For Wet Week-Ends

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 643, 20 April 1929, Page 19

For Wet Week-Ends

America’s Invasion of Cuba

MERICANS have discovered a new place for their winter holidays yFrtjiCly which is putting Cali- ■ inißH fornia and Florida out of fashion, writes Mr. G. Ward Price. The super-heated, super-padded, super-plate-glassed “Havana Limited,’* leaving the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York every afternoon, is crowded with rich people whom Wall Street has made wealthier still, escaping from the blizzards of New England to the perpetual summer of Cuba. And now big Atlantic liners are | starting fiorce competition for this new tourist traffic. The Cunard was first. A few Saturdays ago the 30,000tocs Caronia was put for the first time upon the New York-Havana route. She had it only one week to herself, when the United States Shipping Board switched the President Roosevelt on to the new run. The Ward Line, of smaller vessels, announced a 25 per cent, rate cut to meet this competition, and it is even stated that the United States Lines have given a contract for the building of two large new ships specially for the Havana service. In addition to its perfect climate and Old-World Spanish charm, Cuba has an advantage which neither California nor Florida can offer. It is “ ivet .” And when for nine long years a drink has only been obtainable at considerable cost, and real risk of being poisoned, the ability to walk into an hotel-bar only 4S hours from New York and order a cocktail for the I equivalent of one shilling seems to the average American like a return to the Age of Innocence. Encouraged by big interests in New York, the Cuban Government has thrown itself with energy into the scheme for making Americans happy in Havana, and is investing its revenues deeply in magnificent motor roads, public gardens and Englishspeaking policemen. Outside Havana has been built what is probably the most spacious pleasure park iu the world, with a yacht club, a casino where every known game of gambling, from baccarat and roulette to America's national pastime of “crap-shoot-ing.” goes on all night, a huge racecourse with stalls for I,SOO horses, and ! villas and hotels which set new stand- ; ards of luxury. Americans on holiday do not like to waste their time, and the Havana racecourse is the only one I have ever seen where, in the intervals between races, you can go into a gamblingroom in the grandstand itself and play roulette until the bell goes for the next race. English tourists are beginning to discover Havana, too. Those who know the resorts of Europe find it a curious mixture of Moute Carlo, San Sebastian and Deauville, with a strong j strain of old Seville, and the beauty of West Indian sunshine, purple sea. blue sky and picture-book foliage as well. It adds to tiie charm of the place that 10 minutes in a motor-car takes vou into surrouudings entirely different from the Americanised luxury of Havana. Outside the capital the island remains unchanged in aspect from the days when Spanish grandees lived there in ISth century magnificence on their wealth of slaves, sugar plantations and tobacco fields. Lofty. slender, smootli-skinned I "royal palms” give a romantic grace J

• to every sky-line, and iu bamboo . cabins among the sugar canes lives a picturesque population of mulattoes and negroes in Old World Spanish ‘ dress. An exotic, dreamy, curious island, with wonderful cooking. I shall never forget its roast turkey. Quite apart from the saffron-stained rice, fried bananas, the sweet potatoes that are served with it, the bird’s flesh has a peculiar tenderness. It flakes from the bone at the least pressure of the knife. This delicacy of texture, Cubans tell you, is due to their famous national product, bacardi rum—but only a very ingenious mind would guess how to produce the effect. I was taken into a Havana backyard to see. They called it a backyard, but |it looked like Kew Gardens escaped from glass. The hen-coops and toolsheds were hidden behind hibiscus bushes aflame with crimson flowers, and palmettos sprouted from the ground like giant pineapples. Over the broken-down fence green waves of bougainvillea broke in a foam of purple blossom. In this paradise of poultry-runs two negro children, so black that their skin had a silver sheen as if it had been frosted, were watching a turkey and laughing with gleaming white eyes and teeth. The bird was due for the din-ner-table that evening, and it was floundering about the yard in a curiously un-fowl-like way that reminded one of a certain kind of human behaviour. I remarked that the turkey looked as if it was drunk—and, in poiut of fact, it teas drunk. For it is in that serene condition that Cuban turkeys die. Their end is embittered by none of the squawkings and flappings of European poultry. Ou the day of their doom they are dosed liberally with bacardi rum. When they are thoroughly intoxicated the negro cook approaches. That is the end.