Cuban Trip [Part 1]

As I’m going to cover a lot of ground, I’ll divide my posts into two: first describing the route that we covered and our general impressions of the country and the hotels we stayed in, and the second with a mixture of shots from the 3 or 4 main areas that I took pictures.

As an overview, we covered around 2000km by road over 15 days, staying in 7 different hotels. The hotels covered the full spectrum, from the super posh, right down to the functional. The weather was a real mixture, probably reflecting our mid-November arrival coinciding with the very start of the high season. We bookended the holiday with quite damp, humid days Havana; on the whole though, the weather was comfortable with temperatures around the mid- to high twenties. We only struggled with the humidity on a particularly stormy last day in Havana, a storm which made for one of the most turbulent flights we’ve ever had.

Our tour operator was the same outfit that we used for Vietnam. They are high-end  and, quite simply, the quality of service and the itinerary that they put together was first class. We were travelling with a guide for nearly the entire holiday, who doubled up as our driver for the middle section of our site seeing. We had a separate driver for the first few legs of the journey. As a consequence, this undoubtedly skews the view of the holiday that we had in a very positive way. For instance, if you are thinking of hiring a car yourself to try to put together a serious road trip, you are in for some serious challenges. I’d guess we passed about 30 road signs over the course of the entire 2000km, and those were generally for the larger population centres such as Santa Clara, Trinidad and, of course, Havana itself. I’m not a very experienced driver, but some of the mechanisms employed at road junctions struck me as pretty peculiar. Also, if you are thinking of bringing a GPS unit, you will need to do some research: my iPhone GPS didn’t work at all and while trying to figure out [unsuccessfully] why not, I discovered articles suggesting that you need permission to bring them into the country. We saw a lot of tourists, identifiable by their cars’ mauve number plates, stopped at the roadside peering at maps.

The roads were a real mixture: the central motorway was pretty good, but the more rural routes were ‘full of history’, as our guide put it. The price of petrol is almost prohibitive [around a Cuban Convertible], so there is a system of officially mediated hitching. Clustered generally around bridges and overpasses, there were queues of people being organised by men with clipboards. Passing drivers are obliged to stop to pick people up, though we understood that the system depended on the number plate that the car had [blue for government controlled business owned, yellow for private cars, green for military, and so on].

The roads, outside of Havana, were thoroughly deserted. The novelty of the ‘Yank Tanks’, the generally enormous pre-embargo era cars, never wore off for me. Our guide said that the locals ‘hated’ them, because they are always breaking down and the embargo makes replacement parts almost impossible to get. We saw plenty of them broken down by the road side, but at the other end of the spectrum, there were cars which looked like they had rolled out of show room, obviously the owners’ pride and joy.

On a related infrastructure theme, street lighting is nominal, even in central Havana. Even though the crime rate is very low, we still couldn’t help but find this quite intimidating. There were a couple of exceptions, with some of the more important thoroughfares – such as Obispa – being better lit.

Food is a story in its own right, and a topic that is very hard to capture our experience of. I’d not read a lot of tourist information about Cuba [having contained my research to reading about the wildlife, and a pretty dry book on political history] but had heard from friends of friends that the choice was quite limited, and that the fare was generally not great. Although we had a couple of absolute howlers of meals [including one at the fancy all-inclusive place we stayed at – which I’ll come on to later] in general, the food was very good. Even so, it’s still fair to say that if you don’t eat pork, or are a vegetarian, you may still struggle. The quality of the meat that we encountered was superb, and the pork in particular was the best we had ever had by a country mile. We ate in a couple of paladars, where the emphasis was on quantity rather than quality.

The food was a source of occasional surprises, like when we ordered a Serrano and tomato sandwich, and got a Serrano and tomato ketchup sandwich. I’d also never encountered raw beetroot before.

Our first three days were in the Saratoga Hotel in Havana, which would be a 5 star equivalent. We really enjoyed it, a nice balance of quality of service, great food and friendly staff.

