That was the case when I decided to join 93-year-old Tono Torrente on a trip to the outskirts of Havana to a cockfighting arena.
On paper, this was a privately operated, underground venue — unsanctioned and unregulated by the Cuban state.
For a semi-clandestine event, it was clear plenty of people seemed to know about it. As I picked my way down a short dirt track and past a couple of tethered oxen, I heard voices shouting and what sounded like scores of roosters crowing.
In front of a metal gate, two men barred my way.
“There’s a problem,” they said. I assumed they were referring to the camera gear in my hands, or the fact I was a foreigner.
“Entrance fee will cost you 75 (Cuban) pesos,” they said.
That’s the equivalent of about three U.S. dollars — more than half a week’s salary for a Cuban state worker. But for me, it was the price of passage into the twilight world of many ordinary Cubans, where rules are never quite what they seem.
On the other side of the gate one of the first people I ran into was the event organizer.
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With U.S. President Barack Obama’s December announcement to work towards normalization of ties with an old Cold War foe, Torrente is hopeful.
He says he doubts he will live to see the Cuban government returning the property it expropriated from his uncle.
But the easing of trade and travel restrictions will make it easier for his three children and grandchildren to come back and forth to visit from Florida. The changes will also allow his relatives, if they can afford it, to send higher value remittances to fund him in his retirement.
Funding his retirement, of course, means funding his undying passion for fighting cocks. On sunny days, Torrente places his four raucous roosters in separate, small cages outside on the sidewalk.
And while he is surely hoping for a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, he’s reserving his biggest hope for a young rooster he calls Painted Indian.
Torrente sets him on a rusty kitchen scale, holds up three fingers and says:
“He weighs three pounds. Maybe in six months he’ll be ready. I think he’s going to be a great fighter.”
