Advertisement
Published: August 3rd 2006
Right, where to start...because of the extortionate price and interminable problems with using the internet in Cuba I will have to do my whole 10 days in one go...congratulations if you make it to the end!
I left Isla Mujeres and caught my flight to Havana with no problems. Almost. In order to save $40 I had chosen to fly with Cubana, the Cuban state airline. As I ducked into the ancient plane the first thing that hit me was the fact that all the signs were in what looked at first like Greek and English. A few seconds later I realised that this was in fact of course Russian. Nice. The plane was incredibly hot, as the air conditioning doesn´t work until the engine was on. When it did come in, it also filled the cabin with smoke. This was marginally alarming until there was an announcement saying that this was perfectly normal. All this while I read in the guide book about Cubana´s terrible safely record. Great.
Anyway, the fact I´m sitting here writing this shows that everything was fine in the end, and I arrived in Havana and made my way to a casa particular. There
aren´t any hostels in Cuba and basically what the government have allowed is for a few people to offer rooms in their houses to a limited number of people. They have to pay a very high tax for this and are only allowed a maximum of 2 rooms with 2 people in each. The one I went to was full, but the guy said that I could stay with his girlfriend round the corner. As I dropped my bags he explained that I couldn´t tell anyone where I was as she didn´t have the official license yet and therefore was at risk of losing her house if discovered. Anyway, she was incredibly friendly and made me feel perfectly at home, even though she didn´t speak a word of English.
I went out for a bit of a wander up to the Parque Central and just as I was thinking that it may have been a bit of a mistake to come to Cuba alone as it is basically impossible to meet any other travellers I heard my name being called out. It was all the guys from Manchester Uni who we had met in San Christobal/Palenque/Tulum/Isla Mujeres etc etc.
The jazz cafe
With Sarah and SamI went for dinner with them and arranged to meet them the next day.
A few things stood out instantly upon arriving in Cuba. The first of these is that there are no adverts. Sounds small, but it makes you realise how cluttered the roadsides/buildings/pavements are everywhere else. Occasionally they have these faded billboards with a picture of good old Fidel proclaiming some sort of revolutionary slogan but that is basically it (except for outside the American embassy but more on that below). The other main thing is that the country is completely multiracial, and with no real noticable class difference between white/hispanic/black (they´re all poor!). Another thing I noticed was that no one seems to do anything. All the kids play sport, inventing crazy games with bouncy balls in tiny side streets while the older people sit around in doorways drinking rum and playing music. That´s another feature of life in Cuba. It actually is like in a film, everywhere you go is playing music, either taped or more often than not live. Pretty cool except you have to tip them all the time.
Cuba is a crazy place to travel in for a number of reasons.
Chiefly the fact that there is a different currency for tourists. You can change money into national pesos but then it is virtually impossible to use them, except in tiny little street food stalls (which given the standard of food in Cuba is not an inviting prospect. The only time we attempted this we ordered a pizza (12p) and then had to watch the guy fold it in half and fill half a cup with grease before handing it to us. Needless to say the stray dogs ate well that night). This makes Cuba incredibly expensive, especially if you are travelling on your own. Any day where I had change from $100 was a good day.
This wouldn´t be quite as bad were it not for the terrible quality of most of what you are paying basically English prices for. Eating in the state run restaurants is a joy. Firstly all of them seem to have the same menu, which you may wait 45 minutes to see, they will bring 1 menu for a table of 7, and you can almost guarantee that out of the 6 things on the menu they won´t have 2 or 3 of them
and when the food finally arrives, it will be cold and pretty pathetic. Buying food out basically involves a choice between pasta with tomato sauce, pizza or ice cream. What we quickly discovered was a far better option was to eat in the house you were staying in, where the women would cook you an enormous meal for about $8-10. One night in Trinidad for example I had lobster (again! such a budget traveller! although it was only $10).
This makes it sound like I had a miserable time which wasn´t at all the case, it´s more that travelling in Cuba is an "experience" that is a lot harder work than most places, especially coming from Mexico which is ridiculously set up for backpackers. Some parts of the experience are much better (or at least more authentic), as one of the guys who I met put it you will almost certainly have some of the best highs of your trip in Cuba but also some of the worst lows. Certainly you get to meet a lot more "real" people than anywhere else. Because you stay with families and it is so hard to meet other travellers there is none
of the usual hostel banter. In the illegal casa I stayed in in Havana, Rafaela invited me when I came back before flying out to have dinner with her and her family, which was something that would be pretty much unthinkable in Mexico. In general Cubans are also really friendly, and constantly want to talk with you about everything (even if they normally want some sort of tip at the end!).
Anyway, back to what I actually did. My first full day I met up with the others and we spent the day wandering around Havana, going to the art museum, the cathedral etc etc. All very nice, every street looks like a photo op with the crumbling colonial buildings and old school cars (although the old cars pump out fumes like you´ve never seen!). In the evening I met up with Sarah, Sam and Annie in the Jazz Cafe out in Vedado (a Havana suburb) which was fun...we thought we´d be nice and cliched and try and buy a cigar so ordered a Cohiba off the menu. When it came it was a packet of cigarettes which somewhat confused us. Towards the end of the night I thought
I´d have one, lit it up and got a bit of a shock when I quickly realised it was a cigar. The Cubans are actually so obssessed with cigars that they actually make "cigarettes" with cigar tobacco!
The next day I had arranged to meet Sarah, Sam, Annie and Amy at the bus station to go to Vinales, a small town a few hours west of Havana that is surrounded by bizarre shaped limestone mountains called mogotes. As I was telling this to my casa woman she told me that there were 2 bus stations in Havana. I went to the one that I thought it would be and sure enough they weren't there. Hmmm. As their woman had booked me a space on the bus I had no idea what the name of the person who'd made the reservation was. Finally I managed to establish that although I was at the wrong one, the bus would pass through an hour later. Panic averted. We got settled in Vinales and then decided that we'd go for a walk out into the hills, despite the fact that storm clouds were brewing overhead (unsuprisingly seeming as it is the rainy season).
