As per tradition, my mom and I went for a trip in August. This time we went to Tanzania for two weeks which were to consist of walking, eating and exploring. We landed in Dar es Salaam, where we stayed in the middle of downtown and spent the first two days just walking around town and exploring. As always, we headed for the markets (The Kivukoni fish market and the Kariakoo market), spoke with people and tried a lot of street food. And on the second day we went to the more touristy Slipway Shopping Center in Masaki district where we sat in a bar by the sea and had a well deserved break, and I had a Savanna Dry cider! Hadn’t had those since Mozambique and was very happy to finally officially introduce my mother to the refreshing taste and a glimpse of what my life in Mozambique had been.
We were so excited to be in Tanzania and start another adventure, and this one had all the good things in store.
The portrait above is without doubt one of my favourites from the Cuba albums, the unforced and charming smile, the shadows, the colours, the hat – and capturing something so old and foreign to us, yet so common on the island – payphones. In some places people were even standing in line to make a call from one of these.
With only one day left to explore La Habana, we went for yet another full-day walk. I always think that we meet the most interesting people and see the most interesting things when strolling around without a goal, so to compromise, we usually do the “must-see’s” with my mom, and then make sure we have some time left to “just walk, talk and look” so I can take my photos and feel like I get into the vibe of the place. It’s a good deal and one of the reasons travelling with my mom is so comfortable – we get to do both because of our different priorities. So we walked and explored 14km of the city by foot, and among some interesting characters, we met Ivan with the cool hair-do and then found our way to Plaza Vieja again where we sat for a while and had mojitos and delicious Cuban croquetas. We also stumbled upon the chocolate museum where we sat down and had a couple of pralines, and we basically walked all day until it got dark and we had to make our way to the San Cristobal Paladar on the other side of town where we had booked a table for dinner. A nice walk in less touristy parts of the city.
San Cristobal was a nice restaurant with a quite unpredictable decor, and the food was fantastic. We ordered black bean soup with sweet potato chips, fried yuca, and the lamb, which was delicious and a perfect choice for what has become my once-monthly ration of red meat. We had some mojitos in the mezzanine of the hotel on the way back, and then a nice long lazy sleep – our last night on the comfy Saratoga mattresses.
Next morning we packed, had breakfast at the nearby Hotel Inglaterra which serves a nice and very priceworthy buffet for 6USD per person, and went straight to the pool to get some last moments of fun in the sun before flying out. The Saratoga staff agreed to give us a late checkout and I think by that point we decided that it actually had been a good choice despite the cost. Cuba had overall been quite an expensive trip, but all had worked out really well – from the convenience of the car rental, to what we felt was an appropriate amount of nights in every place, to the people we had met and the things we had seen. Cuba treated us really really well.
We escaped Saratoga in the morning to eat a less overpriced breakfast, but I was still in the mood for something a bit more exclusive than rice and beans or tacos that I can get in Belize. My wishes were granted in Hotel Parque Central, where they gave me delicious smoked salmon! Anybody who’s had breakfast with me knows that I absolutely adore smoked salmon (and avocado, and sunny-side-up eggs), and that it’s impossible to get many things in Belize, and that I miss them. Needless to say, I was very happy. Mami had beer – for breakfast! We giggled like kids.
After breakfast, we had to rush to the cigar factory to make it for the tour. You’re not allowed to take photos in the factory, protecting the secret of the hand made Cuban cigars, and the integrity of the people who work there I guess – it was an interesting tour and it was nice that we were alone so we could ask all the questions we wanted.
We made our way back to where all the vintage cabriolets are, and found a yellow 1957 Pontiac Super Chief that we wanted to take a ride in. A one hour city tour in a vintage car is usually 35USD, but we had another place in mind that we wanted to visit – Fusterlandia. Located in the small fishing village Jaimanitas, 30 minutes outside of La Habana, Fusterlandia is the home of the quirky, “Gaudí-esque”, surrealist Cuban artist José Fuster. We paid 40usd for the Pontiac driver to take us all the way to Fuster’s home and let us stroll around the neighbourhood, it took us 1.5 in total so it was a nice deal.
