6.3.2012

Day 1 - The Cuba diary

So I went to Cuba with my friend Sanni. The two week trip lasted from March 6th to 21st.

As the flight on the 6th left so early we stayed at a hotel by the airport. Really super handy, as we could also leave our car in the parking lot for 2 weeks for free of charge! Staying at the hotel paid itself back big time. Soo, just as a tip: Staying in the boat cabin sized and styled Best Western Pilotti is not a bad idea if you live outside of Helsinki and need to catch an early flight from Finland.

And so the journey began!

Wake up, breakfast, off to the airport (free ride provided by hotel), check-in and hoping that my hand luggage would be accepted through security check. I took a tripod with, which was sticking on the back of my backpack so it looked kind of oversized and most likely was oversized, too. Got through without problems and headed off to the gate. Thankfully Sanni and me were both in the sleepy mood, so an eight hour flight to Halifax, Canada, didn't sound bad at all.

At times a drunken Finnish man sitting behind us took our attention away from sleeping as he was very very entertaining. Already drunk before boarding the flight, already red nose before seeing the sun of Cuba.

He sang a song that went like this:

Ammu se alas,

Tee siitä hanskoja,

Piiiisamiiii

=

Shoot it,

Make gloves out of it,

Muskrat

Wonder if it was his own creation or a famous Finnish folk song..mhmm.

In Canada we had a half an hour stop during which the flight crew changed and the plane was fed with more fuel. Halifax airport was already familiar to me from when I visited Florida in 2007 (?) with a Halifax stop.

What a view.

The journey continued and we flew above some amazing areas. Sanni and me were guessing the island in the picture above to be Nassau. Seeing the beach and sea made our tiredness disappear. Had our fingers crossed and hoped the Cuban beaches would be as amazing.

We arrived to Cuba's Varadero airport. As we had a 'joker' trip we didn't know which hotel we were going to get and where from. The hotel didn't really matter as our plan was to go traveling around Cuba anyway. But it wasn't that much more expensive to take a 'joker' trip than just flights so what everrr.

I dunno what they are called in English but in Finnish we say 'jokerimatka' meaning you have a flight and hotel but the hotel is not named until you get to your destination. You get the package for cheap as the hotel is a surprise. The hotel might be anything from 1 star to all inclusive 5 star. I've been on various trips like that before and experienced hotels from one end to another: the 5star and the opposite.

At the airport we found out that our hotel was in Havana. We had secretly hoped it'd be in Varadero (which we are happy for that it wasn't in the end) and planned our bus journeys from and to Varadero. But Havana wasn't a problem. The opposite - it turned out to be for the better.

2 hour bus ride from Varadero to Havana, the capital city of Cuba.

On the way we stopped for our first Cuban cocktail. Famous pina colada.

The pour your own rum -deal wasn't good as we got a bit greedy. Due to that, we couldn't finish the drink. If it had been pina colada sin ron (without rum), the drink would have been heavenly for a coconut and pineapple lover like me.

Our hotel in Havana was called St. John. Situated right in the heart of the 'new' part of the city.

After checking in and leaving our luggage at the hotel we headed of to change money. In Cuba there are two currencies: the Cuban peso and the tourist peso. This means tourists pay with different money and also pay much more than locals. What a local pays for a banana might be ten times the amount that a tourist pays. No wait, the other way around. Hha.

Also in Cuba there is separate local and tourist transport. But, well, we heard of some Canadian tourists who had used the local money, and Sanni and me also used local transport so I guess these rules are not exactly set in stone. ;)

Later we went out for a walk and tried to find a place to eat. Didn't take long until an older man came to us in the middle of nowhere and offered to show a nice 'paladar' (Cuban family restaurant) where to dine. We followed. The paladar wasn't as close as we thought. In Cuba the word close means 10min walk away. Okay that is close but I was expecting something more like 'round the corner'. We ate, ordered us all mojitos and the old man started to arrange things for us...like going to the supermarket. It was already getting a bit annoying to be accompanied by an older man who was just watching us, mumbling Spanish, and not being able to communicate in English. Thankfully Sanni and I have a Spanish vocabulary, tiny, but we have one. But this guy was just too much, especially after a long day of traveling.

Well, the guy, Kike, still took us to the supermarket to buy some water. Then he followed us to the hotel! 'Pleaaase, leave us alone', we thought. We also felt like we had a personal slave as he was carrying our five liter water can in his arms. No matter how much we asked to carry it ourselves, he wouldn't let us.

He also wanted to show us around town but we said we were too tired. (of his company, yes)

After 30min at the hotel we decided we'd still go out for an evening walk on the Malecon, which is the seaside road around the center of Havana. Guess who was outside of our hotel? Well Kike the slave of course. (No believe me, I felt really bad for this man. He was telling us all about his heart problems as he carried our water with his back curved as a C.) This time we kindly told him we wanted to be alone. He understood and left us with a smile.

The amount of stares, smiles and comments we got was countless. You can just imagine how two blond girls stand out in a country like Cuba.

<3

L

pictures by Sanni