Unique Havana

Havana is a really interesting city full of culture and history! In order to get into the city from marina Hemingway, you can get a cab to pick you up for $25. After speaking to some locals, we they informed us of the less expensive way! We headed out to the road to hail a cab by putting up your hand to indicate the number of passengers as cars would pass. All of the old cars in Cuba from the 1950’s are the ones that usually are the cabs for the local people. Shortly after hailing a cab, a car stopped and picked us up. We ending us paying $7 CUC for a cab to Havana (equal to about $7 US) instead of $25.

Once in the city, we walked around and Steve bought a drawing from a local artist. We wondered into central Havana which is out of the tourist area in order to get a chance to see how the Cuban people lived day to day. The streets were full of stray dogs and cats each on their own journey for their next meal. The area was a flurry of activity, the apartments were small and there were lots of interesting people and cars. We stopped at  a pizzeria where locals were gathered, we paid $5 CUC for lunch for both of us which included two cold Cervesas! The cheese in Cuba is a little different then we are used to but the pizza was delicious! We headed a few blocks over where Steve got his hair cut at a barber shop for $5 CUC where they offered us cold beer and a wooden pipe to keep as a souvenir. Outside of the barber shop we met the wife of one of the men who worked there who was from Germany and spoke good English. She was an expecting Mom who was a tourist guide in the area. She mentioned she didn’t have anything planned for the day so she offered to give us a walking tour of the city! We agreed to meet back up later in the afternoon.

Once Steve was looking fresh with his new hair cut, we headed down the road to a corner bar where we paid 0.50 CUC for 2 shots of Havana club rum! The bartender took one with us! Keep in mind, no one outside of the tourist areas speaks any English so you have to make your way by speaking the little Spanish you may know or using sign language. This actually works surprisingly well if you make the effort. We ended up having full conversation with several Cubans, one lady at the bar in particular which was persuasive and persistent... we will tell you about her in person!!!! We found out that Cubans get paid only$25-40 CUC per month so they will often find creative ways to extra income such as offering to take their picture in various scenes which is what you will see with the gentleman in the photo. We wondered into a church where there was a mass going on in Spanish. It was a evangelical mass that you see on TV where the person at the front is speaking fast into a microphone and is talking loud to the people. The crowd would then yell out and cheer when they agreed with what the women at the front was saying. As we didn’t understand anything, we hung out for a bit and then excused ourselves from the church awkwardly....

We then met up with our tour guide for the day who walked us through the city. She told us that she met and married her husband in Cuba and the they planned to have the baby in Germany but they needed to wait for paperwork in order for him to leave the country. She was full of useful information about Cuba and was very honest in telling us the truth about how Cubans live as well as politics and history of this unique communist country. At the end of the tour, we stopped for delicious Cuban coffee and parted ways. We offered her some money for the excellent tour and an invitation for her and her husband to join on on our boat for dinner the following day. To get back to Havana she hailed a share cab which she said is the cheapest way to get back. This is basically 6-7 people jammed into backseat benches of an old car which will stop for various other passengers on the road looking for a ride. People get on and off and it was actually a very cool cultural experience!

Once returning to the marina, we spoke to the dock master about our plans to invite our new friends from Havana to dinner. It was here where we found out that unfortunately Cubans were not allowed in the marina and if they did they would need special permission and paperwork from the coast guard. If Ann Marine and Orlando are reading this right now, sorry we couldn’t get a hold of you.. send us an email as that will be the best way to communicate.

The marina was full of cruisers from all parts of the globe, some who had made journeys across several oceans to get here. Our neighbours on ether side were from Israel and Amsterdam. We met many other young couples who were cruising the world on their sailboats just like us! It was actually an awesome sense of community! We invited everyone over to our boat one evening for some drinks and music. At one point, we had 10 people just in our cockpit! We went to breakfast with the next day with this same group in a nearby town which you will see in the photo. The breakfast place was kinda hidden down an ally and it actually turned out to be amazing! Breakfast was black beans and rice topped with 2 fried eggs. The cost was 0.80 per person and with coffee and soft drinks, our bill was $3 total CUC for 2 people!!! Our group then found a local who offered to take us to a fresh market that was plentiful with locally grown produce. As Cuba does not import anything from the US and very little from other counties, some items were hard to find. If you needed eggs, fish or fresh bread,  the local man would take you down an ally where you would buy the rare item you were looking for from a house.

A few days later we waved most of our new found friends goodbye where they would be sailing to Belize for the winter months.

Havana was great! Stay tuned for our next blog where we take a 2 day trip by car to Vinales in the mountains!