CUBA
October 22-29, 2007

As you may or may not know, I have been studying as an exchange student in Montreal since August 2007. The association HEChange, which takes care of all exchange students at the university, offered us a trip to Cuba during the autumn break! The deal was that if plenty of us join, we will get a very good price for a week in an all-inclusive 4-star resort (Hotel Tryp) in Cayo Coco, which is a tropical island with beautiful beaches north of the main island of Cuba. I just had to join.

Naturally, I never planned to stay on that island the whole week. Locals are actually even forbidden to enter the island, unless they can prove that they work there. Accordingly, I did not proclaim my arrival in Cuba when we stepped out of the airplane on the island. Instead, we arrived on October 22 indeed in paradise: beautiful white sandy beaches, a wonderful swimming pool, a tropical climate, palm trees everywhere, sun, sun, oh yeah, and some more sun! :-) EVERYTHING was included: food, drinks, alcohol... Except one thing: water! I was a bit disappointed that I had to buy bottled water from a little shop. The room service provided ONE bottle per room per week. Simply not acceptable, since I didn't want to drink the tap water from the restaurants, although all other tourists did. I just know too well: When traveling, peal it, boil it, or dump it!

Anyway, I wasn't really bothered by the lack of free bottled water because I was planning to stay only two days in any case on the island. The first bottle was enough for the first day, and the second day I managed to get an extra bottle from the kind lady who cleaned the room.

Two days of paradise! We were a total of 37 exchange students, all divided into rooms of two (I was staying with Sofia from Sweden), but the hotel was full of mainly canadian tourists. There were even other students from HEC. The activities each day and night were awesome (playing cards, dancing salsa, playing with my devil sticks, swimming, swimming naked in the sea under the moon light...) - proportionally to the free alcohol! :-D Just to make one point clear, this was NOT the real Cuba.

On the second day, October 23, I met Mark from England, a Hospitality Club member (HC username: marktheevildude) whom I had found in the HC forum, as he was also asking around for tips what to see in Cuba. It was actually quite funny; he was exactly in the same situation as I was: Having booked a vacation in Cayo Coco but having the urge to actually see Cuba when being on an island, which belongs to Cuba, he wanted to escape the all-inclusives and travel around a bit. He ended up staying with his girlfriend in the resort just next to mine (the Tryp), just a 5-minute walk away. So we met on the swimming pool, drank a few cokes together, had a few swims together, and spent the afternoon discussing how to merge our plans of escaping the unreal Cuba. It was really cool to talk to him; meeting an HC member in CUBA was just pure fantastic. :-) The more unfortunate it was that we were not able to travel together. :-( Mark and his girlfriend had a total of two weeks - I had just 5 and a half days left - and feeling still jetlagged, they wanted to wait a few more days before starting the trip. I didn't have those days, so I decided to leave alone (I couldn't convince any of the other exchange students either) the next day.

The night before the third day was very exciting (;-)) but then, after a some hours of sleep, I woke up at 5am in the morning with huge pains in my chest and in my arms. My heart was racing and my body was hurting a lot when I was lying in bed. I noticed that it hurt much less if I was sitting. So I was sitting there and trying to find out what could possibly be the reason. A nurse and a doctor came to see me. I had extremely low blood pressure and my throat was red, although it was not hurting like a sore throat but rather like a swollen muscle. They said that it's a virus. Anyway, a few hours later I was again able to sleep. I slept almost the whole day (only making a few walks either to the restaurant or to the beach) and felt much better very quickly. [But sorry, Sofia, that I had to disturb you during that night :-(]

Because of this mysterious sickness, I lost one day. So I left only on the morning of October 25. I had rented a car and started driving. No plans, no limits, only me, my car and my Lonely Planet! That was freedom! (Especially because Cayo Coco was connected with the main island by a ~30 kilometer long bridge, or drive way, or however you call that thing which prevents the waters of each sides from exchanging - a big harm for the nature.) Maybe it was after all good that I was driving alone so that I could scream and sing aloud because I was so happy and excited to FINALLY arrive in Cuba!

