Cienfuegos, Cuba

Once again we were back at the Viazul bus terminal to take a bus to Cienfuegos. This was the only town where no one responded to our requests for a casa and Rafael had a friend he phoned who would meet us at the bus station and put us up. It seems that many people in Cuba now use Airbnb. One person told us that she had instant bookings on the website and although she had accepted us, she could not host us because she was too slow updating her online bookings and Airbnb charges hefty fees if a booking is cancelled.

The landscape on the way to Cienfuegos was flat with lots of fields flooded for rice in different stages of growth. In areas unsuited to rice there were sugar cane plantations. Rafael told us that the government closed 10 sugar refineries because the machinery was too old and inefficient. A lot of the land we passed was government owned. There were several dams holding water for irrigation.

Cienfuegos was a city settled by the French and has a population of about 18,000. It is an industrial city with petroleum, chemical and cement industries. We could see the smokey chimney as we arrived.

The front of the casa with the terrace above

Our host Yhanes met us at the bus station. As we left he gave the security guard a tip for letting him into the station. He and his wife looked like they were in their late 70's. They employed a couple of maids. He had been an electrician for a government factory before his retirement. All retirees get a government pension.

The ridge is where the house ended. The red rails come up from the house to the terrace where we had breakfast. The tall building is an abandoned school.

The house was very narrow with a long corridor and windows on one side. It was joined to another house with an opposite layout. The living area of the house looked onto the busy noisy street and Yhanes and his wife would sit here rocking in their chairs and chatting to the locals who walked by.

Yhanes and Teresita

We were not offered meals but Yhanes took us to a couple of restaurants a short walk away. One had all its pork, chicken and beef covered in breadcrumbs and deep fried, in a cordon bleu style. Unfortunately mine was not quite cooked through and I had to complain to the owner -  the restaurant was in her front room. Yhanes was sorry to hear about it as it is his favourite restaurant. Another time we ate at a farm themed place that had stewed country food more to my liking as it was well stewed. My dish was called 'vieja ropa' or old clothes!

Breakfast on the terrace

We walked about the old city and it has a nice pedestrian street running through the middle. Every second shop in the walking street was a government Panamerica store. There is no advertising like we know other than the name of the place. The city was made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005. It was founded in 1819 by the French. A lot of the French influenced buildings have been renovated. We saw 21 buses lined up by the cruise ship anchored in the port and the buses ferried visitors to various parts of the city.

Yhanes told us not to swim near the Malecon, beach promenade, as it is polluted. He was not wrong. In the 33 degree temperatures the fumes from the sewerage that flows into the harbour were so potent we could smell them from the other side of the street. These are the kinds of infrastructure problems that Cuba has got to solve and of course they will cost a lot of money and be complicated to manage.

A well shaded fruit and vegetable mobile trader on the malecon

I think of central Cienfuegos as the painted human statues city because there were lots of them in various parts of the city hoping to get tourists to leave them money when they were photographed.

Check out the silver cowboy

Yhanes suggested we take the ferry to the Castilla de Jagua. It is a fort that was built in 1745 to protect the bay from invaders. The ferry was absolutely crowded and it was stinking hot. The area near the fort was inhabited by residents that used to work at the nuclear plant but the plant has now closed down and the residents have to commute to other parts of the bay for employment. The inside of the ferry was covered and crowded so we ended up outside where we and the locals opened up umbrellas to protect ourselves from the burning sun. Luckily we had a seat in the shade on the journey home.

Castilla de Jagua

The fort has been renovated and the signs were mostly in Spanish and not many of the exhibits were original. The guide only spoke Spanish it was quite expensive to look around. However, it was interesting to see that as well as the British, French and Spanish they had also been visited by the Dutch and Danish.

This is one of the people transporters with no air conditioning and lots of people sitting on the floor or standing holding onto a rail in the aisle.

As soon as the sun starts to rise the streets rattle with the clip clop of the horses and carts. Here are three forms of transport we spotted while having breakfast on the terrace.

Vinales, Cuba

Viazul bus owned by the government and used by tourists and government workers.

