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Published: November 19th 2008
First German, then English.
Unter dem alten Eintrag findet ihr nun ein paar genauere Berichte ueber unsere Zeit in Kuba, die wie der Titel schon sagt, wirklich nervaufreibend war. Warum? Das ist schwer zu sagen und kompliziert zu beschreiben. In der Hoffnung, eine Oase der Gerechtigkeit, Bruederlichkeit, Solidaritaet etc. zu finden, sind wir angekommen und haben Havana fuer 2 Tage angeschaut. Wir haben vorher noch keine Stadt getroffen, die so unglaublich viel Charakter hat. Die Haupttouristenstrassen sind wunderschoen restauriert (oder einfach nur angemalt), aber sobald man in eine Nebenstrasse einbiegt, findet man sehr alte Haeuser, die dringend ueberholt werden muessten. Man glaubt kaum, dass dort noch Leute leben, aber das tun sie.
Ein bisschen verzaubert von Havana haben wir am Samstag unser Tour begonnen und sind durch den Westen des Landes gereist. Wir waren in Vinales, einem wunderschoenen Ort umrahmt von wunderschoener Landschaft, Aeckern und Kalksteinbergen, die von Hohlen durchbohrt sind. Die Leute sind viel netter als in Havana und fast jeder dreht seine eigenen Zigarren aus dem eigenen Tabakgarten. Dann ging es nach Maria La Gorda, dem Taucherparadies Kubas. Zwei Tage Soller atemberaubender Blicke, viel Sonne, vielen Sandfliegen (schlimmer als Muecken), tropischen Fische gleich am Bootssteeg. Toll, aber leider
ein Resort, d.h. abgeschirmt von den Einheimischen.
Auf unserem Rueckweg nach Havana haben wir die Tabakfarm Robiana und den alten DON besucht. Er ist der einzige lebende Kubaner, der eine eigene Zigarrenmarke hat. Diese zaehlt zu den Top-5 in Kuba - oder der Zigarrenwelt. Uebernachtet haben wir dann in Soroa, in den Bergen - ruhig, erholsam, sehr sehr gruen und einfach wunderschoen. Zurueck in Havana haben wir es nur eine Nacht ausgehalten und uns den Bauch mit Eis vollgeschlagen, dann ging es mit einigen Problemchen in Richtung Guanabo (Strand oestlich von Havana), wo wir 2 Tage geblieben sind. Am Montag sind wir dann nach Hershey (amerikanische Schokoladenfirma) gefahren. Die alte Zuckermuehle - jetzt nur noch eine Ruine - ueberblickt ein weites Tal, das einst sicher stark bewirtschaftet wurde und viel Zucker fuer Hersheys Schokolade lieferte. Am Abend ging es dann zurueck nach Havana, das wir dann noch einen Tag besichtigt haben (viele Fotos, viele Eindruecke, viele Fragen).
Das ist ein kurzer, langweilige und recht kuehler Bericht dessen, was wir gemacht haben, aber wie sehr unsere Gedanken durcheinander sind, sollen die folgenden Fragen, die erwacht und uns gequaehlt haben, widerspiegeln.
- Sind zwei Waehrungssysteme wirklich gerecht?
- Warum haben manche
Leute Zugriff zum Touristengeld (CUC) und andere nicht? Schafft das nicht neue
Eliten?
- Warum muss man Touristen in Resorts wegsperren? Man ist gluecklich mit ihrem boesen/kapitalistischen
Geld, moechte aber nicht, dass sie sich frei im Land herumbewegen.
- Warum liegen in einem Land mit viel fruchtbarem Boden so viele Ackerflaechen brach? Viele
Nahrungsmittel muessen importiert werden. Es ist schoen, Ochsen vor dem Pflug zu sehen, aber es ist
doch ein bisschen aus der Zeit.
- Natuerlich sind Gesundheits- und Bildungssystem hervorragend, aber warum betteln Kinder auf der
Strasse nach Geld und warum arbeiten Kinderaerzte nicht in ihrem Job, sondern vermieten ihre Raeume
an Touristen?
- Wenn die Menschen im Kommunismus so viel besser sind als im Kapitalismus, warum wird man staendig
belogen? Man stoesst staendig gegen Waende.
