Thoughts on Cuba

The first thing is that Cuba is clearly a country in transition.   Private business is new in Cuba, and restrictions on those businesses have been lifted a little at a time.  Public WIFI just arrived in Cuba in 2015.   The state still controls most of the economy, and probably will for some time.  Not all the transitions are for the better.

Cuba is in a time warp.  Not only are many of the cars on the street US cars from the 1950s, but there are horse drawn wagons everywhere we went, except Havana.   The only buildings built since 1958 that we saw were ugly Soviet-style concrete apartment buildings.  It is like time stopped in 1960.   Cuba felt a lot like the Mexico of 30 years ago.

Everyone was happy, and some were overjoyed, to see Americans.  Some people were emotional telling us how happy that they were that we were in Cuba.

Cuba is not ready for prime time.   It is not ready for non-adventure tourism.  There are so many things that Americans or even Mexicans take for granted, that are difficult in Cuba.   It is a constant challenge to find products in Cuba.   The hotel occupancy is 100%.   Although our B&B was fine, the reports that I have read indicate that the guest experience can range from excellent to terrible.

Utilities are substandard.  The water is not safe to drink.  Water is unreliable, so people have tanks on their roof.  Our guide said that his house gets water every other day.  WIFI availability is very limited; there are only 50 public hotspots in the entire country.  A power failure at the airport in Cienfuegos caused our aircraft to return to Miami.

It will be a 20 year project to make all the changes that need to be made, in Sandi's professional  judgement as a management consultant.

There are hardly any shops.   The shop above looks like a shop from the USA of 100 years ago.  The shops that we saw had very limited selection and quantities on hand.

The building deterioration is unbelievable.  A lot of the problem is related to the laws, which give each person ownership of their apartment, but no one ownership of the building as a whole.

Wages and money are incredibly distorted.  A Cuban doctor makes something like $30 US per month, and lives on tips from his patients.  A waiter, who gets tips from foreigners, makes more than a doctor.  There are two money systems, a CUC, which is artificially pegged to the US dollar, and the national money, worth about $0.04 US.  The plan is to phase out CUC, and make it a convertible currency, but we will see. The government pays people in the national money, and then gives them ration books to let them buy basic supplies cheaply.

Our guide's ration book

Cuba is moving from an egalitarian society to one of haves and have nots.  People who successfully make the transition to private enterprise are doing well, those still working for the government are making $20-$30 per month.

There is a lack of a legal framework and rule of law.  For example, the dance troupe in Havana reported that one of their problems is that there is no legal provision for nonprofit groups.

Outside Havana, the streets were largely empty, because so few people have cars.   The six lane Highway 1 had about the traffic that you would expect on a two lane road, with horse drawn vehicles on the shoulder.

But as Sandi reminded me, (somewhat instantly and repeatedly), we saw the country through our American eyes.  She found the people wonderful, working hard to survive, but happy of heart and eager for opportunities.  We heard often "we just need opportunities."  Cubans are survivors - they will find their way through this transition in their own way.  As the professor of Architecture said in replying to one of our group when he asked what will happen when McDonalds (Marriott, cruise ships, etc.) arrives, "That will be our problem, not yours."  Cubans are proud nationalists.   They love their country - with all of its complexities.

To Sandi, the word she used most often was poignant.  The music touched her deeply - from the women's A Capella choir, to the five year old singing solo a traditional "farmers" song,  to the elders dancing with us, to the student guitar group, and finally the professional string and piano group, playing a stunning rendition of "Shenandoah."  Cuba is about harmonies, something sad, something hopeful, always complex.  Our hearts were truly moved.  Maria was right, bring your flexibility and your heart.

Cienfuegos, and the long trip home

On Friday the 15th, we said goodbye to our hosts, and headed for the Benny Moré School of Art.  This was mostly for middle school students, who had been selected from their elementary schools as having talent.  Many of the students were boarding students.  We heard several pieces performed by individuals and groups.


At the Benny Moré school of Art, they say that the children have no time for misbehaving.  ;-)  Their schedule is very demanding, with a full time academic program plus their work in music, dance, and art.

Unfortunately, Richard's stomach, which had been unhappy for the last day, started rejecting food.   I learned that the bathrooms in the school were flushed with a bucket.  For a showcase school that often has foreign visitors, the building was in surprisingly poor condition.   But many buildings in Cuba are in poor condition....

The group then visited the Terry Theatre on the plaza.  Richard was sick enough that he just sat with Sandi.  He finally took the antibiotic offered by one of our fellow participants, and started to be able to keep fluids down.   The group went to Finca del Mar restaurant; Richard and Sandi sat separately, and Richard ate a bit of Sandi's rice and beans.  We stopped by the yacht club, and then headed for the airport.

