Take me to the April sun in Cuba

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Take me to the April sun in Cuba, oh, oh, oh
Take me where the April sun
Gunna treat me so right, so right - so right
- April Sun in Cuba, Dragon

Well, it wasn’t quite April, but after surviving part of a Winnipeg winter and then getting a bit more of the same in Toronto, the best cure we could think of for our chronic Vitamin D deficiency was a couple of weeks in sunny Cuba. The island nation, only 90 miles from the Florida coast, but as you can imagine, it is a world apart. We began in Havana, a city in which the words “this place would’ve looked so beautiful 100 years ago” passed through our lips at least 50 times. We arrived in Havana late on January 13th and checked into the Montehabana, a functional hotel on the lower end of the scale for something rated as 4 stars. Located in the Miramar district where most of the foreign embassies are situated, the Montehabana acted as our home base for our first week in Cuba.

Cuba, and Havana in particular, is one of those places that’s hard to visit without the baggage of a bunch of preconceptions, whether it be from images you’ve seen on TV, news snippets of Fidel and Raul’s latest public escapades, or comments by the US bureaucracy about the threat of Cuba and it’s communist allies. On that last point, we really question the threat that Cuba poses to the United States or anyone else outside of Cuba for that matter.

Apart from the main tourist area, Old Havana is generally a polluted maze of decaying 200-300 year old Spanish architecture that just hasn’t seen the investment and maintenance from the Government that is needed. Having said that, this UNESCO heritage site has undergone some restoration in recent years and more is planned. With no private investment and with the Caribbean Sea spraying salty brine over the Malecon, the Government’s job of restoring Havana is going to be akin to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge - by the time you finish, you have to go back and start all over again. Havana is the beautiful swan that regressed into an ugly duckling. Although that paints a negative image of the city, there are patches of absolute beauty and the liveliness of it all still draws you in.

Despite the years of neglect, Havana has a vibrant and bustling feel, with old Fords, Buicks and Chevys dating back to the 50’s chugging away through the streets, locals meandering along the broken footpaths, stopping to say hello to everyone they know, and kids in parks throwing around makeshift baseballs and kicking around soccer balls. One thing we noticed throughout our travels in Cuba was how little obesity there was and how fit and healthy everyone looked. This could be the result of the limited food rations that the citizens get, and maybe it’s the great healthcare system that we hear so much about, but it must also have something to do with the amount of exercise Cubans get, particularly the kids. Once school finished, there wasn’t a bit of grass or open cement that didn’t have a makeshift game of one sport or another in progress. We saw kids with well worn leather baseball gloves throwing around a ball made up of bits of electrical tape. Baseball seems to be the sport of choice for the youngsters. If we ever go back again, we’ll take a dozen or so baseballs with us and offer a free upgrade to the kids we come across throwing around a ball of tape or a well worn bit of leather that probably once resembled a regulation baseball.

One of the great challenges in Cuba, especially if your Spanish is as terrible as ours, is to actually be able to sit down with a Cuban and have a chat about what it’s like to live there. We found Cubans who could speak English very keen to stop you in the street and strike up a conversation by asking you where you’re from, only to politely and incessantly suggest that you try the best mojito available in the bar across the road, or this great sandwich from the shop next door. Everyone in Cuba is trying to sell you something, whether it’s the guys who try to hustle you into a bar or cafe for a small kickback from the manager (who apparently then just adds the kickback to your bill), the endless number of people who have authentic (?) Cuban cigars for sale at severely discounted rates, or the teacher/ doctor/ mother/ old guy trying to exchange a local 3 Peso coin with Che Guevara on it for a vastly more expensive Cuban Convertible Peso.

In fact, it is this dual currency system that is in place which seems to be responsible for so much of the divide between Cubans and tourists. Every hotel, tourist attraction, and pretty much every restaurant, cafe, shop and taxi takes Cuban Convertible Pesos (or CUC) which is pegged at an exchange rate of 1.12 US dollars. The value of all other currencies is derived from there. Therefore, the CUC is the designated tourist currency. The locals are given rations and paid in Cuban Pesos, which are worth 1/24th of a CUC. Considering that private enterprise is severely limited, and if it is allowed, it is so heavily taxed, the only way that Cubans seem to be able to get their hands on CUCs so that they can shop, eat or play above their ration allowance (and where tourists do) is either to exchange 24 of their precious few Cuban Pesos for each CUC, or hustle CUCs out of tourists. And hustle they do!

The scam of choice in the service industry in Cuba is to simply overcharge. Everywhere you go as a tourist you get overcharged.

- If you walk into a restaurant or bar (all of which are Government owned) and ask how much a particular item is, the price quoted will almost certainly be more than the price on the menu.
- Sit down at a restaurant and ask to see a menu. Get told there is no menu, but that the specialty is a ham and cheese sandwich for 4.50 CUC. See someone else get given a menu, ask to see it and notice that a ham and cheese sandwich is actually only 3.50 CUC. Ask for the bill at the end and get charged a price that is more than the menu price and more than the inflated price you were originally quoted.
- Pay your bill, sit there and wait for change and then watch as your server never comes back to your table and never looks you in the eye again.

With no market economy and low rations, it is understandable that they use the limited opportunities available to them to try to score a little more. Many Cubans seem to be under the impression that every tourist there is rich as they using the CUC for currency, but fail to understand that the dual currency system that makes things inaccessible for them, also makes Cuba an expensive place to travel for tourists. Considering that most prices in CUC are about the same as what they would be in Canada or Australia, when you factor in the artificially high exchange rate, things become very expensive very quickly.

One thing we found with the taxi drivers is that, just like everyone else in the service industry, they try to screw you on the price every time, quoting prices well over what you know is fair and have previously paid. But unlike many others, once we agreed on a price with a cab driver, they always took us to the agreed destination and honoured the price that was negotiated. You’ve got to respect them for that.

