dred

In a lot of ways, Cuba is very similar to the rest of Latin America. Spanish is the official language, albeit a shortened, fast and basically incomprehensible version. The majority of the drivers think they’re either Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Loeb, depending on the terrain. Most aspects of life move at a slow pace, until there is a queue and all courtesy goes out the window and it’s everyone for themselves.

The way everyone spends their time relaxing outside incredibly colourful buildings could be any lowland town in Central America. Like the rest of the Caribbean, the sand is white, the waves are generally flat and the water is clear.

All the towns have beautiful central squares. Machismo culture is unfortunately all too apparent. Customer service is slow. Everyone always seems so happy. Again, this could be applied from Cuba to Chile and pretty much everywhere in between.

Very quickly though, you see things about Cuba that are very different to just about anywhere else. This first became apparent to us in the line to check in and drop off baggage for our flight. Most people were bringing back multiple air conditioning units. One guy was checking in some car tyres.

These unique views continued on arrival in Cuba. Big old American cars were common on the roads. People smoked inside. Horse drawn carts were used for non-tourist purposes. These sights made us feel like we’d been put into a time warp and sent back into the 1950s, or even earlier.

The quality (or lack thereof) of wifi also gave us the impression of being in a time warp. The having to pay by the hour, slow speeds and limited availability were at times an annoyance (particularly when Erin was trying to organise a job interview). That one of the few places that tended to have wifi were public squares also completely changed the atmosphere in them – in Latin America public squares are great people watching areas, whereas in Cuba everyone was looking at their phone. Overall, however, the lack of wifi, combined with less options, completely simplified finding accommodation. Instead of spending half an hour on booking.com to find our next bed, we simply told our current guest house where we wanted to go, and they called a friend in that city to organise us staying there – all of which ended up being the same price.

The constant propaganda was another reminder that living conditions have been a little different in Cuba than other countries we’ve visited, and also an endless source of fascination for us. There was certainly no shortage of political graffiti in other countries in Latin America, but “Evo Si” pales in comparison to big signs of Che Guevara that say “a man without blemish and fear” or regarding the US blockade “the greatest genocide of our history”.

The parts of Cuba that were completely different to other places in Latin America, let alone back home, are what make Cuba such an interesting place to visit. It meant that we spent a lot of time in Cuba just walking around the streets, with the journey towards particular locations often more interesting than the sights themselves. I sometimes think that when people say that “place x is super touristy so go to place y instead” they’re doing it to appear like a more #authentic traveller than actually believing what they’re saying – places are touristy for a reason. However, Cuba definitely challenged that point of view.

Indeed, it’s walking past games of dominoes in the street, seeing a supermarket with an entire shelf of the same brand of milk, or a huge queue outside the soap and water shop that I’ll remember most vividly about Cuba, more so than the three blocks around the Cruise Terminal in Havana Vieja being nicely restored.

That’s not to say everything that makes Cuba different is particularly enjoyable. Sometimes you don’t want to have to walk 15 minutes to get slow wifi. I get that Cuba makes nice cigars, but I didn’t need to be offered one on every street in Havana.

However, the worst part of Cuba was clearly the lack of diversity in food options. It made for some unenjoyable meals and far too much cheese pizza. I’m not sure I had a vegetable in two weeks and I felt unhealthy for most of it. Luckily after Cuba our next destination is a city famous for its healthy living and not at all for its pizza, New York…

Andrew