Monday, July 10, 2017

Cuba from  my experiences- Part2

Cuba from  my experiences- Part2

The Republic of Cuba is one of the world's last remaining socialist countries. Cuba was a different holiday destination from my all holiday destinations till now. Its a third world country. One needs to have open mind to accept the ways the things work there , should have patience to adjust to different way of living, culture and mind set.
I am not going to lie but I was really not happy the first time I arrived there. It was hot, dirty, was not able to understand the language and in that in my first casa the host was not able to speak a single word of English. So with my limited Spanish vocabulary after 11 hrs. of flight I was really frustrated .   But slowly I started liking it. May be I accepted the way things are or the country and people are so nice that they made me fall in their love. Whatever it was but  later I enjoyed my stay more and more. 
Old Havana is really dirty but the country side of Cuba is really beautiful. For me the country side was more similar to Indian costal area and that made some good connection in my mind. Flowers, fruit trees , poor farmers working in fields without much machinary ....all was connecting me to India. 

Cuba is very interesting country. As part of  a socialist country model in Cuba all the education and medical services are free to all citizens.
Every parent has to send their child to school at least till 9th class. Even in the remote of remote place there is a school. Even if its just one child there is a school and a teacher for him/her. Education even till university and above is free. The literacy rate in Cuba is very high. All students, regardless of age or gender, wear school uniforms with the color denoting grade level.
The same with medical services. All the medical services are free to all citizens and Cuba has actually one of the best medical services in the world. They have many doctors in the country. 
But because of the socialist country model of course the salaries for doctors, engineers, teachers are very low. The average salary in government sector is 30-35 $ per month. 
Since few years the government is becoming more open and has started allowing people to have private businesses but of only particular types. Mostly service based. Tourist industry is gaining more and more popularity and also many people in spite of their education as teacher, engineer are changing their profession and coming in tourist industry . Here they can earn much more than as a engineer or teacher.
I did few extra tours and all of my tour guides were actually working as a teacher or engineer before but they all changed their profession and now work as a tour guide and can earn much better than their previous jobs. 
One of my tour guide was even working as a  diplomat at united nationals but after working for many years in this field she decided to come back to cuba and started working as a tour guide. she was really nice lady and told many things about cuba. She said cuba is a poor country but with the problems of first world country. Cuba has currently problem of negative birth rate . Many people still live with their parents as it is expensive to buy house or a car. It is also expensive to afford more children.  Because of low or negative birth rate  the government has increased the age of working for men to 65 years and for women to 60 years. 
In cuba they don't have the concept of income tax for government employees as of course the income is really low . But now as people are allowed to have private business they have developed the concept of income tax for such business. The tax is still very low for them. 
After the fall of soviet union , Cuba's economic system also collapsed and they had a very bad economic period. In this time government decided to be more open and thought of tourist industry. My guide told me that during this period Fidel Castro was good friends with Canada's that time prime  minister and Canadian prime minister first send Canadian tourists to cuba. Till date Canadians tourists are in large number out of all. 
I found very interesting thing in cuba is that they still use horse carriages and cycle riksha along with old American cars as a mode of transport. 

 For most Cubans its also not common to travel within the country. Travelling is definitely expensive with a family and the kind of money they earn it is really not easy for them to travel to another country or even within country. 
There are also no traffic jams on highways. While driving on highway I came across many times that people, or horses just cross the highway even when buses, cars are driving on the same road . sometimes they even come in their horse carriage on the wrong side on high way. Well almost similar to India๐Ÿ˜ƒ
Also at  the road side you can see many people selling  some fruits or veggies and some are even asking for lifts but by holding money in hand to show that they are ready to pay for the lift. 
Another similar thing to India I found in Cuba is having a ration card. Every Cuban has a ration card and names of all family members are written on it. Every person has a quota of food for a month and people can buy that in special ration shops  for very cheap price. 
In Cuba they have 4 official TV channels. One of the channels even show Bollywood movies with Spanish subtitles every night. Many people recognized me as an indian and told that they watch bollywood films.
Many times in Havana I saw some young girls doing professional photo shooting in beautiful dresses. When asked to my guide she told me that this is an old tradition which is still continuing as when girl turns 15 years old they do such a photo shooting . In olden times this was the way to show to the society that girl is now of marriageable age and present it to the society. ๐Ÿ˜€  Now a days even some boys also do such photo shoot. After all its a time of equality ๐Ÿ˜€
The best thing in Cuba is in almost every bar, restaurant you will enjoy live music. I really enjoyed this live music everywhere. These people just have this amazing rhythm in their body by default. The country is really rich in  art, dance, music . 
Can't go on without mentioning the cuban food and drinks. I got chance to eat typical cuban food during my stay. Mostly it is meat with either white rice or rice with bean which is my favorite and some vegetables. And my favorite dessert Flan

