tysontrips

18 April, 2006

Travel On A Broken And Retied Shoestring: Socialist Cuba On A Communist Budget

Part 1

La Habana, Cuba – Finally, after all the preparation, planning and apprehension, suddenly there I was in lively central Havana. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And they probably had never been open wider. Throughout all the years dreaming of traveling to this island, followed by the months of making arrangements to visit and finally the hours of anxiety leading up to my flight landing, I had never once considered what I would do when I arrived in Cuba. Would I sit in a café on a steamy afternoon and sip an iced mojíto while listening to a live band blast trova or would I relax on the malecón, the famous seaside wall in central Havana, at sunset and watch the classic cars rumble by? In the fantasy that was my journey to Cuba the meditation had always ended the minute the plane’s wheels touched down on the tarmac. This was because the difficult, or even impossible part, in my mind, was getting to Cuba in the first place. The rest could be figured out on arrival. Or at least I hoped. Without expectations, I surmised, every discovery on the forbidden island was bound to be a pleasant surprise. Well, maybe not every one.

Above: The malecón, one of Havana’s classic strips

No, arriving in Cuba wasn’t easy. But surviving as a budget traveler, I quickly noticed, seemed next to impossible. With the dollar now outlawed after ten years of internal reliance, tourists are expected to pay for everything in a special ‘convertible’ peso, changeable from their own currency at booths all over the country – but at exceedingly unfair exchange rates as decided by officials in the central government. I brought in Mexican pesos rather than the recently prohibited dollar to avoid the 30% fee charged on dollars. But I still forfeited about 25% of my money right off the bat when I exchanged for the convertible pesos at the airport. Gouging tourists is an integral part of Cuba’s new economy. Still strangled by the crippling US embargo and now distancing themselves from the stability of the American dollar, there are new ways the shrewd Cuban government is learning to support itself. Tourism has replaced Soviet aid and sugar subsidies – fully terminated since the fall of the Soviet Union – as the number one source of income. Since the revolution in 1960, hotels, along with all restaurants, businesses, and transportation, have been state owned under the socialist-leaning regime. The Cuban government, therefore, seizes nearly all tourist revenue brought in from these enterprises. Because of limited competition due to almost complete lack of private business and high taxes which vary at governmental whim, prices for tourist amenities are quite elevated. In Havana, for instance, it is extremely difficult to find a hotel room for less than $50, regardless of quality. While this may not seem like a lot of money to a foreigner on vacation, it is useful to understand the Cuban economic situation to fully appreciate how much fifty dollars is, relatively speaking. Cuban average wage across the country is 24 dollars a month. It varies little, regardless of profession. So a Habanero would have to work more than two months to afford one night in a tourist hotel; that is, if they weren’t banned from them. Needless to say hotels, restaurants, and even some forms of transportation in Cuba are generally for the tourist or, extremely rarely, the well-off Cuban. Because I usually try to live as close to the same economic level as the people in the country I am visiting, I decided that I was going to have to do something to cut my costs.

There was one cheaper option for accommodations, I learned. Perhaps in order to stimulate tourism while allowing a bit of free enterprise, the Cuban government has begun permitting certain houses to operate privately and host travelers in an extra bedroom during their stay. Known as casas particulares, they are a somewhat cheaper option than the usually plain government hotels, while additionally offering the opportunity to eat, sleep and interact with a Cuban family. The government tightly controls, monitors, taxes and collects from these casas, effectively limiting the amount of income that can be made in any one house. Everyone, especially the owners of these casas, knows that even the slightest bit of capitalistic enterprise providing supplementary income can easily upset the relatively equivalent quality of life the government aims to provide for its citizens – especially when the cost of one night’s accommodation is more than the monthly wage. Therefore the governmental regulations are stiff. Generally, casas particulares are only allowed to rent out two rooms – extra rooms which would otherwise not be in use. Also they cannot advertise to the public nor to traveler, must be licensed and continuously inspected and pay more than half their earnings directly back to the government via taxes and regulation fees. A night in a cheap casa particular usually costs about 25 convertible pesos, or about 30 dollars, with most of the cost being passed on to the Cuban government. Before showing up in Havana I sent a few e-mails out to owners of casas particulares so that I would have a place secured upon my arrival. Even so I was fairly nervous appearing at the door of a local family at 1:30 am in the dark of the central Havana night in a van from the airport.

Above: Dinner at the casa

But even before hopping into an unlicensed ‘taxi’ outside the airport with an entrepreneurial transportation employee (I hoped), I had already gone through a much more nerve-wracking part of my trip – immigration. The first step was side-stepping US control on travel to Cuba. That was easy – I went through Mexico. Slipping through Mexican customs was a snap despite the US government’s insistence that it has ‘agents’ in prescreening facilities in common third-country flight origin airports. Airports such as Cancun, the US fibs, are prepared for its citizens who skirt the law. The government has supposedly placed undercover agents, who would theoretically begin my penalty process for breaking the Cuban embargo right then and there by catching me flying to Cuba red handed. Despite these inane warnings, the scariest moment occurred when I was breezing through Mexican security at the Cancun airport and a Mexican female security agent stopped me and glanced at my ticket and passport while asking me where I was headed. Donning a silly grin I responded “Havana?” half stating and half questioning.

“Cuba?” she asked, looking me suspiciously in my nervous eyes.

“Sí,” I sweated. I figured she was probably just doing her job but the US government’s paranoia of Castro must have been rubbing off on me. Or what if she was an undercover agent?

“Entonces, que tenga un buen viaje!”(“Then have a good trip!”) she beamed, returning my documents with a smile.

