Private Travel to Cuba: An Illustrated Guide

March 18, 2009

Playas Del Este

Every year, an estimated 700,000 Canadians make Cuba their travel destination. With white sand beaches, aquamarine waters, stunning architecture and a rich cultural history, it's not hard to understand why sun-starved Canadians flock in droves to the island paradise. Many choose cheap all-inclusive packages offered by various airlines, which include airfare and accommodations as well as all food and drink. For a two-star hotel, these trips can be as affordable as $575 per person.

The downsides to such arrangements include substandard food and limited activities. There is nothing to do but lie on the beach, partake of the resort's resources. Even to go into a nearby city you have to pay extra for expensive junkets with rigidly organized official tours.

Two intrepid travelers decided to go the opposite route: to take a vacation to the real Cuba, staying with local people to take advantage of the native sights, sounds, tastes and colours. One vacationer was a seasoned explorer who had been everywhere from emerging countries like Thailand to tiny mountain towns in the Alps. The other was a vacation novice, having traveled only within the United States and Canada and never for personal enjoyment.

First, a few words about the country as a whole.

view of city from Malecon musical hustler

Overview

Cuba is a Communist country of over 11 million people. The Communist Revolution has produced some startling statistics: in a country where there are frequent food shortages, the literacy rate is 97% and there are so many doctors that thousands of them are sent to assist Cuba's international allies in times of need. The crippling US trade embargo, in place for nearly fifty years, has had an effect on the standard of living: during the periodo especial in the early 90's, for instance, food staples were so scarce that the populace had to resort to frying grapefruit skins. The embargo coupled with the falling of the Berlin Wall that resulted in drastically reduced trade with Communist allies, plus devastating tornados causing terrible damage, have resulted in a plummeting standard of living for the Cuban people. Seemingly undaunted, the resourceful Cubans still delight in the arts, live music, nightlife, baseball and boxing (despite the fact that professional sport was abolished with Castro's regime).

History

Cuba was colonized in 1511 by Diego Velasquez, whose Spanish compatriots set about to work the local native Taino Indian population to death, at which point the first of 400,000 slaves were brought in from Africa to work the sugar and tobacco plantations. Rebellion for independence from Spain began in the late 1860's and was finally successful in 1898, when the US established a type of quasi-military control on the island after helping to liberate it from the Spanish (a fact that is debatable if you ask Cubans).

Simon Bolivar statue

Over the next fifty years, as the Cuban economy boomed with the US controlling many of its resources, Cuba became a hedonistic tourist heaven with luxury hotels, casinos, and nightclubs mostly controlled by prominent American Mafiosi like Myer Lansky and Al Capone. Determined to put a stop to the puppet government's corrupt antics, eliminate poverty and abolish vice, a young lawyer named Fidel Castro decided to use violence, and in 1953 he and 119 compatriots led an attack on the Moncada Army Barracks.

Though that attack failed, by 1959, Castro, with the help of famous allies like Che Guevara, had won the Revolution and assumed the presidency. Ever since, he has ruled the country with a Socialist fist, even now that his brother Raul is the official President. Some of the well- touted benefits of his social policy include widespread literacy, free health care and accommodation, and a highly educated professional populace.

Fun Fact #1: Cuba has two economies and two currencies. The average Cuban salary for any profession is $10-$20 CUC (about $15-30 CDN) per month, plus a ration card providing a severely restricted diet of staples, but there is a thriving black market where most things can be had for a price. To obtain extra funds, even University-educated professionals have taken part time jobs carrying luggage or hustling tourists for tips.

Fun Fact #2: Cuba is separate from the world economy. Your Canadian debit cards won't work in Cuba, and neither will any credit cards affiliated with US banks. You can use a Visa or Mastercard drawn on a Canadian bank, but expect to pay a hefty surcharge!

  Downtown Havana

Fun Fact #3: Rum (ron) can be obtained at any corner store at low prices. It is sold in a variety of sizes including a 9-oz tetra pack that looks exactly like a juice box. For those whose vices include smoking, beware of cigars sold on the streets, by waiters, children, and anyone not at an official cigar store. The cigars will be as cheap white vinegar is to fine French wine.

Planning the Trip

Our one-week trip began with a visit to a Toronto travel agent, who asked us what our plan was. Having studied the 2006 Lonely Planet guide to Cuba, visited a comprehensive website run by a Cuban tour guide, spoken with many friends who'd visited the country over the past few years, brushed up on basic Spanish and made exhaustive lists of everything we needed to bring (including toilet paper and peanut butter), we definitely had a plan. We explained that we were on a budget and looking for the cheapest flight into Cuba we could find. From there, we would take a bus to downtown Vedado (about 6 km from Old Havana) and our accommodations at a casa particular - a private apartment maintained by a local landlady. After a couple of days of sightseeing, another bus would take us to Trinidad, a small colonial city known for its stunning Spanish architecture and sugary beaches.

