Walking up Lamparilla Street camera in hand all I saw were grim staring faces. Spanish was hurled across the street, but my ignorance meant I had no idea what they were saying. I know I felt intimidated though. By day locals just sat staring from their doorsteps, kids stood by the pizza stands rubbing their bellies and asking for money and at night groups loitered on the streets with music blasting from their houses.
Shrivelled hands stretched out for money, they belonged to old women in ragged clothes. Her look was so childlike — pulled up socks, dolly shoes and sweet clips in her hair.
The more business-minded oldies had gotten hold of a huge fat cigar, colourful trinkets and made themselves up to charge tourists like me money for posing. Interesting video from the Washington Post about the current situation in Cuba.
The happy photos you see of bands playing never relay the group following up with a sweep of the bar guilt-tripping tourists into buying their CDs or adding a CUC or three to their begging tray. Too often these bands would also have a vagrant or two hanging on and dancing around them to then demand money from tourists too. In one particular incident I was watching a Cuban woman dancing what appeared to be a mixture of line dancing and crunk.
A tourist came along and she took his hand to dance with him for what could have been no more than 30 seconds. His friends laughed, took a photo on his super fancy DSLR and then he pulled away to carry on with his day, without giving her any money. She shouted after him in the middle of the square and he just shrugged back at her. Like the cars that are buzzing around, on the surface Cuba looks beautiful, but the most beautiful things rarely are underneath.
After that, travelling six hours through the country to Trinidad and then back through Cienfuegos further opened my eyes to what Cuba is really like. The people, the houses and the essence of Cuba seemed desperate to me. Redevelopment is focused on the tourist areas — when Old Havana is revamped it will be stunning, but to the detriment of those living in the poorer residential areas. Cuba has two currencies — one for the locals and one for the tourists.
Tourists use Cuban pesos, while locals use Convertible pesos. This gives the government more control on who is spending what and where. Unfortunately it also means that state workers like doctors and teachers are on considerably less than entrepreneurs who deal with tourists.
Getting their hands on the tourist money is key. Entrepreneurial workers know you have the money and there are only a few ways they can get it. Cuba is a wonderful place for a holiday, but those smiles come at a cost.
For more practical Cuba travel information , check out this handy guide from Surfing the Planet. Sign me up for the newsletter! Also the Art Gallery in Havana? I have also spent time in Research Hospitals as my background is in Epidemiology. I understand these are not really travel related but a comment about if you go there and get sick or injured you will have excellent medical care.
Many tourists find this both surprising and reassuring. That's great to hear Lori. Sadly I didn't make it to those places. I know there is a lot more to Cuba than I saw in my visits, but all of this is my personal opinion that I wanted to share.
The usual tourist information on Cuba is very superficial and I found what I saw didn't match up. I hope you're having a great time studying. It must be an interesting and wonderful place to spend a few months. Having spent nearly a month in Cuba in , where we had a fantastic time, I'd suggest that people planning to visit Cuba would be well served to learn a little about the history and culture of the country beforehand.
Bartering is common. We stop for lunch in Moa at a paladar a private home that sells meals. The house, simple in the extreme and spotless, would make an Amish farmhouse look like TrumpPalace. As we wend our way toward the Humboldt rain forest, Perera spots a rare plant by the road, Dracaena cubensis , which has adapted to a type of rocky, nutrient-poor soil called serpentine that contains levels of magnesium toxic to other plants.
This shrub-like plant is so specialized to serpentine formations, Perera says, that botanists have not been able to grow it in the botanical garden in Havana. Leaving the road and plunging into the park in the SUV, we ford a couple of streams and negotiate a dirt path.
Some parts of the park are so remote that they have not been systematically explored. And the logical place to start was in the eastern forests that became Humboldt. The park also provides habitat to many birds, including the bee hummingbird. Most intriguing, if the ivorybilled woodpecker still exists anywhere on earth, it is likely to be atop the plateau deep inside the park.
