Pilote's Blog No. 5 - La Havana

We got picked up in front of our hotel at 8:30 a.m. 

the last to get on the bus and discovered it was filled with French-Canadians, the tour was to be conducted in French which was great.  The guide was extremely proficient in the language,much better in fact than with a lot of other English guided tours we’ve had in the past.  In Cuba there are only 3 tour operators and Transgaviota the one we had booked is by far the biggest and most common.  All the prices are fixed and the same regardless of who you book with as there is no competition.

Two and a half hours later and after a pretty thorough history lesson, we arrived in old Havana.  The buses, all Chinese make by the way, park on the outskirts and then you walk.  Old Havana is delightful.  If you’ve seen documentaries of Havana that’s pretty well the way it looks.  Candy colored mansions, old Colonial buildings some crumbling, some restored, cobblestone streets, little parks, it’s a lovely little city to walk in.  It’s not congested with traffic because there are not very many cars around, it’s a pedestrian heaven.  We headed for the main museum in Cuba, it’s the repository of so much Cuban history and it’s a grand old building with sweeping staircases and an inner courtyard.  We spent some time in the flag room which has tattered and beaten up flags from a lot of different countries which have tried to put their stamp on Cuba. As with any guided tour time is of the essence and we couldn’t spend as much as we might have liked.  We continued on to a store where cigars and rum are sold, a little café was upstairs.  Rum flows like water in Cuba they are extremely liberal with it, if you love rum Cuba is the place to be.  

Once our tour of old Havana was over we made our way to new Havana which is what you would expect, buildings of a more modern nature, broader streets, boulevards but also some old mansions with impossibly large acreage which have been recuperated by the government for various offices.  Some of these old houses which housed only one family in the days of the U.S. supported Batista regime, have been broken up into apartments with many different tenant families.  Rent is “free” in Cuba but you have to pay the cost of electricity which can be quite high. I’m still unclear about how homes are attributed if rent is free, couldn’t really get a clear answer from our guide.  In addition to free rent, education is free up to and including university, health care is provided as well as medicines.   Cuba fulfills the most important U.N. mandate in terms of providing for its people but like all political systems it’s far from perfect.  With respect to the second economy the one involving Cuban convertible pesos the government has relaxed the rules somewhat and Cubans who can get their hands on these can now use them in so-called tourist stores, with the attendant tourist prices but stocked with goods which are not necessarily available in other regular stores.

Another little known fact about Cuba, GUNS ARE ILLEGAL and the crime rate is extremely low and mostly consists of burglary, petty theft and crimes of opportunities involving property.  There aren’t too many inmates in Cuban jails.  It’s not a military dictatorship in the way we understand that to be, there are way more military and police in Mexico than can be found in all of Cuba, that’s refreshing.  

We finished with a nice lunch in one of the more modern buildings in Havana.  We also tasted a really excellent pina colada along the way, one of the best I’ve had so far in my travels.  We bid Havana adieu but not before a visit to the greatest craft market in all of Cuba.  Most of the stands sold the same things which is quite typical of these kinds of places.  We scored a few items none of them for us, we have enough souvenirs from other travels and frankly the quality of the work just isn’t there.  Tired but happy with our day we got back to the hotel around 7:30 p.m.