Traveling to Cuba

[Lorenzoid]

I did read an article (I think it was on here) about a guy that went out partying with locals. After he left Cuba, one of the girls at the party stated (confessed?) she had sex as a prostitute with him. She was 15. When he returned to Cuba on another visit, he was arrested and thrown in prison. Whether it was legit or not is another question, but I don't know if the US government is keen on helping people get out of prison in Cuba.

There's another article of a guy that flew his drone in the wrong area? He got out of jail after some time, weighing 40 pounds lighter. I need to lose weight, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it that way.

There are things that are not a good idea for a visitor to do in ANY country. Partying with unknown locals is always risky. Foreigners flying drones is illegal in lots of places. I believe Mexico is one. If you just stick to tourist stuff--seeing the sights, eating in restaurants, etc.--like a good tourist is supposed to, and as thousands of Americans do every year, I can't imagine there is any risk of getting imprisoned or fleeced.

Now, I am reading that it is tough to find good food in Cuba.

I'm a bit of a foodie, and at the tourist restaurants it was easy to sample good versions of local dishes. Once, on a lark, I went to a "Polynesian"-themed restaurant that looked straight out of the 1960s--these were indeed a trend here in the US--and it completely met my expectations of what food was like in such places in the 1960s. I also tried some street food, and if you want to sample the sorriest-looking sandwich of the type that we in the US call a "Cuban sandwich"--and for mere pennies--that's how to do it. But again, it was about the experience, not the food. I have read that there are actually decent places to eat in Havana now, but I have no firsthand knowledge. For me, it was more about the adventure than the food itself.

 

[Snoweman]

For me, it was more about the adventure than the food itself.

That's how I would feel, but I'm not sure about my wife and the other couple that might travel with us.

 

[Wookie]

Here's a challenge I am perceiving from reading blogs: Food.

A close childhood friend married a Cuban girl. I visited him for a while when I was going to be in his wedding. We would go over to her parents house for dinner, where her abuela would cook for us. The family took it as routine, but my buddy and I would chow down on her delicious cooking and let her know how great it was. She loved us for that reason alone.

Now, I am reading that it is tough to find good food in Cuba. None of us speak Spanish worth a damn, so I think it would be difficult to eat at a local's house. Thoughts?

You will find all of the good food you want.

I don't know about in a private home, but there are restaurants specifically for tourists. Locals can't (aren't allowed to) eat there. If you want local food, you specifically have to ask for it. See what Lorenzo wrote above about "local pesos" versus "tourist pesos". Also, if you do go to a tourist restaurant, your driver will not be allowed to eat with you. But he has a place to eat with the other drivers. It's a great example of the class system there. You will see locals eating in those restaurants, rest assured, they aren't drivers or laborers or the little people. They are scientists and engineers and doctors or party members.

You don't need Spanish. As with all places, speaking the locals language lights up their faces and makes them happy that you tried, even though you aren't very understandable (Cuban Spanish and Mexican Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish are very different than Castilian Spanish, my translator was Puerto Rican, Cubans hate Puerto Ricans, and never hesitate to show their contempt), but you will have no problems making your needs and wishes known, after all, the nearest foreign country to Cuba is Bahamas, USA, and the majority of tourists over the past 60 years are Engilish speaking Canadians.

 

[ACHiPo]

A buddy of mine just got back from a 2 week photography workshop in Cuba. He and his adult son had a fabulous time. Yes there is a lot of poverty, and Havana is pretty crazy, but he really enjoyed the people (his son is fluent in Spanish which helped a lot). The music is non-stop, and very pleasant.

It's on my bucket list. Please post your findings if you decide to go.

 

[Gene]

