Transportation in Cuba

Transportation in Cuba is unlike anywhere else we have been. Of course there are the '50s cars that everyone loves to see. And they really are everywhere. These ones are parked on a cobbled street in Trinidad. Not sure if there's room for another one to pass here.

Old car aficionados (and there was one on our tour) just go nuts in Cuba. Harry also enjoyed identifying the different models. Most of them have had multiple paint jobs and fix-ups, and some even have Japanese engines in them now.  Some of these are used as taxis and some are owned by Cubans, but it looks like in Havana at least, the majority are  used for tourism.

This car was parked outside of a tobacco farm in the Vinales valley. Notice the pictures of Che and Fidel on their water tank.

This one is parked in Trinidad waiting to be hired for a tour.

Full disclosure: our tour included a drive around Havana in one of these. We got a pink one that sounded and felt like the transmission was about to fall out. 

Here are a couple of people from our tour in a green painted car. Bill took probably hundreds of phots of the cars we encountered.  The photo below is taken from a hotel rooftop in the touristy part of Havana. You can see just how many of these cars are driving around,

Here's the driver of our pink car taking us around the city. But notice on the left there is a bicycle taxi and another taxi (probably a Lada from Russia). These are the non-tourist transportation options in Havana.

But out in the countryside and in the smaller towns the horse and cart is the mode of transit. It could be a four-wheeled wagon....

Or a two-wheeled home-made cart with car wheels....

This wagon has hunks of meat in it. Maybe it's a delivery van.

And this one is a gravel truck. They had the horse back the cart up onto the sidewalk so they could dump the gravel and sand inside the door.

Here are few more bicycles and bicycle taxis.  Most of them appear to be home-made.

This last one shows a horse and cart and an 50s car and a Chinese tour bus, which is the other form of transport that is seen everywhere.  They have a difficult time on the narrow cobblestone streets but they're pretty common.  

Next time I'll tell you about our tour and where we went.  

Havana glimpses

I finally managed to download some of my photographs from our trip to Cuba. It's been really interesting reviewing these images and selecting some to show you what we saw on our trip.We were in Havana for almost four days at the end of our trip so we had time to roam the streets and explore this fascinating city of 2.13 million people. We spent a lot of our time with friends Paul and Wendy who came from Comox BC to join us on the trip. That's Paul on the right talking to a fellow who was selling newspapers in front of a bookstore one evening. We found the people there to be incredibly warm and friendly.

This doorway looks like it's to an abandoned building but it's quite likely that someone lives behind it. The old buildings in Havana are generally in a state of mild to severe decrepitude. We didn't see many homeless people but places like this are home to many citizens.

"Faithful to our History"....  Signs like these with images of Fidel and Che and other Cuban heroes are everywhere, on the sides of buildings, on billboards, statues. 

Parts of Havana still retain the beautiful Spanish Colonial buildings in good repair. These areas are set up for 50's cars that you can get driven around in and fancy hotels and restaurants. 

There are some commercial establishments although I don't think most residents of Havana would be buying anything there as the prices would likely be in CUCs, the money that only tourists have access to. Most people in Cuba are paid in Cuban pesos, worth about 1/25th of the tourist money.

Once you get outside the touristy areas you see how most people in Havana live. The buildings are beautiful but falling apart. Some of them are propped up with two-by-fours to keep the balconies from collapsing. I read somewhere that most Cubans prefer to walk in the street to avoid being hit by falling pieces of buildings.

Peering through doorways you see scenes of beautiful decay...

And often amazing artwork. (More about this later.)

And from almost every balcony the laundry hangs--adding colour, texture, and humanity to the views of this complicated wonderful city.

Cuba's casa particulares

If you're going to Cuba and want to meet the people who live there the best thing to do is to stay in casa particulares. We were in Cuba for 13 days and we stayed exclusively in these Cuban-style Air B&Bs--and we met a lot of wonderful Cuban people.

