Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to Cuba (Travel Guide eBook)

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Contents

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Introduction to

Cuba

For the last two decades, the popular refrain on visiting Cuba has been Go now before it changes forever. There have been some startling developments in that time, but the Cuban story, and the country itself, never ceases to captivate and enthral. This is an island that lurches forward, then crunches into reverse with such regularity that change, in some senses, is a constant. Yet it is also a place renowned for its stagnation over the last six decades, since the 1959 Revolution stopped the clocks and turned everything upside down. Vintage radios, refrigerators and lamps furnish the average home and swinging neon signs hang over storefronts; on the same streets are antique pharmacies and traditional barbers, and iconic classic American cars are everywhere. But this is no retro trend, its make-do-and-mend, frozen-in-carbonite Cuba.

In spite of all this living history, the pace of modernization in Cuba is increasing exponentially. Rampant hotel building is throwing up new, swish places to stay all over the island and particularly in the mesmerizing capital, Havana, which celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2019. In the past couple of years, Cuba has finally launched its first mobile internet service and wi-fi is now common throughout the country though its in public parks and squares, rather than in the privacy of their own homes, that most Cubans get online. Like so much of life in this remarkably sociable nation, accessing the internet is a shared, outdoor experience.

The changes affecting Cuba are not just technological. In recent years this communist stronghold in the Caribbean has lost its titanic patriarch, Fidel Castro, celebrated the first US presidential visit in 80 years and sworn in a new president of its own, Miguel Diaz-Canel, the first person outside the Castro family to lead the country since 1959. All of these events have been transformative in a number of ways, but the uniqueness of Cuba is unwavering. Salsa still bubbles through the veins of every citizen, roadside billboards still proclaim Socialism or death, world-class ballerinas and baseball players dazzle for the same meagre state salary as the ordinary workers, who pay next to nothing to watch them, earn themselves and the island's breathtaking beaches, unspoiled seas and forest-covered mountains havent gone anywhere.

Fact file

• Cubas 11,200,000 inhabitants and 110,861 sq km of land make it the largest island in the Caribbean by both population and area.
• The eastern province of Granma and one of Cubas national newspapers are both named after the boat which carried Fidel Castro and 81 other rebels from Mexico to Cuba to start the revolutionary war in 1956. The boat itself was named after the original owners grandmother.
• Christmas was abolished as a public holiday in Cuba in 1969 and officially reinstated in 1998.
• Cuba has a 99.7 percent adult literacy rate , among the highest in the world.
• The worlds smallest bird , the bee hummingbird, is indigenous to Cuba.
• Cuba has the only functioning public passenger railway service in the Caribbean. The first steam railway line in Latin America was built on the island in 1837.

Despite President Trumps determination to reverse so much of the progress that the Obama administration made in normalizing US-Cuban relations, US travellers neednt feel despondent, at least not for now. Getting there remains relatively straightforward as commercial airlines take off for Cuba every day from various cities around the US. Only a small amount of imagination is needed to stay within the fairly flexible restrictions set by US law, and the Stars and Stripes continue to flutter above a US Embassy in Havana, closed in 1961 but reopened in 2014.

The decision makers of the authoritarian government in Cuba continue to grapple with just how much change to allow. And while the ongoing process is both maddening and hopeful for the local population, it does provide a fascinating narrative. Among the biggest dilemmas is how much freedom to give to the private sector, as Cuban entrepreneurs relentlessly push the boundaries and become ever more inventive, professional and determined, even going on strike, as taxi drivers did in 2018 an unprecedented event in modern Cuba.

First-class, family-run boutique hotels, many of them still at the affordable end of the price spectrum, are flourishing, while shoestring budget options are expanding too as dorm-based hostels, not long ago a rarity in Cuba, are popping up all over the island. House-based restaurants paladars are slowly putting Cuban cuisine on the culinary map and confining the once-deserved infamy of Cuban food to history. You can meet Cuban artists in their own front-room galleries, learn how to dance rumba or salsa in home-based studios, take a city tour in a 1956 Chevrolet and learn how to kite surf, rock climb, play the conga and ride a horse. Highly educated individuals doctors, lawyers and civil engineers frequently run these ventures, stalwarts of the hospitality industry ever since tourism took over the economy in the 1990s. Though increasingly professional, these domestically run businesses remain small scale, making close-up contact with the locals a common feature of a trip. It is possible to peel back more layers of life in Cuba than you might have imagined in a relatively short visit. By doing so, youll discover that for most Cubans, waiting lists for trains and buses, prices way out of proportion with wages and free-speech restrictions still characterize their lives, as do the long-held and cherished achievements of the Cuban Revolution: free education and cradle-to-grave healthcare, providing literacy rates and life-expectancy figures that are among the highest in the world.

Alamy

AGROMERCADO, HAVANA

Classic American cars

Perhaps the most clichd image of Cuba is of a classic American car rolling past a crumbling colonial building, and you dont have to spend long in the country to see why this image has become so ubiquitous. There are said to be around 60,000 vintage American cars in Cuba, known as almendrones , most of them still on the road and almost all of them imported from the factories of Detroit during the 1940s and 1950s, when the US was Cubas most significant trade partner. After President Kennedy cut off all trade with Cuba via the 1962 economic embargo that exists to this day, car owners were compelled to keep their Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets and Fords running. Unable to source replacement parts, proud owners have over the years become the most ingenious on the planet, culling pieces from Eastern Bloc Ladas, household appliances and even old tanks to keep their cars alive.

Cuba is undoubtedly undergoing a great transformation, but it is still like nowhere else on earth.