Our man (and woman) in Havana!

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No sooner had we returned from our Alaskan trip then it was time to venture out once more. We were home for ten days. In that time, we’ve had an overnight stay in Kings Lynn, Norfolk where we saw the very funny comedian, Tom Allan; had lunch at an alpaca farm and visited several National Trust properties. Retirement is far from slippers and a dressing gown in front of the fire with a cup of cocoa watching reruns of Jeremy Kyle, a cross between Oprah and Jerry Springer but with attitude!! There will be plenty of time for that when we run out of places to visit!!

We found ourselves once more on the move to a far-flung destination. This time, our journey will take us to Havana, Cuba where we will stay for a few days before boarding the MSC Armonia for a seven-day cruise. During this time, we will be visiting the central American countries of Honduras and Belize as well as a couple of ports in Mexico then back to Havana where we plan on staying a few more days before returning to the UK (for six weeks!!!)

We flew out of Gatwick, London’s second airport staying the night before the flight in a Premier Inn.

We took our seats in the ‘bubble’ of the Boeing 747. Of the thirty three seats in economy only three were occupied. We were in premium economy, where eight passengers occupied the possible twenty available seats. The doors were closed and the captain made the welcome announcement. In total there were only one hundred and forty two passenger on board this 747 which has a capacity of four hundred and sixteen passengers in this particular configuration. He also welcomed aboard a VIP guest. The captain then added that she was a super model from Reading who was visiting Cuba for a photo shoot. What! No name? You can’t just advertise that we have a celebrity on board without saying who. I managed to grab his attention on the one occasion he walked through our cabin and asked him about the secret celeb. He replied: ‘If I told you I’d have to kill you.’ Blimey, we’re talking someone who can probably walk nice whilst holding themselves upright, not the leader of the free world!! I wasn’t going to let this rest so several hours later whilst walking through the half empty cabin I stumbled across one of the female cabin crew and asked her who our VIP was. It turned out the Captain had been winding everyone up as he was only referring to his wife!! The ironic thing was, his wife was as excited as the rest of us to know who the supermodel celebrity was!!

Less than five minutes after the captain’s original welcoming aboard announcement he followed it up by more news. Due to the mist surrounding the airport this morning, there is a backlog of aircraft departing and arriving and therefore the tower had rescheduled our push back time to 11:55. We were now delayed by an hour and a half. Finally, our time came. We pushed back at a little before 11:55. The Captain hadn’t even shifted the gears from reverse in to forward when a further announcement was made: ‘The is your Captain again. Apologies for this further delay but the gauge is showing that one of our eighteen tyres has a low pressure so we will have to go back on to the stand and get the engineers to take a look.’ He then added,<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> ‘It’s a new tyre, as well!!’ He made it sound as if he’d just been down to the local Kwik-Fit. At least it was a ‘new’ tyre and Virgin Atlantic hadn’t skimped by supplying a part worn or even worse, a retread!! Twenty-five minutes later it was announced that the tyre was fine after all. It was a fault with the gauge. The gauge has been re calibrated and was now working as it should be. That rectified, we pushed back at just after 12:30 and our wheels (I’m pleased to announce, all eighteen of them) left the ground at 12:50pm – two and a half hours behind schedule.

The flight time was nine hours thirty. We only managed to claw back fifteen minutes in that time touching down in Havana at 16:45

The Cuban immigration customs control and security were all super-efficient. One thing I noticed though was that all the officials were female and many seemed to be no more than teenagers. The security ‘girls’ all wore short brown skirts with white blouses and knee-high white socks. They wore no insignia. Their outfits looked more like school uniform than airport security. At first, I thought it must be ‘bring your daughter to work’ day. I later learned that I was not far off the mark. Secondary school is compulsory until fourteen. There after you can choose to stay in education whilst experiencing a working environment. This level of education is for a further two years and known as ‘training’.

I mentioned security. You don’t normally see much evidence of security when you are entering a country. However, immediately after passport control all hand luggage had to be put on the conveyor belt for x-ray scanning. Mine was selected for further scrutiny. I unzipped the main compartment to my backpack, showed her the SDLR camera and lens then for some inexplicable reason, whether is was because I don’t speak Spanish or just the frustration of having the contents of my bag removed after a ten-hour flight, I said, ‘Camera, click, click’, moving both hands to my right eye and doing the actions of taking a photo. In perfect unbroken English she replied: ‘Yes, I know what noise a camera makes sir!!’

After showing various things to her colleague such as a battery charger, an MP3 player and a flash gun, the items were repacked and my bag was scanned once again. There was something at the bottom of the bag that had caught their attention. I unzipped the front pouch and produced what I thought they must be interested in. It was a voice recorder I carry with me in case I need to make notes for my blog whilst I’m out and about. I kept it simple and just said ‘Dictaphone’. She repeated ‘Ahh, dictaphone’, gave her colleague a sly glance then smiled at me as she quickly passed it back as if it was some sort of weird sex toy she didn’t want to handle. Mind you, with a name such as Dictaphone, I guess it could be!!

In Cuba there are two currencies, CUPs and CUCs. The first is the Cuban Peso (CUP). There are about twenty-five Pesos to the U.S. dollar and very rarely used in day to day life. The second currency is the more commonly accepted Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC). This has the exact exchange rate as the U.S. dollar. There are official exchange offices located around the city. They are all government controlled so there is no disadvantage from changing money at the airport. We had no choice. Our hotel had arranged a taxi for us. He would need paying in the local currency. It is not possible to change money in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter – except Cuba!!) We met our taxi driver who was happy to wait until I managed to change UK sterling in to CUCs.