I posted here before years ago about our travels to Cuba, but will mention some of it again here.
My wife and I first flew to Varadero from Toronto in 1993 while we lived near Syracuse working as photojournalists. We told the US we were going there as journalists, and we told the Cuban Interest Section we were going as tourists. Both were accurate. We stayed mostly in Varadero but also rented a car and drove to Havana for a couple of days and ended up eating with a family in their house that lived close to the Hemingway Marina. They had health issues and kept a pig in their bathroom to eat later but had to hide it from their neighbors. We didn't scuba dive but we did snorkel often at Varadero. Cuba was going through a rough time then due to the collapse of the USSR.
My wife went back a year later on assignment with the newspaper following a group called Pastors for Peace. I didn't go with her that trip as she traveled with another female reporter. They ended up meeting with Fidel one night, and she described it being tightly organized as it was a journalist trip.
In 2019 during Easter weekend, we flew down to Havana from Orlando with our adult children and rented a nice B and B apartment in old Havana. It was a relaxed four-day trip where we just took our time and saw what we wanted each day. We didn't have any issues, and we exchanged some dollars for local money twice. Unlike our trip there in 1993 where the US dollar was wanted everywhere, in 2019, local currency was more the norm, and there's two, one for foreigners and one for locals.
I grew up living overseas a lot as a business kid dependent in Europe and Asia, and I also lived in Europe while in the Air Force. To date, Cuba is the extent of my time visiting a communist country. We found the people to be very friendly, but of course we felt bad about their government situation. By the way, while there in 1993, we became aware of receiving counterfeit 20.00 US bills sometimes as change. You could just tell by looking at the bill, fuzzy off color ink, etc. It was the only time to my knowledge I was passed bogus money, and I told my wife we weren't bringing it back to the US. It took awhile, but a hotel bartender took pity on me one night and took it as payment. It seemed to us that one of Fidel's tricks was printing counterfeit US dough.

 

[mcohen1021]

I tried looking for flights on Kayak, but it said it was prohibited from displaying the search results. Delta will give me prices, but Kayak will not? Weird.

I did read an article (I think it was on here) about a guy that went out partying with locals. After he left Cuba, one of the girls at the party stated (confessed?) she had sex as a prostitute with him. She was 15. When he returned to Cuba on another visit, he was arrested and thrown in prison. Whether it was legit or not is another question, but I don't know if the US government is keen on helping people get out of prison in Cuba.

There's another article of a guy that flew his drone in the wrong area? He got out of jail after some time, weighing 40 pounds lighter. I need to lose weight, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it that way.

Been to Cuba twice. Once before the ”soft privatization“ in 2012 and the back in 2015. The changes were huge just in 3 years time, mostly in positive way. Since 2013 over 250.000 jobs were cut in the public communist sector and people were allowed to open small one man businesses. That changed a lot within local people, they became more open.

Sad but true, prostitutes in Cuba make more money than doctors.

We would go over to her parents house for dinner, where her abuela would cook for us. The family took it as routine, but my buddy and I would chow down on her delicious cooking and let her know how great it was.

I sure miss my abuela and moms cooking... I never thought in my life I would have to pay for Cuban food

Now, I am reading that it is tough to find good food in Cuba. None of us speak Spanish worth a damn, so I think it would be difficult to eat at a local's house. Thoughts?

Wat do you expect them to cook, shoe leather? They are lucky to have a glass of sugar water for breakfast - when they have the sugar... It's a country where pets end up missing because they end up on someones dinner plate... I hear about it 1st hand from my cousin who lives west of Havana.


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One thing to keep in mind if you decide to go - there is still a chivato waiting around every corner... My sister gave went on a humanitarian mission a while back... Said there was NOONE around... She gave a little girl a $5 bill and a guy come running from behind a building screaming that that was not allowed.

My sister is lucky to have made it out of there, especially with my family's anti revolutionary activities in the late 1950s.

 

[Snoweman]

Wat do you expect them to cook, shoe leather? They are lucky to have a glass of sugar water for breakfast - when they have the sugar... It's a country where pets end up missing because they end up on someones dinner plate... I hear about it 1st hand from my cousin who lives west of Havana.

All the more reason to go to support the Cuban people.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

So I was in Cuba at the beginning of March, spending 2 weeks there. We drove up from Seattle to Vancouver, and flew directly to Varadero which had the most amazing beaches my wife and I have seen anywhere (and my wife was all over SEA when she lived in Khabarovsk).

First 4 days: stayed at Melia Varadero (a Spanish hotel chain) all inclusive. Amazing beach. Food was pretty bad in general. Through trial and error, I found items that tasted good. These were generally things cooked in front of you. Anything brought out and kept heated was horrible. I did one shore dive at Playa Coral that was a nice, long shallow dive.

