Traveling in Cuba, 1997 Our last hours in Cuba were spent running an impromptu currency exchange for airport workers. This unexpected but delightful experience helped us understand many aspects of Cuban life. We had found the last two available seats in the waiting area of the Varadero airport (out of a total of nine) hidden under a staircase next to the bathrooms. Stationed at the doors of the men's and women's bathrooms were two attractive, vivacious female bathroom attendants. Maria, twenty-seven and a university graduate, was excellent in English. She quit her previous job teaching English in the Cuban public school system because of poor pay and working conditions and a severe shortages of supplies and equipment. (The U.S. trade embargo, in effect since February, 1962, created and has maintained shortages in every segment of Cuban society.) As a teacher, Maria earned the equivalent of $20 U.S. per month. Maria's income as an airport bathroom attendant was vastly higher. Here is why. Bathrooms all over Cuba require an extremely small payment from each user. The usual fee is twenty centavos, which equals only one fifth of an American penny. Foreigners flying into the country have no pesos (in fact, since most tourists stay in resorts, they never do get any), so they put whatever currency they have into the collection plate. Very often, this is a U.S. dollar bill. An American-destination plane delay can mean a dollar bonanza for bathroom attendants. Not all visitors are Americans, of course, so other foreign currencies appear on the plates. Bathroom attendants, baggage handlers and any others who receive tips save these currencies, waiting for someone who will trade them for U.S. dollars. That was my function on February 17, 1997, at the Varadero airport on our last day in Cuba. As word spread we were from Canada and willing to exchange their Canadian tips for U.S. dollars, a steady stream of airport workers arrived at our little bank under the stairs. There is a two-tier money system in Cuba, one price for the locals in pesos and another for those with U.S. dollars. The Cubans suffer doubly because they earn so little and because so few items are available in their stores. We saw one store with nothing but three bottles of cooking oil for sale. Many items are only available in stores in which all customers--foreigners and locals--must pay in American dollars. Cubans are desperate for American dollars, then, because having dollars is the only way to have a comfortable life. In theory, the idea of two-tier pricing is fair, but in practice the system has major flaws, both for Cubans and for tourists on their own. The prices charged foreigners can be twenty times more than locals pay. Sometimes, this is still a fair price, especially if the service is subsidized by the government in order for the poor local population to use the service. This is true for buses and trains. For example, locals paid ten pesos, or fifty U.S. cents, for the eight hour train ride to Sancti Spiritus while we paid ten U.S. dollars for the same trip. We thought this was still a good value, and fair that we pay more. In other situations, the prices charged, especially for meals, were grossly out of kilter. Cuban businesses and individuals seemed unable to judge appropriate prices for products and services or to understand relative wealth of tourists. Sixty dollars for a hotel room with no light bulbs was not fair according to our budget and experience, as we tried to explain. Fifteen dollars each for a plate of plain rice, beans and a little chicken was not a good value. Solving the usual transportation, lodging and eating problems on the go was more difficult than we anticipated. For this reason, we suggest travelers who want a relaxing holiday choose a package tour. Tourists in Cuba we talked with who arranged everything from home found hotel rooms adequate, a good level of service and food at hotel buffets, and all transportation problems solved. Most Canadians fly to Varadero from Vancouver, are bussed to nice beach hotels nearby, lie on twenty kilometers of white sand there, swim in the warm sea and happily eat too much at the buffets three times a day. Unfortunately, we don't like lying on beaches. We wanted to see the countryside and interact with the Cuban people. We expected to take public buses, but Cubans have a terrible transportation problem themselves. There are just not enough vehicles on the road. Many people ride bicycles or walk. Thousands more wait in the sun for hours trying to get rides to work and back home. Buses are jammed. The transportation problem is so severe that by law people with space in cars or trucks or other vehicles must pick up hitchhikers. The U.S. embargo made it almost impossible for Cuba to build or import cars, buses and trucks. In several cities, such as Varadero, we could find space on local buses. But for longer routes, it wasn't physically possible to get on public buses with our luggage, nor did it seem fair for us to take up space needed by Cubans themselves. Many independent foreign travelers rent cars. Ninety-four U.S. dollars a day to a rent a car was too expensive for us, plus there was the complication of needing to park only where watchmen could guard the car (we were told that windshield wipers and mirrors are stolen regularly). Our best choice was to ride on government organized tourist buses. We went on a plush Rumbos Tours bus to Pinar