tysontrips

18 April, 2006

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

Part 2

After a few days of walking, eating and sleeping in relatively expensive Havana, I was ready to get away from the city and head into the more relaxed countryside. Besides, the next step in my communist budget was finding a cheaper place to stay. From Havana I traveled east a couple hours by bus along the coast to the most tourist-groomed area in Cuba, a beach resort town called Varadero. This Caribbean gem was once crowded with luxury hotels and mega resorts for international tourists. Up to the revolution in 1960 the entire area had been the drunken playground of wealthy Americans, only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Now many of the hotels sit in disrepair and disregard with new five star resorts cropping up sporadically due to increased tourism since the mid 1990s. Varadero is supposed to be the nicest beach in Cuba but I would go farther than that. With its relative lack of recent development this totally underutilized Caribbean paradise has some of the nicest beaches anywhere. If the US embargo is ever lifted, American hotel and resort chains will swarm on this small town’s potential. Incidentally Americans are not the only ones looking in at Varadero. Cubans are essentially banned from Varadero and many others of the nicest, most aesthetically pleasing areas in Cuba. The government’s rationale is that the locals frighten off tourists. I for one am not really ‘frightened’ by meeting and interacting with the locals from a country which I came to visit. But while the lack of native Cubans in Varadero wasn’t necessarily harmful to me, the lack of locals meant that many other things were missing from the area: cheap food, public transportation, and cheap lodging. Even the chance to use my moneda nacional evaporated in this haven of package tourism.

All my sources said not to come to Varadero expecting budget accommodation because it simply does not exist. It’s the 200 dollar a night mega hotel or nothing. This is because Varadero is geared toward package tourism and the resort-style tourists – the ones who must be day-tripping into Havana every morning, then storming out every day by noon as if it is infested. Bucking my guidebooks warnings, I soon realized that Varadero has no accommodation for the budget or independent traveler; I learned this lesson the hard way. Lured by the scent of a world-class beach I took my chances. Part of my rationale: with Cuba’s increasing nose for free-market enterprise I figured there had to be a homeowner who was willing to rent out a room illegally in his house. There wasn’t. Casas particulares, it turned out, were illegal in Varadero. So illegal that the penalty for ignoring the law was the possibility of the seizure of one’s property. So a fifteen dollar profit must not have been worth it for the locals. Though via severe methods, in keeping the ideals of the party alive, the socialism-leaning regime had won a small victory for now. Even against these burgeoning capitalists. Cuba was the first place I had ever witnessed the blatant stifling of capitalistic enterprise, and in some ways it was incredibly refreshing. But at this point idealism had only earned me a seat on a park bench. I needed a roof over my head; or at least a lock box to throw my backpack in.

The agent at the local state-run tourist office told me that the cheapest room available in the only option – a state-run hotel – was over fifty dollars a night.

“Ha! I would never pay that. Maybe I will just sleep on the beach,” I joked, assuming I could catch a bus out of town to another destination with cheaper lodging for the night. In perfect English she replied, to my surprise, “That would be the cheapest option.”

Ka-ching! Some kind of cash register-shaped light bulb illuminated in my head. That’s the way to save money on accommodation, I thought. Don’t secure any! It seemed safe enough. Tourists would be inside their posh resort walls, isolated from the beaches. Cubans were effectively banned from the area so I wouldn’t have to worry about them. Not that I would have had to. I felt safer in the streets of central Havana than I felt most anywhere in the US. Guns and violence against tourists are unheard of. I would be silly not to fall asleep on this heavenly white sand beach listening to the calm waves lapping against the shore. The closest I would come to finding a place to stay anywhere near this five star beach would be staying on this five star beach. And the price was right.

A trip to the long-distance bus terminal confirmed my destiny: there were no tourist buses leaving Varadero until the next morning and, as a foreigner, I was prohibited from riding the intercity buses on which the locals rode. Tears. I was stuck in paradise. I stashed what luggage I could at the bus station for the day and headed to my beach/hotel. Throughout the day I walked along the beach, merrily perusing five star resorts as though I was choosing one in which to buy time share. But instead of assessing the quality of the pools, tennis courts and room service, I wandered through their lawns and gardens near the beach, looking for the comfiest circular bush or concealing tree I could pass out under later that night. The rest of my time I spent ‘slumming it’ at my five star beach/hotel.

veradero
Above: ‘Slumming it’ in Varadero.

