Cuba
Ah, Cuba. Getting there is the only hard part about it. I loved everything about Havana! There is so much fascinating history that this may be a place I go back to, just to see more of.
The DEAL: This was a free cruise through Royal Caribbean’s Casino Royale. It’s not really “free” so much as it is prepaid by the amount of gambling I’ve done with them. If you gamble, I highly recommend cruising with Royal Caribbean. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/. I took my first cruise in March of 2018 and have taken 4 “free” cruises since, with another booked in September 2019. I have to pay taxes and resort fees (approximately $300) and get to the port, in this case Miami. This one was my favorite, so far! There were a few pre-boarding issues though that I should warn you about.
THE SNAFUS: (There were 2.) The first was my best friend’s passport was due to expire 5 months after our trip. Everything you look at regarding passports states that they cannot expire within 6 months of the trip. I called RC and was told that since we were flying domestically, it wouldn’t be a problem. That was NOT the correct information! I called for another issue the week before the cruise and was told then that she wouldn’t be let on the ship without a new passport. We spent several days going back and forth on whether we should chance it or pay $500 to have someone go to Chicago and get an expedited passport, but then realized there’s a passport office in Miami. So with fingers crossed, we flew to Miami on the SAME DAY we were boarding the ship for Cuba to try to get a new passport. We had an appointment at the Passport Agency at 8:30 a.m. where they took her passport and said they’d do their best to have a new one issued the same day. And it worked! We went back at 1:00 p.m. (we were boarding at 2:00) and the passport was ready to go!
The second snafu was also due to a call to Royal Caribbean and talking to someone who was NOT in the know about traveling to Cuba. I’ve wanted to go to Cuba for a while and although it’s a slight hassle to figure out which category you’re traveling under (Due to Trump’s elimination of people-to-people travel, your trip has to fall under a category of “authorized travel.”), once we got that sorted, of course we wanted to spend the night in Havana and not get back on the ship. The person I spoke with at RC said that we had to board in the evening and then could leave the ship again in the morning. This was the issue I called about a week before we left and was told we COULD, in fact, spend the night in Havana! That led to some last-minute scrambling to find accommodations as US citizens cannot stay in State-owned facilities, i.e., hotels. More on our FABULOUS hosts later!
the categories that US citizens can travel to Cuba and what’s required for each. We chose “Support for
the Cuban People” as it’s as close to people-to-people travel that we could do. Under this category, you
have to have pretty much every minute accounted for doing activities that support independent activity.
We were also told by some people at RC that our documentation would be reviewed prior to us being
able to leave the ship. That actually didn’t happen, but better safe than sorry.
The people/agencies we worked with did a phenomenal job! We started our planning with Yilliam at
ViaHero https://www.viahero.com/. We let her know how much time we would have and she worked
on a program so that we could see, taste, experience as much of Cuba as time allowed. I’m looking
forward to contacting ViaHero the next time I travel somewhere they provide trip planning for! The cost
for planning our trip was $70, which includes a guidebook (that you have to keep for several years
showing what you did while there…) and a downloadable map (Maps.me) and ViaHero app to (mostly)
keep us from getting lost!
Our first activity was a half-day tour with Free Walking Tour Havana
https://freewalkingtourhavana.com/. Our guide was Nala and I can’t imagine a better guide. She
showed us the ups, the downs, and everything in between. It actually is a FREE walking tour and then
you tip at the end. We weren’t sure what would be an appropriate tip, but when we learned that a
monthly grocery bill averaged $40, we decided that’s what we would leave.
We actually followed a couple of Americans into a restaurant, thinking maybe they knew which ones were okay to go to! This was my langostino (with 2 lobster tails!) for $5!
once again Yilliam saved us! Since US citizens can’t stay in State-owned hotels (which are pretty much
all there are), she suggested an Airbnb https://www.airbnb.com/.
So after lunch and a quick trip back to the ship to drop off our rum, cigars, and coffee (OMG, the coffee…so, so, so good), we caught a Coco taxi to our Airbnb.
Our host at was Yusleisi and although the entry to the apartment was a little intimidating, the hosts were wonderful, as was the view!
Although it said “Private Room” on Airbnb, we were a little surprised that the family stayed in the home
and we just rented a bedroom for the night. It was about $60 for the night and it worked out great!
Although they spoke no English and we spoke relatively no Spanish, after a few failed attempts with
Google Translate app and a whole lot of gesturing, we let them know we had to drop our luggage and
head off to our next adventure, a cooking lesson!
Yusleisi’s husband called a friend who was a taxi driver and he ended up being our personal driver for the rest of our trip. Of course he spoke Spanish and it turns out the street our cooking lesson was on was one of three streets with the same name! We made a few wrong turns and he made a few phone
calls and got us there.
A quick note about taxis: Nala told us that we shouldn’t ever pay more than $5
for a cab in Havana. Our driver charged us $10 the first and second times we used him, $5 the third, and
the fourth was free!
They’re the size of footballs!
The next day, after our great breakfast, we had a tour booked through ViaHero with Old Car Tours
https:
//www.oldcartours.com/.
several other stops, including a street vendor pressing sugarcane to make mojitos!
out it was the Mexican Navy and Cuba was honoring them by firing the cannons.
in the US. Although they don’t, for the most part, speak with reverence when referring to Castro,
there’s a lot more respect than I had expected. They talk about how one of the first things Castro did
after assuming power was to get rid of the casinos. There was so much mob money and crime tied to
the casinos and he wanted a safer place for Cubans. The John Lennon Statue was a surprise as well. The
music of the Beatles was banned in Cuba for years until Castro had a change of heart and honored John
Lennon by unveiling a bronze statue of him, stating “I too am a dreamer…”
On the other side, the poverty there is so real. An example we heard was that while an experienced doctor working for the State may make $100/month, a taxi driver can make 4 times that much! There are apartments called “Barbecues” because when the family has outgrown their apartment, since they usually cannot afford to move, they put a floor in about halfway up the wall and “double” the space of the apartment!
We also took in Hemingway’s hangout, El Floridita, saw a lot of gorgeous Spanish architecture, and ate and drank some super tasty authentic Cuban cuisine!
All in all, Cuba is so far my favorite trip. I’ll probably have to go back soon to see more of it!
