The Cuban Life

Wow, crazy how time flies! Four weeks in Santiago are over! I just arrived in La Habana again and my flight to Lima, Peru leaves tomorrow.

I really struggle getting all the impressions into a blog post. I think it’s impossible. Life in Cuba is so different, crazy and somehow realxing, it’s some undescribable.
When I first came here, I didn’t know what people mean by “It’s like a time travel”. Yes, there are old cars but only that?

Now I know…No, it’s not only about old cars. It’s the whole way of living.
Beginning with appointments and meeting friends. Imagine how it was 20 years ago in Europe… that’s Cuba nowadays. I haven’t used the telephone to make real phone calls that much for a rather long time back home. But here, almost every day.
It’s not possible to send a short WhatsApp with “Oh, I’m sorry but I’ve got no time to see you”. People in Cuba visit each other. For a coffee and a short chat. In general, I got the feeling that people here talk a lot more. In real, not in texts! I like it! People in the streets are looking into each others faces, not into smart phone screens.

Another thing that’s like travelling back in time is that things get repaired here. It’s normal in Europa that you throw something broken away and buy it new. In Cuba, everything can be repaired. My rucksack, thanks to the nice casa owner in Baracoa, got repaired within half an hour. And you can get everything repaired. Even quicker when you know someone who knows someone… and there’s always someone who knows someone. 🙂

In a lot of things you can see and feel very clearly that Cuba is a socialist country. People are used to queue for things they need. For bread, for vegetables, for fruit, for ice cream. No matter for what, sometimes there are queues I couldn’t imagine it’s worth the wait. But if you need or want something in particular and you’ve waited for it being available it probably is worth it.

Cuba also has two currencies. The CUC and the CUP. The CUC is the tourist currency, but it’s also used in supermarkets etc. You mostly pay with that. But if you buy things in the streets, it’s in CUP, or Peso. 1 CUC = 25 CUP…. Means, if you pay something that’s meant to be in CUP with your CUCs, the seller is the happiest man for that moment because you paid 25 times more than you should’ve. But I understand that sometimes it’s just unbelievable how cheap things can be. Ice cream shops for example. The prices are in CUP (Moneda Nacional), but it’s so cheap that I can imagine a lot would pay in CUC. For a large ice cream (3-5 scoops) with biscuits or cake, you pay around 3-5 CUP!!! I didn’t even start doing the mathematics as it was so ridicolously cheap. 😉

And yes, it definitely helps talking Spanish. 😉 Thanks to my awesome maestra, I really improved my Spanish skills. Sometimes it was hard work and we rushed through a lot of things, but as I keep on traveling through South America, there’s still lots of time to practise. At least I know most of the grammatic basics… Now it’s time to improve on vocabulary and the correct use of the grammatics.

I liked Santiago de Cuba a lot. It’s a small town and people start recognizing you very quickly, you have chats on every corner if you like. And if not, you can still act like a tourist and hide in the overprized cafés of the big hotels. Most of my pictures I took only yesterday, on my last day. It’s like always, you think you have endless time and you end up never doing what you want. In my case, walking through the city and take pictures… But at least I made it in the end. 😉

Santiago was also a good spot to start weekend trips. At the first weekend, the other German student and I explored the near surroundings of Santiago. We went to a place called “La Gran Piedra”, which means “Big Rock”. And yes, that is actually a big rock! But before you reach the top of the rock you need to take a really nasty road upwards a hill (steep, curvy and in a very bad condition) and then climb around 500 steps. But the view over the area was worth it! So beautiful. After that hard piece of sightseeing we went to a “natural pool”, which wasn’t really natural. But at least something to relax and enjoy.

The Big Rock

Last final steps uphill

The way to the coffee farm

What a view!!! Open it for better quality

“Natural” pool

Santiago surroundings

The next day we went to “El Cobre” which is the most famous and important church in Cuba. It’s the church of the Patron of Cuba and a lot of Cubans go espacially there to pray. Nice, short tour to the church, a coconut on the way and then off to the beach. We went to “Juragua” and we were the only tourists there. Therefore we got pampered to the maximum… Coconut and lunch straight to the chair at the water… That’s real service.

Guardian Angels of El Cobre

Mess at the Cobre

El Cobre

Coconut paradise

Crowded beach 😉

Food service (and this was only half my portion)

Horses also want to take baths 😉

View above the beach

The weekend after it was time to visit a town called Baracoa. The post with pictures can be found HERE.

The third weekend I spent a little different. I did it the tourist way…I took a bus to Guardalavaca which is supposed to be the second best beach in Cuba (after Varadero B) . And as it was a whole package you could buy, I ended up booking a all-inclusive hotel at the beach. It felt really strange at the beginning, but you get used to it.
Shame, that the weather was rather bad (rain and wind) and my stomache did a bad job these days… So I had not that much fun with beach and all inclusive. For the beach it was too cold and windy and for eating and drinking all day my belly didn’t want to.

