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Published: July 26th 2008
Well finally an update about Cuba. It´s been a couple of weeks as the internet access we were able to get over there was very slow and expensive, and we heard from a few people that all internet use is monitored so I thought I´d wait until we were back in Mexico.
Where to start... Cuba was an incredible experience and one that I highly, highly recommend if you ever have the opportunity.
A very brief history: Cuba was colonised by the Spanish, who eliminated the indigenous population that lived there previously. They also imported slaves from Africa to work the plantations (its main production is in sugar, coffee and tobacco), so Cuba is a fairly even mix of African and Spanish descendants.
There is a history of tussles between the Spanish, British and Americans for control of Cuba, eventually culminating in indepedence in 1902.
In 1956, after a few failed attempts, the unpopular imperialist government of Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro and 82 revolutionaries, including his brother Raul Castro (the current leader, since Fidel has stepped down recently due to ill health) and Che Guevara, amidst huge popular support. Fidel became prime minister of Cuba in
1958 and instigated many reforms, including free health care and education for all citizens. However, his government also executed many members of Batista´s regime and began a policy of confiscating private property for the state, including the prosperous sugar plantations, which were heavily invested in by Americans (notably Hersheys). The government also evicted many Americans, including the mob who had great control and influence during Batista´s time. These actions resulted in America becoming hostile toward Cuba and imposing many economic sanctions, especially on the sugar industry.
Castro´s government turned toward Soviet support and moved more towards communism after a less left wing socialist beginning.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union times have been more difficult economically for Cuba, although it does trade with many Latin American countries, China and the EU.
Much has been written about the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs assault, the attempts on Castro´s life by the CIA, Guantanamo Bay and the fate of Che Guevara so I won´t go into all that.
The result of all of the above is that Cuba in many ways is suspended in time. Rob described it perfectly as ´elegant decay´. Many of the 1950s American cars
are still being driven and carefully maintained (for lack of materials to maintain them). We saw many Cadillacs, Plymouths, Buics, Studebakers, Chevys, and fantastic old bikes with sidecars. And of course many more recent non-American makes such as ladas, European and Japanese cars. We also saw many coco cabs, bicycle taxis, horse and cart transport and oxen ploughing the fields.
The beautiful old Spanish colonial buildings are slowly crumbling apart, with fresh plaster falling every day. Even in the ´new Havana´things are kind of falling apart.
One of Cuba´s proudest monuments is the legendary Hotel Nacional, where many famous people have lounged in its Parisienne Salon and watched cabarets. The Parisienne Salon boasts bullet holes from a revolution in 1933 and past clientele such as Winston Churchill, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Josephine Baker... the impressive list goes on into the hundreds. Unfortunately we couldn´t stay there as we heard rooms start at $250 per night, but we did get a classic Plymouth taxi there and shouted the driver a drink in the salon so we felt pretty stylish.
Cuba is full of propoganda billboards, for example ´Bush is a terrorist´, ´Defend Socialism´, ´Revolution =
equality and liberty´etc etc.
Che Guevara´s face is everywhere, even more so than that of Castro. He is a huge hero and a legend, and more cynical people would say a very good brand name for Castro´s government.
The Revolution museum in Batista´s old palace has the van that was shot up during a failed coup on Batista before the revolution, as well as the famous boat ´Granma´that Castro and Guevara plotted revolution on together. Also many other military relics from the revolution. It´s full of pretty one-sided propaganda too. Not that Castro´s government hasn´t done some good things, and I believe started out with good intentions, but things are not as rosy as is made out everywhere. They did some pretty horrific things too, including the excecution of Batista´s men. And whether you blame the US or communism, things are just obviously not working out economically for the Cuban people, and they have limited freedom.
The museum is full of fully-armed army guys with machine guns at the ready. One hissed at me (he could have used his words) when I sat on some steps so I got up again quick smart. It was quite intimidating!
