Dec 232015
 

Dropoff by my taxi at Havana Airport was simple, but one word of advice is to check out which terminal you depart from. I had arrived at Terminal 3 with Avianca, which is the main terminal handling international flights. According to wikipedia, Cayman Airways uses Terminal 3 like all the other international airlines, but fortunately my taxi driver thought to ask some people and turns out they use Terminal 2. Other than Cayman Airways, Terminal 2 is used primarily for the charter flights to Miami, New York, and Fort Lauderdale operated under the OFAC license. Fortunately, my driver asked. One note, Condor was also using the terminal for flights to Frankfurt, so definitely don’t trust what wikipedia says.

No security at all to get into the check-in area, and the first counter I saw brought back memories:

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I could have been anywhere in the US, except all the flights were pretty much to Miami:

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Check-in was simple, I changed the last of my convertible pesos back into euros (no receipts needed) and headed to immigration. Had a nice chat with the friendly immigration officer who asked how I enjoyed Cuba, and then asked me if he could stamp my passport. I’d been told they always stamp now no matter what, but I didn’t get a stamp on the way in, and was given the option on the way out.

Security was on the other side of immigration, and a pretty simple affair. Terminal 2 is just one big open waiting hall, with a few hundred chairs and no jetbridges. You either walk to your plane, or are taken on a bus. Shockingly, there was actually a VIP Lounge upstairs, which I had access to with business class. It was a pretty quiet affair, with just me and two self-important people loudly telling everyone in the world on their cell phones that they were off to Miami. The lounge had serve-yourself beer and wine, and lounge staff would (in theory) make you other drinks if asked. There were some bowls of nuts and crackers, but that was it for food. I tried to get some pictures of the lounge, but was scolded, so gave up trying.

Soon, about 30 minutes after scheduled departure time, we were allowed to board our plane:

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There were only two of us in business class for the short hop, so I decided to take the window seat and enjoy the views.

Cayman Airways flight 833
Havana, Cuba (HAV) to George Town, Cayman Islands (GCM)
Depart 15:20, Arrive 16:20, Flight Time: 1:00
Boeing 737-300, Registration VP-CAY, Manufactured 1993, Seat 2F
Miles Flown Year-to-Date: 121,566
Lifetime Miles Flown: 2,160,533

Great bulkhead art…He Hath Founded It Upon the Seas!

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PDB was…a mini bottle of water. At least I was offered a second one?

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Hasta Luego, Havana!

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Taxiing out for takeoff, we passed this beauty. Not sure the old Eastern ever operated 737s, but was still awesome to see!

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The in-flight magazine boasted they were the only airline in the world to offer complimentary rum punch to all passengers, so how could I turn that down? It even came with a mini “just in case it’s not strong enough for you.” Now that’s service! I chatted with the flight attendant a bit, and she was from Jamaica and used her benefits with Cayman Airways to fly all over the world. She’d been all over Asia, Europe, Australia, and really was interesting on top of being really service oriented. For a flight that was maybe 45 minutes in the air, she did an amazing job.

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Amazing views of the setting sun in flight:

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On approach to Grand Cayman:

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Was first off the plane when we taxied in, which meant first to immigration as well. All transfers go through immigration in the Cayman Islands. Not sure if you can transit without a visa if you need one, but when I told them what I was doing they quickly stamped me in and directed me outside to the check-in counters. Fortunately, I was familiar with the airport and had no trouble finding them.

When I got to the BA counter, they even addressed me by name, since I was the one connecting passenger they were waiting for. I guess this isn’t a very common connection? Quickly checked in, and since there’s no lounge, I was given a $10 coupon to use at the bar in the departures area. Can’t complain about that!

Security was super quick, and I was through to the departures hall in just about five minutes. Just like Havana, the departures area in Grand Cayman is just one large room, and there wasn’t too much to do. Fortunately, I only had about 30 minutes before boarding. I really wanted a Diet Coke, but when I walked up to the bar this is where things got a bit interesting. After I ordered the Diet Coke, a, um, “rather nice English lady of the mature variety” chatted me up, and had some rather unflattering things to say about my manhood for ordering a Diet Coke. She insisted I join her in doing rum shots…and ordered four right away. Apparently her “friends” were boring and had left the day before to go back to work so she was flying back to London all alone.

Fortunately, before she could order any more drinks, they paged business class for boarding. I excused myself, thanked her for the rum, and was met with “business class? well aren’t WE fancy?!” Hahaha, one of those great random travel experiences.

Boarding tonight was walking out onto the tarmac, and to the plane. She definitely looked majestic from this angle:

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British Airways flight 252
George Town, Cayman Islands (GCM) to Nassau, Bahamas (NAS)
Depart 19:15, Arrive 20:45, Flight Time: 1:30
Boeing 767-300, Registration G-BNWM, Manufactured 1991, Seat 1E
Miles Flown Year-to-Date: 122,033
Lifetime Miles Flown: 2,161,000

Literally within a minute of boarding, I’d been brought bubbles. This flight was looking pretty good for my first BA flight in 25 years!

