PERSONAL
Going . . . e ot Rem
S
o this month’s instalment is going to be a bit of a break from the norm in every respect – no digital nomading, and nothing of the city where I was meant to be based. But that’s really quite fitting when it comes to Cuba. After two weeks’ holiday travelling round the isolated island, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. The only thing I am certain of is that it’s by far the most “different” place I’ve been yet. Arriving in Havana early on a Saturday evening, we were picked up from the airport in a car that summed up all my preconceptions of Cuba perfectly: a beautifully-preserved, 1950s, sky-blue Chevrolet. Any suspicions I had had that this type of welcome was just put on for the tourists were quickly put right on the drive into town when I realised that, while there were a few modern vehicles (mainly taxis and coaches, all from China I think), the vast majority of the traffic was actually made up of classic cars, in various states of repair but all running impressively well. It really does feel like someone hit the pause button 60 years ago and the intervening decades just haven’t happened. Whether that “someone” was the USA or Castro or both is of course a matter of debate, and not one that I am qualified to weigh in on, but the result is that a lot of things we (OK, I) take for granted in other countries either aren’t available or are a lot more difficult to access in Cuba. New cars, obviously, and replacement parts for broken lifts too, it would appear, but also many day-to-day goods and services. For instance, it turned out that at the weekend 6pm is too late to exchange Mexican Pesos or use an ATM in Havana (and of course nowhere takes cards) so if we hadn’t been with a group who kindly lent us some cash, it would have been a hungry first evening. Also I don’t think I managed to buy even a bottle of water from a shop (as opposed to a café) without help from our local guide (either to locate a shop, or to persuade it to open for us, or both) the whole fortnight. And as for the Internet – well, this is one of the few places yet to be
Volume 46, number 6
4-pp61-62-Going Remote_2.indd 61
GOING REMOTE
(not) Bogotá By Heather Lane (Fellow)
invaded by digital nomads. It is possible to get online, but to do so you have to buy pre-paid cards which will give you say an hour’s access and then find a wifi zone where you can log on – typically the town park. Not the most productive of environments. The restrictions Cubans face are particularly evident in the east end of the island, probably due to the long distance from the tourist hotspots of Havana and Trinidad – many supplies just don’t seem to make it this far, from what we could tell, at least from the food on offer. The biggest city in this region is Santiago de Cuba, where we met the first of a series of lovely landladies who would be looking after us during our stay – there aren’t so many hotels in Cuba and so instead you stay in a casa particular, i.e. a private house whose owners rent out a couple of rooms. It’s a bit like a B&B in the UK, and one of the few types of private enterprise allowed in Cuba. Inevitably, all the casas vary somewhat in their amenities – electricity and water included – but throughout our hosts
Did someone hit the pause button 60 years ago?
JUNE 2017
CIPA JOURNAL
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02/06/2017 18:12:58