Hi Everybody I got back yesterday, but as always I'm well behind on the blog so there will be this entry (about my time in Cuba) and then one about coming home so stay tuned.
I wrote this mainly in Cuba but i just couldn't find the time to write it up at an internet cafe so here it is now...

Havana is an amazing city.
I generally don't enjoy being in Cuba.

This is my contradiction about visiting Cuba but it was one of many that I found.

Why don't I enjoy being in Cuba? Well I have to say it's not really Cuba's fault; well actually it is and it isn't.

About three and a half months into the trip I started to become a bit weary of some aspects of travelling. The endless unpacking and repacking of my backpack being one. I still had a lot of enthusiasm for travelling and the rest of our trip but I think I started to turn against 'difficult' destinations. By this I mean the places where it's hard to get stuff done. I'd read a couple of books befvore coming away on this trip about Cuba (notably Isadora Tattlin's worthwhile 'Cuba Diaries') and had the impression that Cuba was going to be a difficult destination. After 4 and a half months of travelling we were probably not in the best frame of mind to deal with any more 'difficult'. You may think I'm complaining but moving around every two or three days starts to take its toll. I think anything longer than three months of active travelling (as opposed to working or volunteering in one place) is an extremely long time and I doubt I will undertake such a journey again. This in some ways was the mindset I was in. I think in a lot of ways this influenced the type of travel we did while we were in Cuba.

"It's not easy"

From the first moment in Cuba I knew things wouldn't be easy. Cuba has a double economy (meaning locals pay in Pesos and Tourists pay vastly inflated prices in Cuban Convertible Pesos or CUCs). You cannot buy CUCs outside Cuba. This means everyone enters the country with effectively no money. It might be alright if you had the comfort of being on a package tour with someone friendly to meet you and the knowledge that you'd got there somewhere to stay. Still though, i'd read that there was an ATM at the airport so everything would be just fine. The ATM at the airport was broken. Ah Cuba!

For the first two days we slept. At one point I calculated that I had been asleep for over 18 hours in the past twenty-four. All we managed to do in the first couple of days was move from a crappy hotel we had to book into to a Casa Particulare. There are no hostels in Cuba, the only budget hotel-type accommodation are hotels for Cubans so most people on a budget stay in Casas. Basically you are staying in someone's spare room in their. Usually you have a separate bathroom but not always. The first family we stayed with were my favourites. the son was an english teacher (of 12 year olds) who spoke well but whose comprehension at listening to Tuely and I speak was fairly awful. One night he asked where we were going and I said "The Tropicana nightclub" whcih is an extremely famous nightclub in Havana. he looked at me blankly. So I said "Tropicana". He looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. Then I said it slowly and the mother exclaimed "Ah! Tropicana!".

Impressions

I must say that Havana has the most impressive architecture of any city I've ever been to. I knew that it was meant to be an impressive colonial city but it didn't prepare me for the reality. I have never really been that into architecture but I now think that it is an important factor in how much I like a city. Even if a city feels busy and alive if the architecture is undistinguished, ugly and anonymous then I find it hard to feel that the city has that much character. Havana is great in two ways for its architecture. Firstly it has the grand, awe-inspiring stuff. The buildings that no matter how many times you walk past them you still can't help but look up and think 'wow'. The Gran Teatro I think might be one of the most intricate and beautiful building I've ever seen. It has so much detail running along the top and it has figures and angels all over it.

Click here to see a picture of it.

My other favourite building in Havana is the Capitolio. Until 1959 the USA had a lot of influence in Cuba and in 1929 the Government finished their Capital building which is very similar to the Capitol building in Washington D.C. You can go pretty much anywhere inisde the building as it is now used only for its libraries and does not serve any government function (as the revolutionary government tried to distance itself from all the previous governments). Inside the detail is so intricate and beautiful that I won't even describe it. I will however, post some pictures in the next few days.

We were very slow in just about everything we did in Cuba in our two and a half weeks we visited only three places (but Havana twice) and we were not as active as we had been before. Many a long hour was spent with a mojito (which is a most excellent cocktail that is common in Cuba) at the Hotel Inglaterra's pavement cafe watching the goings on along the Prado.

The revolution

The Hotel Inglaterra like many of the grand hotels of central Havana is a reminder of Havana's glitzy past. In the lobby of the Hotel Sevilla you can see pictures of famous poeple like Al Capone who used to jaunt down here to this playground of the rich and famous in the 30's, 40's and 50's. Outside on the streets at least a quarter of the cars are still the classic 50's american ones. Tuely descrbed it as a real 'riches-to-rags' story. Being in Cuba you obviously get a lot of the story of the 1959 revolution (which brought Castro to power).. As well as the monuments and graffiti there are many museums to visit.

It's hard to know what to think about it really. I feel that in 60's and 70's the revolution was a very good thing for the Cuban people. In the 50's while some were very rich (there was a prosperous middle-class as wealthy as in european countries) others were desperately poor. (In the Sevilla they also have a photo of ordinary people smashing up the casino that used to be attached to the Hotel during the revolution). Healthcare and education was put first and the populace did well. However, I feel now the revolution is holding Cuba back (whether that's Castro's fault or the fault of the USA because of it's embargo is hotly debated). There is no reason why normal everyday products should be hard to find in a modern society. Even paying in dollars, things are substandard. In one shope a packet of biscuits were about 50% more than I would pay back home and they were out-of-date! Some things are just so needlessly crappy. Obviously there are more important things than biscuits. The people have to struggle to get by, with some nearly starving in the early nineties when the Soviets withdrew their aid.

The double economy is clearly an important part of all this. As I mentioned earlier Cuban people use pesos and tourists are meant to use CUCs. Unfortunately for Cubans a lot of stuff in only sold in CUCs (like those out of date biscuits I mentioned earlier). I think really this distances you a lot from people. You are seen as something different and I felt a big barrier between us and Cuban people we met. Sometimes I felt resented and oftentimes you feel penalised by the Government. One example of the many ways that the Cuban government tries to rinse every penny out of you occurred at the airport. we bought a couple of bottles of Rum at the usual Government standard price and then noticed that through the gate there was a duty-free shop. 'Oh dear' we thought, thinking obviously it would be considerably cheaper. Oh no, not in cuba. We went to look in the Duty free shop and all the prices were more than 50% higher than the standard (government set) price, including at the shop on the first side of the gate. Unbelievable! Also despite the distance and resentment I think many locals have for foreigners (including the many who will try and overcharge) sometimes you feel a completely different current. when we were queueing for Peso pizza with Cubans one Cuban man who was walking along and despite our pleas pushed to the front of the queue to get a pizza and bring it back to us (at the back of the line). I couldn't begin to comprehend that.

I can't really pretend to understand Cuba. It is remarkably complex.

Richard, 18th January, Home

p.s. I'll do another entry in a few days on coming home and how I feel about the trip in general so check back soon.

p.p.s. As always your comments and emails are always appreciated.

buddhamarxandme@yahoo.co.uk