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But seriously, this is a business class seat? Not only was it completely open (so I can look right at the dude in the next row), but that’s a footrest? I don’t think I want to try putting this into flat bed mode…

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Empower?! What is this, 2002?

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But hey, the upside was definitely the crew, who insisted I needed a second pre-departure bubbles, no matter what I said:

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Couple of thoughts on the seat. The design of the tiny little flimsy tray below holding my water is really really bad and easy to bump. Like with your knee to the point you knock your champagne glass on the ground and break it. Not that I would do that of course….

So, yes, it’s a 90 minute flight, but snacks of a bag of M&Ms and some candied nuts? I was a bit unimpressed.

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It was great to have a 767 on such a short flight, and really nice having real business class. Combine that with the fact that the crew was awesome, helpful, and friendly, and it went a long way to making this a really good experience. However, if I’d been going to London, I would be super disappointed.

I know everyone thinks United is pretty rotten, and yes, they have middle seats in business class on some planes, but lately OneWorld has really disappointed me. I think we can all agree that in both alliances Cathay, Singapore, ANA, and JAL are in a league of their own, well above most members of their respective alliances.

However, when you move down a tier, you start comparing Lufthansa to BA and United to American. Let’s assume service is roughly equal on all of them, and think about the hard product. BA flies these awful open seats where you look right at someone else on some routes, and AA is still flying 777s that don’t even have lie-flat seats! Even the hard product on United isn’t that good. Plus, from what I’ve seen, BA is nowhere near the quality of Lufthansa’s new international product. (Now that they’ve finally gotten rid of those awful sloping seats). Thoughts? I guess with both alliances it still means in the middle you really have to pay attention to which plane you’re flying.

Landed right on time in the Bahamas, maybe 10% of the plane got off with the rest continuing to London, and it was time to visit my 185th country…the Bahamas!

Dec 222015
 

Fair warning, this is going to get very long with lots of pictures!

The original plan had ben to do two full days in order to maximize my short time in Cuba as much as possible. Since I ended up arriving at noon this was cut to 1.5 days. My company was great, however, and picked me up from the airport and instantly started the Havana tour. It was a great way to cut down on the transatlantic jet lag, and get a start on seeing things. Yes, it meant I would have a bit less time in Havana, but I knew I’d also have a half day before my flight out, so I was planning to use it more as an intro to the city.

Unfortunately, this also meant that the morning visit that my guide had scheduled with an elementary school class had to be canceled. At least I still had two more exchanges set up in the brief day and a half we had left.

Guide met me in the arrivals area and, let’s just say I was the envy of all the other westerners arriving. Between my amazing classic car and my amazing guide there seemed to be a bit of jealousy. Too bad a bit of it was lost on me, and too bad she was uncomfortable posing for a blog picture with me 😉

Our first stop was the Plaza de la Revolución, where large rallies and events are often held with tens of thousands of people for major speeches and events. When Pope John Paul II visited he held mass for over 100,000 in the square, and Pope Francis did the same earlier this year. The iconic picture of Che Guevara was on a building on one side of the square:

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On another side was the Ministry of Information and Communications, and on the side was the portrait of Camilo Cienfuegos and his famous quote “Vas bien, Fidel!” Loosely translated as “You’re doing well, Fidel” it was his reply to Castro in 1959 at a large rally when Castro asked him if he was making the right decisions by nationalizing various things:

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The other side of the square had a large statue of José Martí, but unfortunately due to the angle of the sun I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it. My guide mentioned that the elevator going up the monument was unfortunately closed due to needing some parts, so we weren’t able to see it.

She asked if I was hungry yet, and since I wasn’t we decided to continue the tour in New Havana. Our first stop was the Hotel Nacional, famous for hosting everyone from mobsters to international dignitaries during its lifetime. The bar inside actually has portraits of all its famous guests, and reads like a whos who of 1930s-1950s America. Funny, but after 1960 most of the pictures are people like Mugabe, Soviet leaders, and the like…

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After walking around the hotel a bit (and dodging tourists) our next stop was Parque Lennon, or John Lennon park. Most notable in the park is the statue of Lennon on a bench, wearing his usual glasses. For many years, the glasses would be frequently stolen for the scrap metal they contained, but lately a local woman has been keeping watch over them. She holds onto them, and when she sees tourists coming she puts them back on him for photos, hoping for a few pesos in return for her work:

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By this point it was mid-afternoon and I was getting pretty hungry, so my guide took me to a Paladar, which is a restaurant run by the self-employed as opposed to a government-owned restaurant. The food at these venues is almost universally better quality, and the staff actually care about doing their jobs as they can be fired for not doing it. Paladars came into existence in the 1990s during the first wave of economic reforms, and seem to be where almost all tourists eat these days.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the name of the Paladar she took me to for lunch, but they were having a special – for 20 CUC you got a starter, a main course, a drink, and a desert. What a bargain! As promised by my guide I met with not just the owner of this paladar, but three others for a couple of hours of chatting about my work over the meal. We discussed the small business environment and how it had changed over the last couple of years including the challenges that increased competition are having on business.