The journey to our accommodation was thirty minutes from the airport. It would have been slightly shorter if the driver hadn’t stopped to pick up his mate just outside the airport perimeter. I saw someone beckon our taxi. The driver indicated and pulled over. He apologised and said: ‘Just one moment please’ At first I thought we had been stopped by the police. It was difficult to know with so many work experience knocking around!!

Our accommodation was known as a Casa Particulare. These are private houses whose owners rent out rooms and whilst many hotels are reasonably priced, these casas are supposed to represent the best value for money. Unfortunately, not all Casa Particulares are guaranteed to come with an English speaking host!! We were greeted by the housekeeper who was very keen to show us around. We were taken down a narrow hallway and shown a small court yard with a few tables and chairs. This, we gathered was were breakfast would be served. Our room was next door to the court yard, Estate agents would probably describe our room as ‘cosy’. It was small but contained all our needs: a fridge stocked with beer, soda and water, a wall safe, a TV and a bathroom. The advert indicated a seating area. This was also estate agent speak for our seating area consisted of a small pouffe in the corner of the room! The walls were painted plaster – terracotta and white with brick cladding on the wall behind the headboard. The bathroom seemed to be relatively new as the wall and floor tiles were shiny and free of cracks or chips!!

Our host continued to address us in Spanish explaining where the grocery store was.

‘Jobbing!’ she kept repeating.

‘Ahh! Shopping’, I exclaimed to Roisin.

‘Si! Jobbing!’

I understood the Spanish words for ‘port, ‘trees’ and ‘right’ and with the housekeeper’s hand gestures we gathered that the store was ‘walk down to the port, turn right and past the trees’. It turned out that the grocery store was on the next block, about twenty yards from where we were staying!! We never did find out what was down to the port, turn right and past the trees. If indeed that is what she had said!! Perhaps a Job Centre??! It had been a long day. However, we were determined stay awake until a reasonable time before retiring to bed. The time was now 7:15pm (quarter past midnight in the UK) so, after freshening up we ventured out to get our bearings and find somewhere to eat.

We walked the two minutes down to the port and turned left on to San Pedro, a stretch of road that followed the contour of the port, hugging the coastline out and around to the Strait of Florida. Having spotted the cruise terminal on our right, we turned off and headed in to the old town (Habana Vieja). My first impressions of Havana old town, as we wandered through the back streets, is that there is a distinct lack of plasterers in Havana with many of the buildings having lost their rendering over the years giving a false impression that the properties are in a state of disrepair. This is not a vocation many of the work experience kids must have chosen, preferring blue collar work over a trade job!! I think their career advisors need to re-evaluate where the necessary jobs lie. Less airport security (especially on entering Cuba) and more plasterers!! Apparently, there is a Job Centre not far from where we’re staying!! Many locals were sat on steps, chatting amongst themselves or just people watching. Feral cats roamed freely looking for scraps while the feral dogs, laid in the shade trying to escape the early evening heat. A local came towards us with a beatbox slung over his shoulder blaring out some gangsta funk hip hop salsa fusion mix. To others around, it was welcome entertainment. Not wanting to sound like the grumpy old Englishman abroad (but I will, anyway!!) to me he was disturbing the peace. Hadn’t he heard of headphones?!! This was only the start. We had now entered Plaza Vieja (old square) Here we found several eateries. As we wandered from restaurant to bar to café the music followed us, but not the locals with their oversized mobile music centre with built in drum machine kind. This was much more aesthetically pleasing. With mainly traditional upbeat Cuban melodies, every establishment seemed to have its own house band!! From the small piece of Havana we had experienced so far, we immediately got a sense of the vibrancy that the city was renowned for.

We finally found a relatively quiet restaurant-cum-bar called the Café de Paris. The house band were cha-cha-cha-ing outside on the pavement terrace. We took a table inside to make use of the very welcoming air conditioning while the band played in in the background. The meal was disappointing. I had read that Cuban food, on the whole, was very bland. I had roast chicken while Roisin had the grilled chicken breast. This was accompanied by edible although rather flavourless mashed vegetables and a boiled potato with somewhat overdone wild rice and bean concoction. However, for $5 each, we couldn’t complain. It was a welcome hot meal after a very tiring day. With a mojito and an export beer to wash it down, the bill came to $15.50 (about £12) The mojito was made with crushed ice. Our researchers told us that tap water is not safe in Cuba, not even to brush your teeth. Roisin therefore first confirmed with the waiter that the water used in the making of the ice cubes had been filtered.

The water issue, however, was only a minor convenience compared to…

…Waaaahhh! NO INTERNET!!!!!!!!! Wi-fi and the internet, although connectivity is possible, is in its infancy here. Cuba is currently only testing 3G. There are no internet cafes and as Cuba is not on the feel at home network, internet will cost £6.00/mb if we use our phones. Data roaming has been well and truly switched off. The alternative is to by a special card that grants you access to wi-fi for $4/hour. This though, entails a registration fee of $30. It looks like we’ll be cut off from the outside world for a few days until we board the MSC Armonia where we have purchased an all you can eat data internet package for the duration of the cruise. We have to be pragmatic and forget the woes of the world for the time being and happily embrace the diversity and vibrancy Havana has to offer.

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