For those of you who know me or have had the pleasure of living with me, you likely know that I am not a morning person. I’m not nasty or cranky in the morning, I just need 8,452,001 alarms to wake up, even at a somewhat reasonable hour. Our flight left Philadelphia for Fort Lauderdale at 6:29AM. Yes, AM. Calculate backwards the two hours you need to arrive before departure, 15-30 minutes to drop our car at one of the long-term parking lots out in Essington, plus a shuttle ride to the departures area. Another 45 minutes to get from my house to the parking lot and 45 minutes or so to get cleaned up, dressed and bags in the car. I had to wake up at basically the same time I would normally go to bed, but it’s vacation and it’s Cuba, so I laid down for two hours max then was up and getting ready to head out the door.
The drive to the airport was quick, as most of the area was still in bed sleeping. Our shuttle had us over to the gates in a matter of minutes and security was a breeze, as per usual, since I have TSA Pre-Check. Having a couple of hours to kill we grabbed some muffins and drinks from a café that was thankfully open, and sat half asleep until it was time to board the plane.
The flight down to Fort Lauderdale was thankfully uneventful, other than my feeling a bit nauseous, which is not uncommon for me when I only get a couple hours of sleep and don’t have much food in my stomach. It is however very uncommon when flying or anything else involving motion. I have what we jokingly call an Iron Stomach. Years of flying, driving long road trips and sailing, occasionally in rough water, has never once resulted in motion sickness. As you will learn if you read the posts that will follow, this maaaaay have been foreshadowing.
After a short nap, I was feeling a little better and we touched down in Fort Lauderdale. Our connecting flight to Havana was thankfully in the same terminal that we landed in. For anyone who has flown in or out of Fort Lauderdale airport knows, this is a BIG deal! Their terminals are all separate buildings. If you need to change terminals to catch a connecting flight, you need to go outside, walk a lengthy distance and go back inside, only to re-clear security before arriving at your connecting gate. If you need to clear customs back into the United States before catching your connecting flight AND change terminals, good luck to yooooou sir or madam. Your connecting flight has a 99.9% chance of taking off without you. (Statistic created from unfortunate real life personal experience.)
Once on the ground and out in the terminal, we quickly located the jetBlue kiosk where we needed to purchase our Cuban Travel Visas from before being allowed to board our connecting flight. At first it seemed a bit chaotic as there was a line and a fair amount of confusion from passengers on what was needed. Not surprising considering most had never done this before. The jetBlue employees were crushing it though! They were pleasantly answering questions from some people, while processing paperwork for others, in what turned out to be a pretty seamless operation. By the time we got to the front we had heard the speech enough times that we were fully prepared and handed over our boarding passes, passports and credit cards. Even though we had everything we needed, it was still a bit nerve wracking, as showing up with documents and money in hand did not guarantee you a visa. After a five to ten-minute wait while they processed our paperwork, we were approved and received our Visas! Phew!
Still tired, we hung out at the gate, ate some lunch, and relaxed for a bit until it was time for our plane to start the boarding process. Once we were boarded and up in the air though, Mother Nature gave us one hell of a sendoff with an amazing rainbow stretching out over the Atlantic Ocean.
The flight from Fort Lauderdale to Havana was roughly an hour long, most of which was spent trying to catch a little more sleep, but ultimately opening my eyes every few minutes to look out the window in hopes of that first glimpse of the Cuban shoreline.
Finally, it appeared, and at 1:27PM on January 3, 2017, this photographer’s dream came true! We had touched down in Havana, Cuba! Though just like the Visas, touching down was still not a guarantee that you were going to be let in. Based on the little information we dug up prior to booking our trip, we knew getting from the plane to the sidewalk outside the airport was going to be an adventure of its own!
Upon exiting the plane, we followed the crowd along to the customs area where you were greeted by a line of nurses wearing uniforms, that to be honest looked just like the “sexy nurse” costume you would buy for Halloween back in the states. They all had on short tight skirts with black fishnet tights, the traditional style matching shirt and a white nurses cap on their head. They were there to collect the medical form you were given on the plane ride in declaring you did not have any sort of fever, rash, cough or stomach illness in the last 15 days, as well as find out your reason for visiting and what other countries you had been to recently. It’s actually quite smart, as long as people fill it out honestly. Thankfully I was feeling better at this point, and being a brief incident versus days long illness, I kept the earlier nausea to myself.
Once you made it past the line of nurses, you waited in line to speak with the customs agent and hopefully have your passport stamped, finally granting access to the outside world. This process took a little while but we all made it through with no issues, and I am now the proud owner of a Cuban passport stamp!
