Cuba, Part 1

"Oh shoot. KK's preschool is closed for spring break 3 weeks from now. We should go somewhere..."

So we did: Cuba (because, why not?) (and also because we just couldn't get excited about waterfalls in Tennessee) (and also because, as Americans, Cuba has an irresistible appeal - so close, yet so far).

Buckle up (wait, you can't, there are no seatbelts in this '72 Lada) and grab a mojito (or go native and just drink the rum neat), 'cause this trip report is as long as the queue in a Cuban supermarket.

Part 1 of this trip report will dive deeper into the way things are in Cuba; part 2 is about where we went, what we did, and how it was for us. Read part 2 after part 1; it'll make more sense.

So here's how to get to Cuba and back, in 10 easy steps. 'Cause who doesn't like a good listicle.

Step 1: Buy Plane Tickets

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: yes, it's legal to go to Cuba. Americans self-declare 1 of 12 categories of General Licenses. Like most visitors, ours was "Support for the Cuban People," which meant we had to keep up a full-time schedule of activities to provide economic support and connection directly to Cuban individuals. The trick is: staying at a casa particular, eating in a private paladar, or hiring an individual guide all count as supportive activities... not very different from how we usually travel!

A few carriers now offer direct flights to Cuba. No more flying to Mexico and then purchasing tickets to Cuba! Simply go to JetBlue's website, click the "Support for the Cuban People" radio button, enter your credit card information, and BOOM you've got tickets.

Step 2: Buy Health Insurance (Or Not)

If you're researching your own Cuba trip, you'll read about Cuba's health insurance requirement. This is to prevent visitors for taking advantage of Cuba's' communist (read: free) health care system. Every commercial flight ticket from the USA to Cuba includes a basic health insurance policy, but you can upgrade to a policy that covers injuries from adventure sports, or purchase supplemental non-USA-based insurance for higher repatriation coverage. After weighing the pros and cons, we stuck with the basic coverage. It was fine.

Step 3: Acquire Currency

Usually we'd bring a debit card and use ATMs. Because we have USA-based banks, our credit and debit cards don't work and will get locked if we try to swipe them. Changing dollars to Cuban pesos incurs an additional 10% penalty, so before we left, we ordered a fat stack of Euros.

Step 4: Pack Carefully

This was our first trip to a less developed country with a young child. Cuba has an outstanding medical system, BUT, no mother wants to take her kid to the hospital in the middle of the night because kiddo is spiking a fever and you forgot to pack the Tylenol (and pharmacy shelves are bare). In Cuba, toiletries like sunscreen can be incredibly hard to find and expensive ($20/bottle) once you do. And I definitely did not want to contract Zika, which meant serious mosquito protection.

So: take everything you might need, but no more. We each had a carry-on sized bag for our clothes and personal items (YASSS WE ARE SO CLOSE TO TRAVELING CARRY-ON ONLY), but we checked a duffle of gear (hiking backpack, large bottles of sunscreen and insect repellent, etc.).

Step 5: Book (Some) Accommodation

Technically optional, but it makes the arrival process easier. Cubans have been doing AirBnB (renting out at room or two of their house) before AirBnB was a thing. These rooms in these casas particulares are usually pretty basic: typically two beds, cinderblock walls, an ensuite bathroom (with or without toilet seat), fan or AC - perfect for us!

the standard sign outside every casa - blue anchor rents to foreigners, red anchor to Cubans

As we often do, we booked accommodation for the first part of the trip and left the last 1/3 open-ended. We ended up staying in Vinales, the 2nd town we visited, for the remainder of the trip, where it was very easy to find accommodation because we were there.

But that left our last night before flying home without a place to stay in Havana...

Step 6: Put Your Phone on Airplane Mode

Five years ago, we would have asked our casa hosts to help us find something and been stuck with whatever their cousin/friend had to offer. But now, Cuba has... the internet! Sort of. Cuba has had (government run) internet cafes since 2013 and (government run) public wifi hotspots since 2017. So just like in the USA, you'll see groups of young people staring at their screens in public places.

millenials on phones in parque cervantes in habana

Some homes and businesses are starting to get private internet connections. To book our last night of accommodation, we tried to use one at a cafe in Vinales that advertised Wifi. (AirBnB doesn't work in Cuba, but Booking.com does.) Let's just say that we had eaten and paid for our meals before we were even able to connect, much less find and book a place.

Internet at a public hotspot costs 5 CUC for 5 hours (1CUC = $1USD), so about $1/hour, more if you buy a wifi card from a hustler (jintero) instead of queuing up to buy one yourself.