Rural Cuba on the way to Guardalavaca

Beach of Guardalavaca

Enjoying 3 hours of sunshine 😀

Rest of the time….

In total it was nice, espacially seeing other tourists that only stay in hotels like this. I even talked to a few who only came for holiday for that hotel (21 days some Scotish and 4 weeks an English lady…Imagine it! 4 weeks all inclusive club hotel! I couldn’t do that). When they leave, they’ve been to Cuba but haven’t seen a bit of the real life… And for me that is what Cuba makes Cuba.

I’m really interested what happens to Cuba in future. Of course, I’ve learnt a lot about Cuban history, the revolution and I’ve heard a lot of different opinions about what might happen with the country. What kind of changes will there be? Will it be good changes? Not everyone is keen on the Americanization that everyone is expecting to happen in near future.

And por fin, finally, my picture impressions. Remember, it’s even better in real life 😉 ENJOY!

Las Enramadas – Pedestrian Zone and heart of the City

Streets of Santiago

View over Santiago’s harbour from “Balcony of Velazquez”

Almost Sunset from the Balcony

Church of Santiago

Skyscrapers – The only ones in Santiago

Where the Cuban revolution started 1953

Plaza de la Revolucion and a typical local taxi (yep, I mean the truck)

Plaza de la Revolucion

Fidel’s tomb

Change of the guards for the graves of Martí and Fidel

Gracias, Santiago! – Fidel

How to buy vegetables in Cuba

Waiting for a shop to open… Waiting…

“Supermarket”

My home food.. It was salad, rice, marequitas (fried plantain) and a stew of ladyfingers

Weather in Santiago ^^

View from above

Café cubano… Strong and Sweet

Cuban homes. Welcome area. Most important: Good and loud music equipment

No glass windows…almost nowhere

Taxi Drivers… 😉

…. and their cars! ❤

Of course… Classical cars

Typical cubano: Rocking Chairs! Everyone has them!

Great having a friend at the market – Free Fruit

Crazy Shop

Flying ants…

Callo Granma

The Fortress near Santiago

Inside the Fortress

View from the Fortress! ❤

Rail… a train exists… but is no option traveling

Baracoa

Fin de semana!! Time for a weekend trip!

Time for no Spanish class, time to relax and time for the beach. That was my plan this weekend. Haha, it happened to be a little different. But still very nice!

Together with Pia, the other German student at the language school in Santiago, I went to Baracoa. A tiny town in the Southeast of Cuba, approximately 4 hours car drive away from Santiago. We went with a “taxi collectivo”, which is an organised car that picks up people who booked spaces but also locals on the way. The more fit into the car, the better for the driver of course. It can be packed…or it can be OK. In this case, it was OK and everything worked fine. Not a common thing in Cuba as we all learnt later that weekend.

Our Taxi collectivo to Baracoa

At least there’s music 🙂

Guantánamo

In the taxi we met another solo traveler girl from the Netherlands. In Baracoa we went to find a room for the three of us. Luckily, already the second option offered us a room with three beds for a very good price.

Casa in Baracoa

We got a little refreshed after the journey and went then off to explore the “city”. Well, it’s not really a city, it’s really small. And by the time we walked through the town it was so silent and calm, it was almost creepy. Only few locals on the street and even less tourists.
The town is beautiful though, but coming from Santiago it takes a few moments to get used to this sort of spooky quietness. We went to the “sightseeing” spots in Baracoa, which can be handled in about 2 hours…. or half a day if you really want to extend it.

City Center… Emptiness

 

Baracoa

Leftovers of the hurricane

Daily Cuban life

Local life

In the evening Baracoa started to become an interesting place. All the people, locals and tourists (that came back from their day trips), met at the central park. Now, the town was busy and a nice mixture of local life and tourists. We ended our day at a “discoteca” called La Terraza, which is on a very big roof top, dancing with the locals (of course! In Cuba you’ll never DANCE alone 😛 )

The next day for me was supposed to be the beach day. But as we met some tour guides on the street, I decided to go on one of their tours. Pia and Anna (the Dutch girl) went to another tour.
My trip was getting me to Yumurí which is the name of a river half an hour drive from Baracoa. On the way there we stopped at several places like the Cocoa plantation. Oh my gosh, chocolate!! Pure and very dark and strong. Super good (and yep, my fridge in Santiago is now stuffed with chocolate 😉 )!!!

