Cuba – Caught in a Time Warp (For Now)

Public transport in Ciego de Avila, Cuba

It is more than three weeks since we left Cuba and it soon felt a bit like we had been living in a dream.  Grant and I are both finding Cuba hard to describe but I will try to capture some impressions of this fascinating place.  It is nothing like we have experienced before and we doubt it will be the same if we were to return there in five years time.   After more than fifty years of Fidel Castro, it is now under the leadership of Raul Castro and changes are taking place right now.

We did not know much about Cuba before we arrived and I felt a bit apprehensive about how it would be.  However we found that tourists are made very welcome and there are lots of facilities to help make travel easier.   However atheists first thing to get used to is that Cuba has two currencies, the ‘peso moneda nacional’and the ‘peso convertible Cubano’ (CUC).  Tourists have to use CUCs and it is the only currency that locals can use to buy luxury goods – like soap! Unless they work in the tourist industry then they are paid in ´pesos nacional´ which means they are limited in the goods they can buy.  They even still have rationing on some food items, including meat and milk.  However the two currencies also mean that Cubans live 25 times more cheaply than tourists can. We managed to have a meal at a local restaurant one night – a whole deep-fried fish with rice and salad each was only 23 pesos nacional, so less than a dollar. Tourists are not encouraged to purchase goods and services at these local service providers but we are not sure how it is regulated. (Another of Cuba’s mysteries.)

The Cuban people are not wealthy.  In fact life can be quite hard but that doesn´t stop them being cheerful and very outgoing. They are also very proud of being Cuban. You can’t help but admire their success in thumbing their noses at the United States for 50 years.  The stand-off between Cuba and the USA is quite funny to observe.  They have an equal dislike for each other.  
There is huge Cuban culture in literature, the arts, music and dance.  Everywhere we went there were very good musicians, playing in groups at restaurants and in the streets.  This is another way that they can earn ‘pesos convertible’. Cubans are well-educated, often too well for the money they earn.  I met a man working at a resort hotel as the restaurant booking clerk because he earned better money there than being a professor at the university.   To give a comparison, policemen earn about the equivalent of US$26 per month and some doctors less than that.

We started our trip by flying into Havana from Jamaica, arriving at the airport terminal at the same time as a flight from Miami full of ex-pat Cubans, many of whom were loaded down with massive amounts of luggage including items like LCD TVs etc.  They are allowed to bring these items in as long as they pay the duty on them.  (And as we found out later, they must have permission to visit Cuba – it is not an entitlement.)  We witnessed many noisy and happy family reunions as we waited for our taxi which we shared with a young couple that we had met in Jamaica.    We spent nearly a week in Havana, much of that time exploring Old Havana which is a UNESCO World Heritage site with many of the building being restored.  However there are also many building that look quite sad for lack of maintenance.  But looks can be deceiving as they may be beautiful inside and some that look great of the outside can be very run down inside.

We stayed in a ‘casa particular’ which is a private home where they rent out two or three rooms to tourists.  It is all highly regulated but this also means the standards are high.  Rooms cost between NZ$28-33 per night.  They also offered breakfast which usually consisted of fresh fruit, fruit juice, eggs, bread and coffee.  All for NZ$4.50  each.    This type of accommodation is all over Cuba and we were referred from one `casa particular`to another as we went.  (The other option is to stay in hotels for which you pay international prices, i.e. over NZ$200 per night.)

However we did take the opportunity to give ourselves a holiday, within our holiday.  We booked five nights at Caya Coco where we stayed at an all-inclusive resort hotel on the beach. This cost us about NZ$130 per night – meals, entertainment and drinks included.   Grant learned to sail a Hobie Cat over the four days which he really enjoyed.  We also made friends with Eugenio Gonzalez, the sailing instructor.  Eugenio lived about one and a half  hours by bus from the resort, in a town called Ciego de Avila.  We decided to make this town our next destination and Eugenio decided that he could smuggle us out on the worker’s bus instead of us catching a taxi.  This meant a ‘tip’ of 10 CUC  (US$10) to the bus driver instead of 60CUC for a taxi.  (There are many things that Cubans are ´not supposed to do´and this was one of them.)