Del Rio and Vinales. The bus was on time, had assigned seats, good guides and took us to good hotels. They even remembered to come back and pick us up two days later. We hitched a ride on a Havanatours tourist bus back to Varadero from Trinidad (we had gone there independently by train, then hired a private car with driver and had stayed in a private home there). The guides pocketed our payment since we weren't on the official tour list, then let us off before reaching the office. Every Cuban restaurant is expensive, yet food choices are more limited and more bland than in any country we have visited in the world. Though we expected the Cuban climate to produce a multitude of fruits and vegetables, the only fruit available everywhere were oranges. Occasionally, we found grapefruit, a coconut, a papaya or banana. The only vegetables served in restaurants or in private homes we visited were sliced tomatoes and cucumbers and a little lettuce. When we tried a Chinese restaurant, the very same salad vegetables were cooked in a hot broth for soup and stir-fried. Never were spices, condiments or sauces served. Never was there an onion used. No matter how fancy the restaurant or where it was, standard fare for both lunch and dinner was a plate of absolutely plain rice, or rice and red beans, plus fried chicken. When pork, beef or fish was available, it was always fried. Dessert was canned pureed fruit (similar to jam) lying on a saucer or nothing. Breakfast was bad white bread and coffee. The standard lunch for Cubans, sold on the streets from food stalls and carts and in restaurants, is Ham Sandwich (white bread with a piece of ham in it). Many people were buying that for breakfast on the street, too. The only food we thought was really good was ice cream. This varied in price from five cents to two dollars for the same size scoop, depending upon whether the customers were locals or foreigners. There was an absolute lack of anything crunchy and salty. No nuts, chips or crackers were available in bars, restaurants or stores. Cubans knew about popcorn, but I never was able to get any. The trade embargo results in desperate shortages of everything, including medicines and equipment, yet Cuba still maintains good medical care for all citizens. Cuba continues to educate more doctors than the country needs and exports them to many countries. While we were in Cuba, South Africa was negotiating to get another forty-five doctors. There is little money for infrastructure. It is said that three hundred buildings a year collapse in Havana. We stayed in a modest hotel in Old Havana amid cobblestone streets, impressive old colonial buildings, magnificent churches, all decaying. It was like Rome without money. Tanks of water are parked permanently on many city streets because plumbing has deteriorated. We saw people hauling water up steps to their apartments in plastic buckets and using ropes to pull up water buckets to third floor balconies. In Trinidad, a city in the center of the country, water was turned on only from eight to ten a.m. daily, and during the two days we were there, the electricity didn't come on at all. We stayed with a family who was vastly better equipped than most. They had a battery operated pump, so each morning water was pumped into a holding tank on the roof for use during the rest of the day. When she cooked dinner for us, it was by candlelight. Havana streets are almost empty of traffic. We could cross the main six lane highway by waiting a few seconds, then walking casually across. Gas is scarce and rationed, except for foreigners. Skilled mechanics are especially valued because pre-embargo vehicles must be repaired endlessly. Seeing so many American cars made in the 1950's reminded us of Montevideo, Uruguay. Cuba has no smog problem from engine exhaust. We were in Cuba on February 3, 1997, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. embargo. It is impossible to overstate the influence of this policy on Cuban life. Prior to the beginning of the embargo, sixty-five percent of Cuba's trade was with the United States. To replace that, Cuba developed about the same trade percentage with the Soviet Union. Then the U.S.S.R. disintegrated. Finding trading partners to replace that huge percentage has been difficult. Now there are close ties to Canada, Spain and other European countries. We were told that tourist hotel investment is funded largely through those countries with Cuba earning half the profits. Before Castro came to power, American businesses owned more than half of the land in Cuba. The rest was owned by the Cuban elite. There was no land available for anyone else and no way to buy it from the owners and peacefully transfer the land into the hands of regular Cubans. The rich Cuban elite living in Florida and the American companies formerly in Cuba still want their land back. They want a return to the good old system in which the rich owned everything. They deny or ignore the extreme injustices of the dictatorship overthrown by Castro's movement. The U.S. first invaded Cuba in 1905 and again at the Bay of Pigs. Cubans still fear the United States will invade their country. When the U.S. invaded Grenada, the Cuban government expected to be next. They spread military weapons across the country, putting them into the hands of citizens. This was a successful demonstration of government confidence in the support of the people. Though in many other