Fuster has not only decorated his own home with his art, but has over the past 10 years transformed the entire village into a dreamy land of surreal shapes, details and partiotic images, and covered more than 80 neighbours’ houses and fences in his characteristically styled randomness. A visit is warmly recommended if you’re looking for something different yet very Cuban. Taking the Pontiac to go to Fusterlandia was a great way to combine the two experiences – especially as the ride along the Malecon and the big 5th Avenue was a very nice experience in itself – windy, fresh, fun! Much better than driving around the congested streets in the downtown area if you ask me.
We came back to La Habana where we had booked a room at the supposedly luxurious Hotel Saratoga already before landing on the island. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s hard to arrange and book things online for Cuba, and for some reason most hotels were sold out already a week before we were scheduled to travel, so we picked the Saratoga (which also only had three rooms left). We weren’t sure what the situation would be with Internet, and since I knew that I would want to check in on work emails after almost a week off the grid, and my mother would want to upload photos to her Facebook, we chose to stay at the one hotel where we surely would have Internet.
Hotel Saratoga also happens to be the most expensive hotel in La Habana, and at 250USD a night it was indeed ridiculously expensive but we figured we could allow ourselves to splurge a little considering how we always choose the cheaper option when travelling – we wanted to experience both sides of La Habana and this was going to be an interesting alternative. The hotel had functioning internet indeed, was conveniently located, and had a beautiful rooftop pool and bar with a great view, the perfect place to have a rest and some “vacation” after our hopping around. Other than that, it really wasn’t that extraordinary – the rooms were not particularly astonishing, the rooftop bar didn’t accept putting cocktails on the room tab which I found annoying, breakfast wasn’t included and was 25USD per person (no, we didn’t!), and it was just really not good value for the money. But, roomservice did bring a cup of honey, hot water and lemon juice to the room when I complained of a sore throat, for free. (haha, wow!) And Usher and Ludacris were staying at the hotel at the same time as we were so we were greeted by screaming fans when getting out of the hotel which made us feel awkwardly and involuntarily famous, which was a funny experience. (The kids were screaming “Uche, uche!” so we didn’t understand who it was about until the concierge explained that it was all about Usher, haha)
And that rooftop bar was pretty special and we spent a good amount of time there catching up on the news, responding to emails and enjoying piña coladas in the evening, especially since I wasn’t feeling well the last days and had a really sore throat.. so I guess it was worth it as a place to wrap up the trip after all. :)
On our way back to La Habana, we also stopped by Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba, today a museum. The house where Hemingway wrote most of “For Whom The Bell Tolls” (Hi, J!) and that never ending “The Old Man and the Sea” has been kept the way it supposedly was left by the writer before his suicide in 1961. It was a bit strange to look into somebody’s living room, although not much unlike the Bob Marley museum or Frida Kahlo’s house, and it was definitely an interesting stop, worth the little detour.
In July 2015, two months before we arrived to Cuba, the country decided to open 35 access points in public parks and spaces all over the island. This was obviously a huge deal in a place where internet restrictions have been among the harshest in the world and where access only had been available in state owned parlors and for a selected group of elites.
One of the things that impressed me the most about Cuba was exactly this, something that we consider a basic right and take for granted – access to information – was now suddenly available to anybody. I was amazed by how evident the hunger for knowledge and contact was. At night, the parks and squares were packed with young people with smartphones and computers, their faces lit up in blue from the screens, entire families standing around one smartphone showing off their kids to relatives abroad over Viber. The energy was very high and it was obvious that this was something that the people had been longing for for a long time.
While being “easily accessible” the internet hotspots are by no means cheap to access. For 2USD you can surf the internet for one hour – very expensive considering that people still earn on average 30USD per month. But anyway – Facebook, Wikipedia, Viber. Open. Suddenly it’s not impossible to communicate and it was clear that the people, and especially the young people, had been craving it.
We drove to Cienfuegos from Trinidad, and took a small detour to Palmira on the way where we had some cashewnut icecream and checked out the only local museum, we then continued to Cienfuegos where we walked around in the evening mostly doing people-watching. It was a quick tour on the way back to La Habana, but it was worth spending one night in Cienfuegos, a pretty place and different from both Trinidad and La Habana. The best thing about having a rental car is exactly this – being able to stop on the way and check other places out.