Casa Particular

We learned that the cheapest flights all flew into Varadero, a beach town in Matanzas Province that, along with Cayo Coco, has been heavily promoted by the Cuban government as a tourist spot. We took the flights, plus health insurance: $600 each would get us into Varadero and back home. To be comfortable, we elected to book a hotel for the first night rather than try to find a casa in Varadero.

"Good plan," the travel rep agreed. "A lot of these places won't let you stay for only one night. They get suspicious. About that, you won't want to bring your laptop, they might confiscate it, like they'll wonder what you're doing if they see you working on it."

We looked at each other. I agreed to leave the computer at home. We were supposed to be relaxing. The travel rep found us a 2-star resort on the beach, turning her computer screen so we could see the small beds, the cracked and weathered wood doors, and the tourist comments about brown buffet food. It looked like it wouldn't even pass a basic health inspection in Toronto, but at $125 per night, it was our best option. The rep suggested we make requests, like a double bed and a higher floor. I explained that we didn't really need a view; we were only going to be in Varadero for one night.

"For the bugs," she said. "There tend to be less the higher up you are."

Varadero

Our plane landed late Sunday evening to a fine drizzle and the applause of passengers: we'd encountered some turbulence along the way. At the tiny airport, a Customs agent saw the US birthplace on my passport and began asking me questions. Unfortunately, he did not understand the answers, especially what I do for a living: the concept of real estate does not exist in today's Cuba. It is perhaps surprising that many Cubans holding jobs where they will encounter tourists on a daily basis, do not speak more than a couple of words of English or French. This can make basic communication exhausting and frustrating if your trip will take you to many different places where pantomime, sometimes, just isn't enough.

Eventually we got to the airport cambio to change our Canadian dollars for CUC - Convertible Pesos, the hard currency of Cuba. Cuba also has a second currency, a very deflated peso known as moneda nacional that converts to CUC at 24:1 and is only accepted in certain places, like street stalls. Our $900 Canadian, nearly double what everyone told us we'd need for a week on the cheap, suddenly turned into $625 CUC: the conversion rate had unaccountably soared in the past few months, so $1.44 Canadian now purchased only one Cuban peso. We asked a cab driver to take us to our hotel, some 25 km from the airport. When asked why he would not turn the meter on, he explained that a contract would be much cheaper. We later found out that any cabbie not turning the meter on would be putting the entire fare - in this case, an inflated $30 CUC - into his own pocket, and that the actual fare would have been closer to $15 CUC. This is very common in Cuba, according to two Americans staying in our casa who had been to the island many times. Especially when drinking, it is important to check your change, count your money, and don't accept what you first hear - i.e. 'there is a cover charge' or 'drink are $4' without questioning it further. Simply paying what you are asked can very quickly bleed you of funds.

Hotel Lobby

Mark playing with local band

The Islazul Villa La Mar was much as we expected. A cool, strong wind made the palm trees thrash and rushed through open windows in the lobby, stirring the smoky air where tourists enjoyed drinks. Asthmatics be warned: smoking is permitted everywhere in Cuba, even in the airports, and Cuban cigarettes are extremely harsh. We saw no Cubans actually smoking their famous cigars.

A porter led us across a courtyard and up three flights of stairs to our small room, where he flicked the TV to a station showing Celine Dion - to make us feel at home. Cringing, my partner turned off the TV and we watched the wind whip the palms. Thankfully, the room was bug-less. After a few coffees at the hotel bar, we followed the scent of the ocean to a startling beautiful expanse of cool white sand and angry black water. The beach was completely empty at that hour, and a beautiful place to stroll, before exploring the immediate area a bit. The evening ended with a Nestle ice cream treat - ubiquitous in Cuba are the blue Nestle coolers, kept locked, filled with ice cream bars not sold in Canada - and a conversation with an old man who said he'd boxed in Montreal in 1974.

The morning dawned very cool and cloudy. We ate breakfast in a grim-looking dining hall that was half cafeteria, one quarter barracks and one quarter hotel restaurant complete with tablecloths. The tepid, sometimes unidentifiable food was ameliorated by a smiling chef making omelettes - tortillas - to order. We left the greasy hall and took a walk through downtown Varadero, where tourist-trap stores sold overpriced goods, cockerels crowed from the lawns of crumbling homes, and horse-drawn buggies clopped through the streets. Varadero is choc-full of hotels, bus depots and tourist restaurants, but very low on architecture and entertainment. Our taxi took us to the bus station where unhelpful, slow staff eventually confirmed what loitering jineteros - young hustlers - had already told us: the bus to Havana was full. After a half-hearted negotiation we jammed our five suitcases - ours and those full of clothing, toys and toiletries we had brought for the locals - into a Mexican-made car from the 80's and agreed to pay two strangers $50 CUC for a ride to Vedado.

