Stranded in purgatory, then rescued by two angels

Today's missive comes with two life lessons. The first: Never change your plans while staying in Cuba. And second: Never give up.

We had planned to stay a second night in Viñales on Thursday. But after one night, we decided one was enough and to go back to Havana where we thought we'd be able to easily find a place to stay once we got there.

After the two-hour trip to Havana, we asked the driver to take us to the Havana Libré hote, which was the Hilton before the revolution. I guess the "Libré" is a reference to the fact that they didn't have to pay for it. (Kenny calls it the Nacho Libré, and now he's got us saying it.)

Anyway, we love the Nacho Libré because it's a big, open casual space with Internet connectivity, a 24-hour cafeteria and plenty of chairs and tables and couches to sit on.

Amira got to work frantically looking for a place to stay for the night working her connections, AirBnB and other resources. Most of the time she did this standing up by the floor-to-ceiling glass window in the front of the lobby, where the WiFi reception was almost OK.

AirBnB stopped working (see my other post), so Amira had Kevin, as well as Mardi and Maria were dragooned into the project for hours. (Maria literally requested more than a dozen bookings on our behalf.)

Every place was booked solid.

The district where the Nacho Libré is located also has a gazillion hotels, casa paticulares, AirBnBs and rooms to rent. So after a few fruitless hours online, Amira hit the pavement, going place-to-place, and learned the same thing: all booked up. (A few hotels rooms were available, starting at $508 per night and going up from there.)

One sympathetic casa particular owner, who had no vacancy, suggested that his grandmother might help. He called her several times, but her line was busy. So he gave Amira her address.

The grandmother was named Angela, and she said she'd help us find a place. Amira went back to the Nacho Libré, and resumed her search while Angela called every place she could find.

So with Angela calling around and trying to find a place, Maria using the Internet to find us accommodations and Amira trying to book something, we slogged on frantically at the Nacho Libré. (Personally, I had resigned myself to pulling an all-nighter in the Nacho Libré lobby.) This continued until around 9pm, when Amira and I went to the diner for our first meal of the day (espagettes and insalada).

While eating, Amira got an email from Angela, who said she found a place and that it was confirmed. She gave the address.

So we bundled up our stuff, got the only cab willing to take us so short a distance, and then went on a circuitous route all over Havana trying to figure out where the address was.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a wonderful, gregarious woman, also named Angela. We climbed a set of stairs, then another and we were inside the woman's home. In the living room were another set of steep wooden stairs, and up we went.

It turned out that our room was two rooms, plus the entire roof, which has a commanding view (of the Nacho Libré, among other things), a tiled floor and lots white-painted metal patio furniture. In short, it's like the perfect Casa Particular. ($30 a night.) There was a doorway in one of the bedrooms, which gave access to steps up to a second rooftop patio, and also a long circular staircase directly into the kitchen.

It's the best place we stayed so far in Cuba, and much better than the Nacho Libré lobby.

The road from Viñales

Amira spent most of her time on the first day in Viñales trying to book accommodations out of Viñales. We wanted to take the bus. But in order to do that, we needed tickets and a reservation. And in order to get that, we had to talk to a specific guy, who was on his lunch break (it was around 2pm). There was a massive crowd of tourists waiting for him the whole time he was on his break.

Amira never successfully even saw the guy. So the next morning, when we decided to leave that day, she went to the office at around 11am. And he was already on his lunch break.

We walked out, some guy approached us and asked for a taxi, Amira asked him how much, he said 15 CUCs per person (around $17.24) and she said OK.

Back up a minute. Taxis in Viñales (and I would imagine elsewhere) work like this. A local guy has a few guys working informally for him, and they hustle the tourists for a ride. Then, they offer the acquired passengers to the drivers, who are from out of town. The (let's call them the sales team) gets a cut, the person they work for gets a cut and the driver gets a cut which appears to be negotiated on the fly.

From our perspective, one guy approached us and told us where to go to find the car. A driver and some other dude told us to get in the car -- they were going to take us to our room to get our stuff. So they did.

Our driver was awesome -- friendly, casual, chatty, funny, considerate and a really good driver. He drove an ancient, gigantic station wagon.

The "other dude," who was the leader of the "sales team," was a total prick. While we were packing, he kept rudely tapping on his watch while throwing shade.

He was dishing out shit. But Amira and Kenny weren't taking any.

First, he said we had to pay in advance (this is after our bags were already on the roof and in the trunk). Amira said no. He said "you have to." Amira said: OK, take down our bags. We'll take another car. So he caved.

I was on the left seat behind the driver, Amira was in the middle, and Kenny was on the right. The "dude" rudely ordered Kenny to get in the back seat (a third row behind the back seat) so that he could sit in the coveted Elgan row. Kenny said "no, you get in the back." So he did.

The "dude" told us we had to pick up two more passengers. So we drove around town and picked up three more. Then, when we were just about to leave town, one of the "sales team" road up on a bicycle and said there was one more passenger. So we went to pick up another.

So now there were eight of us in the car: the driver, the three of us and four Euro-tourists (from Italy and Spain).

After the "dude" got out, our driver told us all what an asshole he was and how he has no sense of customer service.

The drive was uneventful.

Cuban toilet paper

The toilet paper here is clearly recycled. You can even sometimes read the letters on the newspapers they used.

cuba

AirBnB not so Libré

I blogged previously about our luck, or providence, regarding the sudden ability to book Cuban accommodations on AirBnB from Cuba itself. I credited President Obama, and the general normalization between the US and Cuba.

Well, today, the site is back to the way it was before. A banner says (and I'm paraphrasing with liberties here): "What, are you nuts? You're in fricken' Cuba! What do makes you think you can use AirBnB as you can in the other 190 countries where it operates, you Yankee Imperialist!"

Anyway, I really have no idea what's going on with the use of AirBnB in Cuba.

Welcome to Obama's Cuba. ; )

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.