Trinidad was probably our favourite place on Cuba. The colourful colonial architecture, cobblestone streets, horses with carriages and an overall feeling that time has completely stopped in this town, makes it wonderfully authentic. The amount of private homestays in beautiful homes with high ceilings and living rooms that look like museums make even room-hunting an interesting experience. Forget about booking Cuba lodging online, the nicest spots are found walking around and knocking on doors.
We slept two nights in Trinidad, spent an afternoon at Playa Ancon beach, and took a number of nice strolls around town – including at night. Trinidad felt even safer than La Habana. Actually, all of Cuba felt very safe.
We had rented a car in La Habana already before we landed, as there apparently are very few rental cars on the island and it isn’t easy to get one. This was confirmed by the online agencies since only one managed to get us a car. It wasn’t too bad but it certainly wasn’t cheap, we paid about 350usd for the car including gas, insurance and free miles for the three days that we would have it. It would have been cheaper to get it on site, but it would also have been risking not getting a car at all, an option we couldn’t go for with our tight schedule.
Online and in guidebooks, people warned about how difficult it would be to drive in Cuba, no road signs, bad roads, bad drivers, they complained – but we saw none of that. While getting out of La Habana was a bit tricky, getting to Trinidad was a piece of cake once we had gotten out on the road. The road sides were full of colourful political propaganda with shout-outs to Chavez, Mandela, and of course Fidel, animals and fruit sellers made driving through villages interesting, and the empty landscapes were vast and beautiful. Driving felt great, and we could stop whenever we wanted, take photos and just be free – considering the fact that the 4 hour drive we did to Trinidad would take at least 6 hours (and 50usd pp) by bus to go, and 11 hours to come back, we definitely saved time, so the price for renting the car was well worth the extra 200usd.
Before taking off, we took a last little stroll around La Habana and found the Taller Experimental de Gráfica de La Habana just by Plaza Catedral, “Founded in 1962 by mural artist Orlando Suarez with the support of Che Guevara, who was the minister of industry at the time, this studio/workshop is still thriving today.” (source) A nice injection of modern Cuban graphic art, different from the things we saw for sale on the street. This was the real deal.
As if La Habana couldn’t get even more interesting, we decided to take a walk around the malecón at night. The seashore drive where lovers, friends and just about any kind of night-loving Habanero meet to hang out after hours. Be it for drinking Havana Gold rum and singing, be it for kissing and holding hands, be it for meditating and thinking, be it for fishing, the people spend hours by the waterfront, and it’s a beautiful and calming midnight walk – great for meeting people that seem completely unbothered by your presence. I didn’t feel like an annoying tourist with a big camera at the malecón, I was just part of the vibe.
After our walk by the malecón, we took a stroll on the little cobblestone streets close to where we were staying in Old Havana. By one of the entrances to a big old building, we met Wilbert who was sitting outside on the street, cooling off in the night breeze. Wilbert had Che Guevara tattooed on his arm and invited us to come in and have a look at his building from the inside, where he explained that more than 200 people live. We walked through the maze of corridors, stairs and cables and peeked through open front doors where people were watching TV and having dinner in tiny 15sqm windowless apartments. They were tightly squeezed together like little Tetris boxes and all free of rent according to Wilbert (yet each apparently with their own electricity meter and water bills.) People looked up from the TV when we passed and smiled politely, “good evening” they said as we passed, I felt a bit awkward on this “tour” of people’s intimate lives, but it was very interesting to get an insight and Wilbert seemed very pleased to show us around on his own initiative. Most importantly, this really wasn’t like one of those scams where people show you staged realities for money, Wilbert just seemed to sense our genuine curiosity and was happy to introduce us to how he and his fellow Habaneros live like. On the way out, Wilbert wanted to also show us his own apartment where he had a living room, a TV and sound system, a nice little kitchen and his own shower. “I sleep on the floor because it’s too hot upstairs, but this is a good place for me, I like it” Wilbert explained, and seemed to really like his place as he showed us the different things that he had in there, a small altar with pictures of saints and glasses of holy water, his DVD player, his aquarium. “I live here alone, so it’s actually quite big for me, but it’s really good – this is one of the nicer apartments.” Wilbert told us that he works at the cigar factory where he earns 10cuc (10usd) and 300cup (12usd) monthly. This is enough for him to get by, even though he said things can get a bit tough sometimes. We said bye, shook hands, thanked Wilbert for his kindness and hospitality, and walked back to our hotel.