Best mix: Mojito and chocolate

Chocolate of Baracoa

We also stopped at a few other places but the highlight was the river. It runs through a deep valley, the walk to the viewpoint is quite exhausting, especially in flip flops but still OK.
Then we took a boat taxi that took us further down the river from where we started our trek. And yes, it became a trek! (“Thank you, guide, this is NOT OK in flip flops!” XD )

Horses are very common in Cuba

Nature….!!

Yumurí

But in the end (2 hours hiking in total!) we made it to a place where we took a very refreshing and necessary bath in the river and got treated with freshly picked coconuts. OK, that was worth it. And look at the pictures! It’s stunning!

Panorama of Baracoa’s nature

What a spot for a refreshing bath

Treking with (or without) flip flops

On the way back we stopped for dinner at a very small family restaurant at a beach and again at the chocolate factory to buy more chocolate (yes, only because I needed more chocolate ^^). It was already late and after a shower (and a pleasant chat with the son of our casa) we went off to get some mojitos again. That day, our group was a bit bigger. Everyone met someone at their tour and where else to meet than at the the Central Plaza? 😉 We also met our tour guide, Giovany, and our waiter from the restaurant the day before, Maikel. As I said, EVERYONE meets at that place. And after one day, you know already a few people.

For someone that’s a big dinner!

How could you possibly say “no” to those eyes?

Finally relaxing the feet with a papaya juice

For the next day, I planned to sleep long and only go for breakfast, check messages at the WiFi point and come back to the casa to wait for the taxi that takes us back to Santiago. And as usual, everything went different. At 9 am (the girls were already gone) it knocked at my door. Time to smoke the house, they said. What it is? It’s pesticide smoke that will be in the whole house and so I had to leave my room, go on the outside and watch them do their thing. I wasn’t ready, I was so tired and confused. But then you sit on the street, together with the family of your casa and talk to them a little. That’s the great thing about knowing a bit of the language.
When they were ready with everything and I could make myself ready for my breakfast, I ended up meeting two people from the evening before and my tour guide. And nope, in Cuba You’ll never WALK alone ! 😀
Instead of doing nothing or maximum drinking coffee, I got a very sympathic private tour to the hotel (great view over the city), the museum and the baseball stadium. And the best thing about it, it was typical Cuban… two persons, one bike 😉

View over Baracoa Bay

Baracoa Town

Private tour and a Coco Loco

Baseball stadium

Museum of Baracoa

We made it just in time for my taxi to leave Baracoa. Finally on the relaxed way home…. Nope, not relaxed at all. The car was packed this time, it was running late (Pia had to catch her Viazul Bus in Santiago and had reason enough to be very stressed! ) and in the end it even ran out of fuel! What to do in the middle of nowhere? You can only wait until somebody comes along with a spare canister of fuel to help you out. Luckily, most of the Cubans are equipped with spare fuel and so it was “only” another half an hour later. In Guantánamo we then also had to change car. But at least it was a bit more comfortable and it’s only 1,5 hours more.

Engine view 😉

Waiting for help

Help is coming…

It’s not only us 😉

When we got to Santiago it was 7pm, while the plan was to be there around 5pm. Not really in time. At least, Pia made it to her bus (thanks to the help of another co-traveler who was fluent in Spanish and English and could call Pia’s casa to bring her baggage straight to the bus terminal) and I went home, had very necessary dinner (and oh, it was good again) and fell to bed straight away.

What a trip!! But definitely worth the visit! 🙂

Seeds that make the sound in Maracas

Snails in all colors

First days in Santiago or “How to live offline“

I’ve arrived in Santiago on Monday around 2pm, the bus which was supposed to be 15 hours then took 17 hours…ah no problem at all… *big yawn*. At least I was lucky, being able to change seat after a few hours to one I could recline. That made the ride definitely more enjoyable. And I think in total I even got enough sleep as there isn’t anything else to do than sleeping.

Finally in Santiago

Santiago will be my home base for the next four weeks. For some travellers that might sound weird, for me it’s just about right. It’s the first time I could unpack all my bags. And let me tell you, it was the first thing I did when I arrived “home” and it was a big pleasure.

mi casa

Unpacking!

My home again is a casa particular. And as usual I have a big bed, big closets, a bathroom, air con and a fridge. All for myself. And the common areas are good for me to use as well. Simply the way they say “mi casa es tu casa”. The highlight definitely is the roof terrace. No, it’s not that high, but it’s a great place to be. To study, soak in some sun, have lunch etc.

Cuban homes… They are different but I like them a lot. They are very airy. There’s a roof and walls around the rooms but the dining area is open air which is really cool! In my casa there are no windows, there are wooden shades I can close but no glass.

Airy dining area

roof terrace

In Santiago I’ve got a real schedule. Breakfast at 8:30am, Spanish class from 9 am – 1 pm, dance lessons from 4-5pm and dinner at 7pm. Anything in between is free time, for lunch, coffee, walking through the city, meet other students, repeat my exercises etc.