- Angeblich gibt es keinen Bus zum Flughafen, man muss mit dem Taxi fahren. (Falsch!)
- Touristen duerfen nicht nach Guanabo. Falsch, die Leute dort empfingen uns offen.
- Das Abendessen kostet 10 CUC (eigentlich nur 8, aber den Rest steckt sich der Guide ein und falls man
nach dem Menu greift, wird einem das doch glatt aus der Hand gerissen)
- … mehr Fragen folgen
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As you can tell from the title of this blog, we found Cuba somewhat frustrating.
Why? It's hard to say and quite complicated. We both found ourselves bewildered and full of questions and ponderings it's taken this long to digest and put it all into words.
We headed to Cuba full of hope expecting to see justice, solidarity, brotherhood and Socialism doing its thing. We spent the first 2 days in Havana in a 'Casa Particular' (a rented spare room with a Cuban family, a bit like a guesthouse). Havana is amazing. It is full of character everywhere you look. The main tourist roads, squares and parade routes are wonderfully restored (or have at least been given a good lick of paint) and are brightly lit up. As soon as you wander into a side street however, you enter another world. I would like to say the buildings are 'less maintained' but that would be a major understatement. To be blunt, the majority of the residential blocks seem to be in some stage of decay. Harsh but true. It is hard to believe people really live in them. When
we got inside, although the communal hallways were less than appealing, people's individual flats were much nicer and in some cases, outright luxurious! (more on that later). The side streets are very dimly lit which is a stark contrast to the main roads. Despite the darkness though, we didn't feel scared walking around as there were so many people out in the streets and Cuba is said to be a very safe country. We were hassled as expected by hustlers pretending to be your 'friends' chatting along, just getting to know you but then they start demanding money for their time and 'services'. Crazy. It's a real shame though because we ended up not wanting to make eye contact or striking up conversations with people as they invariably ended up asking us for money for some reason or another.
Havana's Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The restored colonial buildings are simply beautiful. So many bright colours, details and designs. Really lovely. The Spanish certainly knew a thing or two about architecture. The decaying buildings are just scattered around among it all, which makes the city all the more mind boggling, interesting, amazing I guess. The other
Capitol
Remind you of Washington?! - Erinnert es Euch an Washington?!wonder of Havana is the number of old fashioned cars chugging along everywhere in all the colours of the rainbow. Pontiacs, Buicks, Chevrolets, Ladas and lots of russian lorries. Amazing. The types of cars we've only seen in old films right there..still functioning albeit with a constant cloud of black smoke trailing behind them!
Entranced by Havana , we met up with our new tour group on the Saturday and headed out to the countryside on the Sunday. Our new guide was awful. He didn't 'do' anything and he quickly admitted that he was actually a trained lawyer but had become a tour guide because it was easier and he got paid more money because the state can't get at his tips! It really is true that that trained doctors, lawyers, pediatricians have given up their jobs in order to work in tourism because they can earn more money. More importantly, they can get their hands on the tourist current (Cuban Convertible Dollars called CUCs for short-the money tourists are 'supposed' to use. 1 CUC is equal to about 25 Cuban pesos. They want to get the tourist currency because they can use it to access luxury good and
food in addition to their normal rations. We can understand why they would want to get more money from toursits and charge higher rates etc but from what we have seen, the double currency has created Cuban 'elite' who can buy whatever they want with the tourist currency creating a 'have/have not' society....completely in contradiction to the core goals of the Revolution, Equality etc. The people who ran our guesthouses (and therefore have access to tourist dollars) all had 2-3 colour televisions whereas most Cubans would have to save for a year to even buy one. They make do with a black and white one...if at all. The guesthouses are also exempt of food rationing as they offer meals for tourists so the people running them have another advantage. This is just one example of the many contradictions and injustices we saw here.
