aussiedom
Intern
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2010
- Posts
- 51
Our group of five spent nine days in Cuba in October 2015. The group consisted of my wife and me, my cousin, my mother and a friend of hers (both in their early 80s).
To get to Cuba, we flew with Qantas from Sydney to LAX, had a night in an airport hotel there (Four Points by Sheraton - LAX), and then flew to Mexico City with American Airlines the next day. This AA flight was a codeshare, purchased with Qantas points. Entering the US at LAX for the first time in quite a while reminded me of why we’ve tried to avoid it. It took nearly two hours to clear Immigration. They seemed to have about 25 booths of which only maybe 6 or so were operating. I think we’ll go back to entering at Honolulu or somewhere else instead for the next visit!
We were pleasantly surprised by Mexico City – in fact we loved our stay there. The neighborhoods we stayed in were great and somewhat European in their ambience. The city has many nice parks and lots of interesting museums. They have a complex and bloody history and we learned a lot about this on the trip.
We felt very safe in Mexico City. At least in the districts we stayed in, there was a very visible police presence. We used to notice when we’d go for a walk at night that we were hardly ever not within sight of a cop!
We stayed at the Plaza Revolucion in Tabacalera (near Plaza de la Republica) for the first stay and then at Four Points by Sheraton in Colonia Roma Norte on the way back from Cuba. We especially liked Roma Norte. Anything you could want in terms of restaurants, cafes, bars etc could be found within a short walk from our hotel in Avenida Alvaro Obregon.
While in Mexico City, we did a number of private tours with a firm called ‘Royal Cars and Tours’.
ROYAL CARS AND TOURS
I’d found them on the internet where there are many positive reviews. We visited the ancient pyramids at Teotihuacan and the Guadalupe Basilica with them, as well as the ‘floating gardens’ and Aztec-era canals at Xochimilco. Also the ‘City Tour’ which includes the Museum of Anthropology and History as well as the Diego Rivera murals at Palacio Nacional, the main cathedral and other attractions close to the historic center of Mexico City.
I will have to add my own (very positive) review for Royal Cars and Tours as we were very impressed with their service. The guides we had were great – very informative – and they had nice comfortable tour vehicles. They are not especially cheap, but probably no more or not much more than it would cost to arrange these tours using Viator, or packed into a tour bus with dozens of other people. For us the flexibility and personalized service was worth it, even if it might have cost a little more.
We spent two nights in Mexico City and then flew with Interjet ( a low-cost Mexican airline, but apparently well-regarded) to Havana. Interjet has an extensive domestic network within Mexico but also flies to various places in Central America, the Caribbean and the USA (mainly the Southwest but also NYC).
At Benito Juarez airport in Mexico City, we got to sample the AMEX ‘Centurion’ lounge for the first time. The lounge in Terminal 1 was pretty nice, and had some semi-private ‘cabana’ type areas with curtains as well as the regular seating. These seemed to all be occupied, but I imagine they’d be a nice place to grab a little rest if you had a longer layover and one was available. We’ve mainly used the Qantas and partner lounges before, as well as quite a few of those available to us via ‘Priority Pass’ in various countries. The AMEX lounges in Mexico had a feature I hadn’t seen before – the drinks and basic food items were complimentary, but there was also a menu of more substantial food offerings that you could buy. This was the same in the AMEX lounge on the domestic side of MEX when we flew to Puerto Vallarta later in the trip.
Our itinerary for Cuba was as follows:
· Three nights in Havana,
· Roadtrip to Trinidad (about 3 hours), stopping at Santa Clara to visit the Che Guevara musuem and mausoleum
· Three nights in Trinidad, a World Heritage site that was founded by the Spanish in the early 1500s
· Drive from Trinidad to Cienfuegos (about one hour) and spend one night in Cienfuegos
· Drive back to Havana from Cienfuegos and spend two more nights in Havana.
