Cuba

1 June - Airport Adventures

To get to Cuba we needed to take 3 flights, with different operators, making connection times crucial. It all started well when we found out that our first flight had been brought forward by an hour and we were off to Lima. Check in at Lima took 45 minutes due to assistant stupidity; we then found our flight had been put back by 2 hours, serious concerns for our further connecting flight. We hung around, ate lunch and enjoyed the luxuries of Lima airport. It is definitely one of the nicer airports to wait in, following Singapore, (and they sell delicious chocolates).

To make it worse our flight was further delayed by another ½ hour - more pulling out of hair which is dangerous given Sean's current levels.... We finally got going with assurances that the plane for Cuba would wait at San Jose for us.....hmm... When we arrived in San Hose we found many irritated people waiting for a plane - fortunately for us we realised it was our plane going to Cuba. Stress over, we got back on the plane, and were on our way. This was definitely a Cuba bound plane - sitting in the back row they ran out of food. The substitute, cold Burger Kings! Sean was in his element as he got mine as well.

Arriving in Cuba at 2am, we looked for a taxi to take us to our hotel. In a typically old fashioned Cuban car we headed off, but struggled to find it in the dark of night. The cabbie wasn't completely convincing, and when he pointed us down a dark alleyway we were a little nervous. Arriving somewhere late at night is always strange, places seem so sinister when you don't know them. But indeed it did lead to our hotel which looks quite nice.

2 June

A late start and super breakfast at our hotel while we marvelled at the hotel we were staying at - the Raquel in old Havana. More of a museum style than a hotel with high ceilings, artwork everywhere, ornate designs in any plaster or metal work it really was quite amazing. Certainly not typical of the majority of broken down housing we saw! But it shows how beautiful the city could be with all these old buildings if only they had been kept up and not left to waste away under the Castro rule.

We took a lonely planet guide walk through the city. Really good to walk off the main tourist routes some times as you get a true sense of how the Cubans live. We were amazed at the smell of the place which was anything but nice. And the standard of the housing is quite shocking - it looks like it is going to fall down any minute (and that is no exaggeration as apparently 45% of housing is deemed unfit for human habitation). The tourist currency is Cuban Convertibles, (local currency is Cuban pesos), which is about the same rate as a dollar, however you pay through the nose when paying in convertibles, so it is always good to have some of the local currency (which goes amazingly far in the local corner shops/homes).

We headed out again, after hiding in the cool of our room, into the famed nocturnal society. We found a microbrewery, sampled their beer, before tucking into a Mojitos at Cafe Paris. We must have still been too early, or perhaps there were few tourists that day, as places were remarkably quiet. We found a Chinese restaurant that looked good, so we ate there and had a couple more Mojitos (when in Cuba.......)

3 June

After another great breakfast at our hotel, we walked along the Malecon (the sea wall) and then into town to the Museum of Revolution for a history lesson and to look at the boats and transport that assisted the revolution efforts. After stumbling, possibly trying to avoid all the cigar touts, into an amazing Italian restaurant we ate lunch. As you can tell local cuisine not the top of our agenda.... After lunch we went in search of a music festival we had been told about The route took us past the famed theatre where we marvelled at the cost of the tickets with tourist tickets (in Cuban convertibles) being 100 times the price of the local currency tickets. We didn't find the music festival after all, but Sean managed to get his first taste of a local delicacy - ice water with syrup on, sold by street vendors, (just don't look in the bottom of the cup at all the nasty bits they scoop up from the bottom of their freezer). All the locals tuck into this drink which is a great way to cool down in the tropical Cuban heat.

After a siesta we found our way again to the microbrewery and had cheap burgers there, to balance our expensive lunch! We stayed and listened to their music, which was a bit half hearted, and then wandered around the city for a while listening to the music diffusing out of the local bars, restaurants and the like.

4th June

Our first stop was the Partegas cigar factory, for a very interesting tour. Sean was very sad to discover that the myth of Cuban cigars being rolled on the inner thigh of a beautiful young ladies was nothing more than that....a myth. It was amazing seeing the intricacy of making cigars - never would have thought it. From there we walked around trying to find the ferry stop so we could get to the beach the following day. Eventually finding it, after having walked past the disguised little shack many times, we realised that you needed to be pretty familiar with the system and language to catch it with any certainty. On the plus side though we did stumble into the Havana Rum Museum, so we went and did the tour. It was pretty interesting and true to form Sean ended up buying a bottle of 7yr old rum having got a taster en route. The coach loads of tourists stopping off here pointed to how popular a place this is and they have a slick international way of doing the tours.

