The strangeness of Havana

Before I went to Havana, the capital of Cuba, a good friend of mine said to me, 'It's not what you expect'. This was a remark I didn't really consider....until I'd experienced it.

There are a few things I learnt very quickly - don't go without a guidebook, it's probably not the best place to travel alone, don't go if you can't speak any Spanish and don't expect to be welcomed by the general populations. I think most Cubans make the assumption that if you're white, you are an American and therefore you are viewed with some disdain. A lot of the time I felt like they would happily take my money, but I didn't exactly feel like a wanted visitor to their country. I make it sound really bad - let me explain.

Firstly, Cuba has no hostels - not so great when you're travelling on your own. The options for accommodation are resort style hotels, which are expensive and crawling with American tourists, or casas. Casas are Cuban family homes where the owners rent out rooms. These are government regulated and heavily taxed. Staying in a casa is a cheaper and a much more authentic accommodation experience in Cuba. I stayed in a beautiful house with a lovely couple. They spoke almost no English, so my Spanish was really tested and we didn't exactly sit around swapping our life stories - unfortunate as I'm sure they would've had some interesting experiences to share. When I first arrived, there was no-one else staying there, I had no map and they had given me directions to Plaza la Revolucion and the tourist bus in Spanish. But being the savvy traveller that I am, I managed to get there ok. My casa was located in Havana Vedado, which is well out of the main touristy area of Old Havana - a good place to go out at night apparently, but definitely not frequented by many Westerners. Walking around by myself, I got a lot of attention - especially from men. I got stared at, hissed at, kissed at and whistled at. This is something I have experienced all over South America, being a blond, white woman travelling on my own, but I found it to be by far the worst in Cuba, which was something I didn't expect.

I quickly discovered however, that Havana, although a tourist destination, does not cater particularly well for tourists. They have one of those hop-on-hop-off tour buses that goes around town on three different routes, however the stop where I boarded the bus had no route information and when I asked on the bus, they said they had no printed route maps. So I was wondering how I was going to work out where I could go and when, because I didn't have a guide book either. When I got to Havana Veija (Old Havana), it took me quite some time to find somewhere I could get a map from, and I had to pay for it.

Another thing about Havana is that it is almost impossible to self-cater, or to eat very healthily. In fact, none of the food I ate was what I expected and it was a bit of a guessing game. The supermarkets are basically ration stores - there are queues outside, everything inside is behind counters, making it a bit difficult if you aren't a fluent Spanish speaker and in many of them, you can only use the local currency. Which brings me to the dual economy of Cuba - there is one currency for tourists and one for nationals, which makes things a bit confusing and often overpriced. Cuba was by far the most expensive place I visited on my trip - even pricier than Brazil. But back to the food. I spent most of the time eating pizza at the takeaway store down the road from my casa, or eating eclairs form the bakery (mostly because they were only 25c each). The one time I did go out for dinner, and ordered roast pork, what I got was fatty, chewy pieces of oily meat on a plate with a piece of lettuce. Truly disgusting. I did however have an amazing dinner at my casa one night - lobster, rice and beans, sweet potato and salad. I also had a fantatic bowl of pasta for lunch one day, which cost CUC$1.50, compared to the CUC$4.50 for the greasy pork - see what I mean about it being a guessing game.

Now it sounds like it was all bad. It really wasn't - checking out Plaza la Revolucion and the Revolutionary museum was pretty fascinating (if a bit one sided), walking around Havana Veija was cool - there are some beautiful old buildings, however the minute you got out of the central tourist area, things started to get very run down, very quickly. Staying in a casa was a real experience, checking out an Afro-Cuban all women musical show one night (surprisingly not touristy at all) and I spent one day on some gorgeous beaches just outside of Havana. I also visited the famous Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas and watched cigars being rolled.....the drunk Havana Club rum and smoked on the roof top patio of my casa (when in Rome...).

So my conclusion is that there are highlights for sure. And I have spoken to a few people who stayed in Cuba for longer than I did, and ventured outside of Havana and their consensus seemed to be that it's the kind of place that takes a little while to warm up to, but it gets better. It certainly wasn't like what I thought it would be and I probably got the biggest culture shock of my entire trip here, which I definitely wasn't anticipating - although I'm not exactly sure what my expectations were. It certainly is an example of Communism really not working, and causing major problems in the country. But it definitely opened my eyes a bit and I learnt a few interesting things - like that Cuban people can't sell their houses, they can only swap them with someone with a house of a similar size. Weird.

I am undecided on my final thoughts on Cuba. On the whole, I found it to be a bit frustrating and confusing, but perhaps if I had stayed longer, or got outside of the capital, or wasn't on my own, I would've enjoyed it more. Would I go back? I'm going to leave that as a maybe.....but by the end of my time in Havana, I was definitely glad to be at the airport and on my way to my next, and final, destination - Mexico....