For the Cuba trip, we had decided to stay in ‘casas particulares’ as opposed to hotels. A ‘casa particular’ is a privately owned house whose owner rents rooms to travellers. This is one of the few forms of private enterprise that is legal in Cuba, and it has only really been allowed for about three years. The casas will serve breakfasts for maybe $4 per day per person and also in some cases dinners. Some are also bars and restaurants – effectively a small hotel.
The casas particulares are licenced and regulated by the government, and the owners seem to be very motivated to ensure that all the necessary paperwork is in order when you check in. Generally a room in a casa particular will go for about 25 CUC per night, and will come with a private bathroom and airconditioning. A ‘CUC’ is a ‘convertible peso’, which is pegged to the US Dollar at 1 for 1. So effectively a dollar by another name!
There are various websites that provide listings of Casa Particulares. ’Cuba Junky’ is one, cubaccommodation.com is another.
You cannot buy CUC outside of Cuba, but can exchange other currencies for CUC once in Cuba. You can do this at banks, at a Cadeca (Casa de Cambio – a government-run currency exchange) or by withdrawing funds from ATMs. Cuba’s other currency is the ‘CUP’ or ‘moneda nacional’. This is used by Cubans in local shops and markets and so on, and there are 25 CUP to the CUC or US Dollar. Tourists will probably not deal in CUP – most of the things we’d spend money on are priced in CUC.
Many of the travellers who come to Cuba and stay in casas particulares are from other Hispanic countries such as Argentina and Spain. Not all casa owners will have any English, and the one we stayed with in Havana did not. There were a few younger members of the family who did speak English, but were not always there. So for this stay, most communication was in Spanish with me translating for the group. I had been learning for a year or so prior to the trip, and had enough to get by and make myself understood in most situations.
The driver who works for the casa owner in Havana also spoke no English. We did several roadtrips with this guy, and I would sit next to him in his '56 Oldsmobile (six people in the car, no seatbelts) and chat in Spanish. We were both car guys, which was a good conversation topic. Even though this guy lives there and sees these cars every day, I still was able to correct him once or twice as to whether the Chevy going by was a '56 or '57. I do know the old GM products pretty well from my time in Canada! He was a good driver and we enjoyed our trips with him. It was good to find that my Spanish was adequate for this kind of basic conversation, although I was disappointed that I usually only understood about 25% of announcements in airports, on planes etc.
The other form of free enterprise that has recently been allowed to flourish is the ‘paladar’. A paladar is a restaurant. I believe that when this system first was allowed, it basically involved a family selling meals to travellers out of the kitchen at their home. This has evolved somewhat, and many paladares nowadays (including one we visited for a birthday dinner) are of a very high standard and quite fancy.
The old part of Havana was a bit of a culture shock at first. Not so much right downtown, where things have been spruced up a bit, but in the area we stayed. This is on the border of Old Havana (Habana Vieja) and the area called Vedado - a long walk or a short cab ride to the old city.
Anyway, you can see that this must have been a very beautiful city in the day, There are many nice 'art-deco' buildings, including the apartment complex in which our casa was located. However some of these buildings are absolutely derelict now, with in some cases piles of rubble in the street that has either fallen off these buildings or been deliberately removed as part of a demolition or renovation attempt. We did a tour on an open-top bus the first day that took us through a lovely, leafy area called Miramar which must have been beautiful once. Used to be the embassy district. Much of it in poor condition now, but you can see how it could be brought back to its former glory with a bit of investment.
Infrastructure-wise Cuba varies quite a bit. They have this major road called the 'Autopista Nacional'. More or less a freeway-type road connecting the major cities. It was in OK shape for much of its length, not too far off being of a first-world standard, but there were stretches that were not well maintained. Our driver would very skilfully weave from lane to lane to give us the smoothest ride. Traffic volumes are low enough that this is quite feasible. When you see my photos, you will see quite a few horse-drawn vehicles, even on the 'freeway'. Along the highway are a few cafeterias/restaurants which are OK and have decent toilets etc. The secondary highways are often in quite poor shape. The guy who drove us from Havana to Trinidad (about a 3 hour drive) got us there about 5pm. I asked him if he was going back to Havana that evening. He was like 'Hell no - I'm not crazy!’ He said there would be horses and cattle on the roads at night and it would be totally unsafe. So he was staying at a friend's place in Trinidad and heading home the next morning. They all seem to have mobile phones, but not really smartphones.
