My first impression of cuba

So… how is cuba really like? When I arrived i was quite over/underwhelmed. Cuba is basically a first/second world country that has gone to shit because an other first world country -the US obviously- set an embargo on cuba in 1962 and tried to force that embargo upon every other country as well. The behaviour of the cuban government explains why the US hasn’t lifted the embargo. Viva la revolucion! Revolucion o muerte! they still proclaim, no, they celebrate it everyday – since 55 years.  Also, cuba stinks. The smell of the black exhaust fumes every vehicle emits is really something to get sick of. The vast majority of buildings are run down because there is simply no money to do maintenance. That doesn’t just include buildings but literally everything. There goes my very first impression.

The lack of money, divisa, hard currency is really a problem here in cuba. The locals usually earn their money on peso cubano CUP which is (basically) a worthless artificial currency. Some lucky ones earn their money in peso convertible CUC which is a currency that is coupled to the US dollar. Every peso convertible is worth 24 peso cubano. The thing is: a lot of stuff has to be paid in CUC. Houses, cars, gas, electrical appliances, high quality food (except fruit) etc… due to the lack of hard currency a phenomenon calles jineteras/os emerged. Jineteras used to be housewives that targeted white tourists in order to get money. (say non professional prostitutes). Recently jineteros became more of a problem: when you arrive at the airport there will be a shitload of people waiting to make money of a unknowing tourist. “TAXI AMIGO?” is probably the most heard sentence in cuba. they try to exchange money for a worse rate that you’d get in the casa de cambio or try to bring you to a casa or restaurant in order to get commission. They are not bad guys or criminals but they see a tourist as a walking ATM and they really mastered the art of quenching tourists of their last cent.
More often than not you don’t even know when you’re a “victim” of jineteros. it is really annoying because they are everywhere. but I also have tp say, they are usually quite friendly. Most Cubans don’t have a steady income and even if they do it is way easier to get money from tourists because working an honest job for the government pays you about 20-30 CUC a month. Still, you will be surprised how expensive cuba is.

I now introduced you to the really bad stuff in cuba and you might ask yourself why should i even go there?
It is different. And it can be shiny as well. And I almost forgot they have very good and cheap rum.

It takes a couple of days to get used to how cuba is. It is one of the last communistic/socialist states in the world. The fact that cuba somehow works is quite amazing – ok to be correct it often doesn’t work and when it works, it’s extremely slow. Nothing gets thrown away with a least a try to repair it. Many cars are more than 50 years old and still work. Cubans really know how to fix anything that is broken because they simply can’t afford to buy something new.

They have free education. The literacy rate is higher than in many developed countries (99.8% to be precise) and the education is actually very good (according to the lovely 79-year-old lady I had lunch with who taught for about 50 years at the university of Havanna). They have free basic health care. They get everything one needs to live for free. However, having everything to survive doesn’t mean the situation is comfortable for them. It is definitely not.

One of the things that caught me the most: The people are generally very lovely and caring. A lot of them live on the street (not as homeless people) and are very sociable and help each other out. Cuba is also extremely safe.

When I walked from habana vieja to cerro about 3km to my casa,  a cuban guy in his fifties named Jorge asked me what the hell i was doing there. There is no police in the area and some “loco” could come and steal my stuff. Fair enough. That also happens in the safest countries in the world. I told him i went on foot because I want to see cuba and not only the tourist spots. After a small chat he took me into his house and served me coffee.
His house looked kinda like a construction site but he made the best effort to make it cozy. His house had two floors with about 25m^2 in total. Surprisingly his wife lives in a different “house” with about 14m^2 in total, distributed on two floors as well. I don’t know where their kid lives, i forgot to ask.
Later he proposed to have dinner together maybe fish but we had to buy it first. I thought why not? so we went our way to get fish.. that wasn’t as easy as expected. We went to about 3 different shops and every shelf was almost empty. See: this is how cuba really is, he told me. When something is not available you go look after it in the next shop, often it is not available at all. Later we had dinner together (his wife cooked a very good meal). We talked for a couple of hours about politics, issues and benefits in Cuba and Switzerland etc.

Interestingly, some issues they face are the absolute same as we have in switzerland. The local people who usually don’t have a lot of money and are forced to move to the outskirts of the cities because rich investors (apparently a lot of spanish french and chinese people) buy houses in the city center in order to resell them again when the US is going to lift the embargo. The prices have been skyrocketing ever since Raul Castro implemented reforms so cuban people are able to own/buy and sell houses since 2011. It used to be only possible to exchange houses when fidel castro was in power. He and his wife really gave their best even though they had almost nothing. We even had to run to a shop nearby to get a cold beers because his fridge broke down and he doesn’t have money to get it repaired. Eventually he asked me to help him out, which I did.

Transport and getting around

As a first timer it wasn’t that easy to get around at first but thanks to modern technology – MAPS.ME, the cuban offline map and a cellphone with GPS- it is getting easier.

As a tourist who doesn’t speak spanish you’re usually bound to take one of the following means of transport:
-Bici taxi

-Moto/Coco taxi

-normal/old cab/yellow cab
-private cars (technically illegal for them)
-viazul/transtur/taxi collectivo for long distance travel

-railway 8just to complete the list. Don’t bother taking it, it is slow and unreliable.

When you’re fluent  in spanish or know how things work you can also take a taxi collectivo car/bus that runs on a certain route or the local buses. Or a -horse taxi (there are usually fixed routes for it). they are extremely cheap. 10 CUP for up to 10km and 20CUP for longer distances. The buses are even cheaper but extremely unreliable and it is often hard to even turn around because the buses are extremely packed.

So that was it for the first post. Hope you enjoyed it.