Out of all the countries
we’ve visited, Cuba is the one that seems to hold the most intrigue for people.
Spending fifty years in the international wilderness and seemingly stuck in a time
warp will do that to you. When we told people we were going there, people
always answered jealously and of course made the obligatory remark that it’ll
be great to go there before the Americans ruin it!
We too were intrigued by
the place and when we were queuing to check into our flight from Mexico City,
it became very clear that this was not a regular place we were going to. I had
noticed on receipt of our flight tickets that the baggage allowance was an
unwieldy 50kg. I didn’t give it much thought besides being amused by the
unusual generosity of a communist regime to baggage allowances. When we joined
the queue for the flight, we begin to understand why- as tourists queued with
their sensibly sized bags approaching the 20kg mark, all of the Cubans,
thankfully in a separate queue, appeared to have just come to the airport
having cleaned out several Harvey Normans! How many flat screen TVs does one
person need? Every one of them looked like they had a minimum of 5 packages all
containing the latest in technology which clearly was not available in Cuba-
trips to Mexico are obviously shopping sprees for Cuba’s nouveau riche or
returning expats.
To top off the surreal
check in process- we had a novel meeting with a Cuban man trying to make
friends. Why? He was looking for someone to bring a package for him to Havana-
a mule of sorts you might say! Clearly the guy hadn’t seen “Banged up Abroad”
as he wasn’t having much luck with his not very enticing request. So even
before we had set foot in the country, the Cubans were proving to be a
different sort of breed altogether. We were already entertained!
The majority of postcards
you see of Cuba all revolve around the cars, a very unique thing to Cuba. It
didn’t take very long for us to see exactly what all the fuss was about. The
1950’s never left here and the cars are the real indicator of this. There are
loads of other things that are stuck in the 50’s but the cars are the ones that
stick out like a sore thumb. Every street is an antique car rally. Wherever you
look, a car that has no right to be still working chugs past you. The more you
look around, the more we fell in love with them. They really don’t make them
like they used to. These cars are huge. So long, so sleek, so very cool. In lots of cases, the cars will drive past
and leave you a present of a nice cloud of black smoke- they can keep them
running but they can’t make them any better for the environment!
It’s funny; all the
postcards that you’ll see have the sleek convertibles, the flashy cars that are
still around the place. No place on the postcards for the array of junk cars
that are still around. I haven’t seen a Lada in a long, long time. The Soviet
Unions finest is in full flow on the streets of Cuba but neglected in the postcards-
I can’t imagine why! Even if trade opens up the flashy cars will be here for a
long time as a tourist attraction if nothing else. Currently being used for
everything and anything but the tourist attraction is where the money is at. It
didn’t take long for us to decide to take a tour of Havana in one of them. Deciding
what type and colour car we would take was the one that took the time to figure
out! As city tours go, taking one in Havana sunshine in a 1957 orange
convertible Ford Fairlane is a pretty good way to go- sure beats the bus!
So with our friend who
owned the 58 year old car as guide we were shown around Havana. For a city of 2
million people, it comes across much smaller. Certainly the lack of traffic
helps that impression. You do have lots of people on the streets, just hanging
around chatting or using the payphones. Seemingly not doing much most of the
time but who are we to judge! It didn’t matter what time of day it was, any
bank of payphones that we saw were always being used. So strange to see but
then you have to bear in mind that it was illegal for anyone to purchase a
mobile phone before 2008. Different world. So it really is the little things
that you see around the place that makes it so intriguing from the black market
sellers to rickshaw runners to street sweepers smoking big fat cigars. You
never know what you’ll see. Take our first day as an example, walking through
Havana on a Saturday afternoon and we heard raised voices ahead as an argument
was going on between two men- a few steps on we realized that one had pulled
out a machete and the other guy was defending himself with a large plank of
wood! Lots of onlookers trying to calm the situation but we chose not to be
included. In my mind it all ended amicably and they shared a bottle of rum
afterwards. You never know what you’ll come across in this place.