Our host in Havana felt very optimistic about the changes that were coming, although she insisted that Cuba must continue to be governed for the Cubans, not for the North Americans. It must be remembered that casa owners and others with access to foreign currency are among the wealthiest Cubans. The official salary for a professional such as a doctor is maybe equivalent to $20 or $30 USD per month. A maid in a resort can easily earn many times that amount in tips from tourists. The extended family we stayed with in Havana included a couple of doctors at the nearby hospital. Also the maitre d' at a fancy restaurant we went to for my birthday was a psychiatrist and said that he earned more in a week from the restaurant than he made in a month from his 'official' job.
Even with the very low wages, one thing socialism does is make sure that everyone has basic food items, accommodation, healthcare etc. I understand they all have ration cards which they can use in the stores that take the 'local' peso as opposed to the 'convertible' peso that is basically a US Dollar by another name. So the bottom 10 or 20% of Cuban society are probably a lot better off than their counterparts elsewhere in the region. For some reason the banks are always full of locals changing money which makes it take forever as security won't let too many in at once. This was never really explained, but I think it is either them getting their monthly allowance or else receiving funds transferred from relatives in Miami. ATMs mostly work, but not for all foreign cards. You generally cannot use credit cards to pay for stuff except in luxury hotels.
One guy we met later (the owner of our casa in Trinidad) was much less optimistic. He felt that the American influence would bring crime, drugs and corruption. This was in the context of a situation where my mum and two others got separated from the rest of the group coming home from a restaurant late at night. I was more worried that they might not remember the way home than that anything bad would happen to them. The owner assured me that, at least for now, Cuba was perfectly safe and women and kids could walk the streets at any hour with no fear. I guess when you look at what Cuba's Caribbean neighbours are like, most of them anyway, his concerns are not unreasonable.
On the whole, people seem very excited about the opening to the USA. You will see the US flag being flown from cars or maybe next to the Cuban flag at restaurants and bars. It is not unusual to see women wearing the stars and stripes in some form as clothing.
It is quite recent to be able to get WiFi in the fancier hotels and in some cases in 'hotspots' around the main plaza for example. Apparently this is only a few months old. You have to buy cards with prepaid Wi-Fi credit to access it. A lot of the nicer hotels are run by a Spanish outfit called 'Iberostar'. There is also another Spanish brand called ‘Melia’ which operates in Cuba. I understand that Cuba still has limited tourist infrastrucutre (not many hotel rooms) and as a consequence they tend to be quite expensive for what you get.
All in all, the Cuba trip was an extremely interesting experience. We had wanted to get there before it changes too much - I guess in five or ten years there wil probably be a Starbucks on every corner just like anywhere else! Probably North American collectors will swoop in and offer a year's wages for the old classic cars and ship them back home...
After the Cuba leg, we returned to Mexico City with Cubana (the Cuban national carrier) and spent a further three nights there. Next we flew with Interjet to Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. We had three nights there and then flew with Alaska Airlines into John Wayne Airport in Orange County (much smoother immigration process than LAX, thank God!). We had two nights at Laguna Beach before taking the ferry over to Santa Catalina Island for a further two nights. Then back to Sydney with Qantas out of LAX.
Below are links each of the photo albums I put on Google Photos for these destinations:
Havana
https://goo.gl/photos/HgFd2mcndDbz9mYo8
Trinidad
https://goo.gl/photos/zhTFGCWTe5zpHGwt7
Cienfuegos
https://goo.gl/photos/wi5RsGaq7vBqd9YdA
Viñales
https://goo.gl/photos/Pbd1mqsSqidUxkow6
Mexico City
https://goo.gl/photos/NWJdVgHL1gBetWuJ6
Puerto Vallarta (Mexico)
https://goo.gl/photos/twsKrKncnBucFM8P8
Orange County and LA Area
https://goo.gl/photos/vEhbL3fVjU2Jwud49
Santa Catalina Island
https://goo.gl/photos/sbsuGpVeC7WPgcwY8
To get to Cuba, we flew with Qantas from Sydney to LAX, had a night in an airport hotel there (Four Points by Sheraton - LAX), and then flew to Mexico City with American Airlines the next day. This AA flight was a codeshare, purchased with Qantas points. Entering the US at LAX for the first time in quite a while reminded me of why we’ve tried to avoid it. It took nearly two hours to clear Immigration. They seemed to have about 25 booths of which only maybe 6 or so were operating. I think we’ll go back to entering at Honolulu or somewhere else instead for the next visit!
