The trouble with laundry in Cuba

We've never had trouble getting our laundry done in any of the countries where we've lived. Cuba, however, presents challenges for nomads who prefer clean clothing.

As far as I can tell, there's no such thing as a laundry service, laundromat, dry cleaners or any other business that exists for the cleaning of clothes.

So by the time we reached Viñales, we really needed our laundry done. We rented a room there, and ask the owner of the house if she knew of where we could have our clothes cleaned. She said she could do it (and by "she," she meant her 12-year-old servant). We asked how much. She was vague. At some point, we handed over our bag of dirty clothes. Later that day, we saw them on the line in front of the house.

Today, when we were about to leave, we got our laundry back and she presented us with her price for one load of laundry: $25. (Note that $25 is roughly the average Cuban's monthly salary.)

Amira laughed at this incredible figure, and told the woman that had she known the price in advance she wouldn't have accepted it. So the woman graciously reduced the price to $20, and that's what we paid.

She really took us to the cleaners. (Sorry.)

AirBnB Libré

AirBnB famously entered Cuba as one of the first sharing-economy startups to do business here. But there was a catch: You could book accomodations in Cuba, but only from outside Cuba. Once inside, the service wouldn't allow you to book.

From inside Cuba, you could browse the site as normal. But a banner appeared at the top of the site saying the service was not available in your location. And there was no button for booking.

We've been using AirBnB from inside Cuba, but only by sending the links of the accomodations we wanted to our son, Kevin. And he did the booking from California.

We needed to change our plans today, and Kevin was on his way to Vietnam for vacation. But as part of the whole Obama trip, however, Cuba agreed to allow AirBnB to operate normally, and that normalcy began today (Wednesday, March 23, 2016). So on the very day when booking from within Cuba became possible, we needed to book and did so sucessfully.

Touring Cuba on Harleys

Tourists are usually dorks, but these four are seeing Cuba from Harleys. (Couldn't tell where they're from.)

The road to Viñales

We hired a taxi driver to take us to Viñales. It was an ancient Chevy, poorly maintained, but gave us that quintessential Cuban transportation experience.

The highway to Viñales was three lanes wide in each direction, something I've never seen in Latin America, and the traffic was practically non-existent. The ride took about two hours.

Around an hour and a half in, we blew a tire. We all got out and the driver put on a spare.

We took off again, and took a right turn into the mountains.

It took us a little time, and some asking around, to find the AirBnB place we're renting. Viñales is something of a tourist town, and it seems like most of the houses there were for rent, or offered rooms for rent.

After getting settled, we struck out to discover the downtown, which is also over-run by restaurants, and seem to specialize in small pizzas (we're going to try those later). We stopped at the first restaurant we encountered, and had omelets, coffee, rice and beans and fried plantains. It was all pretty good.

A fire in our Havana neighborhood

We came home at around midnight a few nights ago to find this fire a half a block from our house. We watched it burn for a few minutes before the fire brigade arrived.

My theory is that someone burned a small pile of trash that got out of hand.

Cuban pastries

We picked up this box of pastries from a shop in Havana Vieja (after discovering that our favorite Havana bakery, which we enjoyed in 2008, had been closed).

Wandering around Havana

Some random pictures I took while walking around. (Tap on the photo to see more.)

Cuba's first brewpub

We checked out Cuba's first and only brewpub, called Factoria Plaza Vieja. My hamburger had two giant patties of mystery meat, plus a slice of ham. The beer came in three varieties: light, dark and black. I ordered the black, and it was, well, not good. I also encountered Cuban ketchup! The existence of an establishment like this is a great start. 

Food markets in Cuba

Amira and I checked out some grocery stores and outdoor produce markets in Havana today.

I believe the food scene in Cuba is improving overall, but the current state of eating food is still pretty grim for the average Cuban.

The "supermarkets" we went to were dark and warm (no air conditioning). You check your purse or bag at the door before shopping. Nearly all the food is highly processed packaged junk food, with limited variety.

In the meat section of one larger-than-average store, the options were hot dogs, canned sardines, frozen chicken and a kind of Cuban spam in a can.

The primacy of hot dogs is conspicuous in Havana. Our apartment comes with breakfast, and hot dogs were the main course every morning.

Kenny bought a hot dog on the street and didn't finish it. He said it didn't taste like a hot dog, or even like meat.

We saw meat for sale in an open air market, where the raw meat was hanging there in the breeze. This is pretty common in many countries we've lived in, including Kenya, Morocco and in some Central American countries.

Several of the grocery stores we checked out also sold home appliances, such as small refrigerators, stoves and so on.

After exiting, they check your receipt and grocery bags to make sure you didn't steal anything (like they do at, say, Costco or BestBuy in the United States).

The quality of produce at the open-air market was very low. Amira and I disagreed about what was for sale there; she believes it's left-overs or past-its-prime fruits and veggies sold at discount and I believe it's just what product looks like in such markets. Surprisingly, root vegetables are still covered in soil. Lettuces and other such produce are browning and wilted.

Private farms now exist in Cuba, but I believe the markets we saw in Havana must have been from the government-run collectivized farms. Without competition, marketing or any of the other drivers of competitive improvement in at least the appearance of produce, the appearance of this Cuban produce was clearly neglected.

