Colas, Carnavales, correr la maquina y más

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¿Qué bola amigos. We are in Cuba! Yes!

Now, I know it has been a week since the last blog, but as you can imagine internet is not the easiest to come by, and since I had a chance I thought I would enter a short little entry to give you all a taste of our experiences thus far.

We left Miami on a charter flight. The ticket said be there by 10.30 am even though our flight didn´t leave until 2.30. We thought this might be a little excessive, but we needed to exchange money and figure out where the terminal was, so we decided to go along with it. No joke, you NEED to be there 4 hours early. There are at least 3 different lines you have to wait in to check in for your flight, all of which look like the same line and all of which consists of answering the same questions of 'why are you going to Cuba' and 'how do you know Spanish' I´m typing on a Russian keyboard, so I´m not sure how to make questions marks or other puntuation, so excuse the bad typing! We got all 5 papers to fill out and we were ready to go.

At 2:30pm we boarded our plane, which was half empty event though we were told it would be hard for us to get a flight a month in advance, and landed in Santiago de Cuba about an hour and half later.

Weather- crazy hot and humid

Customs- confusing, but not as bad as we thought. We only had to speak to 4 aduana agents, which all asked us 3 different times

1. Is this your first time in Cuba
2. Why are you in Cuba
3. What do you do in the U.S., What do you teach
4. Is this your first time in Cuba
5. Where are you staying
6. Do you know anyone in Cuba
7. How are you feeling
8. Is this your first time in Cuba

By the end of our mini interrogations, the whole airport was sure that it was our first time in Cuba and that we were teachers looking to learn a little culture. In the end, the customs process was a lot easier than expected. They didn´t even look through our stuff!

Carnaval de Santiago- Good music, good food and intimidating dancers! Man, can they move. Bathrooms- Very questionable, I would recommend spending the 1 CUC to use the tourist bathroom car then using the local stalls, it is an experience not for the weak at heart or stomach!

Correr la maquina- Literally means 'To run the machine' it means to prank call someone. We found this out the hard way when we tried to call one of our contacts we received from a fellow FFT traveler who came to Cuba 2 years ago. Our first attempt, he hung up on us, thinking it was a joke his friends were playing. The second attempt, we had to be a little more forceful to let him know exactly who we were and why we were contacting him. This approach worked...and thank goodness it did! You cannot do much here on your own as a foreigner, unless you use the tourist companies. We obviously didn´t come to Cuba to hang our with more 'yumas', so we have been fortunate enough to have a local friend teach us and show us the real Cuba that many foreigners are not able to see. Cuba works real hard to keep visitors and locals separate, so much so that there are two different currencies for nationals and foreigners, and 'technically' foreigners are only allowed to use the CUC, which is more or less pegged to the dollar. To give you an idea 1 CUC - 25 pesos nationales...so you can imagine the difference.

Well, my time is just about up. I wish I could be more detailed, but there are many reasons that I cannot get into that limit what I can type right now, one of which is the price of internet!

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