Departure, Customs, and the Return Journey to Cuba
During my first seven-day trip to Cuba after five years of living in Miami, the most challenging things were a 13-hour flight and a queue at customs. On the way out, there will be even more; you have to show a yellow leaflet with information about where you stayed in Cuba and still pay 25 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos) to leave the country. And you will be tempted to say, “Sorry, but I do not have any money in any currency—do not let me out of the country, please.” After a week’s stay in my native city with my family, we decided it was better to fly to Havana on Monday, and we left through the doors of Jose Marti International Airport. The heat immediately hugged us like a big Cuban mother, and taxi drivers offering to take us to the center for 25 CUC flew toward us like flies. If we are not in a hurry, we can stand firmly at 15 CUC, but if we are tired and can’t bargain, then we can quickly get to the city for 20 CUC. Knowledge of Spanish, at least at the lowest level, is a big plus in your wallet. However, by resorting to English, gestures, and body language, you can also achieve a result, and sometimes there are more English speakers among people over 50 than one might expect. And yet, Spanish, even the most broken and slow, is better (Sharpley, 2009).
So many people who have visited Cuba say dreamily, “Cuba is love forever. This is the place where they want to return.” Therefore, probably, these notes are not very valuable for experienced travelers. They should rather be perceived as sketches of personal impressions formed on this beautiful island. In addition, I managed to visit only some parts of Cuba, mainly the western part of the country. Much of what I saw, for sure, I understood in my own way and perhaps not at all as it really was. I tried very hard to see and understand everything—how life is arranged in Cuba, what kind of people there are, what kind of nature. The map shows the places that we visited. The trip was organized not by the tour guide but by a group of our own people, led by an experienced man, a biologist who worked in Cuba for several years and took over the organizational issues—renting transport, hotel booking, guides, and participation in the international wildlife photography contest (Sharpley, 2009).
The main theme of our trip was wildlife, but we looked at everything little by little—culture, architecture, and everything else that caught our attention. In total, there were 12 of us. My husband and three of our friends flew to Havana two days before the others to get used to the new climate and time zone. The direct flight from Moscow to Havana took 13 hours. We flew very interestingly, in the afternoon, over the ice of Greenland, Canada, and the United States of America, then flew over Florida and soon landed in Cuba. The palms that I saw right at the airport of Jose Marti made an indelible impression on me. It seems like nothing special, but it raises enthusiasm. I could not believe that, having flown out of wintery Moscow, you could get to the tropics right away, where palm trees simply and calmly stand everywhere. They are not cold, because even in winter there is no frost.
First Impressions of Havana and Local Transportation
These palm trees are not at the airport. At the airport, the palms are smaller and generally of a different kind. By arrangement, we were met at the airport by a man who ordered us a taxi. The taxi after the palm trees was probably the second brightest impression. I knew that old American cars were still in Cuba and that people still drove them. But I could not imagine that among them there were absolutely chic specimens and that there were so many of them. I thought that driving an antique car in Cuba was a separate entertainment that would require some organizational effort. But no, they are just everywhere. Riding an old car is easy; I would say it’s harder to find a new one, although it’s not. Here is the taxi that came for us. Someone asked me if it is true that it is difficult to rent a car in Cuba. No, a state-owned company rents cars in Cuba; it’s simple and inexpensive, the cars are new and modern, and they have special numbers with the letter T, which makes it clear that the car is for tourists (Sharpley, 2009).
We did not take a car but rented a modern and comfortable minibus with a driver and guide. But it was a little later. In Havana, we traveled by taxi and on foot for two days, and we were happy. For the first two days in Havana, my husband and I stayed at the National de Cuba Hotel. This is a very famous historical place. I wanted to say “pathos,” but this is not the word. The glamour was present in the 1930s when it was built. The hotel was built on the money of the American mafia in 1930. Since its inception, it has not been seriously repaired, and everything there is—watches, decorations, doors, elevators—everything is genuine. Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, and Frank Sinatra stayed here. In this fountain, in the garden near the National Hotel in the movie “7 días en La Habana,” Emir Kusturica threw a mobile phone. In general, this is a famous fountain—films were made near it, and various interesting people were photographed. My husband came up with the idea of organizing a competition of short films shot in any genre and with any storyline. The main thing is that this fountain should appear in them.
