For anyone unfamiliar with the Adventures of Monkeyhouse Travel Blog, Monkeyhouse
is just a name we came up years ago to describe our household; I’ve kept travel
blogs for most of our family vacations over the years – at least the bigger
trips. It started as a way to keep
family and friends informed so we didn’t have to re-tell the same stories over
and over. But it has turned into a way
for us to remember our vacations since memories fade as time goes by. This particular blog is fairly long and
detailed due to the overwhelming amount of stuff we learned about Cuba, the
number of people we met with so many stories, and the number of experiences we
experienced. So – whether you read some of
this or all of it, I hope you enjoy!
***
A little bit of background – I have always wanted to go to Cuba
“before it changed”. An opportunity
presented itself last year when the Spartan Race organization decided to offer
a Spartan Sprint in Cuba. We jumped on
the opportunity with some friends back in September and had been mentally (and
physically) preparing for several months. Sadly, after booking our travel,
the race was canceled – the story goes that the Cuban government revoked the
permit due to a shortage in hotel rooms during their busy season. Coincidentally, the cancellation coincided
curiously with a certain inauguration.
Who knows. In any case, we
decided to just go for it.
Getting to Cuba proved to be a challenge in and of itself. Booking
flights was the easy part as there are a number of direct flights from the
US. It was mother nature who threw us
for a loop. With 12-18” of snow expected
on the day we were connecting through New York, we frantically tried to
re-schedule. United only has one flight
per day out of Newark, so we ended up having to go last minute one day
early. Typically not an issue, but with Cuban
accommodations taking several days to confirm due to lack of internet access, I
just booked the first room I could find.
This becomes important later.
Entering Cuba was a lot less eventful than we anticipated – in
order to enter Cuba, Americans require a special Visa stating your reason for
travel. We thought it would be a big
deal, but in the end, no one ever asked about our reason for travel or
questioned anything – they just took it, stamped our passports, and that was
it. Interestingly, we had to go through
security to get OUT of the airport – possibly because having a gun in Cuba is a
pretty big offense. Or maybe there was
some other reason – we don’t know.
The “TSA” people in the airport are primarily women – they all
have identical tan uniforms with mini-skirts and an unbelievable array of black
stockings with designs. Apparently individual
fashion expression is shown through sexy pantyhose in the airport. Before leaving the airport, I popped into the
toilet (NOTE: be prepared that toilets
will be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the blog). The bathroom had doors that hung weird, no
locks, no toilet seats, and no toilet paper.
Having been forewarned, I was well stocked with Kleenex and was well
prepared to hover. Welcome to Cuba.
I had reserved a taxi to meet us – it was supposed to meet us on
our original travel day and while I had warned them we were coming a day early,
we never received confirmation. Luckily,
we saw our sign and our driver was waiting.
In hindsight, getting taxis is ridiculously easy – so it wasn’t
necessary to be that prepared. Walking
out of the airport we were immediately wow’d by the old cars. We thought that they were at the airport in
abundance since it was a tourist place so we took a bunch of pictures in the
parking lot.
Our taxi was a 70’s Fiat in
somewhat decent shape. This was our
first car ride in Cuba, so while the car was old and beat up and had no seat
belts, it wasn’t too bad. The driver had
a friend in the front seat – neither spoke much English, but somehow they got
us to our first “Casa”.
There are several ways to book accommodations in Cuba – hotels (obviously)
and the very common Casa Particulares, or “Casas” – think Bed and Breakfast –
sort of. Several years ago, the
government allowed people to rent rooms out of their homes to make extra money
– this was a huge deal as most people are barely scraping by. The Casas need a license and there is a
special sign that gets put placed on the door indicating that a room is for
rent.
A Casa can be an entire house, it
can be a room in a house, it can be part of a shared house – basically
anything. The nice thing about Casas is
that they are CHEAP. Typically about
$30-$50 a night and they will bring you a huge breakfast for $5 per
person. We tried to opt for private
rooms with private bathrooms, and the “entire” space where possible. Some people who have access to the Internet have
signed up with websites that help promote their Casas with pictures – I booked
most of our rooms in this way.
Casaparticulares.com; cubaaccommodation.com or now you can use
AirB&B which is a little bit more expensive, but you can pay with an
American credit card ahead of time.
Hotels are owned and run by the government – we tried to avoid anything
government run and get our money into the hands of the people. Plus, the
government run hotels and restaurants are notoriously low quality with poor
service and generally overpriced.
Recall that this first night booking was a last minute booking and
we had no idea what to expect. We pulled
up to a house in a very Cuban/non-touristy area – one we might consider lower
or lower/middle income, relatively speaking.