Step 7: Dust off Your Economics & History Textbooks

Casas particulares cost between 15-25 CUC/ $15-25 per night. In a country where 80% of citizens work for the state, the average government wage is somewhere around the equivalent of $30/month, and the license to run a casa particular is only about $70/ month, the incentive to open a side hustle is obvious.

Plus, running a casa gives the owner access to the more powerful currency: CUCs. Cuba has two currencies: convertible pesos (abbreviated CUC, pronounced "kook") and the national peso (CUP, "coop"). 1 CUC = 24 CUP. CUCs can only be acquired by exchanging for foreign currency, never CUPs.

The dual-currency economy was established during the "Special Period," as the dire years after the fall of the Soviet Union are known, when Soviet sugar subsidies disappeared and the Cuban economy imploded. (Our climbing guide, who was a young child then, told us he went naked except for small shorts his mother sewed out of old tee-shirts.) Fidel Castro decided to legalize the American dollar to get more money into the economy - possession of dollars was previously punishable with prison - and the CUC was born.

a decaying building in centro habana. a building elsewhere in habana collapsed 2 days after we arrived, killing 1 person.
is this what communism looks like? or is this what a 70 year embargo from the world's largest economy looks like? 

However, these dual economies have exacerbated the divide between haves and have nots. I have to imagine this undermines the communist paradigm. Our casa hostess in Havana previously worked as a nurse, where she earned about 400 CUP/month ($16). Now she charges $28/night (CUP 686) for her casa. The choice is obvious.

la epoca, supermarket in centro habana: one type of each item and lots of empty shelf space

Step 8: Eat Rice, Beans, & Sandwiches

Casa owners can earn a little more by serving meals. Breakfast was 5 CUC/adult, and dinner is 10 CUC/adult. Breakfast usually includes coffee, tea, juice, eggs (maybe with ham or onions), bread and butter, maybe a crepe with guyabana jelly or small sandwich.

breakfast in the garden

Dinner was a choice of meat (chicken seems to be the most plentiful and common), one of more kinds of beans, one or more kinds of rice, a salad of cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers, some kind of fried plantain or malanga, with soft drinks and alcohol available for an extra cost.

my face looks funny because i had an unfortunate wasp sting... more on that in part 2

The hosts set up a nice table, serve the meal, and then usually putter nearby in case you need anything. They return at the end of the meal to clean up and chat, or attempt to chat (see Step 8: Speak Spanish below).

Cuban food is kind of bland, definitely not spicy - during the Special Period, spices were hard to come by. For Cubans, the diet is heavy on rice and beans, "purchased" with ration coupons. I imagine our hosts had to put in some decent time and effort to acquire the ingredients that go into our meals.

Street food in Cuba is heavily influenced by its behemoth neighbor to the north: lots of unfortunate, soggy "pizzas" (a circle of soft bread with a smear of ketchup-like substance and a sprinkle of cheese) and sandwiches (ham, cheese, or ham and cheese - tastier than the street pizza, because bocaditos in Cuba spend a few minutes in a panini press).

one of the nicer sandwich shops we found, in Vinales

The same 90s economy that created the CUC also created the paladar, a small restaurant run out of someone's home. Many of the paladars feel more like restaurants, and in the tourist-oriented sections of Habana and Vinales, there are more restaurants than paladars. Just like everywhere, paladar/ restaurant food ranges from barely edible to delicious.

Step 9: Speak Spanish

In my opinion, Cuban Spanish is NOT an easy dialect to pick up; it took me the entire week to begin to feel comfortable understanding it. To my ear, it's mildly hoarse and slurred; all S's are dropped and many D's as well. Imagine a hyperactive life-long chain smoker speaking with 3 cigars stuffed in their mouth and that should give you an idea.

the tobacco house where those cigars were rolled

Decent Spanish skills are a prerequisite for the way we did the trip. You can make it work if you book everything in advance, hire the occasional English-speaking guide, and pick out well-known restaurants (they're more likely to have an English-language menu), but I think you will miss a lot by being unable to interact with anyone. Dave knew more Spanish than our casa hosts knew of English, so I did a lot of translating on this trip.

this one is easy to understand, at least!

Step 10: Keep Your Mouth Shut When Re-Entering US Customs

On the way home, we did get stopped at customs. But that was our fault for being too honest: we truthfully declared that we had been on farms and around livestock. So we got a free sneaker washing! (The poor customs woman said that Dave's sneakers were nastier than mine; I wanted to tip her.)

USA-bound, flying over the coast of Florida

With the details out of the way, let's get to the fun stuff - what did we do and what was it like. Read Part 2 of Cuba.