Cigars and American Taxis Cars

The next few days were spent exploring Havana. Navigating the streets of Cuba’s capital has its challenges. The map given to me by a car rental agency lack a high level of detail and many of the streets don’t have signage. On the upside, Cuban drivers are good and many of the major intersections have signs. It is possible to get around the city, but equally easy to get lost. I found the major attractions and historical sites without a problem.

Cuba is well known for cigars. It is hard to walk down any street in a tourist area without getting several offers to buy cigars. Every offer has a story attached about how the person knows someone in a cigar factory and how their price is very good. Some of them may in fact have the real thing, but I wouldn’t bother trying to save a few dollars only to get fakes. For the present, I’ll buy individual boxes of Kohiba “Mini”, cigarette size cigars. The locals buy individual cigars and sampling them is definitely on the list.

 

Towards the end of my stay in Cuba, depending on how much cash is left, I will start buying small boxes of cigars and roll the dice with US Customs. Expenses are always a tough thing to manage as I hop from country to country, so I usually wait until I am almost ready to leave a country before I start buying souvenirs. Given the complex Cuban currencies and the inability to access my bank U.S. accounts, managing money takes on new dimensions in vigilance.

The other offer that is omnipresent when walking in the tourist areas of Havana comes from taxi drivers. There are three types: regular taxis, bicycle taxis and “American Car taxis.” The last is a specialty driven by the U.S. government’s trade embargo of Cuba. There is a huge fleet of vintage cars in various states of repair. Many are in remarkable shape given the challenges the owners have getting parts and supplies to maintain their vehicles. Many spew black smoke from their exhaust. I assume the piston rings on their engines are worn out and repair is out of reach. I heard the pitch dozens of times. “You want a American Car taxi my friend?”

Bella arte

Havana has many exciting places to enjoy and interesting historic sites to visit. There are monu
ments, government buildings, museums and of course lots of music. The Musuo Nacional de Belle Artes is an unexpected surprise. If you like modern art, I highly recommend this museum.

The collocation is dedicated solely to modern art by Cuban artists. The art is chock full of symbolic themes: sex, family, death, political, to name a few. The first gallery presents works that could have been made by Picasso or cubist artist. There is a sizable collection of sculpture and mixed media arts. Little to no photography. Most of photography is found as elements in larger works.

Photography is prohibited in the museum. I could not resist and sneaked this photo. There were so many pieves of art work that I wanted to photograph, but didn't want to get kicked out  of the museum...

These sculptures are installed in front of the museum.

I love this group of sculptures, a celebration of various screw driver bits -- in brick! How cool is that.

Captain Ludwig on Land and the Money Exchange Game

Captain Ludwig had anchored in Cienfuegos a few days earlier and drove to Havana where his wife Elisa and baby daughter had flown in from Cartagena. We met at at the famous Coppelia for ice cream. 

(Wikipedia photo)

Cuban nationals pay 15 National Pesos (~$.75) for a large serving of ice cream and tourist sit in a separate area where they paid considerably more, about $3.00 USD.

In Cartagena I offered to take photos of Ludwig’s family, but there wasn’t enough time. My Nikon battery charger had gone missing in Jamaica leaving only the iPhone to take pictures. Fortunately Ludwig had a camera, so I took a series of pictures of the baby and the proud parents. When I saw Ludwig a few weeks later in Centrifuges I asked him to send me a copy of the favorite photo that I took. It would never happen. In Havana he lost a backpack in a taxi that mostly contained clothes, but also had the digital camera.

[Update: I just heard from Captain Ludwig and learned that his wife, Elisa, had download the photos to her laptop before that camera was lost in a taxi! Below find the photo they shared with me.]

In need of CUCs, the “convertible currency” I headed to Western Union, a short walk from the ice cream plaza. Of the money I needed to exchange, a 100 Euro bill had a half an inch tear. Western Union would not exchange the torn bill, so I was forced to seek out an international bank, Bano Financial International (BFI.) It was too late in the day to find an open BFI bank. The next day I would find one near my casa particular. The bank exchanged the torn bill, but charged a 1 CUC "commission", roughly $1.00 USD. Later in the trip another branch would charge one half a CUC per bill to exchange two $20.00 USD bills with small tears and to my surprise, they agreed to exchange a $20.00 USD bill that looked like a mouse had chewed a hole in the middle.

It is impossible to withdraw money from a US bank account using a Cuban ATM or get a cash  advance from a US based credit card. US citizens have to take stack of cash with them into Cuba. It is best to take Euros into the country, because the Cuban banks take off an additional 10% to exchange USD. Ouch. If you have an account for a Canadian, European, or any bank outside of the USA, then getting cash from an ATM is not a problem...