Cuba: week 1, getting my bearings, dealing with the difficulties

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Where to begin describing my adventures in the wonderous, mysterious land of Cuba?

My time in Cuba is probably the most extreme, complete and intense two weeks I've ever experienced. I absolutely loved it, and was absolutely ready to leave when I did. At the same time, I am just as ready to go back, after I catch my breath, earn a whole lot of money, erase my memory card for my camera, eat some good food, and quickly learn to play the guitar, piano, and drums much better, oh, and learn to dance of course.

To start with Cuba was absolutely confusing mostly due to the two monetary systems (there used to be three when the dollar was accepted a year ago or so). There are tourist dollars, worth about the same as the Euro, and are silly looking rainbow bills. And then there is the local currency which the cubans use, the cuban peso, or moneda nacional, which are much prettier. About 24 of these equals a tourist dollar.

Supposedly the tourists can only use the tourist dollar, go to the tourist hotels and tourist restaurants all of which are very expensive and not very good quality. There are tourist prices at all of the museums, on buses, etc. The hardest part is you don't really know if the prices posted at a restaurant are in tourist dollars or in pesos because both are listed with the $ sign. Basically a naive tourist will pay 24 times what the cuban pays. And in a sense it is fair; they have more money and should pay more.

But the truth of it all is that tourists can obtain the cuban pesos from the local casa de cambio, or from the markets. And they can even pay in tourist dollars as if it is worth 24 pesos, if they know what they are doing.

Of course I didn't figure any of this out for a week.

Sorry if this is boring, but this, along with stomach problems, is what i dealt with my first week. I had no cuban pesos, spent a lot of money the first few days on housing and food, and gave money away to people, not realizing I hadn't brought enough to do that. In fact I freaked out for a few days, because I thought I only had about 5-10 dollars a day to eat, visit museums, and do anything else. Meanwhile each restaurant charged anywhere from 5 up, most of them charging 7 or 8 dollars. This meant eating only once a day. I wasn't thrilled, and having no contact back home, not knowing many people, and not being able to take out money freaked me out a bit.

I also was a bit overwhelmed by this new culture. It was different, lively. People spoke fast, the world rushed around me, there was so much to see, the city was huge. And I was sick to my stomach partly because of the food, but also had my usual problems due to wheat. I couldn't figure out what to do, as I couldn't acquire the usual medicine I needed for my stomach, and was worried that if I had some major problem, I couldn't count on insurance to cover my problems there or send me home if need be.

I ended up not eating to save money, and save my stomach for the first few days. Both my pain and my weakness left me unable to check out Habana much.

okay, the story will just get better, but I am going to split each section up, as to be a bit easier to read. More very soon.

mikael

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