Prior to leaving for the trip, we read that it was strongly recommended that we only take carry-on luggage, as the wait time to claim bags at baggage claim can average two to three hours. Yep, you read that correctly. Every single bag gets scanned to make sure you aren’t trying to sneak in anything you shouldn’t be, then they are moved along to one of only two baggage carousels for the entire airport. Two of the three people in our group followed the advice and one checked a bag (which admittedly came in handy for packing souvenirs for the flight home). We made our way to the baggage area which was jam packed with people, as expected. Also, as expected there wasn’t anywhere to sit, and the floor was quite dirty, so that wasn’t a great option either. Instead we found a spot against the wall and proceeded to people watch for the next hour plus.
More surprising then the wait time, was the number of suitcases circling the belt that were sealed inside trash bags, with what looked like an entire roll of duct tape covering the trash bag. We had no clue where this method originated, but it was great entertainment watching people drag these out of the airport.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, having been up since around 2AM mind you, we located our checked bag and headed out into the hot Cuban sun to find our pre-arranged taxi driver.
One of the perks of using Airbnb in Cuba, is that most rentals helped book transportation to and from the airport for your entire group. This was a welcomed perk considering no one from our group spoke much, if any, Spanish and had absolutely no idea where the apartment was. Well worth the $30 Peso fee. As we walked and looked our excitement grew, maybe we would get to ride in one of the awesome convertible classic cars that Havana has become so famous for. Spoiler alert, we did not! Instead we were picked up by a Soviet era Russian Lada Taxi Cab. Our driver who was very pleasant, immediately grabbed our bags and loaded them in the car, just as rain drops from a passing shower began to fall. Realizing it was our first time in Cuba, he excitedly transitioned from Taxi driver to tour guide, pointing out various buildings and monuments as we drove towards the city center.
We very quickly noticed a theme as we motored along; every billboard, every sign, every banner we drove past, contained political propaganda for the Revolution and its leaders. Picture the week before a big election here in the states, where every product related marketing campaign disappears and is replaced with political ads telling you their version of the facts. It’s that, but every day of the year and the facts are only coming from one political party, and one point of view. This became the first of many quirky (to us anyway) things we came across in our week there.
Knowing we needed to exchange money, we asked our driver to take us somewhere to do so before dropping us off at our apartment. He agreed and took us to the Hotel Nacional, located just off the Malecon in central Havana. Suddenly he turned onto this long U-shaped driveway lined with palm trees and a lush green lawn down the middle, that eventually led to what I will declare the most extravagant building we saw our entire trip in Cuba. It was a cross between the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas and something you might see along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
He waited with the car, while we wandered inside to find the money exchange office. As it turned out they had two. One was upstairs on the main floor for guests only and another was downstairs next to the pool entrance and was maybe for guests, maybe open to the public. That one is still out for debate. Either way, they let us exchange money and only required a passport and not a room number.
Cuba has two currencies, the Cuban Peso (CUP) for locals and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) for tourists. The CUC that tourists use is typically 1:1 to the American Dollar and is what you will use most, if not your entire time in Cuba. The only exception might be a food truck or bus fare. One CUP is only worth about $0.04 in American dollars, so basically nothing. Also, you can only exchange Cuban money in Cuba. It is not available for exchange anywhere outside of the country.
You can tell easily them apart because the CUC that tourists use do not have people’s faces on them. They instead have images of statues. This is very important to keep in mind so you can make sure you are given the correct currency back after a purchase, as they otherwise look very similar. If you are given the local CUP instead and go to exchange it when leaving for home you will be handed back 4 pennies to the Peso instead of one Dollar to the Peso.
Be sure to exchange all Cuban money back before leaving the country as it is forbidden to export with you back home. Also, only exchange money at an official exchange, not with someone off the street, as currency swap scams are apparently common.
Another note of importance, your American Debit and Credit cards will not work in Cuba. You will be limited to only the cash you bring with you.
Everyone tried to exchange what we thought we would need for the entire trip, but we honestly had no idea what things would cost, so it was a total guessing game. As it turned out, the first exchange of money was not enough and we needed to go back an additional time or two for more money.
Back in the car, and only a few blocks drive later, our driver pulled over and parked in front of a residential street and turned off the car. This must be it! Our home away from home was located in the neighborhood of Vedado, just west of Old Havana and a few blocks walk from the Malecon.