The restaurants
boast fantastic menus from more affluent times, but we soon learnt to ask ´what is available today´ because much of it is for show and to force the waiter to admit this is unkind and undignified for them. Usually our choices were beef, pork, fish or lobster. The food was always good, in fact I enjoyed it much more than Mexican food. It was simple but fresh, with vegetables, rice and sometimes potato. However in the restaurants we were always left feeling faintly hungry. In the ´casas´(private houses officially sanctioned for tourists to stay in - they have to offer air conditioning, locks and hot and cold water), however, there was plenty of delicious food at mealtimes and we were able to leave plenty on the table for the households.
Many restaurants have live music. They all play the traditional jazz-style Cuban music made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club (Buena Vista is a suburb of Havana), and it´s really pleasant to listen to. Much more so than the louder Mariachi music in Mexico. We were listening to a band one lunchtime when a James Brown lookalike guy came in flanked by a photographer and his young busty blonde
wife. A couple of tourists asked to have their photo taken with him so we asked the waitress who he was. She had no idea, and neither did anyone else who worked there. Then the James Brown guy got up and shook some castanets with the band while the blonde wiggled about and smiled and the photographer took photos. They left smiling widely at everyone and the waitress later came up to us and said she had found out he´s a famous singer from another town. It was hilarious.
In another restaurant we went to sit in the corner but were politely told we weren´t allowed to because it was the boss´s table. There was no sign of The Boss but a few subsequent diners were also turned away from the table. We were picturing some mob boss from the old days or something! I can´t remember the name of the restaurant but it was always The Boss´s Table whenever we went past it after that.
While the people are friendly almost without fail, the communist system does seem to result in some pretty slow meals! I guess barring tips there is no real incentive to work hard, as they
are state businesses and people get paid no matter what.
The two big sports of Cuba are baseball and boxing. Cuba has done very well in these sports in past Olympics, and they are excited about Beijing. Being under a communist regime, the sports stars are not really stars. People apparently know their shirt number and name but could walk past them in the street without recognising them. Many Cuban baseball payers have famously defected while playing overseas and ended up with lucrative American contracts.
A lot of the kids on the street playing baseball have to improvise with home-made wooden bats and stones instead of balls. It´s so sad!
Cubans are not free to travel unless they have a very good reason, but some try to reach Florida on smuggler´s boats. American law states that if they reach land they can stay, but if picked up in the water they are sent back, presumably to an uncertain fate. There is also a worry that the familes of those who have left might be punished.
The Cubans have a thirst for knowledge for the outside world that breaks your heart.
The Cuban women don´t wear a lot.
It is bloody hot so I don´t blame them. But it was quite an experience at first seeing so much skin, I think most girls in Auckland dress more modestly when nightclubbing or at the beach! Most of them are absolutely stunning so it´s not so bad, but we saw plenty that we wished we hadn´t seen so much of as well.
They also seem to be pretty sexually aggressive. We saw one very dressed up group of young girls at a Cafe hitting on a middle-aged Western tourist. One of the girls blatantly asked him if he´d like to go home with her. He left alone but when we walked past the same place that night he was back and sitting at the same table as the girls. There were much more attractive Cuban men their own age paying them attention so we had to assume that his tourist dollars and perhaps even a chance to leave the country were the attraction.
The airport in Havana is the only one I´ve seen where people can smoke, buy beers in the check-in area, where the female security guards wear mini-skirts and the money exchange cashiers are asleep side by
side on their counters.
There are police everywhere, even on the beach, although things seem pretty quiet. They don´t seem particularly jumpy but I wouldn´t call them friendly either. One guy joked to us that Havana has 2 million people and 1 million of those are police.
Cuba officially has 2 monetary systems. One is the Cuban peso and the other is the convertible peso, which tourists have to use. Basically there result is that tourist pay about ten times the amount of locals, which I think is fair enough.
It gets costly though as US dollars are hit with a hefty 20% commission when you exchange them (Euros are not). I was a bit annoyed to have read before leaving NZ that non-American issued Visa cards could be used, only to find I was still subject to the 20% US commission when I tried to use my NZ one. Luckily we came in with quite a few Euros.
In practise there seems to be quite a bit of overlap with the two monetary systems. We saw quite a few locals using the convertible pesos. You´d think that the convertible system would just end up inflating the Cuban
peso anyway.
