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Socialismo
o muerte!
One of the greatest
pleasures we are able enjoy at this moment in our lives is being able to take weekend trips away to
other countries! Havana, Cuba is a 2 hour direct flight
from Santo Domingo and we took a long weekend trip there for a
visit and a short adventure. The mission was twofold;
first, to buy cigars for our wedding and second, meet
Castro. One out of two isn't bad.
We decided to spend
all of our time in Havana since we only had four days.
We originally considering taking a day trip to the country but
when we found how much there was to do and see in Havana, we
decided to stay in the city.
If you have not been
to Cuba and have preconceptions about what a Communist country
would be like....forget them. Considering the chaotic
state of many of the other Caribbean countries around Cuba, it
is surprising to find the level of public order, cleanliness,
common decency and respect in a country that is portrayed by
the American media monster as none of these things. The
strange thing is that the Cubans almost seem to buy into this
media monster myth themselves. Is the grass greener in
the "West"? Perhaps in some ways, but in many important ways
not.
Cuba has succeeded
in creating a healthy infrastructure for education, health
care, culture & arts - far beyond what many Central
American and Caribbean countries have. At the same time,
most Cubans cannot walk down to the store and buy a bottle of
milk since milk is rationed to only those families which have children below the
age of 7. Many of the other basic necessities of life
are either unavailable or unattainable to them because of
cost. It is almost impossible to believe, but the
average monthly wage in Cuba is something like US$25. It
is this bitter-sweetness of Cuba which mesmerized us.
The People
By world standards
Cubans are a well-educated bunch and it shows in their
demeanor, respect for each other, and cleanliness. Their
Latino culture is also much different than most of the other
Latino countries we have visited. Women are respected
and equal in status to men in society. The men seemed to
do a lot less of the Latino macho bullshit that you see in
other countries and as a result, Cuba has the lowest occurrence
of AIDS in the Caribbean and Central America.
Unfortunately, the high number of prostitutes and their
deadbeat foreign "clients" are trying their best to
change that.
Things to Know
The currency of the
country is Cuban pesos but you won't be needing any since all
tourist business is conducted in US dollars. In fact, we
had to buy a peso off a lady at the airport just to get a
sample of the currency. She tried giving us the money as
a gift but since she wasn't wearing any shoes we figured she
probably needed the money more than we did. Like we
said, the Cubans have quite a spirit.
After deboarding the
plane, you will be led to the immigration area of the airport.
There is a ticket booth you need to go to first to purchase
your tourist visa, which costs US$15. You need to fill
out your personal details on this form then proceed through
customs. The customs officials DO NOT stamp your
passport; they only stamp the tourist visa card. So next
time you are going through Miami you won't have to do any off
the cuff explaining to the customs bozo wondering what the
hell you were doing in Cuba. As we exited the arrivals
hall, we were offered a taxi by some guy in an official
looking shirt which we mistakenly took without asking the
price. We ended up paying US$30 instead of the normal
price of US$15 but call it ignorance tax. If you flag a
regular taxi outside the airport, they should charge you about
$15 to Miramar, $20 to Old Havana, etc. The taxi driver
we had spoke pretty good English, but we don't know if this is common.
Where to Go -
Restaurants
If you want to check
out a spectacular restaurant....visit some other
country. The restaurants we found in Cuba were not too
impressive. The only place we would recommend is
"El Aljibe" (Avenida 7tma e/24 y 26) which serves this great grilled chicken accompanied
by rice, black beans, and this unforgettable orange
sauce. Besides that place, your next best option
may be to bring along can opener and a few tins of tuna from home
so you can enjoy a nice tuna sandwich (likely without the
bread).
Where to Go - Places
Habana Vieja (Old Havana)
Crumbling
magnificence. A city who's days of glory are long
past.
The old city is very
large, but fairly easy to navigate. We rented a
motorcycle for the time we were there so we spent a lot of
time just zipping through the streets of old Havana
exploring. Historic buildings are packed into every
street and traveling through these unusually straight roads at
high speeds on a moped is quite a thrill. The one thing
that was noticeably absent was a
large number of tourist-type shops. We are not sure why
but there just didn't seem to be many of them. In the
public squares where the most spectacular buildings were
located, there seemed to be a lot of hustlers and shysters
around trying to sell you things or offer you tourist guide
services which was a bit annoying. But once you left
those areas, there was very little of this.
We went to the
famous hangout of Ernest Hemingway, a daiquiri
bar named Floridita (Obispo, No. 557 esq. a Monserrate) and enjoyed some drinks and a
cigar. Quite pricey, but at least they had great air
conditioning which was a nice break from the sweltering heat
outside. We also visit the Partagas cigar factory which
one of the highlights of the trip. The factory is
located just behind the big parliament building and they take
you on a tour for $15 which was quite worthwhile. You
see all the different stages of hand-rolled cigar production
right from unpacking the tobacco leaves from the bales to
packing the finished cigars away in boxes. The rolling
section was particularly interesting as there were about 200
people all at their workstations cutting, licking, and rolling
away. The smell of tobacco is absolutely intoxicating in
the place as most of the rollers were smoking cigarettes at
the same time. The most interesting part was the large
desk and microphone at the front of the room where the
"lector" sat and read Spanish literature and the
daily news to the workers!
There is a very old
and very beautiful cathedral towards the port side of the old
city that we spent some time at. There is a large open
square facing the cathedral where you can sit at tables, order
beers, and enjoy the scenery. There were also live bands
playing every time we went which was very nice.
There were a couple
other places we checked out which were supposed to be the
night life centres, but there wasn't much going on. We
had dinner at a place called the "Gato Negro" which
had fairly disgusting food. As well, there was a bar
downstairs but the average age was probably around 60 so we
didn't stay there long.
Miramar
We stayed at a bed
and breakfast in the area of the sector called Miramar, which is
about a fifteen minute motorcycle ride from Old Havana.
The place we stayed at was called Casa Miramar and was
superb!! And cheap! The nightly rate was $35 for
both of us and the room was decorated beautifully and had a
large balcony overlooking the street. The owners are extremely nice people and gave us a lot of insight
into Cuban culture and people. They have a large library
of books, including some English language guide books
for Cuba which were very useful. The name of the owner
is Ms. Daulema Castillo Lirola and for more
information have a look at her website at: www.casamiramar.com.
Miramar is also
home to the "embassy" section of town. Calle
5ta. (or 5th Avenue) is a wide street, with parks, and a lot of things
to do and see and where most of the foreign embassies are
located. There is a shop called "Casa De
Habana" (5th and 16th) which has an ok restaurant and a
superb cigar shop. I bought a couple of boxes of cigars
there for a good price. Right across the street from
there is a museum dedicated to the American CIA attempts to assassinate
Castro and to de-stabilise Cuba. Some of the exhibits
within the museum are shocking and obviously a source of
embarrassment to the States. CIA attempts to kill Castro
include sending poisoned cigars, attempting to bazooka-blast
him, snipers, hired Mafia assassins, smuggled plastic
explosives, etc...all failed.
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