Cuba….

I genuinely had mixed feelings about Cuba, but it is again one of the places you can’t stop talking about and will not soon forget.

I think – as is the case for many places – going in August was a mistake. I bought a return ticket (Paris-La Havana) three days before leaving for a hefty 1500€. It was one of those, I just got back from travelling, meet up with friends from home for a few drinks, they tell you they are going to Cuba in a a few days and you think “Hey I wanna go to Cuba” and within 24 hours you have bought a ticket. I’m sure loads of people do this..right?
I still ponder this as I am sure the “me then”, just like the “me now”, would never spent 1 months paycheck on a flight… but I am sure glad the “me then” did!!

 

Be it due to the back from travel blues, or because my credit card bill from my USA trip hadn’t yet arrived oops but going to Cuba was definitely both a spur of the moment decision and probably one of the best decisions ever.

August being high season, and the middle of summer, made for a crowded sweaty trip. Cuba operates in a traditional Supply/Demand manner, meaning that the more people are looking for “Casas” the more they charge per room.

The tourist buses don’t go that often, so you either book ahead, arrive early and make the bus, get a taxi collectivo for often double the price or in the worst case scenario stay stranded in the same town for a night.

Beware of booking buses online in advance we saw a lot of people turn up and have to buy their ticket again or not be allowed to board as the bus was full. 

The first thing to know about Cuba is the dual currency. As a tourist you can only operate in “CUC”s. “The tourist currency”. You will soon realize that products, tickets, drinks…are often 5 times more in CUCs than in the local currency. Understandably Cuba makes money from tourism, and believes that tourists have money to spend. It can be frustrating at times, but c’est la vie!

It does make finding the little local gems a little bit more precious…

Whilst visting Cuba you will be made to hand in your passport and sign a document for evry night you spend in a Casa, this is supposedly the governments way of tracking you, and also making sure that the Casa owners declare all of the revenue they make from tourism. This includes them taking note of every bottle of water you buy or meal you chose to pay for. We were told that government representatives were evrywhere in desguise as a TV repairman, binman, friendly neighbour. But as with a lot of things in Cuba, it is hard to define the truth and get straight answers…

HAVANA – Oh na na

We arrived in La Havana, my friends had arrived the day before and had pre-booked a Casa on XXXXXX. We stayed with a nice couple, in a four-bed room.

Whilst in Havana we went to one of the cities famous nightclubs in an old factory named La Fabrica. It’s a great place to go out with multiple rooms, types of music and also exhibitions.

Being 4pax resulted quite handy as it was the right number for taxi collectivos and we often managed to get 4pax rooms and/or squeeze in a 3pax one.

Viñales

We chose to do a day trip to Vinales, from Havana. Our hosts oragnized a taxi collectivo for us that cost TBD.

We stopped in the xxx grottes, which TBH were not worth the money.

Definetly check out the view by the XXXX HOtel

Playa Giron or is it?

We got a bit duped here… We again chose the lazy option and had our hosts arrange a taxi collectivo for us to our next stop, the one I was most excited about, for the clear blue water (proof above). They called and booked us a room is a Casa in advance so all we had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride, or so we thought…

We arrived at “Playa Giron” only to find out that we weren’t there at all, we were at a different village a few kilometres away with a not-so appetizing beach front.

Elie got stung by a wasp, an army of crabs stormed our house, wild dogs surrounded us. (It all seemed disastrous at the time…).

We ended up finding a local concert/festival going on and having a great time in this strange place.

Being in Cuba for Fidel Castro’s (last) birthday was a once in a like time experience and one I am very happy to have had the chance to live!

Every single town we drove through that week was preparing for “El Caballo’s” birthday, putting updecorations and stages.

The night of Castro’s birthday, we were staying in XXX . We had decided to stay put for a few days. Driving back from a day visit to (XX) we noticed disco lights coming out a “salle des fêtes” like building. We decided to head there after dinner. At the entrance I remember them asking for our details (name, passport number) and a silly fee of something around 1€ each. We were the only “gringos” at the party. Naturally we headed straight to the bar, and as always ordered a round of Cuba Libres. If memory serves me well, we were paying something ridiculous like 0,50€ cause the locals didn’t know how much to charge us in CUC. We danced to the reggae-ton songs we had heard 1000 times by this point, enjoying the lyrics being projected onto a huge screen on the dance floor. “Oh so he really is saying ‘dance until your feet hurt’.”

When asking the attendees if they were here to celebrate their President’s birthday, many rolled their eyes, one claimed they were here because they had to be. Everyone however appeared to be having fun at the “disco”.

After about 5€ worth of Cuba libres we merrily followed  some locals to buy some more alcohol from a service station and continued the party in the street.

When asking locals their opinion of Fidel Castro, you get some very mixed views… Even after being there and reading up a lot about Castro and Che Guevara, Cuba still leaves me perplexed.

These are the arguments I personally chose to remember that I believe illustrate the country’s current situation:

A man we stayed with described Cuba as an exemplary nation, with one of the main reasons being free Healthcare comparing Cuba with the USA. Later that same day when asking a local 18 year old her thoughts, her reply was “Yes Health Care is free, but most of the medication you may need/be prescibed isn’t availble on the island”… #paradoxe

• Tips:
  Bring cash to exchange but not dollars
  Don’t get stuck in a “circuit” when locals renting casas keep you in a loop of their friends’ casas – you will get ripped off
  Don’t try to go too far… you may get stuck!
• Try the lobster, if you can in a Casa!

I recommend

-La Fabrica La Havana

-The Cave club???