Planning a Trip to Cuba

From what we have read, there are only three ways for Americans to visit Cuba:  (1) travel from another country such as Mexico or Canada, (2) be part of a professional group, or (3) participate in an organized “people to people” program.  (A friend shared a flyer with us from Grand Circle Tours advertising a people-to-people tour.  If you are interested in visiting Cuba, you might check into something like this.)  Our trip was in the professional category.  Scott was invited to participate in the biannual meeting of “Engineering in the Americas,” which meets in different countries in the Americas.  In two years the meeting will be in Bolivia.

I wasn’t about to let him go on this trip without me, so Scott arranged for me to be the “facilitator” of one of the paper sessions.  We each had to submit documentation of our participation in the meeting and a resume in order to receive a visa.  Since US dollars aren’t an approved currency in Cuba, payments had to be arranged in either Canadian dollars or Euros.  There are no direct commercial flights to Cuba, but there are charters from Miami and New York.  A travel agency arranged the details of our travel, including charter flights, visas, and hotel reservations.  The one we used was Marazul Charters, which handled the arrangements for the American delegation.  The American group consisted of approximately 12 engineers (all men) representing various US engineering societies and three of their wives.

In our reading we learned that there is a 10% surcharge to exchange American dollars, and that credit cards associated with US banks cannot be used in Cuba.  There are also restrictions on how much money you can take into and out of the country.  So we tried to calculate how much we were likely to need and found a bank that could exchange our cash for another currency.  We chose Canadian dollars over Euros because the exchange rate was better.  The Cuban currency is the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), known as the “kook.”  When we were there the US dollar, Canadian dollar, and CUC were approximately equal in value.  Once in Cuba, we were somewhat limited in what we could do by how much cash we had with us.  We are so used to credit card transactions, that this was a different way to travel for us.  We also had heard (but some in our group had not) that there is an exit charge (25 CUC) to leave Cuba, so we had saved money for that.

We really had no restrictions on our travel within Cuba.  There are soldiers/police on many street corners, but no one stopped us or asked for identification other than customs and immigration as we entered and exited the airport.  Many people spoke English, although we had to rely on my very limited Spanish at times. 

Some Interesting Facts

Here are a few tidbits about Cuba that we learned and found interesting:

Cubans are among the most educated populations in the world.

As a communist country, all of people’s basic needs—housing, food, medical care, education—are provided by the state.

The average monthly salary is 20 CUC.  Raul Castro has evidently removed many restrictions and there is beginning to be a non-government-owned economy so that people are now able to earn additional money privately. 

While the general state of buildings, streets, and parks was run down in our eyes, there were no homeless people or disabled people begging on the streets, as we have seen in so many places.  No one really  “bothered” us, except a few hustlers in Old Havana where we were invited into shops, restaurants, etc. frequently.

There is also very little crime.  We never felt unsafe walking around Havana.

There is no free press.  We never saw a newspaper.  We were able to get CNN on the hotel television, in English.  Evidently it is not available to the Cuban people in Spanish.

There were posters, building murals, billboards around town proclaiming things like "VIVA LA REVOLUTION!" and remembering Che or Marti.  Even though it has been more than 50 years, it is very much a part of the Cuban culture.

Internet access is very limited and controlled by the government.  At the hotel we were able to purchase time-limited access but those who did found it to be painfully slow and difficult to use.

The Cuban people we spoke to were friendly and gracious.  Cuba has a vibrant tourist industry, but guests aren’t typically Americans.  Germans, Mexicans, Canadians, etc. visit regularly, but we were a bit of an oddity.

Without cell phone usage or internet or newspapers, we felt a bit cut-off from the world while in Cuba; however, it allowed us to relax and decompress in a way we haven’t in years--not a bad thing!

Getting There

Saturday, April 8, 2012

We flew to Miami today for an overnight stay in preparation for our early Sunday morning flight to Havana.  Having read that the best Cuban food is actually in Miami, we walked a few blocks from our motel to a Cuban restaurant located next to a gas station in a liquor store.  There were a few tables on the sidewalk outside the store as well as a few inside, between shelves of gin, rum, vodka, and wine.  Everyone in the place seemed to be a Spanish speaker, so we declared our Cuban adventure started.  The special of the day was fried fish, served whole, with yellow rice.  Delicious! 

Sunday, April 9 (Easter)

Up at 3:30 a.m. to catch the shuttle to the airport for our “be at the airport four hours ahead of your charter flight” wait.  It took some doing, but we finally located the correct check in location and waited amid a group of Cubans and others. Turns out there were only 36 passengers on our flight, and we were all checked in and through security by 5:30.  (Our flight didn't leave until 8:30.)

There were luggage shrinkwrapping stations throughout the Miami airport, including one near our ticket counter.  We watched a man wrap several large suitcases and other packages before they went on the airplane.  This is evidently a popular way to prevent things from disappearing from checked luggage. The result was large green lumps of things going into the cargo hold and emerging in Havana on the luggage belt. (We didn’t have our bags wrapped and nothing went missing, for which we were grateful.) 

Luggage shrink wrapped in green.