But you want to hear about the meal…Starter was a “salad” of cheese, ham, and chives…it looked and tasted much better than it sounded:

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Main course of local fish, shrimps, and lobster tail with frijoles negros. YUM! Although I’ll admit eating lobster in Cuba felt slightly…bourgeois 😉

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This is probably a good time to talk about money in Cuba. There are two currencies that circulate side by side: the Cuban Peso (CUP) and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) also referred to as the “kook” based on its abbreviation. The government conducts business in CUP, but everything a tourist will run into is priced in convertible pesos. The convertible peso is pegged to the dollar at 1-to-1, however, there is a 10% tax for exchanging dollars so you really end up paying $1.10 for a convertible peso. In contrast, at current exchange rates, one euro buys you 1.08 convertible pesos, so you get a much better rate if you go dollars to euros to pesos. Confused yet?

It also seemed that all Cubans who were middle class had access to convertible pesos. Often, these come in the forms of tips for tour guides, hotel workers, or anyone else who might have occasion to run into foreigners. Consider that the exchange rate between the peso and convertible peso is 25 to 1, you can see why nobody is anxious to deal in “regular” pesos. The paladar owners gave me quite an insight into how the dual system really makes it difficult to get the supplies they need, which in turn stifles small business growth.

After the very long lunch, we drove along El Malecón, which is the seaside boulevard that runs between new havana and the old city of La Habana Vieja, which is also a World Heritage Site. Along the way, we passed the brand spanking new US Embassy:

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Building in the Old Town:

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Buildings around a square in Old Havana:

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Odd statue in another square in Old Havana:

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View of a square in Old Havana:

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View from the roof of the Hotel where Ernest Hemmingway lived:

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We walked the old town for a couple of hours, before the light rain started in the early evening, eventually turning into a torrential downpour. What better time to retire to my hotel and be cliché and have my first mojito of the trip:

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When the rain finally let up a bit I walked around the corner to get some dinner. I didn’t want to go too far due to the rain and the jet lag, but also wanted to get out of the hotel, so went to a place recommended by some other people in my hotel. Yes, it was cliché, but how can you go wrong with a cuban sandwich and mojito. Hint: the ones in Miami generally are much better….

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I’ll go into details on my hotel later, but suffice to say I crashed hard after a long day and managed a good night of sleep before beginning the super long day of touring we had planned. Our first stop the next morning was across the bay to have a view of the city from a lookout point:

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Panoramic:

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As we drove out of the city, we passed a war museum, which I was advised to snap pictures of from the road, because, “it is not worth the admission:”

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…and because Rio has one, Havana needs a large Jesus status to watch over it as well:

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1950s classic car next to a horse drawn carriage…guess which is older?

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As we got out of the city, we started on the highway to Matanzas and Varadero. Our plan was to stop first in Matanzas and see the old city, but just as we approached the skies opened up and it started pouring. We opted to continue on to Varadero first and hit Matanzas on the way back. Our first stop was at some caves outside Varadero where we waited for 30 minutes with a large group of local tourists to go down and explore the cave. The tour was in Spanish only, but it was pretty much like every other cave/cavern tour in the world. Lots of stalactites and stalagmites, and people taking selfies that would never turn out:

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By this point it was early afternoon, so my guide asked her driver (who was from Varadero) for a good place to get some lunch. He recommended the Pequeño Suarez, which previous clients had told him was really good. Based on the lobster thermidore I won’t disagree, even if the cheese wasn’t completely melted on the lobster. Yes, there were more mojitos:

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Shot of the car I drove around in all weekend after lunch:

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After lunch we walked around Varadero, mainly people watching and watching the throngs of tourists behaving badly. Oh, and I might have jumped in the ocean for a bit. I contemplated a small swim to Key West, but didn’t want to aggravate the shoulder any more:

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Unfortunately, as we were walking my guide got a call that the interview we had scheduled with a group of university students that afternoon had been canceled. They didn’t give a reason, but I was majorly disappointed since I was looking forward to this as one of the highlights of the trip. It also left us with several hours to kill.

