Cuba - A journey back in time

In December 2013 we made a two-week trip to Cuba, a country where time has practically stopped since the Americans were forced to leave the country in 1959 by Castro and his rebels, who took over the state and rule it ever since with strong hands. I won’t get into history and politics since you can easily study that on Wikipedia, there’s plenty to read since Cuba’s last 60 years were like no other in the 20th century. The embargo that many western countries maintain up to this day is making the lives of Cubans a suffering from one day to the other, witnessing that the world is passing them by and they haven’t got the slightest chance to keep up. 

As most people in the world know Cuba is famous of its old American cars, the mojito, rum and of course cigars, however few people are aware that behind these luxury products there is a hopeless, sad and desperate Cuban public that would do anything to get their hands on any western product, be that a mobile phone, a computer or just anything as simple as modern hygiene products or a small toy. In the eyes of a tourist people try to look happy, at first they praise socialism, but when you chat with them for a little while they shyly and quietly start to complain about the system and about their hopelessness in general. If you think Cuba is the place to go to see crazy, happy people singing and dancing salsa on the streets you could not be further from the truth. You can witness such performances in expensive hotels or restaurants, but they seem too strained and artificial most of the time, made up only to please tourists and to get a few bucks out of their pockets. 

There is also an upside of communism, which is basically the lack of crime and the feeling of total safety wherever you go, including the low-class part of the capital called Centro Habana, where houses collapse every month due to their terrible condition and the lack of resources to keep them in a livable and secure state. Poor people basically live their lives on the streets, yet you feel completely secure walking among them, they just look at you, sometimes ask if you might want to take a ride, since that’s one of the very few services they can offer you. Should you decide to do so, make sure you agree the price in advance, after that you shouldn’t worry much, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever cheat you. 

After this introduction I feel I need to emphasize that Cuba is not a terrible place to go to, in fact it’s quite the opposite despite the oppression its citizens need to suffer, who are truly friendly most of the time and can help you in having a really good time. Just be prepared, that you are traveling to a “developing” country, or at least something like what we call that, although Cuba in particular hasn’t developed much in the last 60 years. For us it was the first time ever in the country, we spent two weeks trying to see as much as we could, spending the last few days in a relaxing resort, which is of course not the authentic Cuba.

The route we took looked like the following, arriving and leaving from Havana and spending a few days at each pin:

Havana

We landed at José Marti International Airport in the evening at around 8PM. We waited for our luggage for about an hour, the conveyor belt is as slow as hell and they throw a bag on it once in every minute. After a 13-hour flight from Moscow I felt it took forever. After we successfully collected our baggage we headed to the money exchange desk, where we exchanged a couple of hundred Euros. Don’t try US dollars, because they put an extra 10% transaction charge on it, due to their "love" towards anything that’s American. Speaking of which don’t travel with an insurance issued by an American insurance company, they won’t accept it, the same is true for credit cards issued by US banks and even rumor has it that diving certification issued by American institutions (such as PADI) are not accepted at ceratin places either.

After having the Convertible Cuban Pesos (CUC) in our pockets we grabbed a Peugeot 307 taxi to the city, which broke down after 10 minutes, so we had to change to a Chinese car branded Geely - which is by the way assembled in Cuba. Our apartment building was on the edge of Centro Habana and was in a similarly terrible condition as the other buildings around it, however it had 7 stories compared to the usual 3-4, therefore we had a beautiful view from our window all over Havana.

We spent two days in the capital, walking around the usual tourist sites, which you can find in any guidebook so I won’t talk about them in details. Walking in the city is not a pleasurable activity due to the enormous pollution coming mostly from the 60-70 year old cars. Although there are not many of them, they exhaust terrible smoke, I even got a headache after walking for a few hours amongst them in the streets.

We bought fruits, mostly bananas from small street vendors when we got hungry, since buying the junk food locals eat full of oil and sugar was not something we craved for. A great alternative to water was the king coconut, which holds about half a liter of juice full of healthy minerals and can be bought at most places in and out of the city. The local beer Crystal also tastes all right, it’s not strong and not as bitter as a plzen-type beer, so it serves as a great refreshment in the hot, humid weather. The temperature in the beginning of December was around 28-30 degrees Celsius, which went down to 22-25 at nights, making it totally bearable despite its high level of humidity.

If you’re planning to go out to eat in the evenings, you might encounter the so-called paladars, which are basically family restaurants sometimes located in someone’s own flat. They have people all around the city, and if they spot you looking for a place to eat they persuade you that they know the best place in town if you want to have good food and offer their services to take you there. They often take you to places where you can eat regular food for a very high price, like chicken with beans and rice for $15 – which is considered extremely expensive in Cuba. You should go to designated restaurants, where you can freely check the menu and if it doesn’t fit the size of your wallet you can simple walk away and look for another one. I recommend eating out at official dining places in La Habana Vieja – Havana’s old town – where it’s unlikely that you’ll fall into unpleasant surprises.

Vinjales

On our third day in Havana we chose the Viazul bus to take us to our next destination, a little town called Vinjales about 200 km west of the capital. This bus service is designed for tourists, it’s not expensive, comfortable and has more or less precise departure and arrival times, something that is uncommon in Cuba. The only thing you should be aware about is that by policy they run the air conditioning on maximum all along the way and you’re unable to turn it off due to the lack of switched overhead. Many people complained about it along the way without any result. So make sure you have sweaters handy and ideally wear long trousers in case you’re in for a longer ride.