We arrived in Cuba about 9:30 a.m.   It took an hour or so to get through customs and collect our bags. The terminal was small.  Two flights arrived about the same time, so there was quite a crowd, and things were very disorganized.  We weren’t really sure what we were required to do and ultimately just walked out the door into a waiting throng of other people’s relatives and friends.  The company that was supposed to meet us and provide transportation to the hotel wasn’t anywhere we could find, so one of our group members arranged a taxi van ride for 8 of us into town.

We weren’t able to get into our rooms until after 3:00 so we left our luggage with a porter and went in search of food. We walked a few blocks along this road, the Melacon, and enjoyed the roar and smell of the ocean.

We found a seaside tent structure with a few tables and a grill where we had a delicious lunch of grilled fish or chicken served with rice and black beans, salad, and fries. 

Bottled water is in short supply so we drank the local beer “Bucanero.”

When the bill came, we discovered that no one in our party had any Cuban Convertible (CUC) Pesos (known as “kooks”), and the waiter, of course, would not accept anything else.  So, a few of us stayed while some others went in search of a place to change money.

We stayed at the Melia Cohiba Hotel.  Here are the views of the hotel and of Havana as seen from our room.

Hotel Lobby

View of Havana from our hotel room

Hotel where we stayed

Morning mist over ocean and city

For dinner, we went to a paladare--a small family-owned restaurant located inside a house that is part of the new Cuban entrepreneural economy.  Our group was seated on the front porch and had a delightful evening of food, drink, and conversation.  

The dinner began with an appetizer plate of cold cuts, cheese, and olives.  Entrees were a choice of pork, shrimp, or fish; a salad of cucumbers, cabbage, and tomatoes; and rice with black beans.  We also tried  fried plantains and some had ice cream for dessert.  

For drinks we were offered either a mijoto (lime juice, mint leaves, and rum) or “Cuba Libra” (rum and coke).  We have discovered that these are the standard offerings for both food and drink in Cuba. 

Sightseeing in Old Havana

Monday, 4/10:  Sightseeing in Old Havana

We started the day (and the other days we were here) with a breakfast buffet, Mimosas, and music.  This trio was very good.

We took the courtesy bus from the hotel to Old Havana.  The city was surrounded by walls of a fort, to protect it from pirates.  Many of these buildings are hundreds of years old. 

  

Earnest Hemingway spent a fair amount of time in Havana.  We saw the hotel where he supposedly worked on “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and one of the bars where he drank.  This photo is of the wall outside one of them, lots of photos and signatures from the era.

Note the cobblestone street  

Conference Attendance

Conference Center

The reason for this trip was Scott’s participation in an Engineering of the Americas meeting.  It took place at the city’s conference center:

Part of the American delegation.

The opening “reception” for the thousand or so attendees was actually a sit-down affair at which we were each served a plate of appetizers, including pork cracklings, pigs’ feet, fish croquets, cheese and cold cuts (salami and baloney), and a piece of cake.  We had our choice of beverages:  beer, lemon-lime soda, or a local cola.  After the plates were cleared, the bar opened and free rum and beer were abundant, which members of our group enjoyed.  The only thing in short supply here appears to be water.

Classroom Building

Students at the university.

Several of our group visited a technical university, Jose Antonio Echeverria Higher Polytecnnic Institute (CUJAE).  We were hosted by two women attending the congress who were faculty members from the campus. 

 

Jose Marti, father of the revolution

We thought we would get a tour, but instead we were packed into a room, along with congress attendees from Mexico and Costa Rica, where we watched a video about the school, received a book about “The Cuban Five” (reportedly political prisoners, but tried and convicted as spies by a US court), and listened to lots of speeches (all through translators).  We dubbed it our propaganda component.

We were not allowed out of the sight of our hosts and were transported back to our hotel as soon as the activities were over.

The trip did allow us to see some of the city we had not otherwise seen.

Workers being transported in the back of truck.

One of many old American cars on the streets.

Houses and sign to the airport.

Life in Havana

We had no cell service and saw very few people with cell phones.  This collection of pay phones was located across from our hotel.  There was often a line waiting to buy time and use the phones.

 

Taxis come in all styles and sizes. Here are some examples:

Tuesday, April 11

For dinner we tried another paladare, this one located in Old Havana. The dining room was located on the second floor, above the kitchen. The family apparently lived in the space next to the kitchen. The dining room itself was very nice, with a new roof covering it. However, looking either direction we could see that the surrounding buildings were crumbling and in disrepair.



The dinner was delicious: lobster, shrimp, and fish sauteed in a sauce (on the right) and kabobs of steak and chicken with peppers and pineapple (on the left). Accompaniments included salad (back left) and rice with black beans (back right).
 

Here is the street on which it was located.

Odds and Ends

An Indian dinner at another paladare, Bollywood.  This one was featured in a recent New York Times article about Cuba.  We went with friends Allen and Susan Kirkpatrick from Ft. Collins, CO.

Across the street from our hotel was the Galleria shopping center. Occupants included a flower shop (no real flowers that we could see), an auto parts store, an appliance shop, a grocery store (with very limited offerings), a café, and a few clothing stores, again with very limited offerings.

Outside of the "Galerias de Paseo"

Courtyard inside the Galleria.

Nurse, in traditional uniform, at the shopping center.  Note the cereal ads on the right.

We had an interesting and enjoyable time!

Scott and Elizabeth Danielson