Meat is mostly chicken or pork. very rarely beef as its expensive. Fish also rare of course because of the cost. In restaurants many times I got nice banana chips as starter. One more very interesting cuban dish I loved is deep fried raw banana cups filled with cheese, meat, shrimps etc... very testy.


During my whole stay for breakfast I always got fresh tropical fruits and fresh fruit juices. that was amazing. Now when I compare the fruit juice I buy from super market with those fresh ones....really feel like flying to cuba  to get that. All the hosts always prepared really good breakfast for us. Once even one host prepared a smiley face fruit plate for us. that was really nice of him. Along with fruits and juices very nice cuban coffee , some eggs. Very good breakfast

Without mentioning cuban cocktails cuban food is incomplete. Most of the cocktails are rum based.  One bar in cigar farm tour even offered the cocktails with extra rum bottle and every one can add rum as much he/she wants in a basic non-alcoholic version. Very much liked the concept. :)

There is one special cocktail from Trinidad that we all had is called Canchanchara. Very testy. Its made of honey, rum, lemon and may be something else I could not recognize. But this is what you should try if you go to Trinidad.
Also in Havana one of my guides told me to test special coconut ice-cream but unfortunately I did not get chance to test this. May be next time ..who knows.
Overall Cuban people are really nice, friendly, good in music , dance, art . Country has really low crime rate and much  safer compared to other Latin American countries. I was a bit skeptical regarding safety before going there but I really had very good experience of all people there. In old Havana I experienced small lanes, a bit dirty  houses ,really next to each other, people are standing outside their doors , talking to their neighbours, loud, screaming hawkers walking on the road selling some sweets or bread, lively till late night. Very similar picture to some old part of the city in many Indian cities ; at least I have seen this during my childhood times. It was allowed to be loud even at late nights in your own house and no fear that neighbour will call police like in Germany ๐Ÿ˜€
Somehow I always found some similarities to india at least from my childhood times. For me it was definitely a wonderful trip. Something different than usual Europe, America , Australia etc...developed countries vacations. I recommend everyone to visit this at least once before it changes and looses its old charm.






Sunday, July 9, 2017

Cuba from  my experiences- Part1

Cuba from  my experiences- Part1

2 years ago few of my friends talked about going to Cuba but that was just a talk . As every year I was planning my birthday trip I suddenly though of Cuba. I asked many friends  to join me but as usual every one had some excuse to let me go alone. well I am used to this now. 
Any way I finalised my destination and started googling about Cuba. I was really not knowing much about this country and also had some prejudices. First important thing was to find a right agency to plan a trip. After long search found really good company Cuban Adventures to plan my trip. As I was going alone in this country for the first time I was a bit afraid to do on my own all things. So decided to do a group tour and I must say I chose the right company to do this tour with.   I chose the 8 day round trip which started from Havana followed by vinales, Cienfuegos, Trinidad and back to Havana.
I don't want to write about these places as everyone can google it. I would like to write about people, the country and my experiences. Would like to write about some tips to plan the Cuba trip. 
The very first step was to get a visa which is called a Tourist Card. For Germans we have to apply in Berlin consulate with copy of return ticket, insurance, visa fees  and passport copy and normally in 2 weeks we get the visa. For more info check here:http://misiones.minrex.gob.cu/alemania 
Cuba is not as cheap as you would think. For most of the currencies the exchange rate is 1:1 so you can imagine its not that cheap. It is a better option to exchange euros or pounds than dollars. To exchange dollars you have to pay penalty of extra 10%.
The first new thing for me was 2 currencies. Cuba has 2 different currencies ;one for the tourist CUC and one for locals CUP . Of course CUP is super cheap. 1 CUC =25 CUP. Another important thing to note is you cannot exchange your money with Cuban currencies anywhere except Cuba. So the first thing after getting out of the Cuban airport is to exchange your money. Of course you can get money from ATM, bank or any other money exchange offices there. 
I had a little funny  experience with my credit card although at that time it did not find it funny. ๐Ÿ˜€
I went to ATM machine to get some money out . I used my credit card and I somehow entered wrong pin at the first time. Normally at the first time when the machine recognised that pin is wrong it should not go further with my transaction but it did took me till end and then asked to enter the pin again and yet again I entered the wrong pin. The machine displayed this message and asked me to enter again my pin. I just pressed cancel button to end the transaction as I was not sure about my pin but It still did not cancel the transaction and stopped the further processing and just swallowed my credit card. I was really freaked out to see my credit card is gone in the machine. Normally after pressing cancel it should just give me my card back but no..... it didn't. Luckily I had my tour guide with me as I was doing rum testing tour with him ; he came in the bank with me and talked with the lady in the bank in Spanish. and then after showing my passport and signing 2-3 times I got my credit card back in half an hour or so. Oh man you cannot imagine how happy I was to see my card. Now I can laugh on it but at that time I was really worried as I did not have enough cash with me and now card is also gone , new country, not knowing language, had 10 more days to go ...what a situation. 
In cuba 99% places you have to pay in cash only . No credit card transactions. That is something we all have to get used to. As we all are so much dependent on card shopping that paying in cash and basically to keep that much cash with you all time was one difficult thing to do. 

