Pumpkin Soup with Ground Bacon
Location: International restaurant, Melia Jardines Del Rey
Somehow, with no bacon bits in sight, the orange stuffless soup has bacon flavour in it, mixed with a creamy pumpkin flavour. Texture wise it isn’t that creamy - more clear than cream, but it’s like you can taste the creamy thickness instead?
The cream cheese soup I forgot to take a photo of that I had two nights ago was similarly interesting, in that it was cheese soup that felt creamy and clear at the same time. This place has some wild textures. Vicosity.
This is the last of my drinks posts in Cuba, and it seems off to end on formless pumpkin and bacon soup, clash of two titans and specialty of nowhere, but all things end not bittersweet but savoury, I guess? So lets be sentimental with this faintly unappetizing photo of pumpkin soup.
This is what I've learned. When a Victorian-era doctor prescribes seaside habitation for feminine lassitude, that is incredibly valid (don't @ me). The sea and sun is unfortunately a privilege, which is criminal because it's rejuvenating. For me, at least. Past Casey scoffed at the idea of just sitting on a beach doing nothing. Certainly it must be boring after some time, she thought. Past Casey is naïve and a fool. A naive fool. A moron, if you will. Post-beach bask Casey knows better and understands the healing power of Doing Nothing, Basking Under the Sun, Sea Breeze and Ocean Waves Flowing through a body like wind through an ocarina making music. Appealing to all senses. I am calm.
Looking out into the ocean at night as indiscernible dark waves crash into each other and lap the shore, the picture of paradise abruptly and jarringly now an entrance to the underworld, I understood a second thing: the reverence and sheer fear the mass of water elicits from any kind of sailor. Even on the shore, the waves illuminated by the uninhibited moon, I felt a panic grab me. What's the word? Sublime terror? A leviathan, vast, drowning, deep set bone chill awe? To be lost in the complete darkness of a continental watery grave; I too would pray to all the gods and speak of the ocean as a lover I hope will be kind.
An observation: it's quite clear who is a tourist and who is not when we were at the city of Moron, the nearest city to the resort. Mostly, the general tourist is white, and they receive nary a glance from the locals except by the most entrepreneurial among them. The white gaze, in this case, treats everything as part of the vacation experience. For my friend and I, who are not white and therefore not the standard tourist but an emerging other breed who travel with less geographic reservations inherent in previous generations of our kind, we are a sight as exotic as they are to us. Their gaze followed us as we roamed, curious and unfamiliar as they were to us. A mutual touristing moment. People came up to us. Two separate unrelated individuals at two distinct times of day asked us where we were staying, that they worked at that resort, today was their day off, and their daughter was born just yesterday - "congratulations to all the new born daughters," - so have you got anything to give her? Money, preferably, but she'd also probably like chocolate. Can newborns eat chocolate, I asked, and they shrugged and said why not? I didn't have chocolate or anything really on my person, because I didn't come from the circles where such travelling tidbits were exchanged, so I didn't prepare anything, sorry. I heard an old-but-not-quite-elderly white couple mention how they brought their family to the resorts here every year, though, and now that their kids flown the nest they come themselves, so maybe try them, with the know-how. Good luck, with you and your daughter and again you and your daughter. We walked a little faster.