, Wi-Fi was a religious experience. Zombie-like habaneros gathered outside the stadium in search of the sacred signal, clutching glowing screens like relics of a pre-digital civilisation. To join them, you required a holy relic of your own: an internet card, sold only by the government-ordained cashier.
We queued in the noon sun, roasting gently in our own stupidity. From the stadium came a roar. Either someone hit a home run, or a fight had broken out. Possibly both.
At last, we reached the cashier, who reclined in her air-conditioned fortress like a tropical Bond villain.
“No más. Vuelve mañana,” she muttered.
Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
There is no today in Havana. Only the eternal postponement of hope.
Defeated but spiritually fortified, we wandered down the colonial backstreets, flanked by revolutionary murals and a growing army of stray sausage dogs. The buildings crumbled. The colectivos grumbled. Havana shimmered around us—colourful, cracked, and constantly on the verge of either collapse or salsa.
We drifted into a fruit market, lured by the intoxicating fumes of mangoes and papayas. I bought a pineapple roughly the size of a hand grenade.
Felix, who distrusted everything on principle, muttered about fruit conspiracies—that the largest, juiciest specimens were whisked away to resorts where no Cuban had ever tread. I inspected my pineapple. It was shamefully small. He might’ve been right.
Just as I remembered we were meant to be searching for Wi-Fi, a slick young man in fluorescent Nike trainers emerged from the shadows.
“Beef?” he whispered.
We stared.
“Beef? Fish?” he repeated, eyes darting.
“No gracias,” we said in unison, unsure whether we had just turned down dinner or failed to join a smuggling ring.
A policeman, sipping coffee from a cup that looked far too small, eyed us from across the street. I looked away. Then—bam—he was beside me, gripping my shoulder.
“Qué te dijo ese hombre?!” he barked, nearly soaking me in espresso.
“Habla inglés?” I croaked, foolishly hopeful.
He stared, eyes narrowing. “What did that man say?”
“Beef and fish,” I confessed, truthfully but unconvincingly.
A crowd began to form, as they often do when something vaguely illegal happens in Havana.
The officer squinted for a moment longer, then melted into the crowd like a meat-seeking missile.
An elderly woman wearing roughly three kilograms of beads took pity on our ignorance. She flicked her cigarette and hissed: “Cows belong to the state! Sell beef without permission—go to prison! For longer than murder!”
This seemed like a disproportionate punishment for wanting a hamburger. Still, we pondered this over lunch in a government cafeteria decorated with heroic murals of Fidel and Che, who watched us eat rice and question the nature of freedom. The meat, notably, was suspiciously absent.
Then a man appeared beside Felix.
“Wi-Fi?” he whispered.
Our pupils dilated.
He peeled open his jacket—no weapons, no watches, no beef—only a glorious stack of forbidden internet cards. Digital salvation in paper form.
“One dollar, one hour,” he murmured, like an angel of bandwidth.
Felix didn’t hesitate. He handed over the money so fast it blurred.
The man nodded, vanished, and was gone—presumably ascending to whatever digital heaven traffickers of forbidden internet go to.
We sat there grinning, eyes glazed with the light of future connectivity.