“Gracias!” Yes, muchas gracias. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The flight was loaded down with Europeans and Japanese who couldn’t catch a direct flight from their own countries to Havana, but very few American citizens, as far as I could tell. The exception being the two shady characters sitting just to the right of me. Both hailed from Arkansas, were retired and quietly admitted to me that they were on their seventh trip down to Cuba. Without attempting to uncover their apparently secretive motives for so many trips to Cuba I tried to glean as much experiential information as I could from them before we landed. One piece of advice I was given by my large new friend to my right was announced in a whisper at such a low volume that the plane engines drowned out his voice. As I leaned in he repeated to me secretly, “Don’t ever tell anyone you went to Cuba. It’s not a good idea. Believe me, I know. Nobody. You understand me?” he lectured in a paternal, if quasi-chastising southern drawl. But before I could answer respond with a ‘Yes, sir’ he said, “Trust me. It’s a big fine.” I trusted him. But as much as I didn’t want to get involved in whatever scandalous enterprise he was conducting inside Cuba, I wanted to know more about how he had obtained such vital info. “Have you told anyone you are coming down here?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, now believing I should feel guilty for some reason. “Well, I guess that is the difference between us older folks and you young ‘uns. We are a little more careful with what we say to people.” I held my tongue but I wanted to say ‘Sorry, dad, for communicating to my friends and family where I am headed, but you just told me, a perfect stranger, that you have been to Cuba seven times.’ Instead I continued to ask pointed questions in my attempt to land in the country at least semi-prepared.

The final step in the arrival process, besides avoiding the pair from Arkansas as we disembarked from the plane, was getting through customs and immigration. After landing around midnight and standing in a set of long lines - each leading to a row of a dozen or so official looking offices - for a half an hour or so, I was beckoned into one of them. As I walked in I noticed it was more of an immigration (or was it interrogation?) chamber than an office. A man inside Chamber No. 4 – a claustrophobic metal hallway that I could barely turn my body in, much less struggle with my bags through – had called me in for the query. A camouflage-clad agent sat behind a thick glass window and peppered me with questions in Spanish, most of which were run of the mill and all of which I was prepared for. The most important question seemed to be where I was staying. Apparently migration can be much expedited or considerably slowed based on what kind of answer one gives in response to the question of accommodation. The first three nights stay, the government liked to hear, were pre-booked at a state-run hotel. Although I had a reservation at a cheap casa particular, I doubted the immigration offices had the resources to check on any fabricated reservation I could make up. I lied and told him I was staying at a well-known “hotel del estado” (state-run hotel), for the first three nights. He seemed to like my answer, and once I proved to him I had a ticket out of Cuba for eight days later, he was ready to let me pass. The final crucial step was me asking him not to put a damning Cuban entrance stamp in my passport, which he kindly obliged. A loud buzzer sounded and echoed through the metal box. This obnoxious wail unlocked the exterior door and meant I was through the rat maze. I swung the heavy metal door open with my shoulder and entered Cuba.

First night in and thirty dollars poorer, I was way over my preferred budget at my chosen casa particular in Havana – and this was one of the cheapest. Normally I can get by almost anywhere in the world on less than thirty dollars in a day so I wondered what I was going to have to sacrifice to stick with that budget. As with most places I am unfamiliar with, I headed to the center of the city the first morning for answers.

Tourism spills over in Habana Viejo (Old Havana). Every morning charter buses loaded with older groups of tourists from France, Germany and Canada congregate in the old city after a trip into the center from the nicer hotels on the outskirts. This influx of package tourists is not really a hassle because all the groups follow a similar route through the city and are easily avoided. They stay within the confines of the UNESCO-restored area which has been seemingly restored exclusively for them, while much of the rest of the city basks in a sort of classical but ramshackle glory. Walking a predetermined and always identical path, the tourists avoid the gritty, real life areas of the city where locals play baseball and casually toss their garbage in the street. And the tourists are always gone by the time the sun heats up the cobblestones in old town.

Above: A lively plaza in Habana Centro

The major cutbacks I needed to make if I wanted to survive on my ‘communist’ budget were to eat cheap and avoid tourist pitfalls. This took some figuring out but was doable. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to save on accommodation and transportation; hotels were tightly regulated and highly taxed while tourists were only permitted to ride overpriced tourist buses. The first thing I noticed in the old city was that prices for anything where tourists visited were listed only in the tourist ‘convertible’ peso and were five to 10 times more expensive. Something that normally cost 20 cents would be two dollars for tourists. Further out of the center, in the local-inhabited areas of town, the prices were listed in moneda nacional, or Cuban pesos. If I wanted to survive on the amount of money I brought to Cuba I was going to need to get my hands on some of the local currency and ditch the convertible tourist pesos I had traded for at the airport. But I wasn’t sure how. I had heard using the local currency is outlawed for tourists.

Ninety minutes later I felt like a millionaire. Exchanging only a couple of crisp tourist bills which wouldn’t have bought me even a decent lunch in the tourist restaurants, I converted them into a huge wad of dirty crumpled peso bills too thick for my wallet. I had no idea if this transaction was legal or not but nobody said anything. When I bought my first chocolate ice cream bar from a street vendor using local currency (for the equivalent of 20 cents) I felt like doing a dance. He looked at me a little strange for busting out pesos but was more than happy to complete the transactions. Outside of the government-regulated casas particulares, which wouldn’t accept moneda nacional, those 20 or so dollars I traded for pesos would last me the rest of my eight days in Cuba. I couldn’t spend them if I tried. Snacks and meals ranged from five cents to a dollar for a heaping plate of food. Locally produced rum and cigars became almost free with pesos. And fortunately or not, due to the lack of supply of just about everything, there wasn’t much else to buy. I had avoided the tourist money trap. Now I could live like a local – a rich local! And Cuba would be my savory socialist oyster.

Click here to continue to part 2