We were pleasantly surprised by Mexico City – in fact we loved our stay there. The neighborhoods we stayed in were great and somewhat European in their ambience. The city has many nice parks and lots of interesting museums. They have a complex and bloody history and we learned a lot about this on the trip.
We felt very safe in Mexico City. At least in the districts we stayed in, there was a very visible police presence. We used to notice when we’d go for a walk at night that we were hardly ever not within sight of a cop!
We stayed at the Plaza Revolucion in Tabacalera (near Plaza de la Republica) for the first stay and then at Four Points by Sheraton in Colonia Roma Norte on the way back from Cuba. We especially liked Roma Norte. Anything you could want in terms of restaurants, cafes, bars etc could be found within a short walk from our hotel in Avenida Alvaro Obregon.
While in Mexico City, we did a number of private tours with a firm called ‘Royal Cars and Tours’.
ROYAL CARS AND TOURS
I’d found them on the internet where there are many positive reviews. We visited the ancient pyramids at Teotihuacan and the Guadalupe Basilica with them, as well as the ‘floating gardens’ and Aztec-era canals at Xochimilco. Also the ‘City Tour’ which includes the Museum of Anthropology and History as well as the Diego Rivera murals at Palacio Nacional, the main cathedral and other attractions close to the historic center of Mexico City.
I will have to add my own (very positive) review for Royal Cars and Tours as we were very impressed with their service. The guides we had were great – very informative – and they had nice comfortable tour vehicles. They are not especially cheap, but probably no more or not much more than it would cost to arrange these tours using Viator, or packed into a tour bus with dozens of other people. For us the flexibility and personalized service was worth it, even if it might have cost a little more.
We spent two nights in Mexico City and then flew with Interjet ( a low-cost Mexican airline, but apparently well-regarded) to Havana. Interjet has an extensive domestic network within Mexico but also flies to various places in Central America, the Caribbean and the USA (mainly the Southwest but also NYC).
At Benito Juarez airport in Mexico City, we got to sample the AMEX ‘Centurion’ lounge for the first time. The lounge in Terminal 1 was pretty nice, and had some semi-private ‘cabana’ type areas with curtains as well as the regular seating. These seemed to all be occupied, but I imagine they’d be a nice place to grab a little rest if you had a longer layover and one was available. We’ve mainly used the Qantas and partner lounges before, as well as quite a few of those available to us via ‘Priority Pass’ in various countries. The AMEX lounges in Mexico had a feature I hadn’t seen before – the drinks and basic food items were complimentary, but there was also a menu of more substantial food offerings that you could buy. This was the same in the AMEX lounge on the domestic side of MEX when we flew to Puerto Vallarta later in the trip.
Our itinerary for Cuba was as follows:
· Three nights in Havana,
· Roadtrip to Trinidad (about 3 hours), stopping at Santa Clara to visit the Che Guevara musuem and mausoleum
· Three nights in Trinidad, a World Heritage site that was founded by the Spanish in the early 1500s
· Drive from Trinidad to Cienfuegos (about one hour) and spend one night in Cienfuegos
· Drive back to Havana from Cienfuegos and spend two more nights in Havana.
For the Cuba trip, we had decided to stay in ‘casas particulares’ as opposed to hotels. A ‘casa particular’ is a privately owned house whose owner rents rooms to travellers. This is one of the few forms of private enterprise that is legal in Cuba, and it has only really been allowed for about three years. The casas will serve breakfasts for maybe $4 per day per person and also in some cases dinners. Some are also bars and restaurants – effectively a small hotel.
