Cuba Travel Part Two

It's a rainy weekend here in England, and looking through the window is depressing. Grey, cloudy skies - no chance of the walk I had hoped for. Oh well, I suppose I had better just carry on with my "retro" travelog of my trip to Cuba in June this year. Memories of sunnier days..... sigh!

Sunday June 15th 2008

The next day we were up at 7am, victims of the time difference and the fact that it felt like 12pm to us. After changing rooms to a third floor one with a lovely view of the pool, we explored the hotel: bars, restaurants, pool area, fitness suite and spa, and realised that we were in a very special place and were going to have one hell of a holiday! We did say that we might take advantage of the fitness centre, but of course we didn't!!! Who were we fooling! Ha ha.

Keith in the fitness suite and me in the spa

In the hotel there was a large buffet restaurant that opened for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and this was where we ate most of our meals. The choice and range of food was immense, and it was really good quality. Although you might think you would get fed up of it after two weeks of lunches and dinners, that was not the case because there was just so much to choose from. A whole counter of starters, salads, soups, potato salads, pasta salads etc (I fell in love with the ham that was rolled and filled with soft cheese, and with their lovely mustard dressing!), and then counters filled with main courses with every meat you can think of, various special dishes, vegetables roasted and otherwise. Then there were the dessert counters!!! Oh my goodness! Here was where the diet went totally out of the window. Every day we had cake (and what an array of cakes!) and ice cream. And then there were pancakes with bananas and orange juice and rum. Yummy!

Oh, just for the record I discovered that - strangely - all the clothes I had brought with me shrank during the first week. Must have been the humid climate.

Ahem... anyway... where was I?

Oh yes, the food. As well as the buffet restaurant, there were two a la carte restaurants within the grounds of the hotel - one at the side of the pool, and one on the beach (called The Romantic, and it was!). You could eat out at an a la carte twice a week, so four visits in all. It made things a little more interesting and a nice change from the environment of the buffet. Plus, in these restaurants, it was waiter service, not self-serve, which also made a nice change.

Today, we went down to the beach, and Keith snorkelled while I lazed about and read my book. It was so peaceful and idyllic, with the clear blue sea and white powdery sand. We lunched at the Romantic restaurant, which in the daytime doubled as a snack bar. It was so great to have a few beers with lunch and not have to pay for them! A concept that I had not experienced before, but that I could definitely get used to. All you need in Cuba is a few pesos a day for tips. A peso at the end of the meal or after an evening at the bar is very welcomed, but not expected.

After lunch it started to rain, so we went back to the room to drop off all our beach stuff. By this time a magnificent thunderstorm was underway, and the rain torrential, but this was the only time we saw rain like this the whole two weeks. It did rain again during the second week, but it was hardly noticeable.

The beautiful, white sand beach

After dropping our stuff off in the room we decided to go down to the bar for a beer, which was interesting, because with being an open plan hotel, the bar had no walls and the wind and some spray from the rain was sweeping through. We spotted our rep, Janier, sitting alone. He was on duty as he is most days, but looked bored as he waited for people with problems (not many of them I am sure) so we decided to go and sit with him.

We had quite an in depth conversation with Janier, who is Cuban. He told us all about the tourist industry, and how it is normal for the barman serving your drinks to actually be a qualified doctor or lawyer. He can make more money in the tourist industry. Just to give you an idea of the difference in salaries between Cuba and elsewhere, we met a Canadian woman who was a radiographer, and she told us that she met a barman a few years ago who was also a trained radiographer. She earned in one hour what he earned in a month!

Despite this apparent shortfall in earnings, and the perceived poverty of this country, you have to look at things in context. Cuba has no unemployment to speak of, and although the government owns all the businesses and there is no free enterprise , everyone who wants to be is gainfully employed. There is hardly any crime because the penalties are high (many people would argue that ours are not high enough!) and the health service is on a par with what we expect in the UK. Obviously, everything has its problems and nothing is perfect, but life is not as dark in Cuba as you might think.

It's hard to think about Cuban children excited about presents and sweets from the tourists (many people take pens and other stationery if going on any trips where children will be around), but then, don't our children have too much? It's hard to rationalise it, but this is the only life they have known.

Janier said he wanted more for his children, more than is available in Cuba, and I understand that. Not being able to set up your own business and earn levels of money that some of us take for granted must be hard. We can buy TVs and Hi Fi systems, travel where we want to. That freedom can be hard to live without, but then that's what WE have always known.

So, our first full day in Cuba was a diverse mix of lounging on the beach in lovely sunshine, sheltering in the bar with a few glasses of beer, and learning about Cuban politics and culture. I'll be talking more about that later too.

Dinner in the buffet tonight was lovely. Even though you serve yourself, you get waiters/waitresses coming and constantly re-filling your wine glass, which is wonderful. The waiter tonight, Rafael, made me a lovely rose out of a white napkin!

Just two days in, I loved the place already and could not wait for whatever was around the corner. The view from our balcony during the storm!