Our first impression was that the neighborhood seemed nice. The street was lined with trees, and the houses while a bit worn, were nowhere near as bad as the famous photos you see of crumbling facades with missing roofs. We were off to a good start!
He walked us inside and up a few flights of stairs to an apartment door where we were met by the owner. The apartment was much larger than we were expecting from the photos and description online, which mind you was being translated from Spanish. We knew we would have at least two bedrooms and two bathrooms but as it turned out, we had three bedrooms each with their own full-ish bathroom. I say full-ish, because as we later found out, not all components of each bathroom worked on a regular basis. Just part of the charm of traveling to another country!
Besides the three spacious bedrooms, we also had a large living room in the front of the apartment which included two balconies, each with wide double doors that let in an amazing breeze. Ideal, since none of the windows in the bedrooms opened and were covered floor to ceiling with curtains that didn’t move.
The back of the apartment was made up of a dining room and kitchen and a side balcony which didn’t have much of a view but still helped circulate air through.
The accommodations were significantly better than what we were expecting, but we did notice a few things that were listed on airbnb were not actually available in the apartment. The main items being laundry and wireless internet. To be honest, I was going to be surprised if these things did actually exist, so there was no real disappointment when they didn’t. That washing machine would have come in mighty handy on those 90+ degree days though! Washing your clothes with you in the shower, so you had clean-ish shorts each day was not ideal.
The real high point to this rental though was a woman named Diana. Her job was to come daily and cook breakfast if we wanted, swap out linens mid-way through the week and do a general cleaning as needed. While the breakfast and cleaning part were nice, getting to know Diana was the best part of the trip!
One of the visa options at the time was something called “People to People” education, where you were to spend time with the locals and interact and get to know the country through their eyes. While we weren’t exactly following the rules of this, our chats with Diana were the highlight of our day!
She spoke very little English and we spoke very little Spanish so there many fun games of charades and use of the Google Translate app, trying to have conversations. We eventually pieced enough together to learn that she has family in the United States and was trying to save money to go visit them. Unfortunately due to low working wages and strict Visa laws, a family reunion wasn’t looking good for her. Had I been able to pack her in my suitcase and take her back with me I 100% would have!
Once we got settled in and cleaned up a bit, we decided to go stroll around our neighborhood and see if we could find a grocery store to pick up some water and snacks for the house and grab a late lunch/early dinner.
Keep in mind if we were at home, we could easily bring up the maps app on our phones and find a grocery store in 15 seconds. Being cut off from all internet and cell data however, we were reliant on just wandering the area until we found what we needed.
As we later found out once we had cell service back, there are larger grocery stores in Havana. They just weren’t super convenient to our neighborhood and would have required a taxi to get to them. If you expect to want proper food, I recommend searching for their locations before you go, so you have an address handy for the taxi driver.
Thankfully we found a small market called Panamerica Super Marcado not too far from the apartment. It was more like a corner store here in the states and less like the large grocery stores we are used to. They sold cases of water, minimal food and some personal care essentials such as shampoo and conditioner. They also had a small section of rum, because after all, it is the islands!
We grabbed a case of water, a bottle of rum and what we thought was a bag of cookies (that turned out to be breadsticks), and dropped it off back at the apartment before heading out to find a proper meal.
Earlier in our walk Philip had noticed a restaurant that had a cute outdoor seating area and was serving personal pizzas and of course frozen drinks, so we decided to give it a try! It wasn’t exactly a proper Cuban meal but at that point we just needed some food.
I ordered the Pizza Napolitano, aka plain pizza, and my first of many frozen daiquiris. The meal total cost us around $5 pesos per person. The pizza wasn’t quite what we are used to back home but wasn’t bad either!
After dinner we decided we should probably try to go find some wifi somewhere, so we could check in with our families and let them know we made it and were still alive!
We walked over to the Hotel Habana Libre to see what they had available for wifi, as it is one of the larger hotels in Havana. The cost to use the wifi was $5 pesos per hour, which you paid for at the front desk and were given a temporary password on a receipt. Philip paid first as a test to see how it worked before Kelly and I also shelled out the money. It turned out to be a smart plan, as I am certain dial up internet from 1989 would run circles around this wifi.
We took turns using Philips phone to log into email accounts and send notes home to our families, letting them know we were okay and that communication was going to be non-existent for the remainder of the week, so not to worry if they didn’t hear from us.
By this point we were all exhausted from the trip down and were ready to head back to our apartment and get ready for bed.
Stay tuned for day two!
More, please! I need more!!!
I love your writing style.