On the day of departure, we met up with two of Eugenio´s colleagues (it was his day off) who made sure we didn’t look too obviously like tourists by changing our t-shirts and hats. (It is not an easy feat for me to not to look like a tourist, with my red hair.)   They then walked us out to the road to meet the bus, passing the security guards who were checking all the departing employees bags for contraband.  Once of board the bus, our hosts greeted all their colleagues as a way of making sure they all knew what was going on and also ensuring that they were all part to it.  This was all quite exciting and scary as we didn´t really know what the consequences were if we were stopped and questioned.   About half an hour into the trip, we stopped a routine police checkpoint and a policeman came on board!.  He walked down the aisle of the bus, again looking for contraband.  During all this we kept our heads down and crossed our fingers.  He must have seen us but as it turned out we weren’t what he was looking for and he left us alone.  Phew!

Once we arrived in Ciego de Avila we were met by Eugenio and his wife and daughter who after finding us some accommodation in a ´casa particular’ took us to meet his parents and then out for dinner.  The next day we met up again and he showed us his town complete with ´coaches´ (horse-drawn carriages for taxis), bici-taxis, old American cars and old Russian trucks converted to buses.  You name it they use it to get around since private individuals are not able to buy imported vehicles.  We were again invited to his parents small home (where he also lives as there is a big housing shortage in Cuba) for a lunch of fish, rice, beans and salad.  Some of the fish was caught at the resort by the his colleagues who fish while hosting guests at the marine sports facility on the beach.  This was a very generous invitation which we really enjoyed.  In return all I could give his mother was our grateful thanks and a packet of cashew nuts that I had purchased in Jamaica. Eugenio’s friendship and willingness to share his knowledge and home was a highlight of our Cuba visit.

We then travelled by public bus to a town called Remedios where there were so few cars on the streets, it felt like we were on the set of a cowboy movie.  The buildings are all Spanish mission in origin.  There is a central plaza next to the church, hotels and restaurants, municipal buildings and Spanish colonial homes, some of which have been converted into ‘casa particular’.   Our next stop was the city of Trinidad, another UNESCO World Heritage site on the south coast.  Here we ate in restaurants that were furnished with original colonial furniture and fittings, and crockery and glassware that was over 50 years old.  This is mostly because it is difficult to obtain new items in Cuba. It also made for some lovely environments to eat in.  Trinidad, like many cities, has a Casa de Música where you can drink, eat, hear great live music and dance.   We did the eating, drinking and listening but unfortunately Grant and I will never make dancers, even after receiving a lesson or two.

The Cubans don’t waste anything and are extremely succesful at recycling materials.  They make items for sale from resources and techniques we have long left behind.  There was jewellery made from old cutlery and dyed bone as well as various types of clothing that use crochet, tie dying, pin tucks and embroidery.  (I really enjoyed looking at all the handcrafts and how they were made.)  All this good use of raw materials reminded me how much we take for granted all the goods we can buy and also how much we throw away when it could be recycled.

From Trinidad we bused to another beach on the north coast where we spent four days in a run-down beach resort hotel, where the food was some of worst we have had on our travels.  I was not eating too much by this stage as I had a bad case of food poisoning in Trinidad, and I wasn’t wanting to repeat it.   By then I was also sick of Cuban sandwiches which most often consisted of ham and cheese – and nothing else!  The best ones  also contained mustard, tomato and pickles but because we are on a budget these were few and far between.   We have some great food in Cuba and also some not so good food due sometimes to the availability of produce.  For example, a salad might consist of just cabbage and carrot.

After two more days in Havana, back at our previous ‘casa particular’, we took a flight to Cancun, Mexico.  The Cubana Airlines plane, a old Russian model, was in a similar condition to some of the old Go Wellington buses.    Our last memory of how things work in Cuba was when massive amounts of water vapour started pouring out the air conditioning units above our heads as we descended into Cancun.  Since the hostess didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong we just held our breaths.  I think we finally breathed out when we had landed safely and the engines were turned off.

Overall, Cuba was a great experience I would recommend to others.  The people are great, the culture is rich and the political situation is fascinating.

The best things included:

• the bus system that gets tourists around the country.  (Cuban have their own bus system which is highly overcrowded.)
• staying in ‘casa particulars’ and meeting the hosts and their families
• getting to know Eugenio and his family
• the old buildings, particularly in Havana and especially the magnificent art deco ‘Bacardi’ building
• observing how things work and trying to understand it all, and be comfortable with the major differences between what we could do and what the Cuban people were allowed to do – like travel outside their country.