Alright, before you continue on with this blog post I have to say this about Cuba - we are happy we went, we had an awesome time but thank Christ we have left...
After a rather large evening in Cancun for SPRING BREAK!!!! we jumped aboard our Cubana flight to Havana, leaving Mexico and civilisation in general for 17 days. We arrived in Havana and were greeted by the most disorganised and unwelcoming customs officers ever. This was complimented nicely by the ladies doing the pat downs wearing short skirts, high heels and fishnet stockings (no, I am not joking). Leaving the Havana airport was a harder process than getting there. Only 1 of the 3 ATMs in the entire building was working, this added to the fact that ATMs in Cuba do not accept any American brand credit cards (turns out our card was American) meant we could get no money whatsoever! Luckily our Irish/British companion Gary managed to source some cash so we could at least catch a taxi to our hostel. This experience alone pretty much sums up Cuba as a whole: complete chaos with a streak of flair.
A couple of points about Cuba that make travelling there vastly different to anywhere else:
- They don't have hostels as such but 'Casa Particulares', which are essentially people's houses and they let you stay in one of their spare rooms. Upside is that you don't have to organise anything, they just ring one of their friends in the next city you are going to and they will meet you at the bus and take you to your room. Downside, the owners will usually try and guilt you in to eating dinner at their house which was usually absolute massive and really delicious but rather overpriced and there is only so much grilled pork, rice and beans one person can handle.
- Cuba has 2 different currencies: the Peso Cubana (which the locals use) and the Peso Convertible (which the tourists use). Basically the two different currencies are both easy to come by but depending on where you are stores will only accept one or the other.
We spent our first few days in Havana just wandering around the city having a look at a city that was unlike anywhere we had ever been to - dilapidated buildings everywhere, not as many pictures of Che Guevara as one would expect and pretty much every second person was either drinking Havana Club, smoking a cigar or both. We went and checked out the Plaza de Revolucion, which commemorates Cuba's revolutionary history, joining the ugly spire/monument and horrid sculptures of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos is a giant car park, definitely worth a look though. Our first introduction to Cuban cuisine was in the local China Town where Katherine was served raw chicken and Tom cut up his gum on a piece of metal that was hiding in his fried rice. The three most common English words in Cuba are taxi, cigars and money and there was no shortage of people trying to sell/take all three to/from us everywhere we went. It would also seem that the spectacle of a large white man with red hair and a beard was a popular one in Cuba as well, many an odd stare was shot our way. Two of the rarest things in Cuba are Coca Cola and the Internet, both coming in short and very expensive supply.
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| Run of the mill scene in Havana - a taxi in front of the Capitol building |
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| A Cuban taxi rank |
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| The local shops, fruit and veg plus a butcher - refrigeration is for pussies... |
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| A naked woman holding a giant fork riding a rooster - clearly self-explanatory |
The next week or so was spent split between 3 towns - Vinales, Cienfuegos and Trinidad. We spent our time wading through hoards of people offering us taxis, horse rides and cigars. We had managed to form a little touring party featuring a changing band of Brits, Nords, Germans and a Maltese dude, and we traveled from town to town playing Uno, drinking absurdly cheap rum (1L of Havana Club was $7.90) and smoking the occasional cigar. The nightly Uno, rum and cigar sessions became a staple of our time in Cuba. One trend definitely emerged with the local cuisine (a trend we are ecstatic is over) is that Cuba has two main food groups, ham and cheese (jamon and queso in Spanish) or as it quickly became abbreviated to - J & Q. Despite the lack of original cuisine we did manage to settle on a favourite, each town would have a pizzeria which was basically the front room of someones house where we could grab 2 J & Q pizzas for about $1.20 - bargain!
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| A local hassling Tom for some J & Q |
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| The El Nicho National Park |
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| Tom blending in with the locals at the pizza bar |
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| KG and her faithful and originally named horse, Caballo, which in English means horse |
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| A bloke heading to a wedding - zoom in to see he is smoking and drinking a bottle of rum - Classic Cuba! |
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| Mandatory artsy picture - a local taxi |
After this we headed to the spiritual home of Che Guevara, Santa Clara. We cannot tell your how incredibly popular Che and Fidel Castro are in Cuba, there are pictures of them everywhere, huge propagada billboards on the side of the road and everything from taxis to the national currency is adorned with pictures of them. Despite being born in Argentina, El Che is a legend in the country and his remains are buried in Santa Clara. We took in all the Che related sites, his mausoleum, a train that his band of guerrillas derailed and by far the most disorganised bus station we have ever seen in our lives. The basic concept of this bus station was that you couldn't actually purchase a ticket there, what actually happened was that your name was placed on a waiting list to go to the destination in which you desired, you had to arrive 1 hour before the departure time and your name may or may not be called out meaning you can purchase a ticket. After all this it turned out that simply getting a taxi to Havana was a cheaper option anyway... classic Cuba! After deciding to give the bus system the can we organised one of these taxis. At 10 in the morning our taxi arrived to whisk us to Havana - a 1990 Fiat hatchback that was in atrocious condition. Katherine was very pleased by the ultra tasteful choice of bumper sticker on the back window which in Spanish said "sonrie si quieres sexo," which translates in to English as Smile If You Want Sex... once again, classic Cuba!
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| El Che |
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| Tom hard at work playing some Uno - it's a tough gig! |
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| KG and our 1959 Ford Fairlane that took us to the beach |
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| Tom and Tim in our "taxi" |
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| The infamous bumper sticker - keep your pants on ladies! |
After a 3 hour ride which actually took 4 hours due to our Fiat continually overheating we arrived back in sunny Havana. We spent the remainder of our time in Cuba further exploring Havana and came to the conclusion that despite it's downfalls, Cuba is an incredible country and we are definitely glad we came!
