I was there in 2016. Maybe something has changed since then, especially since the day before I left Cuba … Fidel Castro died.One could write and write about Cuba. I will present the most important elements that caught my attention.
Beautiful colonial houses. Unfortunately, most of them are terribly neglected, or even decaying. The closer you see it, the more you see it.
In addition to the specific colonial architecture, another inseparable element of Cuba and most of the photos and postcards from there are old, once luxurious, and still running American cars from before 1960. Anyway – not to look far – my profile photo on the blog also comes from my stay in Cuba and also with a beautiful old car. A dozen (maybe a little more) in the capital are beautifully renovated (for rides around the city for richer tourists).
The rest of the so-called coches antiguos (as opposed to coches modernos, i.e. less than 50 years old) are technical scrap materials that would not undergo any technical tests in Europe or the United States (kept in motion using domestic methods).
But who cares there? All of the photos from the outside look magnificent.
Worse from the inside ?
Worse with traveling in such cars: it smells of exhaust fumes, there are no working shock absorbers for years, also not very safe, because they can barely drive, luggage does not fit. But there is an adventure. We covered several routes with a friend like that, protecting ourselves from exhaust fumes with handkerchiefs.
Fortunately, for a large part of my trip around Cuba, I was able to hire a coche moderno with a driver.
In Cuba, you can also meet Polish kids driving.
Traveling across the country is generally specific. Due to the fact that Cuba has one bus a day from each town, for which tickets are sold out several months before the trip, and the same is the case with car rentals, most tourists travel in Cuba by taxis, which can be found at bus terminals ( sometimes you travel in the so-called Collectivos – when, for example, several people going in the same direction rent the same taxi).
One might ask, since there is such a deficit of cars, why aren’t more cars bought there? Cuba is an island, besides, it has not the best relations with other countries, therefore it is difficult for it to buy cars. Anyway, you probably do not care very much, and private films have a problem with that.
It also seems that Cubans themselves are unlikely to travel around the country, especially for tourists. Before leaving for Cuba, I found a language teacher from Cuba on the Internet to learn something about the whole country and its various regions, apart from getting used to the Cuban accent of Spanish. It turned out, however, that my teacher had not left Havana for over 20 years in Cuba.
Unfortunately, dogs are quite a sad, but also a permanent element of the Cuban landscape. Dogs in Cuba, however, do not play such a role as in our culture. There are lots of homeless, emaciated, sick, sad and hungry dogs wandering around Cuba, and often just lying there. My heart clenches with regret. Nobody takes care of them. My friend and I tried to feed them … But it is a drop, or even a slight drop, in the ocean of needs.
Many shops on the street like in Poland during the communist era. So there were voids on the shelves. Sometimes individual items, like gray soap.
Much more can be bought at various bazaars and trolleys, there are also better stocked department stores in some of the larger cities. But hardly anyone can afford them.
Salon is probably a bit of an exaggeration, considering what most places where you could get a haircut looked like there.
So poverty, poverty, poverty …
And at the same time, despite poverty, the ubiquitous propaganda of success, love for friends (such as the dictator of Venezuela), revolution and … then … adoration for Fidel. Are reminders that the Great Leader is watching. Pictures, photos, murals on the walls, slogans. Inside and out. Everywhere you can.
Of course, also appropriate and “only correct” books in bookstores
Despite this extensive poverty and the lack of prospects, Cubans seem to be very calm people who can stay for hours in doing nothing. Regardless of the time of day, you could find many sitting on the porch or curb, doing absolutely nothing. Alone, so not even busy talking. Men could often be found playing various games while sitting at tables randomly placed on the street or sidewalk. Nobody was in a hurry to get anywhere.
Sometimes someone sits and sells something.
Peace may be real, maybe more resignation, but the truth is also that many young Cubans would very much like to leave Cuba. And preferably to Europe. The easiest method is to marry a European woman. During my two-week trip around Cuba, I saw countless declarations of love and proposals. Some even skipped the declaration of love stage. I experienced the shortest time from getting to know the marriage proposal on one of the beaches in Guanabo.
A young man approached me and the dialogue was something like this (in Spanish)
He: Hi, What is your name?
Me: Aga
Him: Where are you from?
I’m from poland
Him: It’s in Europe
e?
I do
He: Will you marry me?
A good lot. Gold teeth
There were also those (they came to pubs, on the beach, in the park …) who said straight from the bridge that they wanted to leave and whether I would agree to marry them and then divorce them immediately after coming to Europe.
I wrote about poverty. Although not everyone in Cuba is poor. The key to wealth, or maybe more money, is to have any car or room to rent in a touristic location.
The prices of intercity taxi journeys, although much lower than in Poland, are from outer space from the perspective of a Cuban. But since tourists pay?
Same with renting a room. The price for one night was approximately $ 30, which is the equivalent of a monthly teacher’s salary. A family of several people often sits in one room in order to rent the other one. Sometimes one room is divided by the wall in half so that half of it can be rented. Often rented rooms do not have windows, which, unfortunately, often turns out only after the curtains are open – dummy
Of course, all fees for a car trip or renting a room are carried out by the method: from hand to hand, without any bills. The gray area is thriving.
Interestingly, despite earning so much money, the rented flats are dirty, neglected and often fall apart. It was not easy to find an answer to the question why this is so, because Cubans are reluctant to talk about financial matters (read: left interests). But I was able to extract different information from several people.
Cubans collect money from tourists but do not renovate their apartments for several reasons: First, the tax authorities could then be interested in the origin of the funds (if landlords report any rental income, they usually report a small percentage). Secondly, in Cuba there is nowhere to buy materials for renovation (as well as many other products, which means that money is waiting for better times). As Cuba is a quite corrupt country, a lot of the accumulated funds are spent on a family’s passport so that he can go to Europe.
How is the accommodation for the night? By no means via the Internet. Most of the accommodations probably do not have any websites (moreover, access to the Internet in Cuba is an extremely rare commodity). Cuba is the only country where I had no Internet access for two weeks in my adult life. It is probably different when ordering accommodation in a hotel (I did not use hotels; not only cheaper, but most of all, I always look for contacts with locals when traveling). Lodging is provided by taxi drivers. Everything works on the basis of knowledge (and probably also a percentage of earnings). Drivers who bring tourists to a given town will take them to one or more accommodation units (which can be viewed before renting), although the standard usually does not differ much from each other.
If I had to go back to Cuba it would be for that one thing. Cuban music delighted me. Perhaps the times when, as shown in the movie: “Buena vista social club”, Cubans play for themselves … But almost every restaurant in the evening a band plays. Evening dinner with Cuban live music are the moments of the two-week journey that I have been waiting for the most, rewarding everything else. Real musical feasts. Cubans have music all over their body, they play, sing and dance at the same time. Sometimes, in a small restaurant group, I could also play something and sing Polish.
