Читать книгу 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go - Conner Gorry - Страница 25

SOMETIMES HAVANA GETS TOO OVERWHELMING—LIKE today, when my building has no running water and neighbors are knocking down walls accompanied by really bad music. That’s when I know it’s time for an excursion to Parque Almendares. Languishing on a riverside bench, strolling beneath trees so grand they feel like rain forest, or pumping hard on a playground swing is panacea—for the banal, tiresome, and just plain annoying. I imagine it was precisely this tranquility and escape of which urban planner and landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier dreamt when he laid pencil to draft paper. The legendary French designer responsible for elegant gardens and parks throughout Europe (Champs-de-Mars in Paris; Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona) brought his talent to bear on the Gran Parque Metropolitano, to which the Parque Almendares pertains, during the city’s halcyon years in the mid-1920s when poets and painters, flappers and dandies fueled by reefer and rum jammed sidewalk cafés and bars to wax eloquent. If you think Havana is wild circa 2018….

Ultimately, Forestier’s vision of a corridor of connected parks and green spaces from sea to Boyeros and beyond didn’t come to fruition, but a renewed commitment to re-imagining Havana as a sustainable city is now underway and the park is both cleaner and safer thanks to a revitalization project episodically pursued. New riverside landscaping and lighting, fresh coats of paint, and more modern playground equipment have the park feeling downright spiffy these days; if a couple of serviceable public bathrooms were installed and a decent café, this would fast become one of the city’s top recreation destinations.

Parque Metropolitano covers 1,700 acres and is known as the lungs of Havana for its expansive tree cover and green space; the heart of these lungs is Parque Almendares, accessed by crossing the eponymous bridge at Vedado’s western extent. Immediately upon descending the stairs leading to the park you’ll start to see (and smell) part of what makes this park so enigmatic for habaneros: the forest running down to river’s edge here is an ideal setting for Santería rites and sacrifices and rotting sacrificial flora and fauna dot the cityscape here. Renting a rowboat at the pier (35 cents/hour) and heading down-river delivers an unparalleled excursion through the park’s heart and a glimpse of El Fanguito, one of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The Bosque de la Habana—that of the jungle-like canopy—makes for a cool, pleasant stroll and is a hot spot for Santería rites; should you happen upon one, respect the privacy of the adherents and definitely refrain from taking photos. In 2017, the amphitheater here was re-opened (this lovely, several hundred seat venue saw its last concert in the early 2000s when a Cuban rock guitarist now residing in Spain got too political at the microphone), and there are regular Saturday evening concerts here in the summer. Acerbically droll Cuban folksinger Frank Delgado holds forth here most Saturdays, putting together an entertaining mashup of word and song with invited musicians, poets, and playwrights. The music gets going around 7 p.m. when the sun dips soft and luscious below the horizon—a good option for a cheap, low-key music outing with the kids. Occasionally there are raucous, outdoor music festivals hosted in the parking lots and playgrounds of the park, including the Festival de Salsa each February and Festival Havana World Music in March. Dancing under the stars with hundreds of happy Cubans? Unforgettable.