Author Archives: Julie

Cuba Round Up

What photo takes you right back to Cuba?

Trinidad Plaza Mayor Cuba’s architecture was a highlight for us and the colonial Plaza Mayor in Trinidad was a great example

How much does it cost to travel in Cuba?

Excluding our return flights from the UK, we spent £3,165 during our 45 days in Cuba – a daily average of £70.35 for two people (remarkably close to our two year trip budget!). The Cuban convertible peso (CUC) is pegged to the US dollar and the average exchange rate that we got in April/May 2016 was CUC$1 = £0.73.

We took the majority of our money in cash – either GBP or Euros are exchanged everywhere, US dollars have a 10% exchange surcharge so I wouldn’t recommend carrying those. Some money exchanges rejected notes which had writing on or were torn, but in the end we had them all accepted – the offices in more touristy cities (Havana, Trinidad) seemed to be less fussy. At the end of the trip we had to withdraw some cash on our credit card and discovered that Cuban ATMs don’t accept Mastercard (I think Visa is fine) and so we had to get an over the counter cash advance which was charged to our card in US dollars and hence was subject to the 10% surcharge.

Cuba expenses pie chart

Cuba budget info

We stayed in casa particulars (guesthouses) for every night of our stay, except one night spent in the shelter on Pico Turquino. The rate was a pretty consistent CUC$25 per night (room only) across the country except in Havana and Varadero where we paid CUC$30).
It’s not really possible to exist solely on street food in Cuba and so, in addition to taking breakfast in our casa particular (CUC$5 each) we often had dinner there as well which cost CUC$8-10 each. Restaurant meals were comparably priced though Havana was often much more expensive and we found that high prices rarely translated into high quality.
We found both the Viazul and Cubanacan intercity bus services to be a comfortable and reasonably priced way to get around the country.
Within cities we tended to walk everywhere so the relatively high spend for local transportation is taxis to and from bus stations which we found to be quite expensive (possibly because the scarcity of cars pushes up the price but no doubt we were charged tourist prices as well). This category also contains a few day trips that we took by taxi as there was no public transport option available.
Visas – we paid CUC$25 each to extend our 30 day tourist card (included in the cost of our flight) for another month.

Summarise Cuba in three words.

Dilapidated – from the buildings to the classic cars, it seems like a lot of Cuba has been barely maintained since the Revolution in 1959
Rum – made from the sugar cane which generated early wealth for Cuba, the national drink is everywhere and the base of many a cocktail!
Music – upbeat and very danceable, Cuba’s musical heritage is rich

You really know you’re in Cuba when…

.. your taxi is a 30 year old Russian model that needs a jump start!

What one item should you definitely pack when going to Cuba?

Plenty of patience for all the queues you’ll have to wait in – to exchange money, in shops, at the bus station…

Cuban Food

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Before we visited we’d heard that Cuban food is not very exciting so we didn’t have high hopes. There were high points, mostly in the dinners that we had in our casa particulars, but for the most part we found the food to be fairly dull and certainly not a highlight of the trip as it has been in so many of the countries that we’ve visited. We were surprised that, compared to their neighbours (either the surrounding Caribbean islands or nearby Mexico), neither chillis nor other spices were commonly used. It is perhaps telling that the best meal we had (by a long way) was at a Spanish restaurant – Castropol on the Malecon in Havana which is run by the local Spanish Asturianas society.

Breakfast

Breakfast in casa particulars is very standard and although priced separately to the room it seems to be expected that you’ll take it – fresh fruit (some combination of papaya, pineapple, guava or mango), freshly made juice (usually papaya or guava, on good days mango!), coffee (filter, pretty strong, never instant and we were very rarely offered tea), eggs (fried, scrambled or omelette as you like), bread (always white, sometimes dried out and crispy), sometimes cheese or ham (both processed) to go with the bread, or as a sandwich. It was tasty enough but got to be pretty boring by the end of 6 weeks!

Casa particular breakfast

Street food and snacks

It’s fairly easy to find a bite to eat when you’re wandering the streets in Cuban cities. Pizza shops are everywhere and, while it’s not what an Italian would recognise, the pizzas are served hot from the oven, the puffy dough topped with a slick of tomato paste and a sparse sprinkling of cheese, handed to you folded in half with a small piece of cardboard or paper to protect your fingers (asbestos hands required!). They became our go-to lunchtime filler, not so healthy, but Andrew would have had at least one a day if I’d have let him… At MN$5-10 each (about £0.15-0.30) Cuban pizzas are delicious and cheap.