On the tour we stayed at a lovely small town called Vinales, surrounded by beautiful scenery, mainly tobacco fields, and limestone hills. Very peaceful and lots of fresh air after all the fumes of Havana! We found the people to be much friendlier, most of the time with their own hand-made cigars in their mouths. More
importantly, I could understand them! (The accent in Havana is so hard to understand! Could barely understand what they were saying more of the time. Just smile sweetly and nod your head...) Our next stop was a beautiful beach resort called Maria La Gorda (yelp..we didn't want to go to resorts..this GAP tours was very different to the other ones. Hotels and resorts mean no Cubans, just tourists. Cubans aren't allowed to use hotels at all. The Cuban authorities want to keep us separate from the locals which was one of the most annoying aspects of our trip. You have to be very persistent and they blatantly lied to us to try to keep us out of the non-tourist resorts. Yuk. We don't know whether they don't want us to see what 'real' life is like in Cuba or whether they don't want locals to find out what life is like outside Cuba. Or whether it is just because they can get more money out of us if we are in the resorts and expensive restaurants. It's probably an unfortunate mixture of all of the above. We haven't felt like this in any other country we've been too...countries so much
poorer than Cuba have been welcoming and proud to share their culture and customs with us. Cuba, it seems is happy you are there as long as you spend lots of money, use lots of cabs and resorts and are happy to work on your tan for 2 weeks before being shipped back home. If you keep your nose out of local areas and don't mix with Cubans, don't try to use local buses, don't try to find local restaurants you will be fine! But if you are in anyway inclined to actually get OUT and do your own thing, you meet a lot of resistance. Sorry, I went off on a tangent but it makes me so angry that I had to get it all out. Now you see why it's taken so long to get my thoughts together and they are still coming out all jumbled up. Sorry.
Maria La Gorda itself, though a resort was beautiful and we went swimming in the sea and saw tropical fish with our snorkel set (not scared of snorkelling anymore!). The resort is a diver's paradise and those who went, said they saw an amazing variety of sea life. That
evening we were supposed to go on a sunset snorkelling cruise, but due to the complete incompetence of our guide and Cuban inflexibility, we missed the sunset and there was no point snorkelling as the water was pitch black! We were delayed as we were waiting around for our tour guide to lead us (as you would expect) but he didn't show up! Eventually we were told he wasn't allowed to join us as he didn't have a 'license to be on the water'?? It took a while before the penny dropped- he wasn't allowed to go out to sea incase he tried to swim/sail to Florida! Seriously. We were shocked. Also, we too weren't allowed to get onboard before making a record of all of our names and signatures, so that they can make sure no one tries to anything on. The fact that we were all tourists seemed to be completely irrelevant! Anyway, this all meant that we missed the sunset and it ended up being a very cold, windy journey in the dark with most of us wishing we were back on land. Gritted teeth. In addition, we were all bitten to pieces by sandflies during all
the waiting around. They are much worse than mossie bites and insect repellent doesn't work against them.
On the way back to Havana, we stopped at a tobacco plantation called Robiana and were visited by the 'Don' the big boss man of the cigar company! He is the only, living Cuban who has his own cigar brand and it is one of the top 5 in Cuba. He was a really friendly, very, very, very old man. We saw the tobacco plants and an old man demonstrated how they make them by hand. They smell amazing. We were given a free cigar each as and the group shared one round as we had a first 'puff'. I was really nervous as you all probably know, I don't even smoke- I detest it...but a cigar is different... right? It was actually really nice! I'm really surprised at myself. Needless to say, we bought a free cigars although we didn't know if we would be allowed to taken them into the USA on our way home. They better not taken them off us at US Customs!
Back in Havana, at the end of the tour, we only managed to stay
there for one night before needing to get out again! It's an amazing city but the countryside is so much nicer, the people much friendlier..and the air much cleaner! Before we left, we went to 'Coppelia's, a Cuban institution- an ice cream shops and filled up on cheap Cuban peso-priced ice cream (4p for 5 scoops-no joke! If the officials get their way, tourists are herded into a different cafe away from the Cubans, where they pay about 3 dollars for just 2 scoops). Thanks to our trustworthy Lonely Planet, we had already been warned of this and were prepared to assert ourselves and stay with the locals! Hooray for small victories! We saw how whole families came along, stuffed themselves full of ice cream and then ordered another 10 bowls. I was wondering how on earth they manage so much when we saw them empty the ice cream into various sized tupperware tubs they had brought with them from home! Looking around, we saw several other families doing this too. Clever. Ice cream is something that doesn't seem to be rationed so they go to town on it! See? We would never have seen all that had we been
herded into the sterile tourist cafe. Why do they make it so hard!? There is not much choice of flavours, you kind of get what you get and keep your mouth shut but it tastes good and is so cheap. We actually had ice cream for lunch for two days (budgeting you know!). The tourist meals on the tour all seemed to cost us in excess of $10 each which is a lot considering on our own, we'd found places selling the same food for $2-3. We don't know the real prices though as we never saw a menu., Our guide just told us how much to pay. We were fuming. One time, I asked for a menu and was ignored so Christian reached over and picked one up for me. A waiter had clocked me, nodded to the waitress and she swept by and took it out of my hand! We felt like we were being ripped off all the time. Our guide seemed to have no idea of entrance prices and seemed to be making them up as he went a long. Luckily, our guide book had key info in it which I could use to challenge him
when we made a mistake/tried to fool us...who knows which? We have all complained to GAP about him.