The first thing I noticed along the roads was that Cuba is full of hitchhikers! Everybody hitchhikes here: Children, grandmothers, men, women, policemen (YES, I had a policeman in my car), pregnant women, musicians, students, everybody alone or with somebody. It is very difficult to drive a road and not to see somebody who has his/her thumb up. In fact, you see regularly a big group of people standing next to the road. It's like a bus stop. When a car stops, all free places are filled up with the first ones in the cue. The other ones wait for the next car to stop. Government cars are even obliged to stop if they see hitchhikers!

First I was a little hesitant to take anybody into my car. After all, on the roads of Finland I am used to have many hundreds of meters time to examine the hitching person and to take him/her in only if he seems to be a young traveler without a hidden agenda. But once I had overcome my doubts, I was extremely happy to replace, or in fact, to be the public transport means of Cuba. I met so awesome people, as I will tell you soon. By the way, this was the reason I rented a car in the first place: In Cuba, public buses leave at extremely inconvenient times, if at all, from A to B; one maybe at 11pm, another at 4am. It was simply impossible to get around in the rythm that I had to adopt in order to see something in those 4 days that I had. The alternative would have been to hitchhike myself, which I would do if I wanted to travel around the country for a longer time.

The other thing that I noticed was the heavy pro-communism propaganda next to the roads. Unfortuntaly, I missed the chance to take pictures of those signs. Thus, I can't remember the exact wordings but basically the main message was that the values of communism are positive and that communism - in addition to its three heroes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Jose Marti - is simply great. In accordance with the propaganda, every person whom I asked was in favor of Fidel and communism. Their arguments are that everybody is equal, that they can be sure that everybody gets his/her minimal amount of food per month (yes they do - but it is VERY minimal; everybody who has at least a little but of money buys some additional food so that the meals are more interesting and enjoyable), and that communism has given them freedom.

The Cubans that I asked were not able to tell me what the reasons for the poverty of the country are. They want to believe in the good aspects of communism because they are afraid of change. This way, they know at least the system, which has advantages, too: The health care system is excellent; Cuban doctors are wanted all around the world. Unfortunately, doctors in Cuba prefer to work as waiters because the tips from the tourists increase their income significantly.

It is clear that the US embargo on Cuba has harmed the country a lot. But people have forgotten about it since it was implemented some 40 years ago! The US has many times tried to remove Fidel from power but failed so far (the most embarassing trial was at the Bay of Pigs in the South, which I also visited during my trip). What will happen after Fidel's death? Will Mr. Bush claim back all the lost interest in Cuba? It is evident that the capitalist system is the prevailing system in the world so it will eventually take over also in Cuba; but how and when - only time will tell.

One of the major disadvantages of Fidel and co for travelers is the fact Cubans are not allowed to invite foreigners into their homes without paying a tax. In other words, locals have to pay a monthly fee for hosting foreigners in their "casas particulares", which more or less equals the Bed and Breakfast of other countries. This was a huge shock for me, as I am used to staying only at Hospitality Club members while traveling. It is against the rules of the Hospitality Club to request money from your guests for staying at your place. Cuba is the only exception due to its legislation. Locals have to get in some money so that they can pay the expensive fee to the government for being able to host foreigners. Unfortunately, this has the effect that most HC members in Cuba are owners of casas particulares who try to find potential clients. Ok, maybe not most but I was missing the true HC spirit when browsing through the profiles of Cuban members who tell their prices in their profile summary. I really would have liked to meet some "real" HC members from Cuba who genuinely want to meet travelers but unfortunately I didn't find the time. Sorry to the ones whom I contacted beforehand but didn't meet after all :-( I tried to call a few of you in Habana but the numbers didn't work...

Another thing that disturbed me in Cuba was..............

To be continued...

Photos coming soon!