The casas particulares are licenced and regulated by the government, and the owners seem to be very motivated to ensure that all the necessary paperwork is in order when you check in. Generally a room in a casa particular will go for about 25 CUC per night, and will come with a private bathroom and airconditioning. A ‘CUC’ is a ‘convertible peso’, which is pegged to the US Dollar at 1 for 1. So effectively a dollar by another name!
There are various websites that provide listings of Casa Particulares. ’Cuba Junky’ is one, cubaccommodation.com is another.
You cannot buy CUC outside of Cuba, but can exchange other currencies for CUC once in Cuba. You can do this at banks, at a Cadeca (Casa de Cambio – a government-run currency exchange) or by withdrawing funds from ATMs. Cuba’s other currency is the ‘CUP’ or ‘moneda nacional’. This is used by Cubans in local shops and markets and so on, and there are 25 CUP to the CUC or US Dollar. Tourists will probably not deal in CUP – most of the things we’d spend money on are priced in CUC.
Many of the travellers who come to Cuba and stay in casas particulares are from other Hispanic countries such as Argentina and Spain. Not all casa owners will have any English, and the one we stayed with in Havana did not. There were a few younger members of the family who did speak English, but were not always there. So for this stay, most communication was in Spanish with me translating for the group. I had been learning for a year or so prior to the trip, and had enough to get by and make myself understood in most situations.
The driver who works for the casa owner in Havana also spoke no English. We did several roadtrips with this guy, and I would sit next to him in his '56 Oldsmobile (six people in the car, no seatbelts) and chat in Spanish. We were both car guys, which was a good conversation topic. Even though this guy lives there and sees these cars every day, I still was able to correct him once or twice as to whether the Chevy going by was a '56 or '57. I do know the old GM products pretty well from my time in Canada! He was a good driver and we enjoyed our trips with him. It was good to find that my Spanish was adequate for this kind of basic conversation, although I was disappointed that I usually only understood about 25% of announcements in airports, on planes etc.
The other form of free enterprise that has recently been allowed to flourish is the ‘paladar’. A paladar is a restaurant. I believe that when this system first was allowed, it basically involved a family selling meals to travellers out of the kitchen at their home. This has evolved somewhat, and many paladares nowadays (including one we visited for a birthday dinner) are of a very high standard and quite fancy.
The old part of Havana was a bit of a culture shock at first. Not so much right downtown, where things have been spruced up a bit, but in the area we stayed. This is on the border of Old Havana (Habana Vieja) and the area called Vedado - a long walk or a short cab ride to the old city.
Anyway, you can see that this must have been a very beautiful city in the day, There are many nice 'art-deco' buildings, including the apartment complex in which our casa was located. However some of these buildings are absolutely derelict now, with in some cases piles of rubble in the street that has either fallen off these buildings or been deliberately removed as part of a demolition or renovation attempt. We did a tour on an open-top bus the first day that took us through a lovely, leafy area called Miramar which must have been beautiful once. Used to be the embassy district. Much of it in poor condition now, but you can see how it could be brought back to its former glory with a bit of investment.
Infrastructure-wise Cuba varies quite a bit. They have this major road called the 'Autopista Nacional'. More or less a freeway-type road connecting the major cities. It was in OK shape for much of its length, not too far off being of a first-world standard, but there were stretches that were not well maintained. Our driver would very skilfully weave from lane to lane to give us the smoothest ride. Traffic volumes are low enough that this is quite feasible. When you see my photos, you will see quite a few horse-drawn vehicles, even on the 'freeway'. Along the highway are a few cafeterias/restaurants which are OK and have decent toilets etc. The secondary highways are often in quite poor shape. The guy who drove us from Havana to Trinidad (about a 3 hour drive) got us there about 5pm. I asked him if he was going back to Havana that evening. He was like 'Hell no - I'm not crazy!’ He said there would be horses and cattle on the roads at night and it would be totally unsafe. So he was staying at a friend's place in Trinidad and heading home the next morning. They all seem to have mobile phones, but not really smartphones.