The trip was spontaneous, so we did not have to choose a hotel; we went to the hotel where we had seats. We stayed with the family; on the whole, our impression of the stay was poor. The hotel area is quite large, but the overall impression is that it is quite neglected. The tiles around the pools were never washed during our ten-day stay, even with a hose; old leaves were also not removed from the paths. Faded paint and damaged tiles were also present.
Hotel Life, Daily Conditions, and Encounters with the City
On arrival, check-in was only after 4 p.m.; we arrived around 2 p.m. and waited in the hotel to check into the room. The room as a whole is quite spacious, the plumbing and pillow are really awful, and the towels and bed linen leave much to be desired. The room was cleaned daily, and the maid welcomed tips. It is hard to say how well the room would have been cleaned without tips, but in general, there was always toilet paper, and the floors and plumbing were clean. Towels and bed linens were changed only if the towels were thrown on the floor. To change the bed, you need to put a card. During our ten-day stay, the bed linen was not changed, and even items that were drying on the terrace went missing. At the exit from the block, there was a special basket for dirty dishes, and the dishes accumulated there but were never removed during our ten-day stay. The hotel has several bars, the main restaurant, la Marina, and four restaurants a la carte; the food in general is quite diverse, tasty, and plentiful. I liked the breakfasts; there was a great variety, including yogurt with cereal, fried pancakes, and fruit flambé.
The waiters’ service was pretty decent, and there were always fruits: pineapples, papaya, bananas, watermelon, and guava. In the restaurant itself, mold is visible on the walls in some places, but overall, it’s pretty good. Of the à la carte restaurants, I liked the Italian restaurant the most; the Cuban and seafood restaurants operate in the evening as bars, so the furnishing and service are appropriate. In bars and restaurants, there is sometimes live music, which, of course, is a plus. In general, I liked the ocean the most; in good weather, it is pretty clean, the beach is huge and sandy, nothing floats in the water, and it is quite shallow. Just for the sake of the ocean, it is worth coming here. Yes, we were unlucky with the weather; it was cool and rainy.
While there is money and free time, it is worth buying souvenirs. In the city, shops are not ideal for this because they are all pretty “typical,” and buying from individuals or small stalls means paying a high price. Of course, if you have something concrete in mind and the money allows it, you have to take it on the spot—or there is a great chance that later you will not find it anywhere. But when it comes to two or three kilograms of magnets, beads, statuettes, maracas, drums, T-shirts, bags, and baseball caps for relatives, friends, and colleagues, you should go directly to the souvenir port market, the Mercado de Los Subeniros or Almacenes San Jose on Avenida del Puerto.
Art, Tourism, and Reflections on the Cuban Experience
In addition to all of the above, there we can see the works of numerous contemporary artists and even buy a couple at a similar price, as well as get braids and drink coconut juice with rum while contemplating the ocean. As for prices—read the recommendations above and bargain, mercilessly bargain!
On the last day of the trip, we were in Kayejon de Hamel, an art object the size of a street. This impasse in Central Havana was painted and decorated by the Cuban artist Salvador Gonzalez Escalona. The riot of colors, ambiguous inscriptions, hanging dolls, altered mannequins, and old iron baths cut in half instead of benches—the uninitiated will not immediately guess that the entire callejón is nothing more than a tribute to Afro-Cuban culture and, in particular, its religious component, Santería.
Works Cited
De Carolis, Berardina, et al. “Generating Comparative Descriptions of Places of Interest in the Tourism Domain.” Proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Recommender Systems – RecSys ’09, 2009, p. 277, doi:10.1145/1639714.1639767.
Sharpley, Richard, and Martin Knight. “Tourism and the State in Cuba: From the Past to the Future.” International Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 11, no. 3, 2009, pp. 241–54, doi:10.1002/jtr.685.
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