Travels to Cuba Kim Westerman Broer This last August my husband Jerry and I had the opportunity to travel to Cuba to meet the family of our son s girlfriend. Yuni left Cuba about 7 years ago and this was her 3 rd trip back to visit family and bring much needed supplies to them. Yuni is now an American citizen, however once she steps on Cuban soil she considered a Cuban citizen by the Cuban government. Yuni is actually a nickname for Yunisledys. There are some Cubans born during the Cold War with Y names being taken from the Russian culture. In later years it became a subtle way to express dissent against the Cuban government. Since 2011 it has been legal to run a private business. Regardless of what business you do run there are so many strange regulations and you have to receive permits from the government, pretty much the same as in the US. This privatization allowed us to stay at a Casa Particular, a private home with rooms to rent. Our first stop was Camaguey which is Yuni s home town. It is about 350 miles from Havana in the center of island. It is Cuba s 3 rd largest town and founded in the early 1500s. Our room was $25 a night and included a private bathroom and most importantly air conditioning. For $4 a person our hosts would prepare us breakfast. This would usually include some fruit juice, eggs, ham, fruit and rolls. The picture to the left is our Casa Particular with our hosts. The blue and white sign outside the door indicates they have rooms to rent. Eating in Cuba is different in many ways. Yuni s father is a cook for a large school and he prepared meals for us. Cubans receive a ration book which provides approximately 22 pounds of rice (let s say 20 pounds of rice and 2 pounds of rocks, dirt and other debris), some white sugar, brown sugar, 1 cup of cooking oil, five eggs and a packet of coffee. They also receive about 4 5 pounds of meat, usually chicken and some bread. Milk is provided for pregnant women and children under the age of 7. Anything other those items can be purchased if they have the money or can find the goods. Cuban citizens cannot purchase beef, the government restricts the sale of beef to restaurants who do business with tourists.
Much of the additional food purchased is from street vendors. Many mornings we would skip breakfast at the Casa Particular and grab something from the street vendors. These pecan brittle candies were $1 peso each, which works out to be about.26 cents. There are two currencies in Cuba. The CUP which is what the Cubans exchange for payment. And then there is the CUC which is what tourists use for payment. The CUC was exchanged dollar for dollar, with an additional 13% fee to convert US dollars. Other countries currency is exchanged without the fee. You cannot use US bank credit cards in Cuba so we had to travel with a lot of cash. We did occasionally run into vendors such as taxis who wanted paid in US dollars because they or some of their family was traveling to the US and needed US dollars. Street pizza is very popular in Cuba. They cost $1 CUC each and come with toppings such as ham. Personally I preferred the basic cheese pizza, Cuban ham is an acquired taste. This man ran his pizza kitchen in the atrium of his home. When he saw me taking pictures of the pizzas he invited us to come back into his pizza kitchen and take more photos. Generally all the Cubans we met were warm and welcoming. We did find some who refused to serve us because we were Americans, however we noticed that they tended to be of the Cold War age (70 or 80 years old). Younger Cubans were more likely to want to chat with you and ask questions. All in all the street food in Cuba was fresh and good and usually the best choice while out sightseeing.
Speaking of sightseeing, we did a lot of that. When in Camaguey we took bici taxis if our destination was further than we wanted to walk in the high heat and humidity. Most rides costs us just a few pesos. When we were in Havana we would rent one of the vintage cars to get around. Lots of haggling for a good price it was not unusual for the drivers to start with $70 CUC per hour, but most of the time we paid under $25 per hour. They are very proud of their vintage cars and will gladly show you under the hood. Parts are difficult to get so they either make their own parts or wait for someone to bring some from the US. It was not unusual to see only one window crank handle in a car. The owners would sell the other handles to be able to purchase a part that actually made the car run. Every so often in preparation for a big celebration in Camaguey (Pope visit etc) residents are given paint to spruce up the outside of their home. This pink home is Yuni s parent s home. It is one building a block long. There are individual homes divided up in the one long building. Their home consisted of a small living room, one bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. There was a small backyard at the rear of the home.
Art is an important part of the Cuban culture. We saw many art studios and found a lot of sculpture in the parks. The John Lennon on the bench statue is very popular with tourists. Although many Cubans do not know who he is. Considering the Beatles music was banned in Cuba it seemed strange for Castro to have a bronze statue of Lennon created some 20 years after his death. Reportedly Castro made a comment at the unveiling that he, like Lennon was a dreamer and he has seen his dream turned into a reality. My son, Will, and his girlfriend, Yuni, took a few a minutes to spend time reflecting with John Lennon One of Cuba s most famous artists is Martha Jimenez who creates many sculptures and has a square outside her studio filled with her statues. We ran across the sculpture of a man reading the newspaper and it turns out the real man sitting next to him reading the paper was the model for the statue. You can see how much they look alike when get closer. This man comes every day and sits next to his bronze likeness. He poses for the tourists to take photos and then receives tips which is how he earns his money in retirement. The second photo is of one of favorite statue groupings, Women Gossiping
Food in Cuba can be very bland or wonderfully delicious. If we ate a government owned restaurant the food was usually very good and we got everything we ordered. In private restaurants we spent time going through the menu trying find food that the restaurant actually had to serve. Sometimes it came down to what do they have and the answer was that they only had rice for two servings and they had enough for 2 orders of chicken and 1 order of fish. We did have some amazing food, stopping for lunch at Sloppy Joe s, the bar that originated the sloppy joe sandwich. Because it is government run for tourists the meat was beef in the sandwich. And it was a delicious sandwich. Final stop in our Cuba trip was in Havana. This time we choose an Air BNB. It is the center house in the photo below. The house is run by a Cuban and his boyfriend who is Spanish. They divided the house and created bedrooms where the family living area use to be. Each room had air conditioning and a private bathroom. Wasn t a fancy place but clean and comfortable. The two hosts both spoke English and were happy to share their thoughts on everything from Castro to tourism in Cuba. Our trip to Cuba was for sightseeing and a chance to tour the island that we hear all kinds of stories about. Most important part of the trip was to meet Yuni s family. She has some family here in the US. Yuni and her mother have become US citizens and continue to go back to Cuba as often as possible to bring supplies, medicines and other needed items to the family that remains there. The picture below is most of the family who are still in Cuba. They are very loving and immediately accepted us as family. The day we went to their home to visit they slaughtered a pig, prepared the pork for us along with rice and fresh coconut from their back yard. Having very little themselves, they offered us everything they had. It was very difficult when it came time to leave our new Cuban family.
Cuba was amazing and I am very appreciative of the fact that we were able to spend a few weeks there. The people were friendly and other than the military presence at the airport we felt safe. If you have the opportunity to go you need to pack one bag for you and one bag for the Cubans you will meet on your trip. Simple supplies like aspirin, sewing kits, reading glasses, fishing line, guitar strings or shoes are all very welcomed and make great thank you gifts. We did bring back some Cuban Rum which is much different than the rum we have here. Of course no trip to Cuba would be complete without cigars. Unfortunately the cigar factories had closed the day before we arrived. They close for 2 weeks in the summer. However we were still able to bring back cigars which our cigar smoking friends and family seem to really enjoy. At the time we traveled to Cuba it was legal to bring back both the rum and cigars. I loved Cuba and it was all that I expected it to be. This trip took us from the Cubans living in third world country conditions to the resorts filled with Europeans and Brits to the very tourist driven Havana. I would love to go back and hopefully will be able to do so. I already miss the wonderful people of Cuba and look forward to visiting them again.