Our building had a skinny little door that opened into a stairway area
that was dark, crumbling, and had exposed mechanicals at the bottom of the
steps. I was getting a bit nervous when
we got to the second floor and our host let us in. The door opened and I have to say that I let
my breath out a little in relief when we walked in. While incredibly sparse, the apartment was
fairly large, the rooms were very clean and neat even though everything was
well worn. Each room was painted vibrantly - bright turquoise front room,
bright peach dining area, and a royal blue kitchen.
There was a nice front porch with chairs and
plants, it had two bedrooms, a small living room and dining room – and a flat
screen tv (apparently people have only been allowed to own tvs for the past few
years, so everyone has flat screens).
The bathroom was modern and had a toilet seat as well as a half a roll
of toilet paper! The kitchen was tiny
and had minimalist basics and a single small pan for cooking. Oh, and a tiny hot water heater was mounted
on the kitchen wall above the stove.
Our hosts a few houses away – it was obvious that they took huge pride in
this apartment and the fact that they were able to have something they could
rent out.
We took a few minutes to settle in as there was really not much to
do and nowhere to unpack, and then decided to go out exploring – it was about
4pm. Our exploratory walk can best be
described as three phases. The neighborhood area, the depressing area,
and the tourist area.
Our Casa was in a very residential area – clearly all
locals. There were no street signs anywhere and with no obvious major
streets, we just hoped we could find our way home. As we walked, we saw a
ton of kids in school uniforms - I'm guessing school had just let out.
The buildings we walked by were, by American standards, truly depressing -
crumbling buildings, broken windows, garbage everywhere. All of
the buildings are covered in a blackish mold. Clothes lines with clothes
hanging out of windows and between buildings were in every apartment and
hanging off ever balcony. In Chicago, one would consider these buildings
similar to really old dilapidated projects. I noticed, though, that all of
the kids we passed just seemed like regular kids – talking, laughing with no
idea that the way they are living is so different from what we are used to.
As we walked, there was always random debris on the sidewalk. We passed chunks of concrete, piles of rubble
and broken pipes - pretty much any random thing - just laying in the middle of
the sidewalk. Anyone familiar with my level of clumsiness can sympathize
with Damon who was convinced I was going to fall in a hole or off a curb or
trip over one of the many things in our path. Entirely possible given
that I was always looking up at stuff. On our walk, we passed a lot of
parks - one in particular stands out because as we were walking by, amidst the
piles of garbage, I noticed a pile of something else - animal skulls – just
chilling under a tree right next to the sidewalk. Sacrificial maybe? Who
knows. But no one seemed
concerned.
Oh, and there were chickens - we saw them just sort of roaming in
front of apartment buildings. We did see one dead chicken in the road
(insert obligatory chicken crossing the road joke here). We walked for at
least an hour and never saw anything even remotely "commercial"
anywhere - just roads, houses, people and garbage – I’m guessing we were in the
outer “suburbs” of Havana. Admittedly, I
was trying to make the best of everything even though inside I was like WTF –
is this seriously what the next week is going to be like???
Finally we happened upon a famous monument - Revolution Plaza –
which people probably recognize from any major news story about Cuba. It has a tall tower on a grassy hill and a
short way away, two buildings with sculptures on the sides of the buildings
with the two biggest national heroes of the revolution– Che Guevara & Fidel
Castro. Side note – pretty much
everything that happens in Cuba is “post-revolution” – even though it was sixty
years ago, it is the single most defining moment in recent Cuban history and
EVERYTHING revolves around La Revolucion.
We started to walk up to the monument, but apparently everything
closes early and we just missed it timing wise. So we kept walking…Then
we got to the depressing area.
The depressing area was I suppose what you could call a more
commercial area - we stayed on a main street to keep our bearings. Tons of
people walking around - all Cubans, no tourists - it was
probably 5-6pm at this point. Lining the streets are crumbling
buildings - most have the doors open and on the first floor many were selling
something. These shops are TINY - most shops consisted of a small alcove
in front of doorway of the building. They might be selling bread or ice
cream or we saw a lot of tech fix it shops. We generally couldn't tell
what most of them even did. I think people just know. We had no idea which buildings were inhabited
and which were not – unless you saw people, it was hard to tell. A building that would easily be condemned in
the US was typically home to people &/or “businesses”.
Every now and then there would be a slightly bigger shop with
clothes or household things. We would say, look - there is "Sears"
or there is "Home Depot" - maybe 1000-2000 total square feet of
store. Those were the big stores. This was clearly an area for
locals and while I didn't feel weirdly out of place, we were definitely the
only Americans and certainly the only tourists around.