Our first one was in Havana, run by Amay a single mom in her 40s who resigned her job as a doctor to do this work. Amay, like many Cubans chose to work in the tourist business because it is much, much more remunerative than being a doctor.  Even though the government takes a substantial portion of the money that is brought in (like maybe 90%) it's a step up for Amay.

Amay's home is in the restored old part of Havana so it's in an excellent location. She loves to meet people and her home is remodeled to provide four rooms each with a private bath and a common dining room where guests can have breakfast.

We arrived after dark and it wasn't until the next morning that we peeked through the door for our first glimpse of Havana. This is what we saw. That's a bicycle taxi on the street. These are everywhere in Cuba--a great way to get around when you get tired of walking.

Our casa in Vinales was on the main street of the little town. This one offered two small rooms, each with two single beds and a tiny bathroom, but they faced onto a private balcony where we we able to kick back with our travelling compations (Paul and Wendy from Comox).  This picture shows some of the people from our tour group waiting to be assigned to their particular casa.

No matter where we stayed though, we could be sure of having and enormous breakfast consissting of fresh tropical fruit juice, smoothies, bread and jam, eggs, ham and cheese, plus a muffin or cake or pastry, and strong Cuban coffee.                                                            

Truly it was way too much food for any of us to eat.  At first to be polite, we tried to eat everything but soon we started tucking some of it into our bags so we could feed the ever-present skinny dogs on the street.

It was only later that a friend told me that the food that we were offered is not available to the regular residents in Cuba. It's specially for the tourists. Andrew's theory about why the breakfasts were so large was so that the people who lived in the houses would be able to eat what was left over  I have no way of knowing if this was true or not. But it may well be the case.

It was really a treat staying in these casas. We met some wonderful Cuban people, some who spoke English, but even if they didn't we made friends.  Here's a picture of Harry and me with Rafaela, where we stayed at the end of our trip in Havana. Rafaels is a character. Even though her English is limited she's a great communicator and so very helpful.  Aftter we left Cuba, our friends stayed on and were guided to a wonderful casa in the eastern city of Baracoa.  

If you plan to visit Cuba, make a point of staying in casa particulares so you can get to know the amazingly warm and friendly Cuban people.

A tornado in Havana

When we left for our trip to Cuba and Mexico on the 19th of January, my plan was to blog about our adventures as I usually do when we travel.  But the very first time I opened my laptop in the Cuban town of Trinidad about the beginning of our tour in Cuba I discovered that my computer was failing. Before I could even post to the blog, the thing had crashed.

So if you were waiting and wondering what was happening, that's the reason there have been no posts about our trip. Fortunately (for me at least) my camera still functioned. And now, here I am six weeks later trying to remember some of what we experienced on this trip. It's a lot easier to write about things as they happen, but since I have several hundred photos to look at, I will attempt to write a bit about what we saw and experienced.

The photo above was taken on day 10 of our Cuba tour. The tour that took us from Havana to Cienfuegos, to Trinidad, to Viñales and back to Havana was winding up and we were sitting on a rooftop at a little farewell gathering. As the party wound up it started to rain and the wind came up. While walking home it got more gusty and windy and just before we made it to the front door of our casa particular  I tripped on a big hole in the sidewalk and fell on my face.  My injuries were fairly minor, only some scrapes and bruises. Harry and a bystander helped me get the rest of the way home just as the power went out for the rest of the night.

It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that a tornado had come through Havana, a very rare occurence.  Some of our group were in a taxi on the Malecon when the wind came up and experienced waves inundating the car. Violet, the 81 year old intrepid traveler from our tour said she thought she was a goner. We were all ok, but three people in Havana died, cars were overturned, and hundreds of people injured.  (See Tornado in Cuba)

This is the only photo I have from Cuba to date. It was sent along with some others by the intrepid Violet. But tomorrow I will get my computer back from the repair shop and I should be able to view the pictures taken on our trip. My plan is to do a few short posts of mainly photos to show you some of what we saw. I'll try not to bore you.





This is what the Malecon in Havana looked like the day after the storm.