Cuba is broken. Cuba doesn’t work.
We expected this summer’s choice for a holiday to be something of an adventure but were surprised by the degree of difficulties and challenges presented to us everyday.
Air France put us on the wrong footing when we checked in and were told they would not let us in to Cuba without a health declaration, proving that we had been vaccinated against Covid 19. I was certain I had done this correctly on line but had just a QR code printed on a document to prove so. The next 15 hours passed without being able to relax, until the Cubans scanned the code and let us with a smile.
Our first hotel, or hostal, pre-booked in the ‘historic centre’ of Havana turned out to be in the middle of a ghetto, surrounded by filth, squalor, and destruction. Our tiny room had no windows, just shutters, and the bathroom harboured cockroaches. Other people there were kind enough to advise us not to walk on the pavements but on the roads, as the balconies overhead were likely to fall on us. Glancing up and down the street we could clearly see that the advice was valid.
The Cuban music was good wherever we went – we heard Guantanamera and danced the salsa every day. (Do you know Guantanamera translates roughly as ‘woman from Guantanamo’ – now better known for the US naval base and prison.) We also loved the 1950s American cars and a tour around town in one was a real joy.
Our hotel also failed to provide us with a link to the outside world as their internet service was not working. Their solution was to tell us to go an office run by the national internet provider, Etecsa, buy a card with two long rows of numbers on it, walk to a particular square with park benches and after looking for a wi-fi hot spot sign, enter the numbers and get access. The service was weak but worked just long enough for us to plan our journey ahead. We were beginning to doubt that our preference for just making up our minds what to do and where to go in Cuba was the right one.
Dealing with money also proved to be even more frustratingly complicated. We quite enjoy negotiating prices for things, but in Cuba we quickly learned that you also have to negotiate how you are going to pay. Different service providers form taxis to guides, and different businesses from restaurants to hotels, all have different rules. Our bank cards, both in Euros and Sterling, rarely worked and when they did we were charged in US dollars. Someone, somewhere is skimming off dollars and sending them out of the country. With the US embargo on all things Cuban in place we had to conclude that it was the Cuban government itself, or mafia with the government’s support, behind this scam. (Now I’m going to have a sack pulled over my head, bundled into the back of a car, smuggled back to Cuba, imprisoned for life, and never let out ! )
We were also asked to pay in US dollars, Canadian dollars, or in Euros, but rarely in Cuban Pesos. We took quite a few Euros with us, thankfully, and on the second day there the government changed the rate of exchange. It moved dramatically in our favour from 1 Euro for 25 Pesos, to 1 Euro for 120 Pesos. The money changers in the street were already offering this amount so the government was forced to act. So we changed all our Euros to Pesos before they changed their mind. By the time we left the street rate had gone up to 130 Pesos.
Access to our bank accounts was blocked for ‘security reasons’ so we couldn’t even try to manage things from back home. We juggled as much as we could to get to the end of the holiday, but felt we had completely lost control of our finances.
After a few more challenging days staying in a ‘casa particular’, in an old colonial town called Trinidad where time has stopped still, we gave up the daily struggle and booked an all-inclusive resort on the north coast; something we had always wanted to avoid. The beach, boat trip, snorkelling and cave diving, as well as the Pina Coladas, were all great but the food had us running for the hills.
Restaurants outside of the hotel served quite reasonable meals but it was only on rare occasions that all the menu items were available.
The daily struggle with money and the internet exhausted us.
Soo too did the electricity cuts. In the middle of the day or in the middle of the night, the country cannot afford to keep its power stations going. The infrastructure is crumbling everywhere. Houses, offices, factories and roads are all falling apart, and there appears to be no money to repair them.
The world no longer buys much sugar, rum or cigars from them. Tourism accounted for 40% of its GDP before Covid and it has recovered only about half that level so far. Many hotels declared themselves full to us but in fact still had half their capacity closed.
What a shame, a great shame, that the largest Caribbean island, luxuriously verdant, with fabulous beaches, is falling apart.
‘La Revolucion’, still glorified on posters wherever we went, removed greedy colonialists from Cuba, but has taken them in a downward spiral ever since. Their form of socialism / communism / dictatorship simply hasn’t worked.
‘Patria o Muerte’ (Country or death) declared Fidel Castro in 1960.
Perhaps it should now read ‘El país está muerto’ (The country is dead).