The Bar San Juan, in Centro Habana, is well known around town as the hangout of the great Cuban singer Celia Cruz back in the 50’s. It is not well known around town as one of the nicer bathrooms.

This little itty bitty triangular room actually feels quite a bit smaller than it appears in this picture, as the door opens into the room, nearly touching the toilet. So it is necessary to step past/over the toilet bowl into the little ‘point’ of the triangle to close the door.

Now no toilet seat and no toilet paper is fairly common in Cuba. No tank is a little more rare. Well, to be fair, there is a tank here, in the form of a 5 gallon bucket filled with water. At least it is supposed to be filled with water. This lovely toilet is a good demonstration of the underlying physics that all toilets generally work on (gravity) – it is just that the physics is generally hidden in the workings of the toilet. In this case, when your business is finished, you just pour water out of the bucket into the toilet… carefully. If you go too fast it will overflow, which is why it was so kind of the Bar San Juan staff to leave a mop in there. If you go too slow, it doesn’t have the required ’sweeping power’ necessary to carry away your waste. Amazingly, this low tech method works – the new water from the bucket will wash any solids in the toilet down the drain, while still maintaining the proper water level. Liquids tend to become diluted but not entirely taken away, as evidenced in the yellowish tint of the water in this freshly flushed toilet. Takes a few tries to get the speed of the pour down… but an afternoon of drinking mojitos here will generally give you several opportunities.

When the bucket is empty, it is considered good etiquette to let the bartender know, so he can refill it for the next customer. That was not a Spanish sentence they taught me in high school.

There is no sink in the bathroom. Being outside the jurisdiction of OSHA and other US regulatory bodies, Cuban workers are apparently not required to wash their hands before returning to work.

- Andrew Sharp