CUBA TIP #1 – Bring your walking/salsa shoes!
Semana Santa had finally arrived – it’s a long stretch of five-day weeks after you go through October through December in Colombia with entire weeks off or frequent three-day weekends. Rachael and I went through a lot to get our Cuba tickets bought, and the day had come where we hopped on the plane after school and headed to Bogota to spend the night before going to Havana. Rachael wasn’t doing too well with a pretty bad cough and cold sickness, so we were wondering how this trip was going to turn out!
When we arrived, we had to wait quite a bit to get our luggage. Customs was pretty easy for me and surprisingly for Rachael, an American, too. I guess Cuba is getting a little more forgiving towards Americans; in fact, it was the same week that Obama was visiting too! We had to exchange our money to a specific Cuban currency (we had Euros because USD exchanges cost an extra 13%) and it was apparently a rare thing to find ATMs that worked with foreign debit/credit cards in Cuba, so we had to ration our money accordingly. We had a driver pick us up and bring us to our Casa Particular that we had booked – I guess Cuba doesn’t really have “hostels”; there are the expensive all-inclusive hotels and for the average traveller “casas particulares” were the way to go. Essentially, we were staying in a room in someone else’s house! It was in the area of Vedado in Havana and was pretty nice. We decided that the people of Cuba were kind of an “aggressive-nice”. It’s hard to explain, but kind of like, “How dare you think otherwise, what kind of people do you think we are, of course you can have some tea!”, that kind of thing. Our casa did not have Wi-Fi though! Cuba does not have much access to internet which is a big change from what we’re used to! We did however learn that we could buy a little username and password ticket for the Wi-Fi network that was in the park down the street. That’s right, an internet park. It was kind of funny to see everyone go outside to the park just to be on their phones when you’re used to people going to the park to play with their dog or go on the swings and getting away from technology!
That’s El Capitolio or the Capital Building. Look familiar? I thought so too. Interesting.
The first night, we tried to head out around 9pm despite being tired from the travelling, but after organizing with the taxi driver to come get us at midnight (and being unable to contact him after that), we discovered that the place closed during the early evening and reopened at 11pm for the rest of the night. We were stuck outside not wanting to pay the $15 USD cover for the one hour of possibly not so great dancing inside, so we ate some food and chatted to some German guys outside. Rachael and I made up a scavenger hunt game with us earning points based on seeing things from the list we made up. Included on the list were things like “Obama”, “a pregnant lady”, “stilettos”, “a Cadillac”, and “Germans.” She got the Germans first. Initially “a Canadian flag” was on the list, but turns out that was very common! I had never seen so many maple leaves in a place other than Canada, and I guess since there were few Americans in Cuba, Canadians were the next best thing. We also decided that fewer people assumed we were American because they weren’t used to seeing many Americans around. Here in Colombia, I am mistaken for American almost weekly – “Where are you from in the United States?”, “Actually, I’m from Canada,” “AAAAHHHHH CANADA QUE BIEN”! Of course this happens in Spanish, but I’m paraphrasing for you. Rachael with her perfect Spanish and blondish hair was asked if she was from Argentina multiple times! I guess maybe Cuba will be seeing more Americans soon and at least us Canadians will be once again mistaken for people from the correct continent.
Anyways, most of our trip was dedicated to wandering around the old city, aka Habana Vieja. I really got a sense of how terrible I am at directions – luckily I had Rachael to tell me which way to go to get to certain places. I’m good for recognizing landmarks, but not at piecing them together! I knew which way to go once we hit the water anyway…
We became professionals at taking a “collectivo” taxi to Centro for $1 USD equivalent and I loved riding in the old cars. I still can’t get over how those things still run, but it was really cool to see! We also picked up a friend – a lone Australian was wandering around and asked us if we spoke English. His friend has missed his flight and so he was on his own until his friend caught up and arrived, so we had Andrew come along with us for the next few days.
We had some pretty good pictures with statues.
Probably our favourite statue was the naked woman on a giant chicken with a big fork. Yeah… what?
Our first day actually we were walking around looking for a bathroom, but there were people lined up telling us we couldn’t pass here and couldn’t pass there. We figured out that Obama was arriving and parts of the city were being blocked off. We did actually make it through the “guards” using the bathroom excuse and sat down at a café for food and drinks because it started POURING. And we ended up having a pretty good view! There were Secret Service guys with regular tourist clothes on (it was their earpieces that gave them away) and the TVs in the restaurants were all showing that the Obamas were arriving on Air Force One. We ended up seeing a group of people all in suits when they arrived, I may have possibly seen Michelle’s dress? But Obama himself was just in the group of guys in suits, I’m not sure I actually saw him. Rachael says she did though! It was pretty neat, and I think they were luck it was rainy or else it would’ve been a lot crazier!
See that group of suits in the distance? Obama is in there!
Places being blocked off and night life closed down ended up being the story of the week – one day we actually couldn’t meet Andrew at our meeting spot because Obama was doing his big speech at the theatre next door and the whole few block radius was shut down. Remember, no cell phones or internet connections for us, so we didn’t meet up that day and had to reorganize on our casa landlines that night for the next day. But something extra cool that happened was that Rachael was interviewed by a Brazilian news company! In English though, but it was interesting to see how big world news this historic visit was!
Our friend Brian who previously worked at COJOWA and now works in Medellin (I first met him at the Teacher Binationals Sports weekend) was also in Cuba for the week visiting another friend who is a teacher in Cuba. Of course, this teacher is Canadian, because the school can’t hire American teachers in Cuba! He also has no internet at his house and can only use it when he’s at school. It is possible to get internet at your house, but it’s something ridiculous like $200/month. One could argue that it’s worth it, but man it would suck to pay that much. But continuing, we magically coincidentally met up with Brian and his friend Erika in a plaza one day and arranged to meet a few more times throughout the week. Here’s Brian, me, and Rachael at the “Birthplace of the Mojito”…
… and the “Birthplace of the Daquiri”!
They weren’t anything special, but hey we had to.
We went to the beach one day, but it was actually pretty chilly! Rachael was in no shape to go in the water and was absolutely bundled up with her scarf, sweater, and towel, it was kind of funny! Beautiful beach. A little chilly. But Erika and I still went in the water to say we did!
We couldn’t leave Cuba without dance-crazed Rachael going to a salsa club though, so we did end up going to a place that was pretty cool! I avoided the dancing like the plague, but it was fun to watch other people up there. I think I’m going to leave Latin American without learning fully how to dance, but it has never really been my thing. I’d get up and sing karaoke before dancing I think. Don’t hold me to that though please!
Overall, Cuba was pretty neat. I was just as you’ve probably heard – stepping back in time with the buildings and cars and different level of technology. The people were nice and I definitely understand a lot of Spanish cause I mostly knew exactly what Rachael was talking about! Speaking it is slightly more difficult, but I still think I’ve come a long way since I arrived in Armenia July 2013.
Katie En Kolombia 