After spending almost a year gleaning information from this site to prepare for my trip to Cuba here's the payback in the form of a trip report:
I spent one week in Havana. Apart from the airlines losing my luggage, the trip went smoothly. It took 3 days to recover my luggage and I honestly thought I would never see it again. Hanging out in Havana in the same clothes for 3 days was inconvenient, but tolerable. One very nice new Cuban friend even loaned me a toothbrush.
I had made a reservation with Mexicana in advance over the Internet. They held my reservation for several months and I was easily able to pay cash (USD) for my ticket in Cancun. Re-entry into the US was really a non-issue. I don't think US immigration has EVER looked at the stamps in my passport (and I have easily been to at least 30 different countries).
I was expecting a worse situation in Cuba than what I actually found. Perhaps my perspective is different having travelled a bit in the 3rd world, including impoverished and volatile areas in Africa. It seemed to me that the Cubans I met were weary of the Cuban system and yearned for opportunity (and a way out), but were otherwise basically healthy and more or less happy. In some ways, my trip to Cuba reminded me of my trip to East Germany in the 80s.
Mostly I ate my meals in the casa and I found the food to be much better there than any place where I ate out. Highlites of my trip included doing simple day to day things with my new cuban friends, like going to the barber, the "gym", parties, hanging out on the rooftop, the Malecon, and eating ice cream.
Several nights I had so much fun just with a bottle of rum, some cola, some Reggaeton, and my new friends. And wow, can those Cubans dance!
I was surprised by the lack of English skills in those I was around and those I encoutered, even in the tourist places. My high school Spanish got an incredible workout and I learned an incredible amount in just a week thanks to some very patient people. I would advise any non-Spanish speaker travelling to Cuba to learn as much Spanish beforehand as possible. I did not meet any other Americans and that was a great surprise because they seem to be everywhere else I go in the world.
I would add that Cuba is not cheap, and would advise would be travellers to take plenty of $$$. I was averaging probably 130USD per day, and picking up the tab for everything for everyone who happened to be with me added up quickly. Whatever money I had at the end I gave away. The biggest hits were my iPod and my cell phone, both of which I gave a way. I paid to set up a phone line for the friend to whom I gave my phone to, and that was not cheap at all. In my opinion, some desperately poor African countries have many more cell phones per capita than Cuba.
Anyway, in the end I had a very tearful goodbye and look forward to when I can go back. <sigh>
Thank you very much for a great report. I would very much to know what your experience at the "gym" was like...
Thanks for taking the time and trouble to post a report. this is always appreciated by the rest of us.
You mentioned one thing that seems to be increasinly common and should be encouraging to your fellow US citizens making extralegal trips to Cuba. I'm finding this more and more crossing any border. The immigration / customs officials are not examining passports. They "swipe" the machine readable travel document and pay attention only to the result displayed on their computer's console. At most, they check that your image is the same one that is being displayed to them. The passport itself seems to receive no examination, unless something is not in order.
The Mexican double entry and same day arrival stamps have always been posed as hypotheticals----ie. what would happen if. I do not recall a single instance of someone posting that those stamps were actually noticed and they were questioned about them.
The "gym" was in a dirty basement of a building and it was a very sad sight. Old weight equipment, probably 50 years old and as worn as I think weights can possibly ever be. There were more things broken than working. It was very caveman-esque.
#5
My luggage problem was primarily due to Delta and not Mexicana. My luggage apparently didn't make its connection in Atlanta. I had a day layover in Cancun and it still hadn't arrived in Cancun after a day and I wasn't about to hang out in Cancun to see how long it took to get it. From Havana I emailed a friend back in the U.S. to get on the phone and "lean hard" on Delta. Apparently, it was quite an ordeal to get them to "walk the luggage" from Delta to Mexicana in Cancun. In Havana I had to keep calling Mexicana at the airport until they said they had it. Moral to the story is to pack your carryon wisely with the essentials and also don't pack anything of real value in your checked luggage. There were a few items missing from my luggage when I received it and unpacked. Missing: 3 bars of soap, ten packs of gum, and two baseballs. (insignificant loss) I can't know if that happened in Havana, Cancun, or even Atlanta. I had plastic ties securing the zippers (the type that have to be cut off) as a small deterrant, and the one on the main compartment of my bag had been cut off.
Tilfyre, thanks for an excellent trip report. I agree that people who are well traveled in the Third World (out of the tourist zone) see Cubans by comparison pretty well off, and vastly safer than in most other Latin American and some Caribbean countries (thinking here of the violence that is close to or already out of hand in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and of course, Haiti.)
But...Cuban's don't compare their situation to other Third World countries; they compare their situation to those who've emigrated and done well abroad. (The ones who emigrate and don't do well often end up back in Cuba). I also find Cubans in general to be healthy and happy, but too often bored. I think that's partly because it's an island, and the young and the restless in any small place (small town, small country), or even a large one for that matter, will want to travel. The vast majority in most poor countries, Cuba included, will never have the money to do that, nor the means of earning it.
As for the older people, it's human history that the majority are inclined to engage in trade; it's what their biology tells them to do, I guess, once they've got a family to support and need to settle down. The Cuban government having so severely restricted entrepreneurship was and is one of its great mistakes. Not just because it's stupid to try to micro-manage an economy down to the last hot dog stand, but perhaps more importantly, because doing that takes away opportunities for the would-be entrepreneur to exercise his or her creativity in that particular way. And in my observation, world-wide, there are far more people inclined to express their creativity in the development of trade or small businesses than in art, literature, or music. (On the other hand, maybe it's because they can't go into business that the Cubans turn out so many fine musicians and dancers?)
Cubans have far more small-business opportunities now than they did a decade ago, but what's available to them is still not nearly enough. Someday, maybe. Until then, their creative spirit (what doesn't go into music, dance, and other forms of art) seems to get funnelled mainly into creative ways of avoiding government restrictions on the development of small personal businesses.
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