Next 3 nights: Trinidad. For me as a history buff, I enjoyed this more than my wife. I'd recommend 2 nights here, as we went to supposedly the best beach on the south side of Cuba, and it was nothing compared to Varadero. We arranged for a driver through the hotel to drive us there for ($160) and another to take us to Havana at the end of our stay ($120). On the way to Trinidad, we stopped for a couple hours at Cienfuegos, which my wife liked more than Trinidad. We were only in the core central area. Though in retrospect, I wish we spent a night there. Our first night there, we happened to be on this rooftop restaurant where some famous Cuban singer was dining. Delicious food.

We spent 3 nights in Havana, and we couldn't wait to get out of there at the end, as the contrast of dilapidated, crumbling buildings next to other ones was too much. You could see that prior to the revolution, Havana must have been one of the most beautiful cities in the world. While there is restoration of some buildings going on, the decay of others is happening at a faster rate. Next to the capitol are a number of abandoned buildings, though some people were living there without windows, and it simply wasn't safe. It was shocking to see the least, as while I've seen rather extreme poverty in Africa, I have never seen anything like that in a capital city. A couple of days is all you need and I do recommend going here. We stayed in two AirBnBs here as we were planning on spending 5 nights. The second one was quite nice inside, near the capitol. We made up an excuse that we had to leave, but we didn't cancel and try to get money back. Didn't think that was fair to the people as practically everyone struggles. and they had obviously invested a lot of money into the accomodation we rented and it was immaculate.

We then spent 4 nights at 2 different Malia all inclusives, one more modern, one more island style. Food the same in both. Nice beaches though. We did a day trip out to Playa Blanco, and man it was hot with the sun reflecting on the whitest sand I've ever seen. I did a boat dive near Varadero, first dive was okay, second dive was awesome, better than Southwater Caye or Glover's Reef in Belize (more fish, much healthier reef, but no sharks).

Food: when eating out at independent restaurants, the food was generally good, often delicious. The worst food was at the all inclusives as I said before.

People: no anti-American sentiment in general. People were glad we were there as they know we jump through hoops to be there.

I will say that the embargo is pointless and evil. It just makes people suffer needlessly.

We did hire a driver who had been a civil engineer (hydrology). He was educated in the Soviet Union, retired, and drove a taxi/acted as a guide for extra income. He certainly outearned his wife who was a doctor who earned 5000 Cuban Pesos per month. That's less than $500 in the official exchange rate. Exchange money on the street, and you are talking about $300/month. Restaurant prices are not that much less than what you see in the US. Not exactly affordable for Cubans. At least not the places we went. It took a bit to get him to open up about the real situation. He didn't speak much English, so he and my wife spoke and she translated between us.

I saw horse drawn carts on the main interstate of the country. Very few cars. People struggle to get enough food to eat. Much of the previously fertile land has been poisoned, so you don't see people growing their own crops like is so common in other countries.

If you want more information or even to chat on the phone about our experiences, DM me. I highly recommend Cuba as it is an eye opening experience, the people are in general wonderful, and many of the beaches are first rate.

Oh, and as I'm a complete wuss when it comes to water temperature, I loved just being in the water.

 

[Lorenzoid]

All the more reason to go to support the Cuban people.

At my own risk of going into political territory and having my post deleted (though it IS your thread), I'll say it's not always clear how much of the money a tourist spends in Cuba goes to the Cuban people and how much to the government. The US says you can visit on one of those people-to-people tours, which supposedly supports the people and not the government. I don't know how those work, but for a normal tourist patronizing what are by all appearances normal restaurants and hotels, the government gets their share. What are the employees earning? If I understand correctly, some private enterprise can be found nowadays, but it is still not the norm.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

At my own risk of going into political territory and having my post deleted (though it IS your thread), I'll say it's not always clear how much of the money a tourist spends in Cuba goes to the Cuban people and how much to the government. The US says you can visit on one of those people-to-people tours, which supposedly supports the people and not the government. I don't know how those work, but for a normal tourist patronizing what are by all appearances normal restaurants and hotels, the government gets their share. What are the employees earning? If I understand correctly, some private enterprise can be found nowadays, but it is still not the norm.

In general, US residents want to take lots of 20s, 10s, 5s, and A LOT of 1s. No need to exchange more than $20 US to local currency to go into museums. Couldn't visit the capitol as that requires a credit card, cash not accepted.

I doubt the taxis we hired gave the government a cut. Cash as it never happened. Same with restaurants. Probably the only time that taxes were paid were from the hotels. So I'd gather that most of the money we spent in cash went to the people.