We decided to make the most of our last few days in Cuba..and in the warm by heading beachwards. In the guide book, they had recommended a town called Guanabo on the north coast. It is the place where Cuaban traditionally go on their summer holidays. Fab we thought! Finally, something 'real', something authentic. But no. We were told that we weren't 'allowed' to go there. It's was apparently 'just for Cubans, not tourists'. Arrgghh! We wanted to kick and scream. A man told us that we'd have 'trouble' if we went there. I explained how the guidebook had said it was fine etc and he told us that it was a recent development blah blah blah. After much deliberation, we decided to ignore him and go see for ourselves. And what a relief. He had been lying his face off! Why? Why do people keep lying to us? What did he have to gain? We got to Guanabo, it was a normal beachtown, with Cubans but also some other backpackers and lots of guesthouses! For tourists! It was nice to
watch the children playing football on the beach and families there with their huge picnics. Reminded me of days on the beach in good old Brighton...apart from the palm trees of course! The beach was nothing like the westerly end where all the hotel resorts are. The Cubans don't get to use the immaculate, white sand beaches- 'their' end is covered in beach debris, is brown/gold not white and much less fine.
On Monday, we managed to get onto a local bus (despite being told it would be impossible) and headed out of town to a tiny hut in the middle of the countryside, which is actually a train station for the electric Hershey train (built by the Hershey chocolate company in the past to carry sugar from the mills to the ports for export to the US). The journey to Havana was really fun. There were a group of Cuban guys on their way home from work with a guitar and basically having a good old sing song. They were such fun and their merriment was infectious. They started talking to us too (which was a rarity) which was lovely and they didn't ask for any money. They
were the first people we had met randomly that were really welcoming and seemed genuinely pleased to meet visitors. We were glowing. There were times like this when we loved Cuba to bits...and then something would happen which would make us hate it..then something nice again etc etc. A love/hate relationship indeed.
Questions...some of many...
Is it fair to have two currencies? Our guidebook calls it a 'tourist apartheid'.
Why do some people have access to tourist curerency and others dont? Is that not creating 2 classes?
Why do tourists have to stay in resorts? They are happy to get their hands on 'capitalist' dollars..but not to let us mix with their people...
Why are so many of their fertile agricultural fields empty? They import a lot of food. We were also surprised to see them using Oxen?
Their education system and health system are BRILLIANT (free and available to all and very specialised indeed) but why are their children beggin on the streets (when they should theoretically be in school) and why are pediatricians giving up their important jobs in favour of renting out their spare room to tourists!?
Why did we constantly see three-four people employed
Lonely Planet Star
This guy is on the front cover of our guide book!
Dieser Man steht auf der Vorderseite unsere Reisefuerher! to carry out a task (eg. painting, cleaning, waiting at a restaurant etc) but see ONE perosn doing all the work, while the other three get away with sitting around chatting.
Why is customer service NON-existent?
IF Communism is so much better than Capitalism, why were we lied to every day?
Why did we keep coming up against brick walls? Apparently, there are 'no' local buses/busses at all to the airport. We were told several times, that we HAD to get a taxi. We asked ourselves how the locals who work at the airport get there! They don't pay $25 a trip I bet! In the end, there was a bus after all and only had to pay 40 cent (and walk for half an hour).
As you can see, we have found some answers but have come back form Cuba with more questions than we had before hand! it's the first country we've been to where we really didn't feel welcome and are therefore unsure whether we ever want to go back! Partly yes..to try again. To try to get nearer. To come back with a more postive image. Partly, no. Why would we go back
when we have been to so many places which were warm and friendly? !
.
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