We found a little place close to our hotel (which become a firm favourite) to have lunch. The food was good, portions very healthy and the prices were just crazy cheap - including the mojitos. After lunch we headed to the top of our hotel for some rooftop sunshine. From there you get an incredible view of the rooftops of Cuba, pushing home the dereliction and inhabitable nature of some of the buildings. Yet it is strangely beautiful in its own way - especially if caught at sunset.

A late afternoon visit to the chocolate museum took our tour tally for the day up to 3. In reality this was nothing more than a shop with artefacts in, but their hot chocolate is virtually melted chocolate - really the best I have ever drunk. Sadly their milkshakes didn't meet Sean's standards!

Back to the local restaurant for delicious mojitos, and then off to a restaurant called Meson de la Flota. Dinner consisted of barbequed fish and meat skewers accompanied by an amazing band and flamenco dancers - this really was quite special! We were still confused by Cuban nightlife, for all its reputation there did not seem to be much of it in tourist town, with most of the places empty.

5th June

After another good breakfast I am amazed at the low levels of productivity in Cuba. You can just tell by our hotel where there is a different chef virtually every day - as if working a full week would just be too hard. Also the waiters and barmen seem to be on more of a vacation camp than in paid employment. Socialism drives very interesting behaviours. We were amused at the fact that the standard issue footwear for all chefs appears to be Crocs!

We walked to Parque Central and caught the hop on hop off tour bus to the beach. We got off at hotel Tropicoco, as it sounded good, and walked down to their beach. We spent the day enjoying the sunshine and jumping in the bath temperature sea. You need to rent your patch of beach basically and pay for your deckchair, umbrella etc. As you do in Cuba, you make do with things that were once nice and new but have been left to fall apart. The people managing the site sit and do nothing all day, except collect cash. Not once did they try pick up the litter, fix a broken umbrella or chair etc. Yet another indication of the poor productivity socialism has produced. People are continuously walking along the beach selling ...well everything really. We bought chicken and rice in a cardboard box from them at lunchtime - highly risky and cold, but tasted pretty good! With a shocking disrespect for their environment or country and indicative of the squalor in the capital people just throw all their rubbish on the beach or under their deckchairs! After as much sun as we could take we headed back, via Revolution square, looking at the famous huge Che Guevara face on a building. We finished our day at the same little local restaurant, with burgers. These were not just any burgers, these were Cuban style burgers or something as strangely enough the burger buns were hot yet the burger patties were cold!

6th June

Our morning was spent on a quest for a cigar box - no point buying cigars if you cannot keep them properly! We also had one of the highlights of our stay and we bought some peso pizza's for lunch from a stall. Life was a little easier now we had got some local currency and it was hard to imagine how a 30 pence pizza can taste so yummy, but they are delicious, hot and fresh out from the oven. We then stumbled upon an ice cream vendor selling tubs of the most delicious chocolate ice cream, so we got some of that too. In sitting down to eat our ice cream we spotted a tourist market, which we spent some time wandering through looking at the amazing art and craft work. Following this we made another discovery, peso oranges. A man with a strange peeler machine takes the skin off the orange, leaving a thin layer of pith, so you can eat the orange really easily (so clever).

All week we had been thinking about 'the' restaurant in town in a square, so we decided to go for a drink there. The mojitos were nice, but the place was very quiet, and the music was appalling, so we drank up, and went back to Cafe Paris for fried chicken and live music.

7th June

The last day of our holiday! We had by now got a bit fed up of living out of our rucksacks, and were looking forward to getting back to our home comforts. Havana had also become a bit much, a week here is just too long. This was a bit of a disappointing day. We went off to the beach again, finding a spot further along, but the beach was disgusting. There was rubbish everywhere, and people seemed to be adding to this without caring yet again. We made the most of the sun, but soon enough the clouds came over so we called it a day. On the way back to our hotel we couldn't help but stop off for more peso pizza, ice cream and general distractions. Later in the evening we lived it up Cuban style with Mojitos and cigars on the roof of our hotel! Beautiful and a great way to end the holiday of a lifetime!!!