At one place, they were selling fried dough balls - and who wouldn't
want that? The price was “1” so Damon bought one donut hole sized fried
dough ball for 1 CUC. Side note on money:
Cuba currently uses two completely separate currencies. The CUP is only for locals and the CUC is only
for tourists, although locals can accept it.
The ratio is approximately 25 CUP for 1 CUC
I kept telling Damon that paying 1 CUC for a donut hole sized
dough ball in a Cuban dominated neighborhood – where the average person makes
the equivalent of $15/month seemed totally ridiculous. Of course we later realized the price of the
dough ball was in Cuban Pesos – CUP and not tourist CUC. The cost should have been four cents for the
dough ball. We considered that Lesson #1 of many lessons to come. It was a tasty, albeit expensive, fried dough
ball….
No amount of verbal or written description truly captures the
level of dilapidation in this area. Most
of the buildings are just crumbling and falling down and again, the garbage and
sidewalk debris litter the streets. At
one point we came across a “mall” – it was a building that sort of had a food
court and a few stores on a few levels.
We went in to check it out – the stores are fairly empty of goods and
there is garbage on the floors. I had to
use the bathroom so we found that and as per usual, there was a woman outside
waiting for money just for the privilege of going in. No toilet paper, room filled with cigarette
smoke, and a little bit gross – definite hover.
But since there is a lack of public toilets, I made due.
I haven’t mentioned the driving and the roads yet. The roads are pretty busy with cars (more on
cars later). People really don’t pay
much attention to crossings and cars don’t really pay attention to lanes, lines
or pedestrians. Wherever you cross a
road, you do it at your own peril. There
are roundabouts and 6-lane streets with medians – lots of ways to get hit. We definitely were doing the frogger thing every
time we crossed a street trying not to die.
Funny thing was – Cubans just leisurely stroll through traffic all up
and down the streets. Damon would always
hold my hand and drag me across traffic – I think he assumed I would trip at
some point. Not unreasonable.
As we walked and as I tried not to freak out, I told Damon that I
was just waiting for us to turn the corner and I would say “ah, there it is –
the area I’ve been waiting for where I’ll feel more comfortable”. It took a while, but eventually we had the
“ah” moment when we hit the more touristy area.
In the touristy area we started to see bigger buildings, renovated hotels,
the grand theater,
the capital
and a lot more touristy people. The
streets were wider and we started to see restaurants. Don’t misunderstand that this tourist area
was perfect – for each renovated building that looked amazing, there were 10
more that were falling down around it.
We
made it into the Saratoga Hotel and finally changed money so we could eat and
taxi home.
Another note on money – Cuba
does not take American credit cards Period.
And, they charge an extra 10 percent surcharge on American money – so
any money we wanted to spend in Cuba had to be brought in cash, in Euros, which
we had changed in the US. So basically
we had to walk the streets with several thousand dollars at all times. That was fun.
We found a bench where we could re-group and pulled out the map
and guidebook to try to find somewhere to eat for dinner. One thing that is really interesting to note
as we sat in the park – there were no cell phones. In the US, everyone just stares down at their
phones – in Cuba, IF anyone has a phone, they are using it to talk; there is no
easily accessible wifi so smart phones really serve no purpose. Everyone was talking to each other. WHAT???
It was delightful. We eventually
found a restaurant and enjoyed a massive and fantastic seafood dinner along
with the drink that became our daily elixir – mojitos – always with a large
sprig of fresh mint. After dinner, full
and exhausted having been awake since about 3:45am, we found a taxi stand where
there were about 50 taxis hanging out – ranging from every imaginable old car
from the 50’s or 70’s in every state of repair and disrepair, there were
pedicabs, maybe even horses.. But we
chose a special taxi called a "coco" taxi. Imagine a football
helmet sitting on top of a small motorcycle. Yup. That's what we
drove 4 miles home in. A motorized open faced bright yellow football
helmet with wheels.
The taxi found our little house and I was pleasantly surprised to
see a light on in the staircase. We
worked our way upstairs, brushed our teeth with bottled water (NOTE: you cannot drink the water in Cuba) and
crashed hard in the little bed, which requires its own description.
Our bedroom had a window AC unit so we slept comfortably from a
temperature perspective. We had heard that Cuban beds are not quite what
we are used to. This one was probably queen size. One thin
mattress, no box spring and it sort of rested on a thin single spring
layer. So when you got in, basically your butt drops and you sleep in a
v-position. But when a second person gets in, you have the v and then you
also both roll into the middle. We tried to stay as close to our
respective edges but ultimately caved, literally, and spooned in the middle.
Given these circumstances - it was surprisingly comfortable and we slept for
about 10-11 hours!!! And nothing even hurt the next day!
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