The check in and security process were typical.  We sat and watched the arrival time for the jet come and go.   We were scheduled to leave about seven PM.   Finally they posted a new arrival time of 2 AM!  

At that point, someone took leadership of the situation, speaking in Spanish and English, joking that the plane was in South Korea on it's way to San Francisco.  He started leading us in songs, such as Guantanamera and La Bamba.   We found out later that he was a Jesuit priest.   Around 2 AM, the lights went out.  Later the lights came on, and someone from the airport explained in Spanish that the plane was not coming "due to visibility problems" (read: no runway lights).   We all spent the night in the airport lounge.   We had no WIFI and no cell phone, so no way to cancel flights, etc.  The next morning, our charter flight finally arrived, 15 hours later.

By the time that we reached Miami on the morning of the 16th,  everyone had missed their flights.   Richard was so tired from being sick that he accepted a wheelchair ride for the two mile walk to customs.   Sandi negotiated new flight arrangements, which required us spending an extra night in Miami.  

Finally, on the morning of the 17th, we flew to Atlanta and then to Denver.  We took the bus to Boulder, and walked home.  We were glad to be home.  

Trinidad and a concert

On January 14th, we headed for Trinidad, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.   The drive started in the lowlands, surrounded by sugar cane fields.  We then went up in the mountains a bit, where we stopped at a restaurant to use the bathroom.

I noticed the nearby Cienfuegos School, and asked a lady about it.  She said that her grandchild was a student, and that the lady in front was the director.  I went up to talk to the director, and she invited me in.  We ended up with most of the tour going through the two room school.  Our guides were familiar with the restaurant, but had not noticed the school before.   The students attend up to seventh grade, and then go away to a boarding school.

As we got closer to Trinidad, the road followed the coast.  We saw some beaches, as well as a shrimp farm.

The city of Trinidad is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.    It was a prosperous port town in the early 1800s, with riches based on the sugar business.   But time stopped there around 1850, and the town became frozen in time.  It was isolated from the rest of Cuba, with the only access from the sea.

Trinidad has cobblestone streets, and buildings from that era.   We were warned that the cobblestone streets are particularly hard to walk on; we had walking shoes and wished that we had hiking boots.

Trinidad is very picturesque.  The town center was full of tourists, many of whom seemed to be the backpacker type.   But if you walked a few blocks from the plaza, the streets were largely empty.

We stopped at a B&B run by a vivacious lady, who is also a blues singer.  Leah and Pasche performed a song that she wrote, and had received an award for.  They also do workshops for children, as well as house concerts.

She had fallen in love with this old building, and persuaded the 102 year old lady who owned it to sell it to her.  It took a huge amount of work to fix it up.  She left as much original as she could.  Her B&B is the ideal business for her, as she gets paid to talk to people.  ;-)   They provide employment to several local people.  They have a 35 acre farm, with a cow, pigs, and chickens, and which provides much of the food that they serve their guests.

She explained the challenges of the business, and told the story of bringing pillows back from Canada  in her luggage.  She has a lot of international tourists, but was not a fan of the French tourists, putting her nose in the air to symbolize their attitude.

Wagons are still seen on the streets.

The old cars require a lot of maintenance.

We rode back to Cienfuegos, where we attended a chamber concert of Cuban music by the provincial orchestra.   The musicians do concerts, and also teach in the schools.  They performed a mix of classical and popular music, and at one point got us up and dancing.  Their spokesman spoke excellent colloquial English, and enthusiastically thanked us, as Americans, for coming.  They are very hopeful that this will bring needed change to Cuba.

Bay of Pigs, Cienfuegos, and Santa Clara

On Tuesday morning January 12th, we got on the bus, and headed southeast on highway 1, a multi-lane road with very little traffic, including horse drawn wagons.  Our destination was the Bay of Pigs, best known for a failed invasion attempt by Cuban Exiles, backed by the CIA.

On the long drive, Gulliermo showed us his ration book.   The government gives each person or family a ration book, which allows them to get a certain amount of food very cheaply, to compensate for the very low wages.  As Gulliermo said, they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.


However, our first stop had nothing to do with the invasion, and instead was focused on the Zapata Park, a huge wetland.   We had lunch at Enrique's hostel at Playa Larga.  Enrique is a successful entrepreneur, who just bought two other nearby buildings.  He offers accommodations, dinner, and adventure booking.   His car was an Audi A6 wagon, which sharply contrasted with the 1950s american cars on the streets.

The road is the one right in front of Enrique's hostal.  In addition to the old car, note the piles of sand, gravel, and other construction materials.   Houses are being built or fixed up to cater to the increasing tourist trade.  Many houses have signs offering rooms.  Things are changing in Playa Larga, and in Cuba in general.