Our host in Havana felt very optimistic about the changes that were coming, although she insisted that Cuba must continue to be governed for the Cubans, not for the North Americans. It must be remembered that casa owners and others with access to foreign currency are among the wealthiest Cubans. The official salary for a professional such as a doctor is maybe equivalent to $20 or $30 USD per month. A maid in a resort can easily earn many times that amount in tips from tourists. The extended family we stayed with in Havana included a couple of doctors at the nearby hospital. Also the maitre d' at a fancy restaurant we went to for my birthday was a psychiatrist and said that he earned more in a week from the restaurant than he made in a month from his 'official' job.
Even with the very low wages, one thing socialism does is make sure that everyone has basic food items, accommodation, healthcare etc. I understand they all have ration cards which they can use in the stores that take the 'local' peso as opposed to the 'convertible' peso that is basically a US Dollar by another name. So the bottom 10 or 20% of Cuban society are probably a lot better off than their counterparts elsewhere in the region. For some reason the banks are always full of locals changing money which makes it take forever as security won't let too many in at once. This was never really explained, but I think it is either them getting their monthly allowance or else receiving funds transferred from relatives in Miami. ATMs mostly work, but not for all foreign cards. You generally cannot use credit cards to pay for stuff except in luxury hotels.
One guy we met later (the owner of our casa in Trinidad) was much less optimistic. He felt that the American influence would bring crime, drugs and corruption. This was in the context of a situation where my mum and two others got separated from the rest of the group coming home from a restaurant late at night. I was more worried that they might not remember the way home than that anything bad would happen to them. The owner assured me that, at least for now, Cuba was perfectly safe and women and kids could walk the streets at any hour with no fear. I guess when you look at what Cuba's Caribbean neighbours are like, most of them anyway, his concerns are not unreasonable.
On the whole, people seem very excited about the opening to the USA. You will see the US flag being flown from cars or maybe next to the Cuban flag at restaurants and bars. It is not unusual to see women wearing the stars and stripes in some form as clothing.
It is quite recent to be able to get WiFi in the fancier hotels and in some cases in 'hotspots' around the main plaza for example. Apparently this is only a few months old. You have to buy cards with prepaid Wi-Fi credit to access it. A lot of the nicer hotels are run by a Spanish outfit called 'Iberostar'. There is also another Spanish brand called ‘Melia’ which operates in Cuba. I understand that Cuba still has limited tourist infrastrucutre (not many hotel rooms) and as a consequence they tend to be quite expensive for what you get.
All in all, the Cuba trip was an extremely interesting experience. We had wanted to get there before it changes too much - I guess in five or ten years there wil probably be a Starbucks on every corner just like anywhere else! Probably North American collectors will swoop in and offer a year's wages for the old classic cars and ship them back home...
After the Cuba leg, we returned to Mexico City with Cubana (the Cuban national carrier) and spent a further three nights there. Next we flew with Interjet to Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. We had three nights there and then flew with Alaska Airlines into John Wayne Airport in Orange County (much smoother immigration process than LAX, thank God!). We had two nights at Laguna Beach before taking the ferry over to Santa Catalina Island for a further two nights. Then back to Sydney with Qantas out of LAX.
Below are links each of the photo albums I put on Google Photos for these destinations:
Havana
https://goo.gl/photos/HgFd2mcndDbz9mYo8
Trinidad
https://goo.gl/photos/zhTFGCWTe5zpHGwt7
Cienfuegos
https://goo.gl/photos/wi5RsGaq7vBqd9YdA
Viñales
https://goo.gl/photos/Pbd1mqsSqidUxkow6
Mexico City
https://goo.gl/photos/NWJdVgHL1gBetWuJ6
Puerto Vallarta (Mexico)
https://goo.gl/photos/twsKrKncnBucFM8P8
Orange County and LA Area
https://goo.gl/photos/vEhbL3fVjU2Jwud49
Santa Catalina Island
https://goo.gl/photos/sbsuGpVeC7WPgcwY8