With our two week visit to Cuba we decided to stay on the western part of the Island rather than race from one end to the other. Vinales is well known for its tobacco and coffee plantations. Lots of tourists take one day tours from La Habana to the area.

We had booked a casa online and when we arrived at the bus stop in the middle of the small town there was no one waiting for us as we had arranged and had been confirmed. Lots of women met the bus with laminated signs of their casas and swamped everyone as they got off the bus. One lady was loud and pushy and kept at us to stay at her place and do tours of the rural area. I had to tell her she would drive me crazy with her incessant hassling. John spotted a quiet lady and we decided to go and look at her place. It turned out to be perfect for us.

It was on the edge of the town and it was tastefully decorated. Our host Madelin, had lived and worked in Spain and the Dominican Republic and was used to talking to foreigners. She didn't speak English but her Spanish was easy to understand. She was 39 and single and had never had any children. Her separated parents lived near her as well as her brothers and sisters. She had one room for guests and the rest of her huge house was for her family members when they needed somewhere in the town to stay.

We had a huge room with a lounge, and fridge full of drinks. A picture of Marilyn Monroe hung on one of the walls. Madelin's father and brothers built the house and it cost her just the materials as they provided their labour free. She has room on the roof to extend as she gets more funds. We enjoyed the evenings in the rocking chairs on the terrace.

Madelin cooked us lobster one night

Vinales was nothing like I thought it would be. I knew it was popular with tourists but I was surprised when I saw the main street. There are only a few shops in the main street and the rest of the long street is made up of restaurants and casas with the odd night club. Nearly every casa has a porch with rocking chairs.

The ex doctor's restaurant

As we had arrived early afternoon Madelin suggested we eat at a restaurant down the road. It was run by an ex doctor. We were the only guests and sat on the rooftop watching the sunset. The 3 course meals were all the same price. We read that Vinales is famous for its roast pork so that is what John ordered. It was actually charcoal barbecued beside us on the deck and nothing like what we would call roast pork. The rest of the meal was enormous and could have fed 5 or 6 people.



It is common to ride horses to the tobacco and coffee plantations but we decided that it would be nicer to walk than sit on a horse in the 37 degree heat. Madelin organised a guide for us. The horse riders started before us but we arrived at the tourist farm sites before them.

At the first stop we were shown the tobacco drying shed and told about the processes for growing and shown how cigars were rolled. The lower parts of the leaf are used for cigarettes while the tips are used for cigars as they get more sun and therefore more flavour. The cigars are treated with herbs and honey and each plantation has its own secret recipe. The demonstrator told us his brother took his cigars in plastic bags into New Zealand without declaring them but we found that hard to believe as our biosecurity at the airports are so tough.

Tobacco drying building

The coffee plant berries were just starting to redden and they roasted and pounded the beans on site. The farmers own the farm land but have to give 90% of their crop to the government. It is a UNESCO area and only natural pesticides can be used. They make and use sprays from the coffee waste.

There were no tobacco plants growing during our visit. The land was being ploughed by bullocks ready for corn or manioc.

Mimosa growing on the side of the road, when touched the leaves curl up.

We had to change some Euros into local money and John had to wait in a queue in the street until the security guard let him into the bank. Only four people were let in at one time but the locals walked in and were served first. John said one lady had boxes and boxes of cash. There was a second bank in the main street but it charged a lot more fees so no one took their money there.

John said Vinales reminded him of life in the Middle Ages. From first light till dusk the locals come by with food they want to sell and this onion and garlic seller rode round and round the town shouting out 'cebollas' every day.

The onion and garlic seller 

We were surprised at the number of electric motorbikes in the town. Madelin said they came into Panama City from China. They quietly manoeuvred through the dusty streets along with the horses and carts, modern cars and shiny modern bicycles ridden by young boys and free ranging roosters and hens. All of these sights had us believe that there is a lot of money in Vinales.

One afternoon we visited Madelin's brother and his family. They had been fishing and caught a huge fish. They lit an outdoor fire and heated charcoal. Alfredo suspended a rack above the banana leaf wrapped fish and expected it would take 2 or 3 hours to cook it. We sat outside eating fresh pink tropical guavas and drinking rum and lime juice.