Many things are hard to get hold of. I was asked for shampoo many times. It was hard to find many beauty products, although shampoo and deoderant seemed to be in most shops, but at tourist prices that most cannot afford. I tried to leave as much excess stuff as I could: shampoos and soaps saved from Mexican hotels, plasters, paracetemol, dental floss, moisturiser, a top, etc... In truth though I should have found someone to leave it with other than in the casas or for the hotel staff, as they probably have more access to these things anyway.
Cuban shop shelves seem to stock about 50% alcohol (the opiate of the masses?) and not a lot of useful food. We did spot some markets though where all the fresh stuff is coming from.
The Cubans like to drink, and it´s pretty cheap to do so. A bottle of beer was only a couple of dollars and a one litre bottle of Havana Club rum was $3-4, and that was in our tourist dollars. Nobody in Cuba seemed to get drunk to the point of being a problem though. They´d get a bit noisy but never
aggressive. I´m starting to think aggressive drunks are purely a NZ problem!
They drink it on the streets, at the waterfront, while swimming... Some of the beaches would be completely littered by bottles and other rubbish by the end of the day, but in the morning it seemed to be all cleaned up by somebody, although not before a lot of it had washed out into the Carribean.
Air pollution is also a problem, the old American cars weren´t that economical even in their hey day and many factories are billowing out smoke. Lucky for the Cubans (but less lucky for the rest of the Carribean), most of that seems to waft out to sea as well.
Officially, Cubans are now allowed to use the internet, although access to this is probably expensive for them and very slow. It´s also monitored so things aren´t really so free.
The same goes for cable TV. There are official national channels but in the tourist hotels we were watching American TV. Again, not so easily available to the average Cuban.
We had quite a few odd cloak and dagger experiences. I don´t want to go into too much detail but one guy
asked us to assist with some letters out of the country. Luckily we didn´t see him again as we didn´t really want to be carrying potentially counter-revolutionary material around! Maybe that sounds a bit paranoid but we got that way after a while.
Another guy got into a deep conversation with Rob. He discovered Rob was a policeman and suddenly wanted to move away from where poeple might hear them. He said there is always someone listening. He then asked Rob for his email address and walked away while Rob was writing it, before coming back and furtively taking it. He then pretended not to really know us in the morning! Crazy stuff.
I talked to another guy who said ´Nobody here is happy. We have to pretend we are but nobody is. I could even get into trouble for saying this to you´.
Many people make their living in Cuba by touting for business. It doesn´t matter what it is, restaurants, casas, horse and buggy rides, whatever, the person who sells something to you then gets a cut from the vendor. We got to the point in Havana at one stage when we had to be on the
lookout for 4 different amigos that were looking out for us (even walking past our hotel and peering in) and trying to sell us stuff. Our most consistent was Alberto, a nice man who arranged a restaurant dinner, a dinner at his families home and a taxi ride for us. It was actually really helpful but sometime we just wanted to be left alone to walk around and find our own places, so we would give them all the slip.
The Cubans seem to love babies, both men and women were constantly congratulating me on my pregnancy and asking if it was a nina or a nino. I was given some clothes and a soap for the baby by Alberto (I gave him a fiver that he insisted he didn´t want in exchange, which he then took happily), and a delicious mango to eat from the receptionist at our hotel that is only grown in the Santiago de Cuba region. She said it was just for me and the baby, not for Rob!
Only, I´m paranoid now that I´m unusually massive, because at least 4 people asked if I was having twins! In fact I compared my belly to
a pregnant women who arranged a ride in a classic taxi for us. She was 4 weeks ahead of me but with a smaller belly. We´re putting it down to Western women having bigger frames, as well as their babies being bigger, rather than me being a freak of nature.
We can now feel the baby when it kicks, which is very exciting, especially from Rob since he can now feel it for himself. Sometimes not so nice being kicked in my bladder though...
We were told we were not allowed to catch ordinary buses, but had to catch the tourist ones. I guess this is another way to force us to pay top dollar for things, but that was fine. It wasn´t that much money to us, which made us feel pretty guilty.