Our lunch speaker was a retired professor and birding guide.  He spoke about the many birds only found in this park, including the world's tiniest hummingbird.  They also have US and Cuban crocodiles.   There are mosquitoes, but he says that they do not carry disease.  The park offers fishing to a few anglers each day, as well as diving, kayaking, and many other activities.  Zapata Swamp park is over one million acres.

We went on to the Bay of Pigs museum, in Playa Girón, which celebrates the victory of revolutionary army against the Cuban Exiles.  There are many artifacts there, including guns, mortars, and tanks, as well as photos and text telling the story.  I won't bore you with photos of tanks......  What Sandi noted was how quiet our gorup was while in the museum.  It was intersting to read the Cuban perpective of the "imperialist invasion."

When we arrived in Cienfuegos, our group was split up into several casas particulares (B&Bs).  We were in one with two rooms, with one other guest from our party.   Our bathroom was impressive, with spanish tile, nicer than the bathrooms that I have at home.  This was quite a feat in Cuba, where supplies are a problem.  Overall we thought that the accommodations were good, although the pillows left something to be desired.  We learned later that if you want good pillows, you have to bring them home from the USA in your luggage!

Our hostess, Yeni, was delightful, petite and a bit shy.  She spoke almost no English; our guide assured her when we arrived that I spoke good Spanish, so we heard no English from her.  ;-)  Her husband fixed us perhaps the best fish dinner that we had on the trip.  Her husband and her parents work for the government hotels for the usual pittance.  Her price was $30 US per room per night, with dinner $12 per person, and breakfast $5.  She reported that she was booked every night, generally with tour groups from the Netherlands.

On Wednesday we started at the market in Cienfuegos.  Cubans shop daily in the market for fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat.  Their monthly food allowance is pennies by our American standards.  The meat, mostly pork, was set out in the open, without refrigeration.  We learned about Yucca, a starchy vegetable.  We purchased some garlic and veggies for our hosts.

The vendor is offering us coconut shavings, which he made using his own homemade grinder.  The Cubans are nothing if not resourceful.

We then got on the bus for a long ride to Santa Clara.  This area is known for sugar cane, and we were surrounded by sugar cane fields for most of the trip.  Sometimes you could see the smoke coming out of the stack of the sugar cane mill.  However, Cuba produces a lot less sugar than in the past.

The truck is carrying sugar cane to the mill.

We also saw many horse drawn wagons, both in the country and in the city.  The wagon shown is a popular type in the city.  Note that it is covered, and has benches on each side for passengers.  The ladies behind the wagon are about to step up and get on.

In the country, we saw almost as many horse drawn vehicles as cars.

Here you can see a line of wagons waiting for customers.

I believe that in many cases they were operating as a kind of collective taxi or mini-bus, running a fixed route, with people getting off and on.  We also saw automobile taxis stuffed with people, apparently doing the same thing.

We visited a group of seniors, who danced Danzon, and explained a game similar to baseball using a tubular "ball" and a stick.  A
couple of people played the game, and then they got us dancing.   Sandi spent some time with lovely grandmother who was crocheting.

We had a nice lunch in the Pergola restaurant, a beautiful old house which has won restoration awards.

We also visited the Che memorial and museum, where we took off our hats to show respect, and were not allowed to take photos inside.  The eternal flame is similar to that of JFK.

I spoke to a horse drawn wagon driver, who was on a fixed route from the Che memorial to downtown.

Finally we drove back to Cienfuegos for dinner at a restaurant next to the water, and then back to our B&B.

Havana Cuba

We met our tour group and guide at the hotel on January 7th.  The group was Road Scholar, formerly Elderhostel.  Our guide was Maria, a Columbian/American who loves Cuba.  She started by telling us that there were two important things to remember: be flexible, and keep your heart open.  Sandi was impressed that she started that way, and we learned that her advice was good.  We spent the rest of the evening filling out forms.

On the morning of the 8th, we headed for the airport, where check in was a bit hectic.  The other passengers seemed to be Cubans bringing gifts or products wrapped in stretch wrap, so very strange luggage.  We got on an XTRA Airlines charter flight to Miami.  Our flight was routine.   After we got through immigration, we paused in the luggage claim area to regroup, and wait for our bus and Cuban guide, Gulliermo.  Guillermo is a former middle school teacher, paid the equivalent of $20 US a month.  He decided to be a guide to make life better for his family.  He taught us much over the course of the week we spent with him.  

The first thing we saw when we left the terminal were many 1950s American cars, kept running by creative Cuban mechanics.   

