MY TAKE ON CUBA

I had never been in a big hurry to visit Cuba. Having visited Eastern Europe several times prior to 1990, I was not a big fan of socialism, and travel to Cuba was illegal for Americans. Of course, there were ways to get around this – both legal and illegal – but there were still so many other places on my list, that Cuba would have to wait. Also, every legal method for Americans to visit Cuba involved a group tour and, as I have mentioned many times in this blog, I just have no interest in this mode of travel.

However, when Barrack Obama started to loosen up the travel restrictions in 2014, I started to change my position on this. In fact, Cuba had moved way up on my list, because I wanted to get there in advance of the hoards of other Americans that were certain to take advantage of the new rules.

I knew that Cuba wouldn’t be easy. The first stumbling block was finding an agent who would help me arrange a private trip. I wasn’t comfortable with just showing up and I couldn’t locate an American agent who was willing to do this for me. So, after a considerable amount of searching, I found an agent in New Zealand, of all places, who specialized in private tours to Cuba.

The next problem was getting there. There were US agencies who could arrange a connecting flight in Miami on airlines that sounded suspect to me. And then I discovered that Aero Mexico would allow Americans to book flights to Havana via Mexico on their Mexican website. I proceeded to do just that. But I quickly discovered, to my amazement, that the company would not accept American credit cards. The biggest airline in Mexico – the National Flag Carrier – was not up to accepting my Citibank Visa? Shame on them! I eventually stumbled upon Interjet, a large Mexican regional airline with offices in the US. I booked a roundtrip flight from Mexico City to Havana, paid for it without problem, and was all set.

We arrived in Mexico City on a February evening in 2015. We spent the night and flew out the next morning to Havana.

In Havana, customs and immigration went without a hitch. The immigration lady asked me if I wanted my passport stamped. I responded in the affirmative – this is all legal – correct?  I was on a private “People to People” tour and had no intention of spending a week at the beach. The first speed bump came at Currency Exchange. Americans need cash in Cuba – our credit cards are worthless and there are no ATM’s. This took approximately 2 hours. Not only was the single line very long, but the lady behind the exchange desk had the standard, socialist approach to work – “I won’t get paid more for being efficient – so what’s the hurry”. Travelers were automatically docked 10% for changing US Dollars.

We were transported to the Hotel Inglaterra – an ancient hotel in the city center that had seen better days. We were greeted by our guide for the next two weeks – an attractive, affable, young black man who spoke perfect English. He introduced himself as Jose Foster and proceeded to check us in. We agreed to meet in the lobby at 6 PM to walk to dinner.

During our evening walk, Jose and I got to talking. It was at this point that I started to figure out that things in Cuba might not be perfect. It turns out that Jose was a fully trained General Surgeon. He had recently decided to change jobs because he could make a lot more money as a tour guide. I won’t mention his monthly salary as a surgeon – you wouldn’t believe it anyway. But, suffice it to say that he was making significantly less per month than I would typically make in under an hour 10 years ago. Having in common the fact that we were both surgeons, we developed something of a kinship and, during the next two weeks, he gradually opened up to me about his personal life and about the way things were in Cuba.

Of course, the first thing one notices about Havana are the Classic American cars. In Cuba, everything more or less stopped in 1959. The American embargo prevented Cuba from importing American cars after that year. So every American car you see in Cuba is a 1959 model or older. You see these classics all over Havana but they are particularly common around Parque Central which was located directly across from our hotel.

We could sit on our balcony and tick off one classic after another. Ever single owner of one of these anachronisms knew the exact year, make and model of his particular vehicle – and probably how to repair it.

A couple of public squares in Havana had been restored and were quite beautiful. But once you got past these, it became obvious that Havana was in desperate need of some TLC. Much of the city was crumbling – and I don’t mean just “getting old” – I mean actually crumbling. Several major buildings had already collapsed and I was starting to feel a bit exposed walking through some parts of the city. There is not much to buy around the city – oil paintings of classic cars and piles of bogus Che Guevara memorabilia.

My favorite part of Havana, of course, were the Cigar Ladies (and men). These people hang around the public squares and cigar factories posing for photos. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been one to scoff at a photo op, and I don’t insist on absolute authenticity – as long as the situation doesn’t degenerate into a tourist circus.

On our third day, we took a side trip to the Vinales Valley – a tobacco-growing area about an hour from Havana. It was a pretty area with scattered karst formations and typical Cuban Palms, but it was not something I would consider unmissable.

Our next stop was Trinidad the high point of the entire trip. Trinidad, is a beautifully restored colonial village in the coastal mountains about four hours to the east of Havana. This is the showpiece of Cuban tourism and the only place in the country that I would actually choose to return to.

Not only was the architecture stunning, but the people hanging around the Plaza de Armas were entertaining.

We continued to travel in an eastward direction, making stops at Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba, and finishing the trip at Baracoa – a small, very tropical village at the extreme eastern tip of the island. I really don’t have much to say about the eastern half of the country. If you’ve traveled around parts of Eastern Europe that haven’t quite caught up with the twenty-first century, just transpose that experience to a tropical location and you get a good picture of this part of Cuba – run down, monochromatic, and just plain boring – with none of the quaint villages or colorful markets you might find in other parts of Latin America.

Traveling for two weeks with Jose Foster really opened up my eyes about Cuba and about socialism in general. I ended up with the feeling that Fidel (now deceased) and Raul Castro should be ashamed of themselves for forcing their people to live under a system which is not only outdated, but which obviously doesn’t work. 50 years ago, socialism seemed like a good idea. But the continued obsession with an archaic and defective social system can only be considered to be pure selfishness – the same type of selfishness that has made Venezuela the basket case of the Western Hemisphere, and that allows a chubby spoiled brat in North Korea to threaten half the world with nuclear annihilation.

It seems that everybody in Cuba wants to leave, including Jose Foster. He’s been planning his escape for years but still hasn’t accumulated sufficient funds to underwrite the trip. Incidentally, his wife is also a physician, yet they live a “bare bones” existence. He had to rent a digital camera for the trip. Free education is a noble idea. But what good is a PhD if it only gets you a job that pays $20 a month? And free medical care is also a great benefit. But can you really expect top-notch medical care when the government refuses to pay its doctors a living wage?

I began the trip with a somewhat romantic notion about what I was about to experience – the old, trite “noble savage” idea that never really measures up to reality. I hoped that I might be visiting an innocent people who had had limited contact with the outside world. But every Cuban knows exactly what is going on in the “outside world” and they all want a piece of it.

I ended the trip with the hope that things will soon change for this country – that no group of people should be subjected to a form of government that, by definition, will keep them in perpetual poverty, just because of the ideals of a few misguided political leaders. I have no doubt that change will come – but it may still be many years.

And, incidentally, the American tourist invasion never really happened. I think that people started to understand that the Cuban tourist infrastructure is not even close to being ready for full-scale tourism. We stayed mainly in “casas particulares” – private residences which have been turned into tourist accommodation. Before arriving, I had heard that these accommodations were excellent – sometimes almost luxurious. I have to disagree with this notion. It’s possible that we were just unlucky, but I found the casas particulares to which we were assigned to be barely tolerable. The beds were small and uncomfortable, the air conditioning was sporadic, and the food was terrible – so bland that you could barely taste it.

So, maybe, it’s just me – but that’s my take on Cuba.

Tags: baracoa, camaguey, castro, cienfuegos, classic car, communism, cuba, fidel, fidel castro, havana, raul castro, santiago de cuba, socialism, trinidad