Like in Mexico, dogs are not treated well in Cuba. We saw many in a pitiful state, with mange, ribs sticking out and pussy eyes. It was horrible. We saw one awful old man hit two dogs hard with his stick. People were glaring at him but hi didn´t seem to care. I´d like to find out if any of the animal welfare agencies
are able to access Cuba.
The other tourists we encountered were mostly European. Americans are not supposed to come here but we did meet a Californian girl who decided to come anyway and deal with the consequences when re-entering the states via Mexico. She had become paranoid about the chip in her passport and taken to it with a hammer! Might make it a little harder to play dumb if they do question her.
So our time in Cuba started with 3 nights in Havana at the hotel Carribean. It was twice the price of the casas but it did include free breakfast and very friendly staff and we really liked it there. The people lounging at the bar and the waiter in his waistcoat serving mojitos almost felt like hotels in Havana must have felt in the old days.
We then went to a nearby beach, Playa del Este, for 2 nights. It was jam packed with locals! This was the one that seemed to end up with the most trash all over it. I felt a bit self-conscious being the only one there who was actually whiter than the sand. Our room was pretty good but
had only shutters, no windows, and all day Spanish music came blaring in from the swimming pool. Another country, like Mexico and Mozambique, where silence does not seem to be valued much.
After that it was back to the Hotel Carribbean for one night before trying to catch a bus to Trinidad for 3 nights. However the tourist buses were all full (Rob was convinced it was a scam but I think they were just under-resourced). Luckily we managed to share a cab for the 4 hour drive with a German guy who spoke fluent Spanish and 2 Danish girls. It was a bit pricier at $40 each but at least we got there and saw miles and miles of sugar cane. Trinidad is a town near some beautiful white classic Carribean beaches. Stunning, although not much to do except alternate between dips in the warm water and lying in the shade. It was extremely hot in Trinidad as well as in Havana. We stayed in a cute little casa with lizards jumping around in the trees around the deck and ate like kings. It was the first time we hadn´t felt hungry since arriving in Cuba. Trinidad was full
of fighting roosters and little birds in cages. The people would gaze out of their barred windows during the afternoon heat and somewhat resembled their caged birds themselves. We were woken by the sound of roosters every morning but got more used to it after the first time.
Then we went back to Havana for a night but were unable to get a room at the Hotel Carribbean, but they very kindly called on a friend with a casa (everybody has a friend for everything) so we spent an uneventful night there.
Having cottoned on to the waiting list system we managed to get bus tickets to Vinales for 2 nights there. That was a lovely town which is tropical but a bit higher up so not so stinking hot, more a respectable 35 degrees. We stayed at another casa with a Spanish lady who did a LOT of talking. I couldn´t understand any of it so it was a bit frustrating but again we ate like kings. There was a massive thunderstorm with I think had something to do with the bog tropical cyclone Dolly that hit the Texan/Mexican border. We hooked up with an Argentinian guy and got
a taxi driver to show us the local sites - a couple of beautiful big caves, one of which involved a boat ride and had bats, a big mural (not a propaganda one but randomly depicting evolution) and some amazing views of the mountains. We ordered some pina coladas (one for the taxi driver too) from an outdoor bar which were delicious. They serve them alcohol free and just stick a big bottle of rum in front of you so you can help yourself. The taxi driver and I didn´t have any but Rob and the Argentinian had a modest amount. Then the bar tender obviously decided Rob was being a wimp and topped his drink up so much that Rob´s must have ended up with 75% rum! He was well sloshed by the time we got back.
Then 2 nights back at the trusty Hotel Carribbean in Havana before sadly, it was time to depart Cuba. What an amazing country.
Sorry this was so long, but there was a lot to say. I´ll leave the Cuncun stuff for now so I don´t drive anyone insane.
Love XX Krista and Rob.
Viva Cuba!
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Emily
non-member comment
hola beautiful lady
Krista, you're looking so beautiful - positively glowing! More photos of your divine belly please!!! I love the photo of the Lonely Planet fella, and the caged man and bird is beautiful too, very conceptual if you want to look at it that way. Please do rant about Cancun, I'm loving reading about your honeymoon. Love.