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> Destinations > Cuba > Trip Reports > Trip Report
Here's my report on our vacation in Varadero, Cuba Jan 9-16, 2001. I
hope it will be of some use to those about to go there for the first
time.
I'm not even sure how we ended up in Cuba. Our intention all along had
been to vacation in the Dominican Republic but we never found any
indication that previous visitors raved about the place. Then we heard a
rumour that there was a polio and/or typhoid outbreak. Somehow we moved
our focus to Cuba but that also involved a lot of work finding a good
deal with so many hotels and so little information. I think we ended up
with a short list and Alba Tours and Sol Club Las Sirenas ended up the
winner based on facilities, price and departure point. The airline was
Royal and we later found out that they are tied in with Aeroplan so we
have still to claim for Aeroplan points.
It turns out that most (all?) Caribbean tour packages that start from
Ottawa leave on a Tuesday at 6 am. You are expected to be at the airport
at least 1.5 hrs in advance so this means that unless you are terribly
organized and get to bed right after supper you don't get more than a
couple of hours sleep the previous night. We arrived at the airport at
4:40 am and there was already a long lineup. Some people managed to get
checked in early by joining a shorter line but most resigned themselves
to inch forward like we did. After checking in everyone headed to the
Tim Hortons for breakfast so there was another lineup there. By this
time it was getting uncomfortably close to takeoff time so everyone
headed to the gate and another line for security checkin. We were all
settled in our seats by 6 am but of course there was a delay while the
wings were de-iced. The flight itself was very full but uneventful.
There was breakfast and a second-rate movie.
I was anticipating a third-world airport so was pleasantly surprised
when I found that the Varadero airport was quite modern. We passed by
the outing tourists waiting to take our plane back to Ottawa. The wait
to get through immigration was about the same as coming in to Ottawa.
Remember to relax and smile to the official as you turn comes up - I
find it always helps to get through faster. Customs was easy - go
through the nothing to declare section, wait for your luggage - same as
every other airport - everyone wants to get his bag out first. Outside
the airport you get your first introduction to Cuban hustle. Porters
want to take your bags to your tour bus which in some cases is only a
few feet away (although you don't know that yet since there are about 15
of them there waiting). On the bus another hustler wants to sell you
refreshments (it's still only 11 am !). Finally when everyone for the
bus route is on board, the bus leaves and the guide starts into his
welcome to Cuba, basic information tips and what to expect spiel. In our
case the guy spoke good english and was knowledgeable and pleasant so I
think he did well with tips. We were told about the Varadero peninsula
and how to get around. We stopped at maybe 3-4 hotels before we got to
Las Sirenas.
Our immediate impression about the hotel was positive. The lobby was
colourful, airy and modern. We didn't understand why there was a
Frankenstein figure outside but we later found out. At the checkin desk
we were greeted by one of the staff and assigned a room. She strapped on
to each of our wrists plastic bracelets that were to be our ticket to
free food and drink at the hotel. Be aware that hotels require you to
leave your passports at reception. It's not clear to me why this is
necessary because the accommodation is already paid for. What they don't
tell you however is that are quite willing to give you back your
passport the next morning. This is important because in some stores you
need your passport to cash checks or use your credit card. The lady
helped us take our luggage up to the room since there didn't seem to be
any porters around. Unfortunately although the room was large and had
the facilities you would expect to see in North America, there was just
one double bed that was definitely not what we were expecting. The room
had a good view of the ocean so I think that was what the lady thought
we would be interested in but once she understood our priorities she
soon found a substitute with twin beds (which together made up at least
a queen if not a king size). The view from this new room was actually
not a lot worse than the first although it was on a lower floor. One
thing that immediately struck us about both rooms was the musty odour
but we learned to live with it. After settling in we then spent the next
couple of hours exploring the hotel. In fact it took a couple of days to
find out all the "tricks" - where to eat, when is the best time to go,
how to sign up for tennis, special meals, get towels etc.
On the topic of electrical facilities, Cuban hotel bedrooms seem to
predominantly operate on a 220 or 240v system. So you need a converter
to operate devices that accommodate only North American voltages. Be
aware however that it is NOT
sufficient to just take a voltage converter you also need a plug
converter. I have never seen receptacles like theirs before - 3 thin
pinholes in a row
but I presume the centre pin is the ground as my converter only had the
2
outside pins and worked. I bought a converter kit from Home Hardware for
around $25 which contained the voltage converter and 3 or 4 plug
converters. One of these was described as being for Caribbean use but it
was the one that was labelled for use in Africa that I needed in Cuba !
I charged my Sony camcorder battery without any problem. It was a
120/240v 50/60 Hz but it charged OK with and without the
voltage converter. On the other hand a hairdryer that was rated at
120-125v did not work with the converter. ! Strangely enough I
also saw some North American style receptacles in places - I forget
whether
it was in the Hotel Lobby area or maybe in stores. So 110-120v must also
be available in certain spots.