As darkness set across the beach town the tourists retreated to their isolated compounds and even locals became scarce. But my plan, like everything around me, seemed more and more shady the darker it became. The unlit, uninviting and unguarded beach seemed like a perfect place to lose my belongings – either at the hands of a thief or in the pitch blackness of night. And because all tourists who come to visit Varadero have a room waiting for them, there is no place in town where I was able to leave my backpack or valuables for the night. I had to carry around my passport and all my money everywhere I went. If I lost my money and passport for any reason I would be shit out of luck. The US has no embassy in Cuba to replace passports and the US Interests Section in Havana wouldn’t have much sympathy for a man who snuck into Cuba illegally. They would probably send me straight home on a flight with a ‘go directly to jail’ card stapled to my prison uniform. Even scarier was that if I lost my money there was no replacing it. American credit cards aren’t accepted in Cuba. Neither are bank cards nor traveler’ checks issued in the US. I needed a better plan.

By a few hours after nightfall my backpack began to weigh me down like a bag of rocks and my spirits were low as well. As I scuffed my feet walking down the nearly deserted main drag in Varadero at 10pm, wondering where a recognizable place to bury my passport and money in the sand might be, it suddenly seemed that my luck might change. I saw the flashing neon sign of an open restaurant a few paces ahead. The sign read ‘24 Horas’ below the name. I had never known any business to stay open 24 hours in Cuba but I figured if the restaurant would, then so would I. I sat down at an outdoor table and decided to wait it out until my bus left at 7am the next morning.

Even if I didn’t order anything to eat or drink I knew that I could sit outside this restaurant all night without being asked to leave. In fact, the two workers inside the kiosk seemed much more interested in flirting with each other than helping me. One of the stereotypes of Cubans is that they are so kind that they would do anything for a stranger. Anything except their jobs. If I needed to find a building five kilometers away in Havana complete strangers would approach me and ask my permission to walk with me and show me the way. Apparently it was their pleasure and they were glad to do it. But even if I was the only one standing in line to buy a bus ticket from a sales agent, it might be several minutes before this same person would give me the time of day or ask who is next. It’s understandable that many Cubans can’t be bothered to do the menial task which they are required to do over and over on a daily basis. In a system with such an incredibly low wage, where cab drivers make more than doctors and doing one’s job any quicker or better will not result in any more positive outcome for the worker, its no wonder these normally friendly and altruistic people are seemingly bound apathetic by red tape.

rapido
Above: The all-night diner

But the action inside the kiosk had nothing to do with customer service. The man looked to be a manager type. He was instructing the pretty, younger women how to clean the kitchen. Much physical contact was apparently necessary in this instruction. As I sat and sipped off a small bottle of Havana Club rum, my time machine for passing the long night quickly, the pair often slipped away from the front of the kiosk to an unknown area, perhaps a storage space, to ‘train’ in a more private environment.

The next seven hours passed as uneventfully as the previous two. The women in the restaurant had redefined my definition of socialistic inefficiency. She had been sweeping and mopping and flirting for more than eight hours in a ten by ten foot area without making any progress, at least in the sweeping and mopping categories. As time wore on the manager headed home. Soon after he left the restaurant, around 4am, the night’s forbidden relationship was nothing but another moment in time, gone by without incident or witness, except for this white, rum-drinking fly on the wall. The witching hour brought little of excitement except for the transvestites, who appeared in small groups ever so often, walking home from small, unregistered clubs. At this point I realized that the 24 hour diner was definitely going to stay open all night. Good thing. In a few hours I could hobble over to the bus station and wait there.

It had been more than 24 hours since I strapped on my backpack at 4am in Havana, walked two hours to the bus station and headed toward this resort town for the rich. I felt satisfied with my accomplishments. I excused myself from the table where I was sitting and headed toward the beach. The woman working inside the restaurant took no notice. She was now sluggishly wiping down the counters after she had spent the last hour grudgingly chopping the day’s ice off of an enormous block. Walking to the dusky, mysterious beach under the moonless but starry sky I felt fatigued – mentally more than anything. I had tried to live like a local and this is where I ended up: Under a palm tree on a glorious beach, but without the human necessity of shelter. This situation must have been a metaphor to help me understand the paradox of living in Cuba, a gorgeous country that still leaves something to be desired and many out in the cold. In Cuba the locals sometimes say “Nada es fácil en Cuba” or “La vida es difícil.” Maybe I was beginning to understand what they meant. Puffy-eyed and content with my communist budget I threw my backpack and myself down on the beach for a short siesta before my walk to the bus station at sunrise. I drifted off briefly to the sound of the crashing waves and the semi-disconcerting thought that the more time I spent in Cuba the less I really understood of this convoluted island, its people and its politics. The only thing I really knew was that I had the money and the documents to visit it long enough to witness its charm, but without having to be part of its reality. On that note, I picked up my backpack and walked to the bus terminal, my money and passport in hand.

sleep