Vedado

view of Vedado from Casa

A wealthy suburb of Habana, Vedado features wide promenades, gorgeous architecture, ornate churches, and luxury hotels like the Hotel Presidente, right up the street from our casa particular. For $200CDN per night, the grand old Hotel Presidente offered the height of luxury: internet access in the lobby ($8 to check email) an ATM for those lucky enough to possess Canadian credit cards, a money-changing station, and an employee who spoke English. Like nearly everything else in Cuba, the impressively sized hotel was at the height of decadent modernity in the 50's, when Fidel Castro's famous Communist Revolution changed everything.

Our casa particular was on the 20th floor of an aging apartment building with two erratically functioning elevators (when out of service, an adjoining building provided access via a scary rooftop catwalk with stunning views of the city and the malecon, the 8 km seawall snaking along the coast) Our landlady, Lourdes, lived in one wing of the renovated apartment and the other was ours - a spacious living area, full access to the modern kitchen and a bedroom with a private bath, all for only $35 CUC per night. This excellent value could have been augmented with meals for a negotiable fee, an excellent option for budget travelers. Cuba is rife with licensed casa particulares but be warned that many landlords, including ours, do not speak English.

Habana

Plaza Vieja

The beautiful city of Habana Vieja (Old Havana) is stuffed with gorgeous buildings influenced by everything from Spanish-Moorish styles to art deco to French Neoclassical and decorative baroque relics of its colonial past. Everywhere thick columns support domed arches and lacy balconies overhang cobblestone streets; in downtown Havana, modern skyscrapers serve function rather than form. The massive Capitol building overlooks a proud square with fountains, statues, and of course the ubiquitous hustlers offering cab rides in antique cars, horse-and-buggy rides, cigars, tours and other services. Street hawkers sell overpriced bottled water and ice creams; market stalls sell jewelery made from shells, bones, stones and seeds; traditional Cuban drums and maracas, cotton clothing and handbags; toys, caged live songbirds, and of course, memorabilia from the Revolution (Che & Fidel's faces are on everything from T-shirts to plates). Havana has many public parks and is dotted with palms - miniature oases in a city reeking of exhaust fumes from the ancient vehicles.

Saint Francis Cathedral

Beautiful open squares like the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza de la Catedral are flanked by charming restaurants, shops and galleries - artistic expression of every kind is encouraged in Cuba, save for political writing and music, which has resulted in Cuba becoming an astonishing powerhouse of engaging sculpture and art, often designed with vibrant Afro-Latin colours and jarring shapes. The open air restaurants offer a chance to watch uniformed schoolchildren play and tourists pass by, and to hear live bands play local music and old classics like Girl from Ipanema.

outside The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

There are tons of museums in Old Havana, including a Chocolate Museum selling delicious drinks and chocolates shaped into animal figures; a tobacco museum, rum museum, natural history and art museums, even a Museum of Humour! Ballet is big in Cuba and there is a Dance Museum along with several national ballet theatres. All the museums charge admission towards the maintenance of the buildings and their collections. Many historic buildings, especially those damaged by ferocious weather, are in the process of restoration by private groups as public funding is scarce.

Downtown Havana, while retaining its share of buildings that look like wedding cakes, also looks very much like what it is: a slum, with residents packed four generations into a single home. Buildings have cracks running from foundation to roof, and some sites look as though bombs have been dropped on them. Streets are in disrepair and here the hustlers, rather than selling goods or services, ask for diapers and clothing. Despite the poverty, the busy shopping district along Obispo has a wide variety of clothing and housewares shops, restaurants and street food catering mostly to locals. The tiny Chinatown (Dragones) has a selection of restaurants and open air stalls selling fried foods and live songbirds.

Plaza near Malecon

Nightlife is rich, with a whole generation of club kids strolling the malecon on their way to dance clubs. Cover charges are high, up to $25CUC in some spots though bar credits are sometimes given; bar/restaurants are filled with young slickly dressed Habaneros who have access to the designer clothes and cell phones that hard currency will buy, as well as tourists and older gentlemen with impossibly beautiful young girls on their arms. (A whole class disparity has arisen in Cuba, much to the chagrin of the Socialists who had tried so hard to erase the haves and have-nots.) Live music and dining usually begin late, with restaurants filling up with diners at 9 pm and bands beginning to perform at 11 pm. The performers we saw are great imitators of Western culture and unless you want to hear lackluster renditions of old jazz standards, stick to the dives like the Bar Dos Hermanos and avoid the overpriced tourist joints and the limp, ambiance-challenged dinner buffets.