Peso pizza Andrew looking very happy with his first Cuban pizza even though he had to deploy his handkerchief to protect his fingers from the steaming dough!

As an alternative to pizza, sandwiches are the other lunchtime option, also sold from little hole-in-the-wall shops. The bread is always soft and white with highly processed ham and/or cheese to fill it (interestingly cheese was often more expensive than ham). Sometimes we had bread with mayonnaise (i.e. a mayo sandwich, better than it sounds), or bread with tomatoes (the best option if it’s available), and occasionally fritters of savoury dough or mashed potato. If we were very lucky we found a stall selling pan con lechon, roast pork sandwiches.

Street food vendor We bought sandwiches and cake from this friendly vendor in Bayamo

Cuban street food Street food (clockwise from top left): peso pizza; ham sandwich; pan con lechon; fritter sandwich

In bars and cafes sandwiches were often toasted. The ‘Cuban sandwich’ contains roast pork, ham and cheese and somehow manages to transcend all three

Meat

Chicken and pork were the most common options, usually just fried with some garlic or onions, but the best meals we had were beef and lamb. Ropa vieja literally means ‘old clothes’ but it’s a lot tastier than that sounds, imagine pulled pork but made from beef in a sauce made from tomatoes and peppers. We were served lamb casserole a couple of times in different casa particulars and each time it was meltingly tender and deeply flavoured – why don’t they do something like this with all the chicken and pork?!

Cuban meats Clockwise from top left: fried pork with garlic; Ropa Vieja is not pretty but it is tasty; chicken leg; lamb casserole for dinner in Viñales

Liver We didn’t come across much offal but when I saw the unfamiliar word ‘hidalgo’ on a menu and found in our dictionary that it was liver I knew what I would be having for lunch! The liver was sauteed with onions and green peppers and made a nice change from the more usual options

Seafood and fish

Cuba is a long, narrow island which means that you’re never far from the sea and so it’s hardly surprising that fish and seafood are readily available. We had various kinds of fish as well as prawns, lobster and even octopus. Again we found that they would most commonly be prepared quite simply by either frying or grilling perhaps with a little garlic or a tomato based sauce.

Cuban seafood Clockwise from left: At St Pauli I had octopus salad and Andrew had prawns cooked with garlic; a mackerel like fish in tomato sauce; lobster in Baracoa

Rice and beans

The standard starch with a meal is rice, either plain white or the rather politically incorrectly named ‘moros y cristianos’ (moors and christians), a mix of rice with black beans which was our favoured option. I really enjoy bean soups and I think they’re probably a staple of Cuban home cooking but we hardly ever saw them on restaurant menus – I suspect it’s considered poor people’s food. We did sometimes get bean soup as a starter for dinner in casa particulars and when I requested it for dinner from our casa in Camagüey she looked very pleased to be asked for it. The beans are usually either black or kidney beans and the soup might also contain bits of ham, peppers and pumpkin.

Black bean soup in Camagüey – delicious but not easy to photograph!

Vegetables

A salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and white cabbage was the customary accompaniment with dinner. If we were lucky it had some grated carrot, beetroot or cooked french beans on the side too. Otherwise the only vegetables that we were served, apart from a rare bowl of pumpkin soup, were plantains or green bananas. Plantains seem to fall somewhere between vegetables and starch in terms of how they are used in Cuba. Sometimes deep-fried until they are crispy (chicharritas), sometimes fried but soft in the middle, sometimes baked into a tart shell and filled with prawns or meat as a starter, they seemed to function a bit like potatoes.

Cucumbers and tomatoes When we didn’t feel like pizza or a processed cheese sandwich for lunch we bought a handful of tomatoes and cucumbers and a loaf of bread.