We've seen people walking around eating corn on the cob, and the corn looks amazing. It's super dark orange-yellow, and looks very good and healthy. However, Amira tried some and it lacked flavor and was very tough to chew through.

The fresh fruit we've eaten was strange, as well. We had fresh pineapple, which lacked flavor as well.

Cuba could grow amazing food, and probably used to. But collectivization of farming has, as it always does, result in barely edible food, for the most part.

My office today: the bar in the lobby of the Havana Libre hotel

My office today: the bar in the lobby of the Havana Libre hotel

My son Kenny convinced someone associated with the Obama visit to share the password for the event's special WiFi, which at this moment is the fastest and freeist WiFi in the country.

Today it's the WiFi Libre hotel.

Nice discovery about Google Maps

Google has a newish feature in Google Maps that enables you to select just about any reasonably small area (say, a city or county) and download everything for offline use. By everything, I mean turn-by-turn directions, business info, small streets -- the works.

This is great for nomads, who often find ourselves needing the use of Google Maps offline.

However, Google Maps didn't let me do this for Cuba. I assume that Cuban restrictions or pressure somehow prevented Google from offering this feature for Cuba.

However, even offline and with location turned on, Google Maps shows me my current location against a map of any Cuban place. There are no turn-by-turn directions, and the detail isn't 100%. But it's super useful for not getting lost.

Living without the Internet

The single biggest culture-shock inducing reality in Cuba is the whole Internet situation.

I wrote about the Cuban Internet in my Computerworld column today:

I'm old enough to remember life as an adult before the web existed. And I also remember when the Internet was slow and something one did occasionally, rather than constantly.

Over the past couple of decades or so, like so many others, I've grown accustomed to using the Internet for hours every day, and having an Internet connection available at all times. This reality is so integrated into our lives that we scarcely notice it.

Until we're forced to go without. As in Cuba.

Connecting in Cuba involves buying a ticket that gives you a username and password. Then you have to find a reliable WiFi hotspot, and connect while the clock is ticking. In our case, it's a mile walk to the nearest hotspot. With the exception of a tiny minority of elites, nobody in Cuba has home Internet. And no businesses can offer it -- no restaurants, cafes, cybercafes.

That means at our apartment, at restaurants, while walking around or while riding in a car, there's simply no possibility of going online. It's weird. And hard (in a first-world, entitled kind of way).

It's especially hard in a place that raises so many questions, such as: Who is that guy with Che on that giant propaganda poster? What is the exchange rate? Where was that restaurant again? And above all: Where's the nearest WiFi hotspot?

I have to do what I did in the 70s and 80s: accept ignorance, delay gratification and get used to simply being unreachable.

(Picture shows Cubans using government WiFi.)

The view from our Havana apartment

Our apartment building is the tallest on the block and we're on the 4th floor of the 5-story building. Which means we have a great view!

Sent from my iPhone

Our awesome apartment in Havana

Amira found this great little apartment in Havana. We're really enjoying the apartment and the location. It's also on the 4th floor with a balcony, so the view is really nice.

How they fumigate in Cuba

We got run out of our Havana apartment this morning. Here's what happened.

The woman we rent from suddenly told us that the fumigators were downstairs and that we had to leave the building immediately. (Cuba is super freaked out about the Zika virus.)

The way they do it in Cuba is that a team of fumigators, each with four or five policemen, shows up at an apartment and tells everyone to get out. Cubans have about a minute to vacate. (Our host pleaded with the fumigators to give us slow-moving visitors an extra minute or two.)

She told us to pack all our belongings into cupboards and advised us to leave as soon as possible. So we did.

Outside, the street was foggy with pesticides. Every nearby block had at least one team of fumigators and cops.

The cops are there to arrest anyone who doesn't vacate.

The fumigators enter every apartment, and go room to room spraying pesticide.

Our host promised to change the sheet and clean up for us.

(The picture shows the kitchen and dining room in our Havana apartment.)

Coffee at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba

This place is so fancy that even the saucers have their own saucers. We lingered for hours sipping on beverages and listening to live music.

In the far background, you can see workers painting in advance of President Obama's visit Monday. We hung out until midnight, and they never stopped working.

Cuba has two currencies

Cuba has two currencies: The Cuban Convertible Peso, or CUC (which is for tourists) and the Cuban Peso, or CUP (which is for Cubans). Although tourists aren't really supposed to use CUPs, we do anyway. It's the only way to pay for one of those amazing old Chevys used as shared-ride taxis.

The old cars of Cuba

These old American cars used to predominate in Cuba. Nowadays, they're in the minority. Every once in a while, though, you can catch a shot like this with a cluster of old cars.

I'm off to Cuba!

We just boarded our flight.

My office today: The Cancun International Airport

I'm catching up on some email and doing a little research at the Cancun airport. We're about to take off and fly to Cuba!

I'm loving Google's Project Fi, by the way. Amira and I are both using my new Nexus 5X phone as a WiFi hotspot from our iPhones, and it's fast and easy.

I'm not sure when or how often I'll be able to post from Cuba -- Internet connectivity is hard to come by, and even when you can find it, it's as slow as the WiFi at Peet's.