As soon as La Habana found us strolling around without plans and open to what she had to offer, the city pulled us straight into her warm nightly embrace and showed us her innermost core. The people of the night were calmer, more open and warmer than those of the day. The buzz was slower, the light was a dull yellow and the cats owned the streets. Most of all, La Habana felt very safe and comforting at night, a place where you just want to slowly walk in whichever direction intuition pulls you, and become a natural part of the city.
On our first morning in La Habana we woke up with a lot of eagerness to get out and start exploring the surroundings – we wanted to see more, meet more people, and walk all of it. This was when Cuba was going to show us, for the first time, the eclecticism of it’s essence – the colours, the architecture, the old American cars that look brand new, the people with golden teeth and aggressively vibrant fashion statements, the mojitos, the tourist traps, and all the posers who walk around town trying to trick you into taking their picture just so that they then can tell you that you now have to pay them.
It was exciting, interesting and packed with contrasts. People queuing for rice and overpriced soap, empty shelves in the grocery stores, the long lines to different offices and people begging for the most random things such as pens and toilet paper. My mother would sometimes say “this is just like Poland when I was young” and the communism vibe could certainly be felt and seen all over the place – the US blockade was on big posters portrayed as the ultimate evil that was the reason for all of the people’s suffering, it was referred to as “the longest genocide in the history of mankind” – no mention of the complete lack of private commerce as per Castro’s ideology, even though people insisted to tell us how they really felt about communism as soon as they got the opportunity to catch us where nobody else was listening. It was quite bizarre yet, interesting. Imagine streets in the middle of the tourist centre and economic centre, packed with people, but almost no boutiques or shops in sight other than those selling art or souvenirs, or government run food stores. To further explain it – we noticed three shoe shops during our entire stay in Cuba, and entered only one shop with clothes (where everything was VERY expensive) – an interesting contrast to the ultra consumerism one is used to seeing.
After a couple of hours of walking, (my phone says did 25km that day!) we ended up on the pretty Plaza Vieja where we sat down next to a very nice Uruguayan couple in the old brewery and had a couple of drinks and some food by the band that was playing “Guantanamera and the hits”. We continued walking and made our way to La Bodeguita del Medio, the ultra-famous little bar where Hemingway supposedly used to have his mojitos, and where a mojito therefore costs 5CUC (5USD) rather than the usual 3, and where tourists and dressed up Cubans gather to get the perfect selfie. We sat down for a while as a band was playing “Guantanamera” (haha, okay, I’m going to stop now – you’re getting it, right?) and looked at people. When it got a bit calmer I went out for a while to talk to Luz, one of the girls that was standing next to the bar and taking photos with the tourists, dressed up as a ridiculed version of one of the traditional African groups. “I don’t want to take your photo for money,” I explained, “I just want to hear why you’re doing this.” Luz told me that she had dropped out of school, because she would make maximum 300CUC if she had finished her education, while she was making 600CUC right here, on the street. “The outfit is just a joke,” she explained, “tourists like it.” She explained how you must get a license from the government to do the job of “having your photo taken” and that she has to give away a significant part of her income, “if I don’t have the license they will put me in jail.” she said, and then insisted I take her photo anyway, and posed. “Maybe somebody will find your photo on the internet and put it in a magazine – and I will become famous. Come on, snap it!”
“You’re from Poland!” another dressed up man with a big white beard and oversized fake cigar came by. “Look, I was featured on the front cover of the National Geographic Polska, I’m a millionaire now! Take a picture – it’s free!”
I was more interested in photographing the real people, though. Alan with the cool flowershirt and big sunglasses. Urbano, who runs his bicycle taxi and is 48 years old even though he looks much younger. Luis Ibañez, the gentleman reading his paper in the bar, and the cool girl above, with her red contacts and little puppy – a teenager hungering for attention just like anywhere in the world, only maybe a little bit more “all in” in her style.