Plantains in their various guises (clockwise from top left): this market stall gives an idea of how much plantains are used; fried plantains as a side dish; plantain shells stuffed with prawns and cheese as a starter; plantain crisps

Sweets

Satisfying your sweet tooth in Cuba is easy and cheap. Cakes, biscuits and pastels (little pasties containing guava jam) are available from street vendors and hole-in-the-wall shops and generally cost MN$1-3 each (£0.03-0.09). The cakes are heavy on the icing which looks like swirls of cream but is actually marshmallow fluff! We found quite a lot of sweets made from nuts, as well as the coconut based cucuruchu in Baracoa, we saw bars of pounded peanut in several places and cones of caramelised peanuts were for sale in all of the main squares on an evening. In restaurants flan (Spanish creme caramel) is the most common option.

Cuban sweets (clockwise from top left): cakes with a generous swirl of marshmallow fluff; bars of ground peanuts and guava membrillo for sale; flan; a cake vendor roams the streets in Matanzas

Cubans love their ice cream and there are cheap ice cream cafes in every city

Drinks

Soft drinks in Cuba fall into two categories: freshly made fruit juices or cans of Cuban made fizzy pop. Alongside the usual cola, lemonade and fizzy orange options is Malta, a malted soft drink which smells exactly like a Soreen malt loaf – too sweet for me but Andrew liked it. At peso food stands what looked like squash was served by the glass but as we weren’t sure about the water used to make it we never tried one. Coffee is also available at peso food stands and usually cost MN$1 (~£0.03) for an espresso size cup poured from a Thermos flask. Tea is practically unknown so if you’d struggle without it I would advise you to pack some teabags!

Cuban soft drinks Malta, natural lemonade made from lime juice and sugar topped up with mineral water and tuKola

Sugar cane juice (guarapo) in an idyllic setting near Viñales

As sugar is a major crop in Cuba, it’s unsurprising that the most common alcohol is rum which is distilled from sugar cane juice. Rum based cocktails, e.g. mojito, daiquiri, piña colada, were the order of the day if we weren’t sampling one of the various Cuban brands of lager-like beer. In Havana, there’s a micro brewery in Plaza Vieja in the heart of the old town. We tried one of their brews and really enjoyed it but sadly the service was so awful that we couldn’t bring ourselves to go back.

Cuban alcohol Clockwise from top left: daiquiris; mojitos; Cristal was my favourite of the local beers; piña coladas

Trinidad, Cuba

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Trinidad is one of the most visited destinations in Cuba and we arrived with some trepidation about how much of a tourist trap it would be, but the pretty little colonial city soon charmed us as much as everyone else who goes there. Yes the historical centre bustles with tour groups during the day and there are dozens of overpriced bars and restaurants but you don’t need to venture too far down the cobbled streets to find normal life.

Trinidad streets Pastel coloured houses line the cobbled streets in Trinidad’s historic centre

As well as wandering the streets and taking lots of photos there are a few small museums to seek out. Plaza Mayor is the centre of town and most of the attractions are within one block of it. It’s ringed with museums but, apart from poking our noses into the cathedral, we just visited the Art Gallery on its western edge which was almost more interesting for the 19th century frescoes preserved on its walls than the art on display!

Plaza Mayor, Trinidad Plaza Mayor from the balcony of the art museum. The cathedral is in the top right of the square in the photo

Art Gallery, Trinidad We liked the wall frescoes better than most of the art in the Art Gallery

Trinidad is a well preserved example of a Spanish colonial city, and was built with the money generated in the sugar plantations in the nearby Valley de los Ingenios. Together the city and the former plantations have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Municipal Museum is set in the one-time home of a sugar plantation owner and shows the opulent wealth that he and his family lived in. Rather bizarrely it’s weekly closing day is on a Friday which hadn’t occured to us as a possible reason for not being able to go in when we first visited.

Municipal Museum, Trinidad A sumptuous mother-of-pearl inlaid bedstead in the Municipal Museum

The yellow bell tower visible from much of the centre (see top left in the photo of Plaza Mayor) and the subject of many a postcard of the city belongs to the former convent of San Francisco de Asís. The building now displays a variety of exhibits about the fight against the counter-revolutionaries who based themselves in the nearby Sierra Escambray in the early 1960s and, according to the museum at least, were backed by the CIA.