The large black-and white bird has near mystical status among ornithologists, not least because it may have gone extinct despite feverish efforts to save it. The last confirmed sighting of the ivorybilled woodpecker in the United States was five decades ago. But scientists working in eastern Cuba came upon a pair of the birds in , and the government moved to protect the area, setting aside forest that would become the core of HumboldtPark, named after Alexander von Humboldt, who explored the island years ago.
Since Castro seized power in , forest cutting has slowed markedly, according to Perera; forest cover has increased from about 14 percent in to about 21 percent today. The headquarters for this section of HumboldtPark sits above TacoBay. A couple of rangers take us for a spin around the lagoon in search of a manatee family that divides its time between TacoBay and another lagoon nearby.
In a dinghy, powered by an impossibly small outboard, we put-put across the placid waters, stopping first in a channel that becomes a tunnel as it passes under mangrove boughs—one of the few places in the world where pine forests meet mangrove swamps, Perera says.
We encounter no manatees, but TacoBay still looks like a wonderful ecotourism spot. Though the ranger station has a small bunkhouse for visitors, little seems to have been done to enhance such sites. Perera, speaking carefully all Cubans speak carefully when touching on official matters , says the government has trouble delegating the authority for the planning and design of ecotourist ventures, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to get started.
Tact is especially valuable in a country where a verbal misstep can land one in jail. In its latest human rights assessment, Amnesty International reported in that a significant but unspecified number of Cubans were imprisoned for their personal beliefs and political dissidence.
This past March, the Castro regime reportedly arrested at least 75 Cubans for alleged dissident activity—the largest roundup of political activists in decades—after a number of them had met with a member of the U. Islands showcase the capricious paths of evolution: their very isolation acts as a filter, minimizing somewhat the coming and going of species that make terrestrial ecosystems so diverse and complex.
From an ecological point of view, Cuba is strategically situated between North and South America, with flora and fauna drawn from both continents. Arrayed around the main island are more than 4, other islands; some, like the Isle of Youth square miles , are quite large. Its mammals have a particularly South American accent, for instance.
Most experts argue that South American primates, sloths and other animals reached Cuba on rafts of floating vegetation. He theorizes that a ridge, a part of which is now 6, feet below the Caribbean between the West Indies and South America, rose above the ocean surface 33 million years ago.
Evidence for this, he says, is the presence of ferric oxide, or rust, in the Aves Ridge seabed; the compound is formed when iron-containing soil is exposed to atmospheric oxygen. Perhaps not surprisingly, the one mammal that flourishes on Cuba and many other islands has wings: bats. Plants that can float or have seeds that float also have become established. Cuba has a great diversity of palm trees—roughly species. Reptiles, like the iguana and the crocodile, are well represented, too, perhaps because their capacity to estivate, or wait out the summer heat in a torpor akin to hibernation, suits them to ocean voyages on tree trunks and the like.
Cuba ranks tenth in the world in reptile diversity, with some 91 different species. Geology continues to shape island life. An abundance of limestone-rich terrain is heaven for mollusks, particularly snails, which fashion their shells out of the mineral.
In western Cuba, erosion has created steep-sided limestone hills called mogotes. Asnail originating on a particular mogote is essentially limited to it, so snail evolution follows its own course on virtually each mogote, producing a great number of species. Alas, the polymita is critically endangered because people collect its shell; the Cuban kite, a bird that feeds on the mollusk, is also disappearing. Not to mention a pound rodent, amblyrhiza , that once graced, if that is the word, Anguilla.
There is a small insect-eating bat Natalus lepidus with an eight-inch wingspan as well as a gigantic, fish-eating bat Noctilio leporinus with a two-foot wingspan. Why dwarfs and giants flourish on islands has long provoked debate among biogeographers. Bristol Foster of the University of British Columbia theorized in the early s that reduced predation and competition on islands allow species to expand into unusual ecological niches. There can be powerful advantages to the extremes, researchers say.