The Valley of Vinjales is known for its tobacco fields, its caves and unique limestone formations called mogotes. The village itself is quite the opposite of Havana, it mostly has narrow dirt roads with single-story houses with different farmyard animals running all over the place. The house we stayed in had no glasses in its windows, just shades, so we could hear everything that happened on the street 5 meters from our heads even at the middle of the night. At around 5AM the rooster served as our early morning alarm system basically every day, after which field workers rode along our street on horses. We stayed at a casa particular – a family owned apartment-to-let – called Luis & Ony’s, who were our kind, attentive hosts. Neither of them really spoke English, we had to communicate in Spanish. This is true for about 75% of the Cuban population, mostly people in the tourism business speak English, and it’s not even true for most taxi drivers. It’s handy to have at least one person in the group who understands and speaks the local language, however you can get along with minor difficulties without knowing Spanish. We felt it’s important to emphasize that we’re not Americans, since they have a general antipathy against people from the Unites States due to historical reasons. 

Once you’re in Vinjales apart from taking a walk in the nice, friendly center of the village you can go and visit a tobacco (cigar) factory, a couple of caves nearby, go hiking around the mogotes or choose horseback riding as an alternative option. We felt that two days were more than enough here, we got a glimpse of the real country life in Cuba and took the smell of the fresh tobacco leaves grown on the famous terra rossa, the red soil.

Trinidad

From Vinjales we took the Viazul bus again and headed down to Trinidad, a beautifully preserved colonial style city part of the UNESCO World Heritage. We stayed at an amazing place called Villa Dalia, which was a modern, clean and friendly apartment house with a great kitchen and amazing food. This was the first time we enjoyed basically every meal we had, be that fresh-fruits, chicken, pork or fresh grilled lobster for $8. 

 

Trinidad has a beautiful beach called Playa Ancon 13 km south of the city. We rented bikes and cycled out there for a day, it was great fun finally relaxing on the shore with coconut drinks in our hands. The beach itself is sandy, the water has beautiful turquoise color and it’s not packed with people, you can have your own comfortable space with deck chairs and shades. They belong to the nearby Hotel Ancon, so if you’re not a hotel guest you need to pay 1 CUC a day for each chair, which is completely fair. You can use the hotel’s beach bars and waiters will come and serve you drinks all over the day. 

The downtown of Trinidad is surprisingly clean and well-maintained compared to Cuba standards, which I believe is mostly due to being a World Heritage site. We didn’t encounter too many tourists there and the restaurants were also rather empty, nevertheless there was a fair amount of locals roaming the streets, not too crowded but not empty either. My advice that I wrote above about paladars goes to Trinidad as well, do not let yourself be invited in to family houses for lunch, it’s risky what you get and it might just be a waste of time and money. Stick with the decent looking restaurants, we had a bad experience regarding the former.

Cayo Santa Maria

From Trinidad we left for Cayo Santa Maria – our long awaited resort island in the north of Cuba built exclusively for tourists. In order to get there we needed to take the Viazul bus to Santa Clara, where we had to spend one night and arrange for a taxi next morning. We stayed at a hostel near the city center, the owner was extremely friendly and spoke English very well (for the first time during our trip). He called the cab for us which happened to be a VW Golf II. with around 950k km in its odometer. During the three-hour trip we broke down twice, at first we had our water boiling then we got a flat tyre, which was not surprising due to the fact that it practically had no markings left on its tread. We reached our 5-star hotel called Eurostar, where one night cost $123 per double room per night all-inclusive, having an enormous amount of eating and drinking possibilities, a gym and a couple of swimming pools. It had an amazing natural beach with different recreational possibilities like sea kayaks, windsurf equipment (beginner boards only), catamarans and small laser-type sailboats – all included in the price.

We had an amazing time here, we felt disappointed to leave this wonderful place and go back to Havana on the day of our departure. We chose to take a private taxi to the capital, which lasted a bit longer than 5 hours. Private taxis are considerably cheaper than state taxis, which are usually newer, more reliable cars, but you can pick a decent private car as well if you’re lucky and persistent enough.

In Havana we did a last round of compulsory refrigerator magnet shopping, and after a short stroll in the city center we took a taxi to the airport. There you need to spend your remaining pesos, it’s not allowed by law to take Cuban Pesos out of the country, however nobody checked it in our case. Make sure you have 25 CUC per person remaining as an exit fee, they don’t allow you to leave unless you pay that at the appropriate window. The air conditioning was not working at the premises of the airport neither at our arrival nor at our departure, so people were dropping their last drops of sweat on the floor of the waiting room before boarding the plains.

Altogether we had a great time, just keep in mind that you’re traveling to a country where people are not as free and happy as they’re supposed to be, they live in a system which is not sustainable and they know it, they’re hoping for changes that should come any time soon. If you want to see the authentic Cuba as we know it today now is the time to go, in 3-5 years it might be too late, they have begun implementing major reforms in the last couple of years that will lead to profound changes in the near future regarding the political and economic environment within the country.