This was where we had our first experience of artistic towel folding, which was sometimes quite nicely done, but was occasionally bordering on the surreal. This isn’t a great shot, but hopefully captures the peculiar sensation of finding a 3 foot long wingless bird [or chubby snake??] floundering in your sink:

We fitted in a couple of nice tours, such as of the various squares in the old town, and a particularly interesting hour in a cigar factory. No photography allowed, unfortunately. All of the familiar Cuban cigars [Cohiba, Romeo y Julieta, Bolivar etc] all come out of the same factory. It’s the sorting of the leaves and the composition of elements of those leaves for flavour, strength and quality that defines the difference between the brands.

We really enjoyed Havana. By European standards [and the prevalent Spanish building style in the old town do lend it that flavour], it’s very clean, people were pretty friendly, and it had a very buzzy feel to it. Our favourite watering hole was Bar Monserrate, half a block from the much more famous, and pricey Floridita. The latter was one of only a couple of poor service experiences that we had during the holiday. The waiter who served us an admittedly fantastic Daiquiri, was as miserable as sin, though nearly fell over himself smiling and laughing with the locals who were sitting next to us. It was about 3 times the price of Monserrate and, on our brief experience, thoroughly worth skipping. Monserrate was great fun, excellent live music every night, and friendly waiting staff.

In terms of overall atmosphere, service and food, the best meal we had was in El Patio in the old town, sitting on a balcony overlooking the square.

On our fourth day we set off on our travels, first heading to the area around Vinales. This included a short boat ride through a cave system [fun but not really worth going out of your way for, if I’m brutally honest], and then on to the bizarre Mural de la Prehistoria. Again, not really that interesting, but the lunch we had next to it was simply fantastic, roast pork with roast potatoes and a side salad. The pork, by unanimous consent, was the best we’d ever eaten.

That night we stayed in a place called Las Terrazas which, our guide explained, was almost like a social experiment set up by the minister for tourism. It’s a self sufficient community, with the Hotel Moka in the centre of it. The hotel was lovely, famous for the very large tree growing through the middle of the reception area. We were only there for one night, so we didn’t really have enough time to explore that much, but it was a pretty nice spot. Ever so slightly hippy though. The room was lovely, although the bathroom did appear to be at the crossroads of a couple of ant highways. The fridge was also so noisy that it sounded like it was running on diesel; easily remedied though.

The next day we drove out to Palma Rubia to catch the ferry to Cayo Levisa. Although this is known for SCUBA diving, we were there to chill out for a couple of days. It’s a pretty small island, only about 4 kilometres long, with a pristine beach on the outward, Atlantic facing side, and then mangroves on the Cuban side. There’s not a lot of development there, just the one hotel made up of cabins [some standalone, some for 4 groups over two storeys], and not a lot else. The weather was a little odd: very hot up until about midday, and then it started to get very breezy.

The food – like the cabin – was basic, but still very good: the grilled red snapper I had for lunch on both days was as good as I’ve ever had. There was a quite good buffet for the evening meals. Lunch appeared to be an identical selection on both days, so we might have timed the length of our stay about right. Also trying to pay for lunch and dinner was a somewhat chaotic affair. But yet again, the staff were really friendly, and there was a great atmosphere about the place.

Quite a lot of people take the ferry for a day trip. We happened to overhear one group talking among themselves and saying that they couldn’t get a cabin to stay the night. If we were at peak capacity – well, it hardly felt like it was overrun.

After the ferry back to the mainland, we had a long drive [in our embarrassingly flash car: an Audi A4, by far and away the most expensive modern car that we encountered anywhere] down to the Bay of Pigs. We had one night in what was the most basic of all of the hotels that we stayed at, called Villa Horizontes in Playa Larga. Despite the fact that the decor was kindest described as functional, we both quite enjoyed it. There was not an ounce of pretence about the place, the room [a sort of semi-detached single storey unit] had just been decorated and was as clean as a whistle. The beach it was adjacent to was immaculate: gently sloping, crystal clear warm water – oh, and gun emplacements. Given the historical significance of the area, the density of roadside political messages and posters [which are everywhere] was at its highest here.

