Tuesday, May 12, 2009

This fella is another of the "posers" in old downtown Habana. He seemed a bit indignant when I walked off after snapping the photo without slipping him some pesos.

This guy was doing a bit of renovation work inside one of the buildings in the square around the cathedral.

More "posers" near the bar Ernest Hemingway used to frequent.

There are hundreds of these old retired guys in red shirts all over Cuba. They don't have a retirement plan, so their "job" is to wear the red shirt and "mind" the cars that park in their area. When you return to your car, you slip the guy a peso or so for keeping "watch". Over the course of a day they could make between 10 and 50 pesos ($13-$65), depending on the location of their "area". In a two or three days they easily eclipse the monthly salaries of doctors and engineers (both earn approximately $40 Cdn/month).

It's 6:30am in downtown Habana, and Alberto reflects our wait for the bus to take us to Vinales and a coastal Key for a day of sightseeing and swimming in the sea. As it turned out, the bus was one hour and twenty minutes late, with no apologies; the return bus ride was a whole other story.

2 comments:

northerndreamer said...

It must have felt like home with all those 'posers' around. Don't you play hockey with a number of posers?

Rob Greenfield said...

Takes one to know one, Poser. Or is that Hoser?