Gigantism may offer otherwise diminutive mammals like rodents access to new food sources. Moreover, a key element of island biology is that, just as living things are suited to the extremes, they are especially susceptible to being wiped out when the environment to which they are so finely adapted is disrupted. So says E.
Wilson, the Harvard biologist and pioneer of island biogeography, who points out that most of the major extinctions caused by humans have occurred on islands. Human beings settled Cuba about 5, years ago, many thousands of years after they established themselves on the continents. The giant sloth, for instance, vanished from South America roughly 11, years ago, presumably after being hunted to extinction, but held on another 5, years in Cuba. You will need local currency to pay for the taxi to Havana.
The cost of the taxi to the Havana city center is about the equivalent of 25 tp 30 U. Make sure to have small change for tips or to purchase bottled water or some local transportation. Many of these are rated 4 and 5 stars. These ratings do not adhere to any internationally recognized rating system. A typical 5-star government hotel in Havana is the equivalent of a 2 or 3-star hotel in any other Caribbean nation. The prices, however, are very much in keeping with a standard 5-star hotel.
This results in an exceeding poor value for your money. For the past several years, the government has allowed private citizens to engage in certain private-sector pursuits including renting out rooms in their homes to visitors. They are similar to Airbnb, homestays or your typical Bed and Breakfast establishments.
In other words, a Cuban guesthouse. On average these casas go for much less than a regular hotel room would cost. Many are modest but clean and well located for seeing the sights. Most offer a decent breakfast and any other meal for an additional, affordable cost.
Besides the price and quality, the advantage of staying in a casa is that you are interacting with a Cuban family and giving your money directly to them. Whereas a few years ago capitalist pursuits like selling peanuts on the street was a crime punishable by a fine and possible jail time, today Cuban restaurant culture is experiencing a renaissance. Demand is outstripping supply, however. To dine in some of the best paladares you need to reserve weeks or even months ahead of time.
One trick is to request a reservation at some odd time like 2 pm and later just have snacks and drinks for dinner at one of the music hot-spots in any of the colonial plazas. The best menu selections include chicken, pork and fresh seafood as the star attractions. Lobster is also on the menu but is is being overfished so I advocate against ordering it. Beef, particularly steak, does not seem to be a good choice probably due to the cost of meat and its relative lack of availability.
The paladares venues vary. Another is San Cristobal , a converted early 20th-century mansion where President Obama recently dined. Honorable mentions go to Dona Eutimia in a little alley off Plaza de la Cathedral and Paladar de Mercaderes on Mercaderes Street, one of the major thoroughfares.
But there are so many more! You can tell by looking at some Havana areas that they will soon begin to resemble Bourbon Street. The best products to buy in Cuba are tobacco, the superb rum, honey yes, honey and original art. The coffee is also a good buy at U. In September the Trump administration prohibited U.
It is expected the new U. Check before you go to learn how much you can bring back. Not that you would want to anyway, but there you have it. Cuba, and Havana in particular has amazing museums , history, art, and architecture. This will blow you away. Check out my post on Why you should visit Havana and prepare to be amazed on your trip to Cuba. Customer service is poor. Wi-Fi and connectivity are expensive and slow when you can get it, which is not very often. As an example, a friend told me the bartender at the Nacional Hotel complained that he was stressed because tourists were asking for more ice in their drinks.
Apparently, the stress was too much for him. Make sure to listen to our podcast interview on Cuba to learn insider tips and cultural insights of Cuba and check out the guides and reference books below.
BTW, if you are getting ready for your trip, make sure to take advantage of these useful, money-saving links to book your trip:. I personally use, and can recommend, all the companies listed here and elsewhere on my blog. By booking through these sites, the small commission we earn — at no cost to you — helps us maintain this site so we can continue to offer our readers valuable travel tips and advice. Hi there! Great post on Cuba! I totally agree with all of it. Bring your own spices to Cuba.
I found that pepper is rare, as are any hot spices.
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