One of Alfredo's friends was a paediatrician and asked us all sorts of questions about NZ. I usually carry a couple of photo books on New Zealand and the Bay of Plenty, where we live, as well as a world map with us in the centre and another of New Zealand in more detail. Unfortunately, I had left them in Havana because we only brought enough clothes for the 3 nights here in our little daybags. A neighbour with a baby who had a sore throat arrived to have the doctor look at his throat.

On the way back to Havana we passed through Pinar del Rio where we stopped briefly to pick up a couple of government workers. At the bus station were several people transporters like these that look better suited to carrying animals than people.

La Habana, Cuba

When we checked in at the airport we had to buy a Cuban tourist visa for US$30 each. We boarded a small Inter Caribbean Beechcraft 200 plane from Providenciales to La Habana. The pilot had to take on extra fuel as rough weather was expected along the route. We all had to be weighed along with our bags and one poor lady discovered when we arrived in the rain at La Habana airport that her bags had to be left behind because the plane was overweight. Our uncovered bags, co-pilot, ground crew and passengers spent about half an hour in the rain on the tarmac as the lady, a Cuban, with an American passport tried to sort out how she could get her bags back.

A sculpture in a space where old buildings had been.

Once inside the terminal it was chaos. There were only two immigration officers and x ray machines for the hundreds of arriving passengers so it took a long time to process everyone. Everyone was asked if they had a second passport. We think this was because they do not recognise the dual nationality passports held by Cuban born visitors. If you are born Cuban you are Cuban for life.

The harbour

Once outside we were able to join a very short queue to change our Euros to Cuban Convertible Pesos, CUCs. American dollars are not wanted and a 10% extra charge is added to exchange them even though the peso is linked to the dollar at one-to-one. The locals use Moneda Nacional (MN) pesos while all others use CUC which is 25 times the value of the MN. Tourists will pay 25 times more for everything they buy in Cuba. This makes it an expensive place to visit.

The old cars lined up ready for hire

We caught a modern, Hyundai Sonata, yellow government taxi from outside the terminal driven by an ex-pharmacist who spoke excellent English. He said he started driving taxis because it paid better than working at his profession. He rents the car from the government and is his own boss. The route from the airport is a fixed tariff at $30 CUC=US$30 and drivers get a license to work that route. He said he has a son who is academic so will encourage him into a profession while his oldest son who is not, is also a taxi driver.

Our casa

We arrived at our Casa Particular which is similar to a home stay in NZ. We had already ordered dinner in our request to the family. Rafael carried our bags up the first flight of steep stone steps and then up a second flight of narrow spiral steel steps to his apartment. His wife Mary served us our dinner of steak and onions, boiled green bananas that tasted like potato, fried then smashed banana (called tostones), and a rice and brown bean mix. There was a salad of cucumbers and avocado followed by delicious fresh mango juice. John had a Cuban coffee and I had tea. An ex guest from the UK sends Rafael a parcel of different kinds of fruit tea every year so he can serve them to his guests. He received a second box of tea while we were there so he is hoping to have more tea drinkers than coffee drinkers.

Some places have the ground floor propped up while other just crumble to the ground through neglect

About ten years ago Rafael gave up his engineering job in a government factory to run the home stay. Mary got more money than him working at the National Mines office as a technician so she continues to work there.  17 year old Jenifer and 20 year old Elizabeth and boyfriend, live independently below them with Mary's father. They own their apartment and have spent several years extending and renovating it as they get money.

The beauty of the old buildings

Currently they rent two rooms to tourists. Our room he called the apartment. It had its own entrance with a kitchen and its own bathroom. The fridge was full of boxes of juice, bottles of water and cans of beer operating on an honesty system. There was a separate lounge with armchairs and a sofa. The bedroom had an old fashioned noisy air conditioner and a huge old TV mounted up high. It was more than we needed and pretty comfortable. All home stays must have hot water in order to get a license to operate. Previously the landlord had to pay a high monthly tax to the government whether they had guests or not but since Fidels' brother Raul took over the tax has been reduced to a more manageable level.