The bus took us to see a modern dance performance by an independent dance company, Malpaso.  (Malpaso is a bit of a play on words, as it means misstep).

Our next stop was the Christopher Columbus Cemetery, which was pretty amazing.  The mausoleum shown was made of Italian marble, modeled on Italian churches, similar to what we saw on our 2015 trip.

In the photo below, we are going through a popular ritual to request a wish or a child from Amelia, who died in childbirth.  She is revered in Cuban culture.  First you knock on the grave with the ring, then you reach up and touch the baby, and then walk the rest of the way around the grave backwards, facing the grave.   There are many plaques (exvotos) giving thanks for a child or other favor.  I have seen this kind of plaque before, but in churches addressed to saints.  We heard the following day in our lecture that Cubans are a superstitious people.

We had a lunch in La Moraleza private restaurant, and checked into the Hotel National, built in the 1930s and used by celebrities and VIPs since then, including Fred Astaire and Churchill.  It was like stepping back in time.  The hotel is run by the government.

Our group is educated and globally aware.  Maria likes our group because we are not focused on shopping.   Gulliermo likes our group because we are not about piña coladas. 

On the 9th we started with a scholar of the history of religion.  She took the view that Cubans have never been very religious, but tend to turn to religion in times of crisis.   Their Afro-Cuban beliefs are masked in Catholicism.

We walked in the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza de Catedral.  We had a nice lunch in O'Reilly's restaurant, and a cup of Cuban coffee for Sandi.  Richard bought a book written by Che from a street vendor; he was once a military lawyer, but found that selling used books paid better.   This became a theme of the trip, as government employees' wages are only around $30 US per month!

We visited the Fort of San Carlos de la Cabaña, which offered a view of Havana across the bay.   We got on the bus, but were then told that the bus was broken, so we would have to take taxis.   This was really a trick to get us all in classic convertibles for a tour of Havana.  Our group of 24 was treated to a ride along the Malecon (seawall) of Havana.

The driver explained that the owner of the car was a mechanic, and that the driver got 25% of the income.  He had a recent LG smartphone.  His wife, working for the government, makes $20 US per month.

Dinner was at "1958" restaurant.  However, it was somewhat marred by an attempted mugging and a loud Mariachi band.  Our guides said that they had not seen a mugging before, so they were not watching out for it.  Luckily, the victim was not hurt.  Generally, the Cubans are happy to see Americans.  They realize that we bring dollars and jobs.

Sunday January 10 started with a talk on the history of US-Cuban relations, focused mostly on the recent normalization of relations.  We then went to the Cuban Fine Art museum for Cuban art; most of the art there was dark in color and in theme.  We had lunch at La Moneda Cubana restaurant, and stopped by the craft market.  Dinner was at the La Fontaine restaurant; entertainment was by an all-female choir.  The women are all music teachers by day; Sandi was amazed by their harmonies.

Gulliermo, our guide

On the 11th we walked in the old Plaza and Plaza San Francisco, and got on the bus to Hemmingway's house.  

Hemmingway's typewriter

 

Outside Hemmingway's house

We had a great lunch at La Bonita restaurant, which had only been open a few months, with most of the employees being family.  The bathroom was amazingly nice, far superior to most of what we saw elsewhere.

In the afternoon we had an excellent talk from the Architect Pedro Vasquez.  He basically preemptively answered all my questions.   After the revolution, everyone became owner of their own apartment, but no one owned the building as a whole.  No one could be evicted, so no one could be forced to pay for repairs, which means that the buildings have been deteriorating for 50 years.   This is still unresolved in terms of the law.  They have been working on the old city in recent years, so much of what we saw has been restored.   We essentially saw no buildings built after 1959, except for some ugly concrete apartment buildings.   All the buildings that we were taken to in the tour were built before the revolution, which suggests that whatever was built after the revolution was not anything to be proud of. Or perhaps that not a lot has been built since the revolution.

Before dinner, we met with a young man with a jewelry business. He rents a table in a market, and has an employee man the table.  It sounds like a pretty marginal business by our standards, but what choice does he have?  We discussed loans with interest, but that struck him as unfair; apparently credit is not part of their society, only loans from family.  His sister is in Miami, but he does not want to leave Cuba. 

Miami Beach

We were on our way to Cuba, and ended up with extra time in Miami before we met our tour group.   We decided to visit Miami Beach, and look at the Art Deco there.

We took a tour through the Art Deco Museum.  Our tour guide was an enthusiastic volunteer.



 

The restoration work is excellent, done in recent years, after years of neglect.

The Tides Hotel was beautiful inside and out.

Versace's house

 We met Sandi's old friends, Sandy and Dale, for a nice lunch.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel to meet our group.