Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Cuba, November 28 - December 5, 2009


I figured I would use my recent trip to Cuba with my girlfriend, Sara, as a good ice-breaker with this new blog of mine.

We left Toronto November 28 at around 6pm, landing 3 hours later in Varadero, Cuba. The first two days were spent lying on the beach - with my stomach covered due to a bar accident at a rugby party. We went snorkelling and I found a sea turtle skull buried in the sand. Much to my dismay, part of it broke off when I lifted it from the water, but what a find.

On Wednesday we rented a scooter just down the street from our hotel, La Puntarenas, which is the first hotel along the Varadero penninsula. The goal of renting the scooter was to make our way all the way down the coast until we got to the last resort hotel, called Barcelo Marina Palace, where my friend Tim was staying with his girlfriend. Telecommunications in Cuba, being a socialist country, are not very 'modern', if you will. We had no outgoing telephone access for 3 days, so our pervious messages for Tim never arrived. Once at the Barcelo, we proceeded to scour the beach and buffet areas in the hopes of finding a lanky white bald guy. As luck would have it, there were many lanky pasty white guys on the beach. Our efforts eventually proved fruitless, so we returned to the other end of the penninsula, roughly 30km down the road.

Upon returning to our hotel, we inquired about the local bus services from Varadero to Havana. We were not interested in the organized tours offered at the resorts. The hotel said the busline Viazul leaves at 830 am everyday. The bus actually left at 8am everyday, which we found out when we showed up and saw the bus pulling out - DAMMIT!
We bought our tickets anyway for the next day and walked back along Varadero beach and spent the rest of the day lounging on the beach with our friends, Guy and Steph, from Brampton, ON.

Friday morning, bright and early, we arrived at the station and boarded the bus destined for Havana. WOW, what a city! There are really two countries: Varadero(and the resort towns); And then there is Havana. Havana, although rather dirty and filled with people, is very safe. There are police officers on almost every corner. The crime rate is the lowest in central America. Upon stepping off the bus, were flustered by all the people surrounding us offering taxi tours, cheap cheap`` and all sorts of crap. We decided to walk along Avenue de le Missiones towards the centre of Old Havana. We were getting a little frustrated with our 'map', given to us by a tourist office in Varadero, which had some missing info, but whatever. We met a local Cuban couple, Maria and Eduardo, walking down the street and they offered to help us find our way through the city. Maria took me to the bank, while Eduardo showed Sara where to go on the map and drew us up an itinerary. After a couple Mojitos, we ended up buying a box of cigars from Eduardo. His commission on this sale: A food coupon for a bag of rice, beans, and diapers for his 9 month-old boy, Roberto. These people were so nice and we really enjoyed talking with them about life in Canada and life in Cuba.

There are two sides to living in a socialist country like Cuba. The country is 100% literate. 100%. Many western countries don`t even come close to that! Every child is guaranteed a high level of education and every person has access to a hospital bed. Life expectancy in Cuba runs around 76 years, I believe. The drawbacks, however, include an embargo on travel and trade. Neither Sara or I had any idea that Cubans were unable to travel abroad. In Canada, you can simply apply for a passport and travel wherever you want in the world. Cubans do not have this luxury. Eduardo told me that they will come to see Canada after the next revolution - which will be shortly after Fidel passes away, as the masses are not happy with the way Fidel`s brother, Raul Castro, is running the show. This made us think of the strange hotel employee we saw earlier in the week who was on the roof all day long scoping out the horizon along the ocean. His job is to look for Cubans trying to flee the island and get to miami - about 90 miles north.

Cuba, was an amazing trip. Even though we were on the resort, we made sure that we got at least a little taste of the real Cuba. I would highly recommend people seeing Cuba. It will be interesting to see how the next 20 years in that country`s history turn out.

Marc out.