With Cuba as it
currently stands, its not one thing that intrigues you or one thing that makes
you laugh, its literally everything here that bamboozles you. It delights you and it
frustrates you at the same time. Even the simplest things can lead to frustration.
Something that you thought would take you five minutes ends up taking an hour
but at the same time you find yourself taking a deep breathe and reminding
yourself that there’s no place else like this. The modern westerner will no
doubt proclaim “Thank God for that”. When I refer to small things- that could
mean “I want to buy a bottle of water”, no point in starting with the more
difficult queries like “I want to buy toothpaste”! You see, Cuba really doesn’t
have shops. I don’t mean shopping malls or supermarkets either I mean shops. You
can be in the main tourist area and still struggle to find out where to buy the
most basic things. The fact that the licenses for shops seem to restrict the sellers
to only specific goods obviously doesn’t help. When you do find shops, quite
often you’ll walk through and see that the majority of shelves in the shops are
empty. Seriously, how these people manage to cook a coherent meal still amazes
me. If you ever doubted that the Cubans were in a time warp then a visit to a furniture
shop is a must. There you will find a whole array of furniture decked out in
floral patterns that surely went out of fashion in the very early 60’s- they’re
actually probably so old that they’ve probably come back into fashion as retro
designs numerous times! It is a window into a Cuban living room- speaking of
which….
As we’ve mentioned Cuba does
many things differently to the rest of the world, another thing to add to the
list is their accommodation. Here there are hotels, not many of them, and there
are no hostels- the main type of accommodation you have are “Casa
Particulares”- in most cases this is simply renting a room in someone’s home,
effectively AirBNB without the fancy website. The joy of this is that you get
to spend time in the home of Cuban families, see how they live, avail of their
hospitality and in many cases eat your food there. We stayed with a number of
wonderful families who were so welcoming. Communication was a struggle at times
given our Spanish speaking abilities but you always got through. The breakfasts
they served were better than any we’ve had anywhere else. Superb. We wouldn’t
need to eat for the rest of the day. You’d assign at least an hour for it as
the food tended to just keep on coming. You really felt like you were the
prodigal son coming for a visit. This linked with what I just said about the
shopping made it all the better. Served the freshest fruit and some of the best
coffee I’ve ever had. The joys of them not being able to export their good
stuff!
Obviously you need to
take the good with the bad, the good was described above, the bad is actually
trying to book and find the places! I will never take for granted the ease with
which you can book accommodation online again. Presumably due to trade
restrictions none of the established booking websites operate in Cuba so you
are forced to use Cuban based ones. It’s a tedious process as availability of
accommodation isn’t shown on the site and every casa particulare has only one
maybe two rooms so there are hundreds to choose from with no clarity as to
which are good and which are not, which are available and which are not. Oh how
we take the internet and its wealth of information for granted. There’s no
connectivity in the country either besides in a few 5 star hotels. The basic
things again are out of reach- using the internet to book accommodation, directions
to places, confirmation emails, the random questions you put into Google- no
longer possible! But these fun struggles are always what we’ll remember,
booking something with three clicks on Hostelworld isn’t that memorable. “Cuba
gives you memories”- there’s one for their tourist posters!
From Havana we went west
to Viñales, one of Cuba’s most scenic regions- an area famed for its cigar
manufacturing. On the journey through the countryside to get there, we spotted lots
of billboards along the road. However none of them carry conventional
advertising, all of them are covered with some sort of political message and
generally contain images of one of the Castros or of Che Guevara. The favourite
one I saw was one, which combined three pictures- one of Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela, the second featured Fidel, himself and the third randomly featured
Nelson Mandela! I don’t know what the caption was but I’m sure the family of
Nelson Mandela didn’t sign off on the poster!