View from bell tower Entry to the museum also entitles you to climb the bell tower for panoramic views over the city and to the surrounding mountains

A little way outside the city to the north-east is a TV and radio antenna perched on a hill called Cerro de la Vigía. It’s a steep 30 minute climb up a rough road but from the top there are stunning views down Valley de los Ingenios and out to the sea. We did it in the late afternoon and I’d definitely recommend hiking in the cooler part of the day, though I think sunrise would be better than sunset if you can rouse yourself as the viewpoint faces towards the west.

Radio antenna The enterprising security guard might even take you out back to stand on the roof of the shed containing the back-up generator (past the no entry sign) before selling you a cold can of beer!

View down to Valley de los Ingenios (from the top of the generator shed!)

Beers on Cerro de la Vigia Admiring the sunset view with a cold beer

We hired a taxi to take us around a few of the sights in the Valley de los Ingenios. First up was a viewpoint restaurant which was fine, but for us the view from Cerro de la Vigía was better. Next up was San Isidro de los Destiladeros, the ruins of which are slowly being excavated and restored but are currently in an interesting intermediate state set in lush forest (complete with hordes of mosquitos).

The owner’s house and bell tower at San Isidro de los Destiladeros are undergoing restoration works

Ruins of San Isidro de los Destiladeros In the ruins of the sugar factory we could see how the system of boiling pans would be set over the furnaces to turn the sugar cane juice into molasses

From San Isidro we moved on to Manaca Iznaga, the most touristed of all the sites we visited in the valley. Here the colonial mansion has been turned into a restaurant and the 44m tower which was used to keep an eye on the slaves who did the plantation work is open to tourists with good views from the top. Behind the restaurant is an old sugar press which would have been turned by animals or slaves to extract the juice from the sugar cane.

Tower of Manaca Iznaga The tower at Manaca Iznaga is approached along a path lined with stalls selling local embroidery

View from Manaca Iznaga tower Another nice view from the top of the tower at Manaca Iznaga

Our final stop in the valley was at Casa Guáimaro. When we arrived we were the only people there and the lady custodian began showing us around the house with its frescoed walls and period furniture explaining the history of the Borrell family who had built it, then in just a few generations lost it, and its subsequent usage as offices, a school and even housing for seven local families! My Spanish isn’t good enough to ask how the wall paintings were preserved during that time, I can only imagine that they had been painted over and then uncovered later. About halfway through the tour the lady began distractedly glancing out of the window and two minutes later we found out why when six bus loads of children on a church trip from Cienfuegos rolled up and started invading all doors. We were handed off to one of the bus drivers to be shown the final two rooms while she tried to contain the crowds…

Casa Guáimaro; the wall paintings in the entrance way shows scenes of European cities; a holy water holder in the small family chapel

We enjoyed the variety of the sights in the Valley de los Ingenios, I had thought that it might get a bit repetitive visiting old sugar plantations but each stop had something different to see. On the way back into the city our driver asked if we’d like to stop at a pottery workshop and we agreed. It was interesting to see the craftsmen working so quickly and uniformly and we admired everything we were shown so our driver was rather confused when we didn’t want to buy anything (I think he would get a commision) but we genuinely don’t have a need for a multi-coloured ceramic mobile or vase.

On our final day, we took a walk away from the bustling touristy centre to the west towards the cemetery passing lots of normal Cuban life on the way with roadside butchers, greengrocers, pizza shops and even a barber who Andrew was able to persuade to cut his hair for just a little more than the locals’ price.

Trinidad local life Clockwise from top left: a pig’s head hangs outside a butcher’s shop; gateway into the cemetery; pizza for lunch; the barber had a price list on the wall but insisted that the tourist price was different – he looked rather uncomfortable when we pointed out that all hair is the same

In the afternoon we took the tourist bus to the beach, Playa Ancon (for the record we should have believed the taxi driver and hired a colectivo taxi for the same price – we would have had some flexibility over times and it wouldn’t have been such a crush on the way back). After the beautiful beaches we’d visited along the north coast of the island, Playa Ancon was a bit of a disappointment, nice enough but just not as perfect. We took a walk away from the crowds towards the end of the peninsula then, back at the beach, relaxed with a beer in one of the small bars with a view of the waves.