countries in South America soldiers armed with machine guns stand in doorways of banks, businesses and on the streets, we saw no visible military presence in Cuba. Castro remains the most important, respected and loved person in Cuba. His picture is rarely seen, however. Che Guevara is the man featured on t-shirts, posters and walls, not Castro. The major positive experience we had in our travels was talking with Cuban people. They were unusually confident, outgoing, bright, interested and friendly. People wanting to practice speaking English would approach us everywhere (education levels are high, all public schools are free and English lessons begin at the fifth grade, if teachers are available). It appears that women have a much more equal position in the society than in many other Latin American countries we have visited. We saw no women bus or taxi drivers, but we saw women police officers and tour guides. We had great talks with maids working in the hotels. In North America, hotel maids are often immigrants and treated as inferiors. Maids in Cuba were clearly not considered lower class. They confidently and proudly made eye contact and conversed as equals. We were invited to some of their homes and met their kids. We took photos of some and sent them copies, because few have cameras or could afford photos. The variety of skin color was a constant surprise. There were many white-skinned blondes, many very black, many all shades. Some looked exactly like Victoria matrons, others could have been straight from Africa, still others looked more Spanish or Mexican or Italian. It was quite wonderful to see this mix, apparently fitting together well in many spheres. We saw all combinations of colors playing dominos together, for example, walking together as friends and in what were obviously family groups. We traveled around the western half of Cuba, from Varadero east to Sancti Spiritus by train, then by hired private car with driver (these are called "particular" cars and are not legal) south of there to Trinidad, by bus back to Varadero for a rest, then by bus west to Havana, then farther west to Pinar Del Rio and Vinales, finally by bus back to Havana and Varadero. Most of the area was flat, pleasant but unspectacular. Coconut palms dotted the land everywhere (though surprisingly, coconut milk or meat was not part of the cooking and we never saw anyone harvesting or using coconuts). We saw fields with cattle grazing, a few goats, large sheds housing chickens and pigs, banana plants, a little corn growing (though never evidence of anyone eating, selling or using it), many tobacco fields (especially toward Pinar Del Rio) with drying racks out in the sun near the plants. We visited a cigar factor and watched fifty workers sitting at little desks rolling leaves by hand. The workers wanted to talk with us as they worked. They also hoped we had some soap to give them (too bad we didn't know that ahead of time). Cigars are the second biggest money maker after tourism now. Most of all and everywhere were sugarcane fields, in all stages of growth and harvesting. The large factories we saw in the distance were usually sugar refineries, with an occasional gas refinery. We were told Cuba produces twenty percent of the oil it needs. Near Trinidad, we went on a "jungle" hike. It wasn't a jungle as we had experienced in the Amazon, but there was a lot of vegetation. We followed a river, crossing it at least twenty times, to a nice waterfall. To get there, we were taken by huge Russian lorry down extremely steep paths with huge furrows and holes that seemed impassable. I sustained many bruises from that lurching ride. The most beautiful part of Cuba we saw was the valley area of Vinales. We stayed two days, walking around the rural roads and the little town. Our hotel was on top of the highest of the modest hills looking over the cultivated valleys, green in the mist of morning, roosters crowing from miles in every direction. We had expected to see more bird life. There were turkey vultures soaring over fields, cities and towns. Along the coast, we saw a few brown pelicans (Fort Lauderdale, by contrast, had huge numbers). Once we counted sixty cattle egrets from the bus window. We saw a couple of gulls on the coast, a few mockingbirds in the hills, a few single birds we couldn't identify. Most Cubans out of the larger cities seemed to live in small concrete homes. These had no glass windows. Instead, they were open to the air and had louvers to close when needed. In Havana, there were many incredibly ugly concrete block buildings, similar to the monstrosities we've seen in photos of Russia. Unfortunately for Cuba, the Soviet Union seemed to have had a great influence on architecture. Several hotels downtown and many gigantic tenement buildings look as ghastly as anywhere on earth. I wondered if water could up pumped up to the top floors. The Cuban government needs to hire some good tourism consultants. They need advice on pricing, and they need a larger variety of goods to sell to tourists. There is almost nothing to buy there but cigars and rum. Tourists should bring many one dollar bills (we brought two hundred and used most) and American coins. If the price of a beer is $1.10 U.S., for example, and you give two dollar bills, you will receive worthless centavos in change. In effect, that $1.10 beer just cost you $2. Bring larger U.S. bills, too, lots of them. Janis Ringuette