After walking around the city for a couple of hours to kill time, on the way out of town we drove by the Casa de Al restaurant, which allegedly was an old home owned by Al Capone. It’s now a government-owned restaurant with terrible service, and thus, no tourists:

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The rain had let up a bit, but started as a light rain just as we approached Matanzas again. On the main square we stopped to look around. First site, which was very frequent in Havana as well, lots of people camped out next to buildings that had WiFi using the signal. Internet cards are easy to buy, and the signal is horridly slow, but finding a hotspot is harder. Thus, people congregate wherever they exist to use them. My hotel sold cards for nearly 4 CUC an hour and they could be purchased for just about 1 CUC from a government vendor. My guide helped me buy a few, however, the lady refused to sell me more than three hours. “No! You do not need that much! Save for others!” Ah, socialism…

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Panorama of the main plaza in Matanzas:

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Statue of José Martí again in the centre of the plaza:

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On the way back, we stopped to see a bridge. Classic cars parked outside, next to a large tourist bus:

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In 1960, the Puente de Bacunayagua bridge was completed, and offered great views:

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After a long day of driving, I got back to my hotel to see they had left a creepy towel elephant for me. Talk about working for those convertible pesos in tips…I couldn’t resist a tip after this:

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So this is probably a good place to talk about the hotel. I stayed at the Hotel Mercure Havana, mainly because it was easy to book from abroad. Apparently, this isn’t common, as almost every there is on a package holiday and prepaid. Once they figured out my unusual situation it was fine, but they did request I pay in full in cash upon arrival. Ok, no problem, I had planned on this.

As far as the room goes, it was comfortable enough. There was anemic air conditioning that kept the room just comfortable enough to sleep, it was clean, and fairly large. The only rooms they had had two beds which was less than optimal, and the washroom was in serious need of upgrading, but overall the rooms were pretty good. I didn’t bother to check if the tv worked, so can’t give an update on that. Also, the anemic WiFi was only in the lobby.

I also tried the breakfast restaurant, which was decent and did make omelettes to order. The rest of the selection of breads and fruits was pretty poor, but the coffee was decent and it was more than enough for breakfast. The best part was the price, which was only about 100 euros a night. From what I understand, that’s a pretty good deal in Havana, so I was pleased with it. Also, the lobby lounge made good drinks and had live dancing and music all afternoon and evening so was a good place to hang out. Overall, I’d recommend it. The staff were helpful and friendly as well, which isn’t necessarily easy to find in Cuba.

For dinner, I ventured a bit further from the hotel along the Malecón to what was described as a “traditional Soviet eatery.” I mean come on, how can you not try such a place in Havana:

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The pelmeni dumpling starter was tasty too. You can see I also continued the mojitos:

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Dinner was stroganoff. Now, I would have had the beef stroganoff, but there’s a problem in Cuba. Apparently, cows are in short supply. To the point that if you kill one, you can go to prison for life. When they do eventually die of natural circumstances, you must call a government vet to come certify that the death was natural (so you don’t go to jail) and then the government takes the dead cow to make into beef for hard currency sale to foreigners. Reminded me so much of this:

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Anyways, politics aside, for 1/3 the price I accepted the pork stroganoff, which was just as good:

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I met an American family over dinner, and we had a great chat. They were from South Carolina, and were a couple of lawyers and their college son in Cuba doing “research on the legal system.” I was surprised the government was kosher with that, but hey, made for a great mojito-infused Thanksgiving dinner, and after last year’s dinner with the Israeli military it was hard to top. I’m really going to have to work hard next Thanksgiving to come up with a good story.

Thanks to the mojitos I passed out relatively early again, only to wake up to this view from my room. Life was rough:

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View of the atrium of the Mercure hotel from my room on the sixth floor. Everything was a lovely shade of pink and beige:

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Headed out for a walk after breakfast. More classic cars:

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The Museum of the Revolution:

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The Bodeguita del Medio, Hemmingway’s favourite place to grab a mojito:

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Inside of Havana Cathedral in Old Havana, a short walk from my hotel:

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Back to La Bodeguita del Medio to have mojitos with the tourists, and enjoy a bit of music:

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Making tourist mojitos by the batch:

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The most expensive, and probably the worst, mojito I had the whole trip. But with Comrade Castro and Hemmingway looking down on me, the atmosphere made it worth the 5 euros:

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The full tourist experience…one after another…

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Walking back to the hotel, a produce vendor. Bananas were cheap…and I got three for about 25 cents US.

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Buildings in Old Havana:

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More classic cars:

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At this point, it was time to head back to the hotel. The green car above was the taxi I hired from my hotel, and made a great end to a memorable trip. I would highly recommend anyone interested in Cuba to head there soon. The infrastructure isn’t in place to support massive numbers of visitors any time soon, so the biggest constraint will be capacity. Hotel rooms are already a bit tough to find (mine was sold out more than a month in advance) and that will only get harder as more Americans are allowed to visit.

Off to the airport, and my next stop…the Bahamas!