Our Matt in Havana

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Narrowly avoiding another missed flight connection, I made it onto the Cubana flight to Havana - the first Soviet airliner I've been on and also the first plane with a built-in smoke machine... As the (loudest ever) engines went into full thrust for take off, the cabin filled with cold water mist for added atmosphere...

Havana is an amazing city, much of it the crumbing ruins of somewhere grand but with life going on regardless. Opulent houses with marble staircases and the remains of ornate plaster ceilings, apparently unpainted for decades. The famous 1950s American cars mixing with battered Ladas and Moskviches rattle along the pot-holed streets. Once-chic shops with huge cracked windows with nothing in them. And everywhere the hussle of people trying to sell you charlie, cigars, spliffs, girls, accommodation, restaurants. Music spills onto the streets from makeshift bars and people's homes and there is a constant buzz of activity.

There's a dual currency system here - Convertible Pesos for the tourists, Moneda Nacional for the Cubans. But the split is deeper than just the currency, there's a huge rift between the touristy areas and the poor local residential areas, and between the newly affluent Cubans who are making money from tourism and those who struggle to survive. Cruise ships and rich all-inclusive tourists sweep in, stay in luxury hotels and go sightseeing in horse-drawn carriages, cosseted from the reality on the streets.

But slowly the tourist money is revitalising the city. Restoration works are in progress all over the place, the crumbling buildings are gradually returning to their former glory. It may take decades but the improvements in the economy from tourism seem to be benefitting Cubans, especially those who have made use of laws allowing them to let out private rooms for accommodation or set up paladares - restaurants in their own homes.

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Comments

[El]

What no lying on a beach??
You mean to say that you haven't gone to stay in one of the beach resorts in Cuba...? All inclusive, 5 star hotel, lying on a beach. I'm shocked. I know a couple of people who have been there and those who enjoyed it the most, seem to have been those who feel that they connected most with the "real" Cuba. With the notable exception of my sister and brother-in-law as they got married in a Cuban beach resort; but I think that may have had something to do with the marriage itself!