Hotels in the new part of Havana

Rafael's place is popular for young Chinese men who want to cook for themselves. They fly onto Cancun, Mexico and then go into USA from there as they want to settle there illegally. Rafael has learnt a bit of Mandarin so he can communicate with them better.

This man makes a living taking photos the old fashioned way

We loaded the Google offline translator to his phone so he could use it for his guests. Elizabeth has an app she can use to load things that are blocked by the government so she was grateful to get the translator from us. She is able to use Facebook, Twitter and download movies for free from a site she has been able to access. She is so happy to be able to do the things other teens do with the internet.

Breakfast was enormous. We had a huge plate of mango, tropical pink guavas, and papaya followed by freshly whizzed up mango juice. Rafael scrambled eggs with onions and we had real butter on our buns. This came to be the standard breakfast in all the casas we stayed at, and we wondered if they had all been taught to do it this way. Every family still uses La Libreta, a ration book. Everyone is entitled to eggs, rice, bread and a few other things which are subsidised by the government. Of course they can buy things from other places as well. Sometimes there are large queues outside the government shops for supplies as some months things are not available.

The far end of our street was being dug up and the old water pipes were being replaced with polythene ones. They took away the rubble and refilled the holes with concrete and it looked like they would reseal the top section at a later date. Our street had very few cars so people would hang out on their doorsteps and children would play on the road. Sometimes we would hear people talking and listening to music until 5 am. Lots of socialising happens on the street.

All down the street are little hole in the wall shops. They sell all sorts of things. Some sell ice cream, ice lollies, small pizzas, hats, cakes, rum, and water. Often they just fit in the doorway to someone's house or in the stairwell.

About 10 plane loads of tourists are pouring into Cuba each day as well as cruise ships. The day before we arrived was the first day that American cruise ships could visit Cuba. Since Obama came to visit, a concession for special groups was approved and American visitors can now visit Cuba since being locked out because of the trade blockage imposed by JF Kennedy in 1962. There were lots of brand new Chinese made buses ferrying tourists to all the tourist sites.

We walked about the city everyday and saw several buildings being renovated and also noticed a sign by the tourism department about the renovations. It looks like they are getting ready for a boom in tourism.

We caught the hop on hop off bus one day to look at the three different parts of La Habana. We couldn't hear the commentary from the English speaking guide because the sound system was pretty useless but it was interesting nevertheless.

Rafael preparing breakfast

We really enjoyed long chats with Rafael and his family whenever they were around and learnt a lot about their lives and his future plans to expand his casa to have more rooms to rent.

Internet card seller sitting in the shade

We were told to buy a black market card to access the internet so headed off to the park where we found the sellers. The seats were full of people shouting above their neighbours to talk to family and friends online. Normally the cards cost $2 CUC for an hour but the black marketeers make a $1 CUC on each one. The legal option to get a card is to queue at the company office in the long lines. In our two week stay we never managed to connect to the internet at all. Sometimes the connection would be for 20 seconds and at other times I could not get the page to log in. In the end we gave up on it as it was so frustrating. You could always tell where people were able to connect because they would be sitting on steps in clusters with their phones and netbooks.

Elizabeth, Mary and boyfriend unpacking teas.

One night we went to a show featuring some of the people from the Buena Vista Social Club and Afro-Cuban All Stars. They enjoy playing music from the 1950's. The place was packed out with two shows at different ends of the venue. You could have a meal before or just nibbles and drinks. The electricity went out about 5 times during the evening so they gave everyone an extra free drink. The power box seemed to get overloaded. It was a fun night with a surprising number of Cubans in the audience.

John managed to find a website for the Viazul buses that travel between the Cuban cities. He booked all the bus routes first and then I found the casas. It is possible to take taxis or hire a car. We did meet a couple who hired a car and they found the roads quite slow to travel because of the potholes as they ventured off the main routes. They said lots of places had no signs so that was also difficult. We also met an English couple who hired an old American car and driver. They said it was terrible as the car filled with fumes and when it rained they got wet as it leaked. We met them trying to buy bus tickets for the rest of their time.