The whole point of going to Playa Larga was for me to go to the Zapata National Park. I’d done some research on the park before we incorporated it into our itinerary and, based on the number of articles I was finding on it [on wildlife], I’d assumed that it was more developed than it transpired to be. It’s basically a single track with controlled access – you have to arrange access with an official guide – which bisects the park. The park itself runs parallel to the shoreline, and is interspersed with lakes and heavy forest. Our guide [one of a pair of brothers who are quite well known] Angel was great, very knowledgeable, and occasionally tried to attract birds with both whistling and a small tape recorder of birdsong. We saw a rewarding amount of wildlife including flamingoes, a rail, hawks, spoonbills, cormorants and egrets, but we have never been so comprehensively bitten in our lives: on the way back in the car, Angel decided it would be interesting to take a quick detour into the forest to see what we could find. He managed to spot a Cuban Tody, which was a cute little article, but we had to run back out onto the road. I used my peaked cap to try and beat off some of the mosquitoes that had assumed an attack formation around She Who Must be Obeyed. This despite the fact that we’d both used a liberal amount of Jungle Spray. I suppose a strapline of ‘Jungle Spray: one it ten mozzies will find it mildly distracting’ wouldn’t exactly make it jump off the shelf.

We’d had an early start for the bird watching / mosquito bait session, and settled into a long drive to Trinidad. The hotel that we stayed in, the Iberostar, was probably the highest end of the entire holiday. The room was the nicest we had, but the towel folding and related activity reached disturbing new heights:

We had one of our highlights of the holiday at this point, a forest drive in an area called Topes de Collantes. There was a slight problem: I’d had an allergic reaction to the bites I’d got in Zapata, so I could barely see out of my left eye it was so swollen. I had to undo my watch because of a bite on the back of my hand, and was feeling a little bit out of it. Despite this it was still a really enjoyable afternoon. Plenty of wildlife on show, including our first encounter with a hummingbird [the Cuban Emerald]; the Cuban national bird, and various types of lizards. Unfortunately the density of the canopy meant that it was generally too dark for the camera.

We had a couple of nights in Trinidad. The first night we had a thoroughly ignorant service experience in one of the paladars, and a half a stone of pasta each. The second night we had the buffet in the hotel. It was quite nice, but a bit pricey for what we actually had. The highlight of the entertainment was a couple of hours in the Casa de la Trova bar. The music was fantastic, though the waiting service was hit and miss: I had to go to the bar after we paid the waitress in advance for a drink that hadn’t materialised after a half an hour.

We left Trinidad for a 5 hour jaunt to Cayo Santa Maria, which is at the end of a 49km causeway. We stayed at an all inclusive called the Royal Hideaway and, surprisingly, which turned out to be the most target rich venue for photography. The room was great: walk-in closet, balcony, and a magically self-replenishing free-beer fridge. The hotel itself was spread over a huge area, with little 2 storey clusters of rooms dotted around the pools and gardens. The quality of the food was occasionally a little bit hit and miss [specifically at the a la carte restaurants], but on the whole it was a great spot. We had four days there, with me generally spending a couple of hours a day trailing around the gardens with my camera, no doubt building a reputation as a nutter with the staff over the course of it. There was wildlife everywhere: hawks, turkey vultures, egrets, hummingbirds, iguanas…

From Cayo Santa Maria, we had our last long drive of the holiday back to Havana, and our last night in the NH Parque Central. Mixed impressions of hotel, though. The room we got was probably the biggest I’ve ever stayed in: it must have been about 30 feet from the door to the balcony. We never figured out our decorative gates by the bed:

We were an hour early for checkin, and were told to come back at 4. When we did, we were then told to come back at 5. Bearing in mind that we’d had an hour and a half wait for our taxi to turn up at the all inclusive [the only wrinkle in the logistics in the whole 2 weeks], followed by a 4 and a half hour drive, tempers were starting to fray. Apart from the fact that we wanted to get a shower, we were keen to get out and make the most of our last day. While we were waiting [the first hour] we went up to the pool on the roof, and had the bizarre Serrano ham and tomato ketchup sandwich I mentioned earlier. Breakfast was an opportunity to bookend the holiday with similar levels of service grumpiness that we had in Floridita. I don’t think we’d go back…

Despite the slightly disappointing hotel at the end of the holiday [and to be fair, when you’re staying at 7, you increase the odds of the wheels falling off somewhere], it wasn’t enough to dampen our enthusiasm for the country and the people. It was an unreservedly fantastic fortnight. Would we go back? Quite possibly. A week back at Cayo Santa Maria is an appealing prospect.