Spanish class… one on one ! 😉

Santiago neighbourhood

The life here is mostly offline. There are public WiFi hotspots in the parks. No WiFi in the casa or the cafés or anywhere else. It’s wuite funny when you realise how we’re used to constantly being online and available. Luckily, it’s also easy to get used to being offline again. You make appointments with dates, times and places. And of course you should be there because there’s no way to drop a text that you’re late or you cancel. It is actually a very nice and relaxed lifestyle.
For me staying in contact with home is prewriting messages at home or whenever I’ve got time for it and when I’m in one of the parks I’ll go online and send everything at once. At home I’ll read all my messages and prepare replies for later or the next day.

View over Plaza de Marte – One of the WiFi spots

During day you almost don’t want to do anything. It’s super hot here. I thought I’m already used to hot temperatures but this is a complete different level! UGH!

For the next days I’m going to prepare some pictures and try to upload them. Wait for the impressions. They’re great!

Havana

I am in Cuba! The way here was a bit tough and not what I would call smooth but still…it was better and easier to cope than expected.  In the end I was only worried about how to find my home stay. But it turned out that I shouldn’t have stressed myself with that. It was past midnight when I arrived in Vedado where I’m staying. But as soon as my taxi stopped in front of the house my host was downstairs and let me in. He showed me around and then I guess he was happy to finally go to bed.

The place is a comfy home stay. Home stay or what they call “casa particular” is the typical accommodation in Cuba. I’ll explain a little later how it works.

Balcony of my casa

The next day I slept in. Oh how I was looking forward to that!!! No alarm for nothing, no sunrise, not even breakfast.

I took everything a little slower, took a long warm overdue shower, enjoyed the juice and fruit which my host had put into my fridge and watched Havana lifestyle from the balcony.

When my host, Javier came back home he was very kind and took his time to explain the first essentials to me. His English was very good and his explanations helped me for the first day. I now knew where to get my bus ticket to Santiago which was the big to do for the day. After I got that sorted I got a taxi to old Havana. Yes, it’s a little time machine. The big cruise ships don’t quite fit into the scenery but apart from that: welcome to the America of the 60’s (or at least what it looks like in the movies).

Taxis

I didn’t do or see too much that day. I found a barber and finally got my hair cut. I was walking around in old Havana but it was almost impossible doing this by myself. The locals aren’t shy at all. That way I found a typical local treat (coconut caramel ball) and a local restaurant without any tourist.

Plaza Vieja

Church near Plaza Vieja

Still being a little tired I went to bed early that day. Which also wasn’t too easy because of course in Havana it’s salsa time at night and the locals don’t want to see a foreign single girl walking home without having a dance.

My to do the next day: find another casa. Unfortunately Javier was booked for the following night. And so I had to do the following: take your stuff and simply find a house with the particular sign somewhere at the entrance. Just ring the bell, hope that someone is home and ask for vacancy. Simple as that. I knew about it because several people told me. Still I couldn’t believe until I did it myself. It’s a great system though. Everyone who has a spare room can offer it for guests. They get a good amount of money out of it. And my experience so far is really good. The beds are comfy, the tons are clean, you have hot water and apparently it’s also common to have your own fridge in the room.

In Havana itself isn’t that much too see. So I talk a long walk from my casa to old Havana again, walking all along the Malécon which is the main avenue in Havana. Today it was closed for cars because there was triathlon. So you have 10 car lanes but not worry about crossing.  (That changed on my way back and it’s different here from Asia…you shouldn’t simply cross the street 😂)

Along the Malecon

Along the Malecon

Along the Malecon

Along the Malecon

Old Havana is really beautiful. There’s nothing special to do. I just walked around and took tons of pictures.

Old Havana

Boulevard of Havanna

Old Havana

And I got my hands on a Wi-Fi login. Yeah! Wi-Fi in Cuba is not a common good. There are only few places in each city (mainly in parks) where there is public Wi-Fi. Before you can go online there you need to go to a shop and buy a login and a certain amount of hours of Wi-Fi. There don’t seem to be much sellers either…..I queued half an hour for my login.

Queuing though seems to be very common. In the park next to my casa is an ice cream parlour. It’s supposed to be good but seriously would you queue on the outside of the park with 100 other people for ice cream? I wouldn’t, Cubans do. 😂

Coconut balls in the street

Street Art in Old Havanna

Houses and Electricity

Local Market

So that was Havana. It is a beautiful city with lots of charm and old houses and cars. But it’s also very busy and loud and touristy.

Streets of Havana…

What I’ve heard about Santiago so far was only good.

Cars in Havanna

Cars in Havanna

Cars in Havanna