Havana 1

As expected, I woke up early due to the jetlag. I munched a bit on müsli and nuts, watched a bit of CNN TV, and read a bit then went back to sleep. When I opened my eyes again, it was 0630. I took a picture of the dawn from the balcony, then went down for breakfast.


The dining room was overserviced. There were lots of waiters hanging around looking for something to do. The buffet offered omlette, potatoes, some kind of salad, and bread. Coffee and nice tropical fruit juices were available. It wasn't a memorable breakfast but at least ample.


My first order of business was to locate a casa particular, a home renting out a private room. The hotel room was costing me $50 per night, and my budget was $50 per day. According to guides and travellers who had been there, a private room costs $20 to $25, fairly invariant throughout Cuba, but slightly more in Havana, and the rest accounted for mostly by transport, food and sightseeing. The first place I tried on my list was full, but they told a neighbour who came around to collect me. This was to be a recurring pattern in Cuba: Cubans passing on business to acquaintances. The house was one block away from the hotel and the room was a private one containing its own bath.

The owner was still away so I could not register, so I left my backpack in the room and went to change a few dollars at the cadeca (casa de cambio, money exchange). The going rate was 26 Cuban pesos per USD. (I will explain Cuban money matters in a separate post.) Nearby was Coppelia, the ice cream stand. Cubans love ice cream and it features prominently in the slightly daring 1994 Cuban-Spanish-Mexican film Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), which portrays a gay man. It won several prizes and nominations.

Back at the casa, the owner was still not back so I went out sightseeing. Havana was an assault on the senses, after coming from neat Europe. There were potholes in the streets and dog shit on the pavements. Edifices were in disrepair. Money for spare parts and fuel was scarce so the government had developed long buses powered by truck engines, called camelos (camels) due to the humps, to transport many passengers at one go.

The streets were full of people. Many of them were looking for lifts. Fortunately it was not so hard to walk the whole distance from my casa to centro. Here I encountered these bright coco (coconut) taxis.

El Capitolio resembles the Washington one. This area was thick with touts trying to interest tourists in anything they could offer. They were quite pesky and persistent. Sometimes when sex services are involved, they are called jineteros, literally horse jockeys in standard Spanish, but Cuban slang for a tout or pimp.


I saw a couple of dollar shops selling hard currency goods and had a squiz out of curiosity. One has to leave any bags with the counter when going into stores.

This former Canadian schoolbus doing service as a public bus was a donation. I also saw buses donated by other countries, e.g. The Netherlands, amusingly often still displaying the original destination signs.

This is El Floridita, which was one of Hemmingway's favourite bars. He is supposed to have coined the famous line My mojito in La Bodeguita, My daiquiri in El Floridita which is displayed writ large for visitors. No, I didn't have a daiquiri there.

Reliable piped water was yet another one of Havana's problems.

Bacardi rum originated in Cuba, but after the Cuban revolution, they moved operations to the US. Bacardi is not a brand found in Cuba now, the major brand there is Havana Club. This historic building remains.

This museum houses the Granma, the yacht that brought Castro and his revolutionaries to the island. Surrounding it is a motley collection of other displays, including pieces of US warplanes that were shot down. Incidentally granma means exactly what you think, it was named by the yacht's original US owner after his grandmother. The name was also given to the newspaper of the Cuban communist party.

I ascended to the dining room of the Hotel Sevilla. From there one can look over the city. The view of these buildings in disrepair resembled to me photos of bombed out cities in Europe after WWII.

There is a view to the La Cabaña, the fortress on the eastern side of the harbour.

I walked a little along the Malecón, the seafront promenade that is a very recognisable emblem of Havana.

These crumbling buildings were a marked contrast to the new edifice further down the street, probably a tourist hotel, built with foreign investor funds.

Havana used to have a sizable Chinese community, and this gate is a memorial of that era. Many of them moved to the US after the revolution. I had eaten in a Cuban-Chinese restaurant in New York City back in the 80s. The fusion cusine was distinctive and meals in Cuba reminded me where I had eaten similar before. I also recalled a documentary I had seen about some remaining Chinese eking out their old age in Havana.


Fittingly I took my lunch in a restaurant that had been founded by Chinese, called El Flor Loto (Lotus Flower).


Dinner was taken in the casa. Nearly always Cuban casas can cook dinner for you because they can earn a few dollars more from that. It's usually good value. I chatted a bit with the family over pre-dinner drinks. The matriarch, the owner, used to work in the military but had retired.