Cuba, McDonald's and cheap sex

Cuba, McDonald's and cheap sex
5:00 AM Sunday Aug 2, 2015Add a comment

We were liquored up and keen to dance and they saw us straight away. An
unattached white male? Boom. You've not seen women like this unless
you've been to Cuba. That might sound sexist; it certainly sounds crass
but I cannot recall ever seeing a concentration of living, breathing and
not photoshopped women so alarmingly physically attractive. It is, after
all, the sort of thing one remembers.

They were tall and lean and Latin, booties, busts and bare shoulders,
all flesh and eyelashes and vacuum-packed in elastic mini-dresses. One
surprised me. I didn't see her until she swept a finger down the small
of my back. She wore massive heels and a blood-red dress, early-20s
maybe, and purring.

My brother giggled.

"No, gracias ... ahhh ... Somos juntos!" he said. We're together. We're
lovers.

"Prove it and kiss him, then," she cooed in Spanish and was off, quick
as a cat.

The guy to our right was talking to two girls, then was gone. A
grey-haired man tried to cheat his age with a goatee and an ill-advised
bracelet. His hand was on one woman's behind and every few beats the
lights would roll across the room and hit his wedding ring.

I was last in Cuba's capital city in 2011.

That same time, President Raul Castro began a series of political
reforms allowing for limited development and private commerce. The
changes culminated in this month's re-establishment of diplomatic ties
with the United States.

I'm taken by the rate of construction and development. Prime buildings
are being snapped up and you hit building sites all the time. Last time
I was here, I don't remember seeing cranes or teams of painters and
carpenters. Cubans walk around in clothes festooned with the Stars and
Stripes.

A few days after Friday night, our host drove us through the city. He's
an hombre de negocios - a born businessman - and just last weekend
bought a second apartment in Havana to rent out to foreigners by the night.

He was plain when we asked what he thought about the impending tide of
American dollars and tourists.

It'd be a bit of shame to see McDonald's, he said. But at least not all
the Americans will be in Havana for cheap sex.

Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB Saturdays, 9am-midday

Source: Cuba, McDonald's and cheap sex - National - NZ Herald News -
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11490606&ref=rss