While in Viñales, we did
a tour to give us an idea of the manufacture of cigars. I’m not a smoker but
the whole thing is amazing. All done by hand. Over a hundred different
processes involved in making the cigars. We visited a farm where the tobacco is
grown. There we met the farmer, a right character, who greeted us with rum and
cigars he rolled himself. At ten in the morning it was a great start to the day.
They say smoking’s not cool, well I respectively disagree- when it’s a cigar that
big, how can you not look cool! So after seeing the beginning of the process we
were then brought to various factories to see more of the processes. Our
favourite part was in the cigar factory where the finishing touches are put on-
such delicate work. Depending on the size of the cigar each worker must do a
minimum of 100 cigars a day and they then get paid extra if they go above their
quota. They also get to keep two cigars a day for themselves- perks of the job!
Our tour guide assured us that most of these freebies would find themselves on
the black market and sold for much more then what their wages were. Meanwhile
in a booth In the corner they have a guy employed who’s job is to read to the
workers from a book over a microphone all day long. Todays book of choice was
by Che Guevera! Oh the entertainment.
From Viñales, we moved
east again to Trinidad, another place caught in a timewarp only this time the
timewarp began in the 1850’s not the 1950’s like Havana. Lots of really old
buildings, lots of cobblestones, lots of horse and carts. Charming place where
we spent time walking through every street in the place. The pace of life here
makes Havana seem like Manhattan! Funny to see the horses tied up against the
front gates of the houses. Here having a car from the 1950’s puts you well
ahead of the game!
Another of the many
strange things about Cuba is the fact that it has two currencies, not in the
way that many European countries did while they transitioned from their old
currency to the Euro, but they actually have two operational currencies and to
complicate it further neither currency is convertible in FX markets outside of
Cuba! Basically, tourists and middle/ upper classes in Cuba have access to the
CUC while the peso is the currency used by the majority of people. 1 CUC is
worth 25 times 1 peso. These two currencies have unintentionally resulted in a
two tier society- those who can get access to the CUC and those who can’t. The
link to us is that for those Cubans who are not rich, the easiest path to get
access to CUCs is through tourism. So you get to a system where all government
workers are paid in pesos which isn’t much so everyone is now striving to work
in tourism- for example a taxi driver who gives 3 trips (to tourists of course)
from Havana airport to Havana will earn more then what a doctor earns in a
month! It’s all very strange and it really results in tourists paying way over
the odds for everything as we have no access to the cheaper currency! For
comparison, we found Mexico a much cheaper country to travel in. As far as we
could see, there were no benefits to this system and there’s a reason nobody
else has two currencies. The sooner they get rid of this, the better for
everyone!
As we felt we hadn’t
maximized the communist part of our trip, our next stop was to Santa Clara or
as I like to call it, the town that loves Che Guevara the most! The reason
behind the love is, this was where one of the most important victories of the
rebellion took place led by Che Guevara himself- it involved a digger wrecking
the tracks of the train line to stop the train containing military supplies
getting to Havana. Amusingly enough the same digger now sits atop a pedestal in
an open air museum right next to the train carriages involved- best museum
ever! The town also has a number of statues of him and any number of paintings
and murals of him. Popular man around here although having heard differing
views as to his actual popularity, seemingly due to things he did once he got
power, it seems that more reading will be required by me to actually understand
where he lies or should lie in their history.
And so after two weeks
of trekking around Cuba as the locals see it, we spent our final few days in
Cuba as the tourists see it! Varadero is a town built around its sandy beach
where ever since the 1990’s lots of beach resorts have been built - three days
around pools, beaches and all-inclusive bars and restaurants- surely the exact
opposite of what the Castro’s fought for! Anyway, we check the politics at the
door and head for the buffet………!
Our route:
Fly to Havana, bus to Viñales
(day trip through Viñales valley and Pinar del Rio), bus to Trinidad, bus to
Santa Clara, bus to Varadero, bus to Havana, fly to Mexico City
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