We all are so used to have 24 hrs. internet connection that cannot imagine a place without it. But yes its Cuba.  5 years ago when one of my friends went there he told me there is no internet in Cuba at all but now situation has changed. Now they have limited internet. Well people do not have internet at their homes. only important people and may be people like journalists or so have internet at their homes but then analog i.e. dial-up connection which is slow and also keeps telephone line engage. The kind we might have 15-18 years ago. So every one uses an Internet card. We have to buy it at  telephone office which costs 1.50 CUC and it is valid for 1 hour . You can also buy it privately or in a big hotels but then it costs at least 3-4 CUC so better to buy in official telephone shops called ETECSA . that's the network they have. This card has a user name and password and then we have to search for a public Wi-Fi zone . This could be anywhere in middle of a square , or at the end of street , park , outside of a big hotel. Then go there and get connected. It was really new to me. So everything is public, on the road. you can do skype or video chat and it will be on the road ; in public ๐Ÿ˜€ everyone can hear it , see it  ๐Ÿ˜€
I always had to walk 5-6 mins. from my casa to the next Wi-Fi zone and then use internet. Wherever you will see many people with mobile in hands looking into it you can be sure that is a Wifi zone. it was quite funny. 
This is how the card looks like 
And this is how the public Wi-Fi zone looks like :


One more new thing for me or for any tourist for that matter is use of toilet paper.  We cannot flush the toilet paper in Cuba . We have to throw it in the bin. It took really conscious efforts to remember this . They have a very old pipe system and so paper can not be flushed. 

IF you want to plan some trips in Cuba definitely check the websites of
Cuban Adventures:  https://www.cubagrouptour.com/ 
profil-cuba-reisen: http://www.profil-cuba-reisen.de/en/
viajeskronoscuba: http://www.viajeskronoscuba.com/en 
cubatravelnetwork: www.cubatravelnetwork.com 

I booked all of my tours from these different companies and I had really good experience with all of them. 
Definitely do a tour of Cuba by night including Cabaret Parisien in famous hotel National, and Hemingway tour . But do not waste your money in Rum tour if offered by any company as its really not worth of its money. You can go on your own to this rum museum in old Havana and get the 15 mins . not so interesting tour including one shot of rum at the end. I wasted my money but that's why you should not . ๐Ÿ˜€

Another interesting place one should visit in Havana is Fusterlandia. This is the place where Cuban artist Josรฉ Fuster has decorated his house and also the neighborhood houses in colorful mosaic. 
Something like this:



Also if you have time  and you are staying in Havana between Thursday and Saturday then do visit fabrica de arte cubano for live music shows , art exhibition and to enjoy some night life. One more bar one should visit in old Havana for good cocktails is O’Reilly 304. Really loved the place. The bar man make even simple lemonade look fancy and testy . 


Tobe continued.......