The buses were fine. They had toilets on board but none of them worked. The aircon worked and they were in reasonable condition having been bought from China. On one route the drivers did their shopping stopping at junctions and buying goodies and meat from the local farmers.There are a lot of black market dealings. When we stopped for a break it was at places run by the government tourism department. You could buy cigars, tubes of pringles, nestle's products, packets of ground coffee, and all kinds of rum as well as some food to eat.

A lot of people stand on the side of the road waving money about to get anyone going past to pick them up. It is common to find people under the over bridges where it is shady as the temperatures are in the high 20's or early 30's and very muggy. There are all kinds of local transport. Horses and gigs clip clip through the towns, concertina buses called camel buses race through the big cities, and coconut taxis and bicycle taxis go short distances and take a few people.

Coconut taxi

We visited La Habana 3 times because of the way the buses travelled using the city as the hub and as we were flying out from there we had our last few nights there. We left all our old clothes and left over food for Rafael's family and the girls were excited to try the canned pink salmon we had in our supplies. Poor Jenifer could not eat the noodles and snack bars because of her celiac disease. We read there could be shortages so we decided to stock up just in case but ended up eating huge breakfasts and evening meals so skipped lunches but still managed to put on weight!

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos islands

Our flight took 65 minutes from Santo Domingo to Providenciales. Once again we  were met by an agent to direct us through the airport. The accommodation we had booked was near the airport so we decided to walk it. As we set off and elderly man pointed us in the direction of the Old Airport Road and told us he wouldn't walk it. When we told him where we were going he said I wouldn't go there. He told us that he had been a lawyer in town for 27 years. Anyway we headed off and about 10 minutes later he pulled up and told us he would drive us to our hotel. The hotel was very new and not on any maps so we all had difficulty finding it. He asked at a few shops and came back to the car complaining about the Dominicans who didn't speak English.

The place was really lovely with a small pool and was very tastefully decorated. The safe in our room was locked shut so we were moved to another one that worked. Of the 14 or so rooms only two had guests so it was very quiet. Beside the place was a restaurant where we watched some of the locals playing dominoes while we ate the local conch and fish. We walked about 20  minutes along the road to a new modern supermarket and bought a few drinks and snacks, as well as food for breakfast. Along the road we passed some bars with blaring music and groups of Dominicans cooking on charcoal barbecues and drinking outside.

The temperature was in the 30's but lovely and dry compared to Santo Domingo.We decided to take a 24 hour hire car and hired it to coincide with our flight check in time so we could have something to do after our check out and before our flight out the next day. We drove east to Turtle Cove and looked around the residential areas and beaches there. The island is very populated by people with a lot of money. The residences are large with manicured gardens and statues and the obligatory electric fencing and security guard.

The beaches belong to the resorts and condominiums and the few public beaches are called national parks. On our last day we headed west to check out the beaches there.

The islands used to have huge salt pans. There are not many tall trees left as they were felled as they shaded the salt beds.

The island is famous for its annual conch festival.

The hire car company warned us not to drive on unsealed roads as we would risk being robbed. We were not to pick up hitch hikers. The locals hitch hike to get about. We had to leave the car unlocked if we got out of it so that robbers didn't break the windows to get anything inside. We had all our bags with us after check out so they would have scored everything we have if we were held up. Fortunately we were spared robbers but while waiting at a roundabout in a queue of traffic we were hit from behind by a huge SUV. John leapt out and started taking photos of the offending vehicle and the damage and this unnerved the driver. The  Spanish speaking woman was taking her partner's lunch to him and was keen to do that. John suggested I hop in with her and that we all drive to the car rental yard around the corner. He was worried she was going to disappear. At the yard the woman rang a friend who spoke English and the yard rang an insurance assessor. The woman, it appeared, did not have legal papers to be driving so admitted liability and fished out US$550  from her purse to pay for the damage and our excess. We got all the paperwork finalised in the hour before we needed to check in and were dropped off at the airport in time for checking in to our flight to La Habana Cuba.