{"id":22488,"date":"2015-03-25T16:26:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T16:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/?p=22488"},"modified":"2015-03-25T16:26:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T16:26:37","slug":"cruising-cuba-provisioning-huevos-particulares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/2015\/03\/cruising-cuba-provisioning-huevos-particulares\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruising Cuba: Provisioning \u2014 Huevos Particulares"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"eggs<\/a><\/p>\n

Cruising Compass is excited\u00a0to have received dispatches this winter from cruiser\u00a0Sissy Puedes\u00a0in Cuba and will be sharing them over the coming weeks! Here’s the fifth\u00a0installment…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The bean vendor sizes me up before sidling over. \u201c\u00bfHuevos?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>At the agropecuario<\/em>, fresh-picked, perfect pineapples and papayas are displayed alongside guavas and grated coconut; garlic and onions nestle among other sofrito<\/em> essentials, cachuca<\/em> peppers and culantro<\/em>; pumpkins and dried beans are piled with malanga<\/em> and boniato<\/em>. In one corner, Havana Club bottles hold honey, vinegar and banana or chocolate liqueurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Good meat isn\u2019t hard to find. Neither is chicken. Eggs are another story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Huevos\u2014<\/em>sold exclusively by the state\u2014have such famously unpredictable availability as to be a running joke in Cuban films. Cubans peer into the windows of not-yet open shops to assess the possibilities. My crew stood in line for an hour one morning in a government store watching customers fill their plastic sacks or flat-size egg-carriers. By the time his turn came, huevos no hay.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow much?\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEight CUC.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the government store, a flat of two dozen eggs goes for about a peso a piece or one CUC (US $1.20). The chandlery occasionally sells the same flats for five CUC, a 400% markup. Vendors have their own sources, urban chicken-herders whose wares are known as huevos particulares<\/em>. Some of them will be resold.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay. Six.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToo much.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, do you have a Spanish-English diccionario?\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/em> He smiles broadly. \u201cI will trade you. \u00a0After you bring it, eggs for you are only three CUC.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDeal.\u201d <\/em>I head boatward to look for the dictionary. Could this be construed as trading with the enemy?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cruising Compass is excited\u00a0to have received dispatches this winter from cruiser\u00a0Sissy Puedes\u00a0in Cuba and will be sharing them over the coming weeks! Here’s the fifth\u00a0installment… The bean vendor sizes me up before sidling over. \u201c\u00bfHuevos?\u201d\u00a0At the agropecuario, fresh-picked, perfect pineapples and papayas are displayed alongside guavas and grated coconut; garlic and onions nestle among other sofrito essentials, cachuca peppers and culantro; pumpkins and dried beans are piled with malanga and boniato. In one corner, Havana Club bottles hold honey, vinegar and banana or chocolate liqueurs. Good meat isn\u2019t hard to find. Neither is chicken. Eggs are another story. Huevos\u2014sold exclusively by the state\u2014have such famously unpredictable availability as to be a running joke in Cuban films. Cubans peer into the windows of not-yet open shops to assess the possibilities. My crew stood in line for an hour one morning in a government store watching customers fill their plastic sacks or flat-size egg-carriers. By the time his turn came, huevos no hay.\u00a0 \u201cHow much?\u201d \u201cEight CUC.\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 In the government store, a flat of two dozen eggs goes for about a peso a piece or one CUC (US $1.20). The chandlery occasionally sells the same flats for five CUC, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[365],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22490,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22488\/revisions\/22490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}