Wandering away from the crowds at Playa Ancon

Julie’s Highlights of Havana

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Cuba’s Fine Art Museum is spread across two buildings in Centro Havana, one dedicated to Cuban art and the other to international art. We visited the Cuban building first and I was blown away by the quality and variety of the works on display. The exhibits are arranged chronologically, the first few rooms are dedicated to colonial art with some arresting portraits, landscapes showing the countryside and life in the past with a few maps thrown in for good measure.

Fine Art Museum, Havana Outside the Cuban building of Havana’s Fine Art Museum, sadly no photographs allowed inside

The rest of that floor (about three-quarters of it) shows how art progressed in Cuba from the late-19th to mid-20th century – this was my favourite part, I especially enjoyed the satirical cartoons of Rafael Blanco and Wilfredo Lam’s paintings which reminded us of Picasso. The second floor exhibits works from the mid-20th century through to the current day, also worthwhile but by that point we were starting to get museum fatigue (and hungry!) so probably didn’t enjoy them as much as we might have done.

El Tercer Mundo by Wilfredo Lam ‘El Tercer Mundo’ (The Third World) by Wilfredo Lam [photo credit: Transregional Academies]

Having refueled in a nearby cafe, we spent the afternoon in the international building and found the display of mostly pre-20th century European and Latin American art to be a bit lacklustre after the Cuban works. The stained glass ceiling in the central stairwell was spectacular although we worried about whether it would survive as it was in desperate need of renovation and the building seemed to be crumbling around it. Also in this building was a temporary exhibition by Francis Alÿs, mostly video installations covering the time he spent embedded with the British army in Afghanistan, immigration across the Straits of Gibraltar and his attempt to create a ‘bridge’ of boats stretching from Cuba to Florida.

Outside Museum of Fine Art, Havana Francis Alÿs is known for creating trails of paint from art galleries out into the surrounding cities

Fusterlandia

In search of more art, one day we made the long journey out to Jaimanitas on Havana’s western fringe to visit the home and workshop of José Fuster. Our guidebook suggested we take a taxi but we were sick of haggling prices and still feeling like we were being ripped off, so we took a chance on a local bus. We perhaps should have been a bit better prepared with landmarks around where we were supposed to get off but we managed OK and after a one hour bus journey (total cost MN4 = £0.12) and a 40 minute walk along a shady road we arrived feeling slightly smug.

Wow! I guess we’ve arrived at Fusterlandia, José Fuster’s home and workshop

Fuster has turned not only his home but half of his neighbourhood into something reminiscent of Barcelona’s Park Güell (created by Antoni Gaudí) with lots of organic forms and bright tiles covering every surface. We loved wandering the nearby streets checking out the colourful buildings and decorated walls, there’s even a tile covered unicorn!

Granma tile mosaic A tile mural of the Granma yacht and some of the revolutionaries who sailed in her

When we arrived Fusterlandia itself was closed for lunch but at 2pm we were able to go in and explore. It’s an overwhelming experience with seemingly every available surface covered in tiles, and every time we turned we spotted something new. There are lots of animals, cockerels especially appear very often, as well as hearts, a mermaid and a pavilion in honour of the Cuban Five.

Fusterlandia details (clockwise from top left): giraffes; a heart; the Cuban Five; and cockerels

Hershey train

We love travelling by train but it turned out to not be a straightforward way to get around Cuba – the rail infrastructure is not very good and the schedules are unreliable. In fact the only train that we travelled on was the electric line from Havana to Matanzas, though we got off midway in the small town of Camilo Cienfuegos (aka Hershey). I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, this electric line can not be compared to Japan’s shinkansen, or even the East Coast Mainline back in the UK, it’s an old interurban train – basically a very rickety tram!

The rather dilapidated looking Hershey train at Casablanca station in Havana

The line was built in 1921 by American chocolate tycoon Milton Hershey to link his sugar mill (in the town then known as Hershey) with Havana and Matanzas. Before the Revolution the sugar produced here was shipped to the US to be turned into chocolate, but in 1959 the factory was nationalised (and the town was renamed after a revolutionary hero) and it feels as if there hasn’t been much maintenance to tracks or train since then, although actually the trains were replaced with second-hand Catalonian ones in the 1990s. It’s rusty and dilapidated and bumps and clangs along stopping at dozens of little ‘stations’ (imagine a concrete bus shelter next to the line and you’ll be about right) along the way.

