Visiting Cuba – First Impressions

Central Havana

Having grown up in Africa hearing about Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution, several of us decided to visit Cuba and experience the Cuban way of life first hand. Cayman Airways flies on a regular basis to Havana, and because there is a fairly large Cuban contingency living and working in the Cayman Islands the flights are nearly always full. The flight time is just 1 hour.

One can always tell about a place when one receives the arrival form on the plane. In this case, upon receiving the arrival form from the air hostess, I looked at my friends and I said “WTF!”. The form was on rough, brown paper (the type that can appear or disappear in court, depending on what a particular government official thinks of you), and the questions on the form resembled those on immigration forms of many dictator-led countries in Africa.

Buildings in Old Havana

Upon landing in Cuba, the whole immigration/customs experience was actually quite a pleasant experience. The officials were very efficient and within no time at all, we were standing outside José Martí International Airport looking for a taxi to take us to Central Havana. As far as accommodation goes, we had pre-booked into a “casa particular”, which is really a private home that caters for tourists. Casa particular is a very popular concept in Cuba in that the accommodation has the feel of a house as opposed to a hotel, they are much cheaper than the hotels and they are usually located within the Cuban community. These casas particulares are run by individuals and are usually very neat, even though they maybe sparsely furnished – do not expect big screen TV’s, plush mattresses, huge sofas etc.

Restaurant in Old Havana

Once settled in our homestay, we decided to explore Central Havana with our new found Cuban friend Rondys, who spoke excellent English – not very common in Cuba, I believe. Without being too critical, we found Central Havana to be pretty run-down, everything seemed to be state controlled, there were secret service personnel all over the place, the cars were from gone-by era and the food was not that great – that is what Cuba is, as first impressions go!

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