Getting By in Cuba

Perhaps because of the many rules and direct government interference at every level of daily life, things do not seem to work with the efficiency Canadians are used to. We were warned about 'Cuban time' - that if things did work, they would likely work slower than in Canada, and involve tipping. City buses are apparently dangerous, though the price is right: the equivalent of about 15 cents CDN per ride. Lining up is interesting: rather than forming lines, Cubans shout the question 'Who's last in line?' and then mill about, keeping their eyes on that person. At banks, you need your passport with you to change funds. Washrooms are not plentiful, not clean, not necessarily functional, and things like soap and paper are very rare. Food is bland at best; only licensed national (read: expensive) restaurants are even allowed to serve beef, so pork and chicken are the staple meats. Plain white fish is common, shellfish very uncommon. Salad means shredded cabbage and tinned vegetables. You cannot buy fresh milk at Cuban grocery stores and they will only let you into those stores if there are not already too many people inside. Pizza is not pizza as we know it and never will be. Tap water is safe to drink in Havana and may be a good idea: prices for bottled water fluctuate depending on the day and place you buy them.

We personally encountered the difficulties of living in a country that is fairly cut off from the rest of the world, when we realized on Day Two of our trip that our funds were running short - knowing that Canadian bank cards and American credit cards wouldn't work in Cuba, we began to try to arrange a wire transfer. After three days and many four-minute, $10CUC phone calls to our families in Canada and the US, we were at the Canadian Embassy, having changed our travel plans - no Trinidad for us, as there is no wire transfer service there, and besides we had to stick close to 'home' lest our non-English-speaking landlady intercept our expected parental phone calls. Note: whatever Western Union tells you (they have two locations in Cuba, both in Havana) Western Union is only for Cuban residents (they will not necessarily tell you that the first day you try to get funds). And they only accept money sent from the US and Puerto Rico (odd, since everything else from the US including the currency, once valid in Cuba, is highly suspect), and if you are lucky enough to have a relative in the US, chances are the Western Union branch he or she goes to will not know what's going on either.

stunning cars at foot of Capitol building

Assistur, a money transfer service with a location in Old Havana, does accept monies from Canada if they are sent via TD, CIBC or National Bank (the other big banks apparently have US affiliations). In Canada, they will tell you that the transfer takes 3 business days, but in reality it is usually 1-2 business days. This makes a difference when you are stranded with no money! Eventually, due to the efforts of our families in Canada, the Canadian Embassy was able to get emergency funds wired to us for a steep 20% commission. At the embassy, our representative remarked that they had not seen a colder March that they could remember, and recommended we return in August.

A word to the shy and privacy-seekers: Habaneros will approach you at any time, asking 'Where you from' and the long conversations will usually end in being asked for aid of some sort. Bands will stand and play at your table until you give them something. Elevator attendants expect gifts. What seems like a minor annoyance can become very irritating when repeated constantly. If you really wish to be helpful to the Cuban people, the many churches and orphanages are excellent options to give donations of clothing, school supplies, toys, toiletries and the like.

The Beach

No trip to Cuba would be complete without a trip to one of Cuba's 300 beaches! Though Cuba is an island, which makes it subject to every whim of the weather (complete cloud coverage rolled in at least several hours per day, and winds are very high) we refused to leave without sunning ourselves. We headed to the 9km Playas del Este, about a $15 CUC cab ride from our room in Vedado. The beach was everything a Torontonian could hope for: blue-green water, white sand, and palm trees. There were also no bathrooms of any kind, hustlers eager to be your escort, paramilitary men with guns, beach chairs for rent, a restaurant where the electricity had failed, hundreds of jellyfish, and extremely high winds of the type that guarantee you will consume sand.

Despite the absent loos and the rest, we stayed the entire day, letting the sporadic sun and salt water do its work. On the cab ride back, our driver asked us if he could let a policeman hitch a ride with us, and we all had a pleasant conversation about baseball.

Cuba's Future

In the Varadero airport waiting for our return flight that had been delayed 14 hours - a long wait since the many rules prevented us from checking our luggage to allow for freedom of movement - we spoke with Canadians who had stayed at various resorts and told us things were going downhill, with substandard food even at four-star resorts, hustlers right inside the resort, and unclean beaches. During our trip, 13 cabinet ministers lost their jobs, signaling perhaps a more hasty upheaval than previously anticipated. Now that Obama has agreed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, locals are hopeful for an end to the embargo, which might signal an end to Communist rule in Cuba. Despite their troubles, the Cuban people make the best of it, and Cuba will likely remain a travel hotspot in the future.

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