We started off down this little mud track and pretty quickly were in deepest darkest rural Cuba (the area around Vinales is where they grow most of the tobacco). We came across this old farmer who gave us some free pineapple and a cigar and told us that we could climb the mountain (maybe it was more of a hill!) behind his fields. Off we set, suitably attired in flip-flops, scrabbling up very steep mud and rocks when just as we got to the top it started to rain! How predictable! After recording a quick birthday message in the rain for Amy's mum we started to descend. A mad slide/fall down the slope led us into the path of some fairly aggressive pigs roaming the hillside but after a brief stand-off we made it to the bottom much to the bemusement of watching farmer. Crazy tourists.
The next day Simon and I had booked to go for a day trip to Maria de la Gorda, a beach right at the far Western end of Cuba. As we waited for the bus at 7am up strolled one of the guys from Nottingham who had flyered for us last year which
Probably the worst restaurant in the world
(l to r)
Sarah, Amy, Sam, Matt, Annie and Simon was quite funny...We had arranged to do a dive, which was pretty amazing. There wasn't an especially large variety of fish but the coral on the wall drop-off was as big, varied and brightly coloured as any I have ever seen which made quite a change from some of the diving in Mexico which has been dived to death. We got back and had a pizza with a couple of Dutch guys who we'd met - another example of the bizarre nature of Cuban logic - the shrimp and lobster pizzas were the same price as a plain cheese one. Obviously. After an afternoon lounging on the picture-postcard beach we caught the bus back and went straight to meet the others at a hotel overlooking the valley for dinner, before catching an old school taxi back to the village.
Then it was goodbye to Matt and Simon, as Annie, Sam, Amy, Sam and I headed down to Trinidad, an old colonial town where the whole town centre has been designated as an UNESCO World Heritage site. I had the best meal I'd eaten in Cuba in my casa, with the woman bringing me out a whole snapper, plus chips,
rice, beans and 3 vegetables...somewhat better than anything seen in the state-run restaurants!
In the evening we went to the square by our casas and sat having a beer, somewhat bemused by the fact that although Trinidad is supposedly overrun by tourists and full of hustlers (another persistant problem in Cuba), we were experiencing neither. It was only when we got back that we realised we had gone to the new town square that was basically just for locals!! It was also interesting to talk to the casa owner (who spoke English) about Castro and what he thought - he was openly vehemently anti-Castro and said how much everyone was hoping that a) he would die and b) that things might actually change when he did...(of course this may now be about to happen!)
The next day was spent again on the beach (Playa Ancon) a few miles from Trinidad. Despite being described as "a luscious strip of sand with good snorkelling" in the Lonely Planet, it was actually more like a Cuban Costa del Sol, dominated by a couple of hideous, old-school Russian style concrete hotels and with water that you couldn't see your foot in.
On my final day in Trinidad we just milled around the centre, taking a look at all the old colonial architecture. I also bought a couple of boxes of cigars off the dad of the casa which the girls were staying. Cuban cigars are still v expensive in Cuba (starting at about $250 a box) so there is a constant stream of people offering to sell you fakes...or as this guy claimed, ones stolen from the factory. Even though I'm sure these were fakes and not genuine stolen ones, we bought a real one and smoked one of each to compare and none of us could tell the difference so whatever (and at $50 for 2 boxes I don't really care!) Although they could be real, because, as we came to realise Mario (the dad), was a little like the Godfather of Trinidad - whenever we needed anything he would insist on making a few calls and it would appear...! Sam and Annie kindly offered to take them back to England for me as they are very strict about people importing cigars to Mexico, although I then heard of numerous people having their fake cigars impounded by Cuban customs so
Trinidad 3
Annie, Amy, Sarah and me! whether I ever see them again is doubtful...
The next day I left everyone to head back to Havana. I met up with Rafaela again and she welcomed me back like a long-lost son, insisting that I had dinner with her and her children that night which was a fantastic experience (even if I didn't really have a clue what was going on!). In the afternoon I wandered around Havana a bit on my own, before bumping into the Dutch guys in the Hotel Inglaterra (the same place I'd met the guys from Manchester - that place turned out to be my lucky charm!!). They said that they'd probably be sitting on Prado (the main pedestrian boulevard) that evening with a bottle of rum so the evening was spent amusing ourselves by hustling the hustlers...!
My final day in Havana I wandered down the Malecon to check out the US 'special interests' building. As America has no diplomatic relationship with Cuba it does not have an embassy as such but just a building where a few people work (mainly spies I imagine!!) All around the building though the Cubans have erected these huge blag flags and anti-American adverts.
There are also tens of Cuban police ensuring that you are not even allowed to walk within 100ft of the building let alone approach it!
Then it was back to Mexico, and after another delightful Air Cubana flight I had never been so pleased to get back to a country where you could get some food or a bottle of water in under an hour!! Although I am extremely glad to have seen a bit of Cuba, even more so now that I hear Castro appears to be on his last legs!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.118s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0819s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Dad M
non-member comment
"War and Peace"
Well not quite, but great to have such a long report, and I quite understand why you did not want to do this on Cuban internet - I suspect it might have made it smoke as much as their planes (perhaps they run those on cigar tobacco as well). At least you have a couple of weeks of rest and relaxation in relative civilisation before reality kicks in and you have to come home. Enjoy the diving and make the best of it - I would be lying if I did not admit to still being jealous.... (which is why I have to remind you that home beckons). Also we do miss you!