There are a range of cabs in Havana, from new air conditioned hatches through to tourist friendly restored 57 Chevys, but our carriage of choice was always the beat up old diesel soot spewing Ladas. Many of the cabs do actually have meters that we think they’re legally supposed to use, but we always just agreed on a price before we got in and no one seemed too concerned about flicking those meters on.

After the crazy hustle and bustle of Havana, we decided to head out to the small city of Trinidad. Trinidad is a 500 year old city, and also a UNESCO world heritage site. The city was a centre of Cuba’s sugar production, however after the sugar trade collapsed in the 1800’s, poor economic conditions and subsequent lack of development meant that the city was preserved. The city is small and compact with cobbled stone streets, brightly coloured colonial buildings, horse-drawn carts and locals going about their daily business. While it has its fair share of tourists, it has managed to keep a small town feel.

Trinidad also offered us a better opportunity to talk to some local Cubans. Two small private business opportunities that are open to Cubans are Casa Particulars - essentially opening up a maximum of two rooms in your house as bed and breakfast type accommodation, and Paladars - privately run restaurants in your house. We were fortunate enough to stay at a 200 year old colonial house in the middle of Trinidad. The house was filled with antique furniture and had a beautiful garden courtyard in which we were served breakfast on a daily basis. Our host, Mercedes, was great, giving us tourist advice and chatting to us about what it is really like living day-to-day in Cuba.

The paladars were a godsend and served up the best meals we ate in Cuba by far. Cuba struggles a bit in the food and dining department - there are only so many ham and cheese sandwiches you can eat in a week. We hardly saw any fruit and vegetable for sale while we were in Cuba, and if there was, there would only be a few items and of mediocre quality. At Paladar Estela, for 10 CUC each we got a massive meal, great service in a beautiful outdoor courtyard, and the most memorable avocado we’ve ever eaten. After not seeing, eating or hearing about an avocado in 10 days, we had to ask “Where did you get the avocado?” The owners looked at us as if we were stupid and merely replied “Off the tree in the backyard over there”. The service in the government run restaurants and hotels was painfully slow, and at times non-existent. The difference between them and the paladars and casa particulars could not be more distinct.

We decided to venture out of Trinidad for a few hours and headed to the nearby Playa Ancon. We took a coco taxi - basically a bright yellow three wheeler moped with two seats and a fibreglass cabin behind the driver - for the 8 km journey to the beach. Now we’d heard about beautiful Caribbean beaches, but the first sight of one with their crystal blue water is a joyous experience. It was here that Lok decided to take the plunge (not literally, that would have been a lot more sensible) and propose marriage, which of course Catherine very happily accepted. A Coco taxi ride back to Trinidad and one last night there, and then it was time to move on.

To make sure that we did get enough of that precious vitamin D before our return to Canada, we headed to the resort town of Varadero. This is the place of the all-inclusive resort - the plastic wristband means that no more cash is needed, all of your accommodation, food and beverages are included. This is where thousands of tourists come to escape the northern hemisphere winter, lie on a beach and eat and drink till their heart’s content. We decided to do the same, and developed our appreciation for the Mojito and Cuba Libre (rum and cola). After a tough day at the beach underestimating the powers of the winter Cuban sun, there is nothing like mint, soda, sugar and rum to ease those sunburn blues.

After coming from bustling Cuban cities, the strange thing about Varadero is the lack of Cubans on the streets. They are actually restricted from travelling there. Our only contact with Cubans was those that worked at the resort and those in the stores and markets. Instead of streets filled with bicycles, taxis, cars and locals trying to hail them down, Varadero’s streets hum quietly to large air-conditioned tourist buses, rented scooters and the clip clop of horse-drawn carriages. It was such a contrast to the Cuba that we thought we were getting to know.

Highlight of the trip - while we were walking through a market in Varadero, a middle aged Canadian lady turns to her husband and says - "who is that guy, I've seen a lot of people wearing t-shirts with him on them?" That guy was Che Guevara.

After two weeks in the Caribbean, it was time to head back to the cold Canadian winter and continue our journey east towards the land of the vikings.


Catherine and Lok’s tips for travelling to Cuba:

- DO NOT make travel arrangements with Sunwing. They are incompetent idiots.

- When you take foreign currency to exchange for CUCs, make sure none of the notes are marked with ink (pen or a stamp). We had trouble changing a few notes that were marked.

- Take some cheap baseballs for kids and if you plan on staying at a casa particular, take some vacuum packed coffee as a gift for your host, they’ll appreciate the gesture.

- Keep a few smaller denomination CUC coins in your pocket. They’re great for tipping the bathroom attendant and there’s never any paper in the bathrooms, so if you need some, a tip is the only way to get it. Likewise, it’s a good idea to keep a few tissues in your pocket just in case.

- Exchange a couple of CUCs for local Cuban pesos. They’re great for buying a cheap pizza, cake or ‘refresco’ from a street vendor, particularly in the smaller towns.

- Get a taste for rum before you leave home. At 3.85CUC for a 700ml bottle of Havana Club, it’s the best value in Cuba.

- Be patient and pick your battles. It’s a country and people trying to offer western travel experiences within a socialist framework. It often misses the mark.

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Photos

Old Havana
Some buildings have seen some love in recent years.

Che - This Guy is Everywhere
His image even appears on Government buildings.

Jose Marti Statue at Revolution Plaza, Havana
An icon of Cuba's independence movement.

Callejon De Hamel, Havana
An artistic oasis in the middle of Vedado.

An Outlook Over Trinidad
A view from the top of the National Museum of the Struggle Against Bandits (real name, not an attempt to be humorous).