Llego a Cuba

Llegar (pronounced "yaegar"): to arrive, llego the simple present.

For a country of 11+ million people, one cannot quite imagine Cuba at all without going there. As the plane started descending toward Jose Marti International, the airport in Havana, all one could see was green (and occasionally red) fields, some trees here and there, clusters of houses with the occasional, ancient jalopy visible from even up here. No seething, sweating masses; no crowded tenements; "nothing" was the word that came to mind.

Anyway, after the immigration fiasco, I spied the young, attractive mom with the cute 3 or 4 year old curly-haired shy boy, who kept looking at me shiftily through the corner of his eyes at the Toronto airport, walking ahead. The taxi was a flat 25 CUC. What a rip-off. It was a large van of indeterminate vintage and brand, windows open that trundled with me into Havana.