We got our stuff together and went to walk around. The first task was to find a cadeca (bank). We walked around and found what looked like a bank. There was two line ups - one was really long, the other rather short. No knowing what was going on, we stood in the longer line up. After a few moments, a Cuban man muttered something in Spanish to us, which we didn't understand. He simply shrugged and turned around. More time passes as the line progresses slowly. The bank wasn't full by any means - but there was a security guard at the door making sure only people who could sit down in the small waiting room were allowed to enter - no standing allowed. Another Cuban man came and stood behind us and looked at us puzzled. "Pesos o CUC?" he asked. "CUC" I responded. He smiled and pointed us to the other shorter line, which had only 2 people in queue. I laughed embarrassingly, as I now knew why we were getting strange looks. This was the local line for the peso currency. CUCs had a different counter, and locals were much less inclined to have any of that currency. We finally got in the bank - converted some of our Canadian dollars into CUCs. I also asked if we could get Pesos (as we were planning on eating at local establishments that would not accept CUCs). I asked for 20$ Canadian worth of Pesos, and got back a humongous stash of bills. I tried to divide them up into different storage locations - so that I wasn't pulling out a wad of cash each time.
We then set out to get breakfast, it was a restaurant that had locals in it - so we though we'd poke our head in. Not knowing what to expect for Cuban breakfast, and the fact that they had no menu - we simply not and smiled at whatever our waiter mentioned. He made sure to sit us at the front of this massive, mostly empty space - right by the window so others might come in. After waiting a short time and enjoying the laid back vibe that we were getting from the locals - out came our food. Burgers... of course, he must of thought that's what tourists like - burgers. It wasn't traditional beef burgers, but more like some meat in between a bun. It was actually good - but we were hoping for something a little more Cuban. Oh well, can't win them all.
We continued to walk around Centro Habana, taking pictures and getting a feel for the city. The streets are thin, without any side walk really. You'd have to dodge around things placed on the side walk and make sure no car was coming. The buildings were all roughly 3 or 4 stories which made the streets feel even smaller and narrower as we worked our way through the maze of buildings and streets which seldom had any signs.
We finally made our way to Old Habana, with it's majestic colonial buildings. This is were the majority of the tourism was. Up to now, we hadn't seen another tourist. Old cars everywhere, taxi drivers shouting trying to get a fare in a beautiful old Chevy. Seeing how we were hoping on walking around - we passed on the ride.
We made our way to the water and decided it was time for lunch. But what to have? Go eat at the touristy places with the locals outside trying to wrangle tourists, or find something else... We walked by La Bodeguita Del Media, this was the bar that Hemingway loved to frequent. It was full or tourists and locals trying to sell things etc...
This wasn't for us - so we decided to find something else. There were small counter shops along the road in the smaller side roads. There was no seating, you walked up to the window, ordered, payed and ate standing on the side of the road. Since all the locals seemed to be at these places - we decided to try it.
We saw others with what looked like a pizza pocket of some sort - we decided to try that. Peso Pizza we called it; freshly made dough, tomato sauce, cheese, cooked in a woodfire oven (not a fancy one, some were just converted oil drums with a rack). We paid our 10 Pesos (roughly .30 cents) each and received the most amazing food. Another 3 Pesos got us a cup of homemade pop which was not as amazing as the pizza. The pizza was roughly 10 inches in diameter and they would fold it in half and wrap a page of paper around it - and you're good to go. This discovery changed the remainder of our trip - as this was now our go to food. We could both be full and satisfied (very satisfied) for under 1 CUC - perfect. We continued on and walked around the Plaza de la Catedral of Havana. This was a beautiful square with amazing colonial buildings.
Walking around the busy city was great. We'd often get hassled to buy cigars. People would come up to you and act interested in meeting you. They'd ask where you're from and then tell you they know somebody from there. "Where you from?", "Canada...", "Oh! Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver..? I have an uncle there". This pattern was constant and repeating throughout the touristy places in Cuba. Eventually they would tell you that they know a guy who works at the factory and he's trying to cell Cigars for cheap, but only today. Sometimes they'd tell you there was a festival going on, etc. We know this, because two guys started talking to us and said there was a festival. This being the first time we've heard the horse and pony show, we went with it. They said they'd give us the address of where it was, but we had to go find out from the guy first. We followed them into a really cool quaint bar. Slow fans going overhead, old men drinking rum on the bar. I was excited to be here, as this is what I fantasized a Habana bar would look like. He wrote down an address as the bartender came over asking what we wanted. He handed us an English drink list - with ridiculous prices (again, English menu = rip off). We politely declined any drink and the bartender did not look happy. The guy writing out the address quickly lost interest in us after we refused to buy a drink, and he left. We smiled at everyone around us and cowardly left the bar.
We ventured more around the city and decided to find internet as I was hoping to check my work emails in case there was anything urgent - not that there would be anything I could do about it. Internet in Cuba is non existent. Only a handful of establishments have it, and if they do it's ridiculously expensive. There are also ETECSA stores (where people can refill their mobile phone cards) that had a few computers that you can use the internet. Not only was it ridiculously expensive (CUC$4.50 per hour), but it was terribly slow. The line speed is 64 kbps but it's shared. We couldn't find any ETECSA stores, so we went to a fancy hotel that had it. It was our first experience with Cuban internet - and we were surprised. It took roughly 1 to 2 minutes to load a single page each time, sometimes much longer. And at 4.50$/hour, the costs quickly add up to check email / facebook etc. Not to mention Skye ordered a Mojito and I had a Cuba Libre (delicious, but at ridiculous tourist hotel prices) while we waited to check our email.
The employees of the hotel asked if we'd be back for dinner, they had the roof top dinning room and it looked beautiful. We told them we might - knowing quite well we were much to cheap for that. We did however decide to go to a nicer restaurant - but just not in the touristy area. This restaurant {Name?} was amazing. You walked up three stories of narrow stairs to get to the entrance of the huge place. It was full, so we had to wait. There were two wooden swinging chairs that we could wait on, so we waited and swung. It smelled amazing, and the plates looked great. We finally got our seat by the window overlooking the city. We both ordered appetizers, main dishes and had a couple drinks. This was my first time trying Bucanero beer. It was darker than Cristal, and was stronger (Feurte written on it). Skye had a Mojito, as was her usual drink, and I went back to Cubata (It's a Cuba Libre with dark rum).
I figured since we were in Cuba, I might as well drink rum (ron) as the locals did, though I did not have an affinity for straight rum as they did. The total bill for the dinner came up to CUC 30$, a fraction of what it would have cost us for such a nice meal in the touristy places. We enjoyed our dinner and walked back home. We had originally thought that we'd stay in Habana for another day, but we felt like we wanted to move away from the busy city and people trying to sell us things constantly. We decided to head to Viñales in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment