A few days before New Year’s 2017, we landed in Havana and took off on a hectic 10-day, figure-8 shaped trip around the Western half of Cuba. We caught brief glimpses of Cuban life, which seemed vibrant, beautiful, and raw. It was also full of contradictions as the country tries to gracefully emerge from its socialist isolation into the world economy.
Caveat emptor — it’s REALLY hard to summarize Cuba in a few posts, so I’m trying to mostly focus on my personal experiences and semi-random musings. If you want to better understand Cuba’s history and how it got to its current state, plus have 8 hrs lying around to dive into 20th century geopolitics, I highly recommend the Netflix series “Cuba Libre”! Also, my friend Ted has a great series about his trip here.
OK, back? Ready? ;) I’ll be squishing the story into 5 parts.
- (This post) Getting to Cuba, and first impressions
- Free healthcare or modern luxuries? Cuba’s economic paradoxes
- What growing up in China taught me about Cuban society
- Tobacco farming and the art of cigar rolling
- Fantasies of a San Fran-Cuba
First, a few tips for Americans who want to visit Cuba:
“Tourism” isn’t allowed, thanks to the US embargo. Sanctions were partly lifted by Obama, but things could change under Trump, so check official sources like the Embassy in Cuba or the State Dept page for the latest. As of early 2017, US citizens and permanent residents need to travel for one of the 12 authorized reasons, the most common of which is “educational activities, including people-to-people exchanges”. You also need a Cuban visa (tourist card), but if you travel with a US airline they will issue that for you. We were flying in directly from Spain, so we had to apply for the visa ahead of time. Thankfully, it was as simple as buying it from a UK travel agency, which I know sounds crazy, but is totally legit.
Also — bring lots of Euros! LOL what? Cuba is an expensive country for foreigners (more on that later), and US credit & debit cards still aren’t accepted. On top of that, you’re charged a 10% penalty above the exchange fee when trying to change USD. 😢 So if you’re gonna bring $500 or more for that 1 week trip, carrying it in Euros would be the least likely to explode your wallet. Oh — I also recommend changing it all at once, cuz waiting in long lines is a Cuban fact of life.
Now that you’re legal, and got your money — where to visit, and how to do it? We discovered very quickly that there’s very little tourism infrastructure in Cuba. You can’t book anything online! OK, for lodging you can use AirBnB — but behind this Mechanical Turk there’s actually a pre-digital economy. Internet access in Cuba is scarce, so many listings are managed by Cuban hosts’ relatives abroad, who then telephone them when a booking comes through. Payments are distributed on a monthly basis, by an AirBnb partner that makes the rounds and goes door-to-door.
If you’re into backpacking and love spontaneous adventures, just grab a Lonely Planet from your library and figure things out when you land! Cubans are very open and friendly, the country is frequented by European backpackers, and things will work out. For the rest of us who like to know what we’re getting when we travel — find a tour agency that serves Americans, who can book those educational experiences for you. This was surprisingly hard to find online, but luckily through word-of-mouth we settled on Southern Star Travel.
Almost all travelers arrive first in Havana. There’s so much to see across the island that many people inevitably travel back and forth, East and West, in a loop, then land back in Havana before flying out.
Havana, well it’s Havana. It’s the EVERYTHING-center of Cuba. The obvious must-see’s are Old Havana, the Malecón, and the Plaza de la Revolución. The city encompasses several neighborhoods with quite different personalities. Since my travel FOMO forced us to be on the road almost every day, one benefit is that we crossed Havana 3 times, and stayed in 3 different neighborhoods.
- The “Miramar” district is home to embassy row, wide clean streets, and fancy walled residences that’d be unaffordable even in America. Apparently mostly foreigners or Cubans who made $ abroad or through recent businesses live there. Not to be missed: the Russian embassy, towering over the city with a roof full of antennas pointing North.
- The “Vedado” neighborhood, by contrast, was still relatively rich and modern, but obviously more working class. Houses are smaller and less maintained, bus stops are filled with commuters, and roads are littered with potholes.
- “Marianao” was a suburb outside the city borders — it had the feeling of a town on the edge of the country. Our casa owners raised chickens and dogs in their backyard, and when the house went to sleep all the neighborhood dogs barked up a symphony like something out of a Disney cartoon. During the day neighbors kept their doors open, and hung out on the street side.
Fidel Castro was supposed to have been an avid scuba diver in his youth; so much so, that the CIA is alleged to have plotted to kill him by planting a bomb in a large conch shell at one of his favorite dive sites (oh those wacky CIA agents, maybe they should be producing a black-humor spy TV series instead). We wanted to emulate him on this trip, and since we didn’t have 1 week to devote to a live-aboard, we choose to stay at Maria La Gorda, one of the best dive sites on mainland Cuba. It’s a natural preserve famous for its pristine corals, especially the black corals at El Valle de Coral Negro. Across all the sites I’ve visited in SE Asia and the Americas — this has got to be the most untouched coral gardens I’ve ever seen. The swim-throughs were also impressive and fun to try. As was the case in many state-sponsored businesses, the dive equipment and all the hotel toiletries were all provided by the state, and the divemasters were also trained by a state-sponsored instructor.
Cienfuegos & Trinidad are a pair of historic cities on the southern coast that derived their richesse and grandeur from the sugar baron families of the last century. Both cities have gorgeous Spanish style architecture and planning, with Cienfuegos being slightly more French-influenced. Both are UNESCO heritage cities by the sea. Cienfuegos felt like a large bustling city, while Trinidad was more like a mountain-side town that expanded but still retained its country feel. They’re probably somewhat exchangeable for the first time traveller.
Viñales (and its small neighboring town of Soroa) is in the heart of tobacco country, in the Pinar del Río province. All the best known cuba cigar brands, like Cohiba, Romeo Y Julieta, and Montecristo, all source primarily from this region. The beautiful surreal valley and surrounding limestone hills were reminiscent of Guilin, China, and many travelers stay in a casa particular here for several days, and bike throughout the countryside enjoying the slower pace of life. Tourism has made the small town of Viñales affluent and tourist-friendly, as almost all the local residents operate a casa in their home. All the roads off the main square are filled with lovingly restored and brightly colored houses.
The Bay of Pigs and Playa Girón is a mostly barren bay where history happened to make its mark for a few days in 1961. Now there’s a propaganda museum (much like all the propaganda museums across Cuba), and not much else. Our one highlight there were the floor-to-ceiling posters of Fidel in hipster cat-eye frame glasses, looking nervous on his tank and directing the fight against US supported troops.
I tried giving brief glimpses into the personality of each of the places that we visited, and in the next few posts I’ll dive into some strands of commonalities that tied these places together. The one impression that’s burned in my mind is that Cubans are fiercely proud of their heritage and country, and have persevered in amazing ways through a tumultuous last century. However — change is finally on the horizon with Fidel’s passing, yet nobody knows what that future will look like. The Cubans I’ve met are tentatively optimistic about the future, but they’re also wary of what will replace the stability and socialist ideals of the last 50 years.