Inside the Hershey train The one carriage train was pretty full leaving Havana and even more people got on at the next few stops

The sugar mill ceased production in 2002 and its rusting ruins dominate the sleepy town. We had a bit of a poke about and took some photos being careful not to cross the ‘Danger No Entry’ signs. While there we met an American father and son, Fred and Justin, who’d also travelled in on the train.

Hershey sugar mill ruins The huge sugar mill at Hershey is slowly disintegrating although its three chimneys remain intact for now

After taking photos of the mill we still had 3.5 hours to kill before the train back so we headed 1km north of town to the only other ‘attraction’ in the area, the Hershey Gardens, basically a rather overgrown pleasure ground with some woods, a pool for bathing and a couple of restaurants. We ate lunch with Fred and Justin swapping traveller’s tales over papaya juice while we waited for the food, before setting out to investigate the rest of the gardens only to discover that there wasn’t much to explore. The path wound along the river a little way to the pool where several local families were picnicking and cooling off in the water before coming to an end at a fence just a couple of hundred metres into the wood!

A peaceful section of the river in the Hershey Gardens

Callejon de Hamel

Tucked away off a quiet back street in Centro Havana is the Callejon de Hamel, an alleyway covered in artworks and host, at 12pm every Sunday, to a live rumba session. We thought it might be a show for tourists but there were at least as many locals there and the first band of musicians and dancers performed for an hour and a half! The drumbeat throbbed and everyone was clearly having a great time. Absolutely superb!

Artworks cover the surrounding buildings along the Callejon de Hamel

Cigar factory tour

Think of Cuba and one of the first things that’ll spring to mind is cigars, from the iconic images of Fidel Castro with a cigar clamped between his teeth to the roll call of famous brand names – Cohiba, Montecristo, Romeo and Juliet – and so we were keen to visit the Partagas factory in Havana to see how they were made (spoiler: they’re not rolled along the inner thigh of a nubile young woman…)

Partagas cigar labels Many of the famous cigar brands are made at the Partagas factory in Havana

We thought the tour was a bit overpriced at CUC$10 (£7) each for a 30 minute visit and we were very disappointed that we weren’t able to take photographs of the factory floor, nevertheless our guide Marisela was very knowledgeable and we had a small group so it was easy to get a good look at what was going on and ask questions. First she explained how tobacco plants are grown, and the different types of leaf which are needed to make each cigar (for flavour, strength and burn quality) as well as leaves from shade grown plants which are more flexible, almost stretchy, and used for the binder and wrapper.

Partagas cigar factory The interior atrium of the Partagas factory

Next we were taken up to the third floor where we could see the cigars being made. The workers were a mix of men and women across a wide age range and seemed friendly, smiling and winking at us as we peered in from the doorways and Marisela dashed back and forth bringing us samples to look at and smell. It is a highly skilled job and each worker must pass a 9 month training program before they can begin producing sale quality cigars (the practice duds are sent off to a different factory to be chopped up and made into cigarettes). We were interested to hear that salaries are paid in national pesos with a bonus in CUC (dependent on their output) plus 5 cigars per day.

It was fascinating to see how the cigars are rolled and pressed in forms before being bound and wrapped. Different workers each producing just one grade, length and thickness of cigar. I suspect its one of those things that looks very easy when performed by a skilled worker but is extremely difficult to get right, especially as the tightness of the roll is crucial to the finished cigar – quality control have a special machine, developed in Cuba, which measures the airflow through a sample of the production to make sure they will burn well.

Napoleon museum

Havana seems a rather unlikely place for a museum of artefacts relating to Napoleon, but here we are, one of the best laid out museums that we visited in Cuba. The displays include everything from soldier’s uniforms to period furniture to Napoleon’s pocket watch and were amassed by Cuban sugar baron Julio Lobo. Following the Revolution they were seized by the state and set out in a beautiful restored mansion near the university in Vedado.

Napoleon Museum Main Hall The stunning main hall of the Napoleon Museum

The museum was fairly quiet and a good way to spend an hour or so – I don’t think it’s on the itinerary of the bus tours – and the staff were friendly. The lovely lady on the second floor in particular spent a lot of time pointing out the various highlights set up in the bedroom and explaining to us the history of the museum collection.

More busts and statues of Napoleon than you ever wanted to see, including his death mask in the bottom right