Las Sirenas has 3 main restaurants and 3 or 4 bars (some of which also
do sandwiches). 2 of the restaurants are speciality restaurants (one
Italian and one Chinese). The other is a huge buffet restaurant that can
probably seat around 200-300 people. We tried the Chinese restaurant on
our 2nd evening there and were surprised we were able to get a
reservation so easily. We understood why after our food arrived. The
look was great but the taste terrible. Fortunately there was plenty of
wine to dull the pain. The Italian Restaurant on the other hand was
excellent - even classy. Wine again was plentiful (as is alcohol
everywhere in these "all-inclusive" hotels) but a nice touch was a
really good string quartet (who were pleasantly surprised by the
applause from our table). We dined at the Italian restaurant 3 times
during the week we were there. For the other suppers and all breakfasts
we used the Buffet Restaurant. This place has an excellent variety of
foods to suit every nationality. There were smoking and non-smoking
sections (rare in Cuba where people look at you strangely if you don't
have a cigarette or cigar in your mouth). The bar areas are typically
taken over by the smokers so if this bothers you it is indeed a
challenge to find a comfortable spot. Las Sirenas has a convenient bar
and also a small buffet style lunch place by its pool. We found this
very convenient on the days we decided to relax in the sun. On the third
day we decided to check out neighbouring hotels and the one next door
was the sister hotel to Las Sirenas - the Sol Club Coral. This has a
similar layout and concept to Sirenas and we found we were not
challenged when we went to the Biergarten there for hotdogs and beer -
maybe because the Coral guests had the same colour bracelets and they
didn't look too closely at the shape.
On our first morning there we attended an orientation session with the
local Alba Tours rep. A nice guy by the name of Omar who turned out to
be a very helpful asset (and did not even expect a tip - we had to
arrange to leave it for him to pick up). Omar gave us a good
introduction to the Cuban environment, the different types of currency
(we only saw US dollars) and the availability of tours. We had already
decided we wanted to visit Havana City and so immediately signed up for
that. To be truthful we did not sign up for the full tour but just for
transportation in the tour bus to Havana and back that cost us $30 each.
We were more interested in exploring the city on our own and maybe
seeing the real Havana rather than that normally presented to tourists.
In actual fact we were again lucky to get a good guide who had no
problems with us tagging along with the other 4 people on the bus (all
spanish speaking - so he had to do a bilingual commentary) for the first
part of his itinerary. While the others were being shown the Rum Museum
we walked around the harbour area and started to get a feel for the
poverty that existed there. Afterwards we all met up and went through
the market area together. At this point we split up and made our way
into the "downtown" section, trying to find our way through the narrow
streets and bustle of people and taxis (cars, bicycles and horsedrawn
carriages). We finally found the Floridias Bar (famous as an Ernest
Hemmingway hangout) which was where we had to meet the tour to start
back to the hotel but decided it was much too expensive to have lunch
at. Just around the corner was a more modest place however and we both
had a decent ham and cheese sandwich plus a beer there. (The waiter
wanted us to drink something more exotic until we started to get up and
leave but then went to another bar down the street and came back with
two beers). After lunch we continued walking through the poorer areas -
passing the Capitoli and what seemed to be the Chinese Quarter (but
there was no evidence other than a huge overhead arch with chinese
writing on it). The roads in this area were extremely poorly maintained
as were the buildings. I would venture to say that 50% of these
buildings if they were located in Canada would have been condemned as
uninhabitable and quickly demolished. Finally after about a 45 minute
trek we reached our objective which was Revolution Square. This was
disappointing - a huge cigar-shaped monument on a wide, open street
across from which was a large empty parking-lot. One of the buildings
beside this parking lot had a metal creation bolted to its outside wall
that depicted the facial outline of Che Guevara. It would be one of many
images of Guevara we would see in travelling around Cuba. Rather than
walk back to our tour bus rendezvous point we opted to take a bicycle
taxi. As we had been told to do I negotiated a price of $5 for him to
take us back downtown. This was a fun trip and obviously required the
driver to exert a lot of energy as we weaved in and out of traffic and
climbed up a couple of steep hills. He frequently had to come to a full
stop as we got back into the narrow streets and met up with potholes and
huge crevices in the roadway. The only sour spot was when we arrived at
our destination and found that he wanted $10 not $5 - i.e. $5 per person! Not that I wouldn't still have hired him if I had known at the start
but I wasn't sure whether I was being taken advantage of or not.
We tended to spend one day around the pool followed by a sight-seeing
day followed by another day at the pool. This was not only to make sure
we saw all we wanted to but also because the sun there is very deceiving
in its intensity. As it was we both got a comfortable tan and did not
suffer any burning at all. One of the sightseeing days involved walking
down the Varadero hotel strip visiting other hotels and ending up at the
town of Varadero. We did not have time to explore Varadero to any great
extent but can report that it does have at least one major shopping mall
- mostly occupied by clothing and souvenir shops. This mall was built
around a central open area which was packed with stalls set up by small
souvenir vendors - selling wooden carvings, jewellery, T-shirts etc. We
were amazed to see some of these vendors in order to move their stalls
from one location to another had actually adapted bicycles to carry all
their goods, delicately balanced on trays attached to the various parts
of the bike. On the way back it was late in the day and we decided to
walk back along the main road rather than a smaller road closer to the
shore and the hotels. This turned out to be a very busy highway with all
the workers returning home from their early shifts at the hotels. It
really hit home how common and necessary hitchhiking is to the Cuban way
of life. Every intersection had a group of people waiting for
transportation. Trucks drive down the road with numerous people in the
back and still stop to cram more in.
The other major tour we took was to the Guama Indian Village and Bay of
Pigs. This is about the same distance from Varadero as Havana City -
around a 2-hour drive. The bus was very comfortable with
air-conditioning and once again we were very happy with the quality of
the tour guide. Part way to our destination we stopped at a rest area
(whose purpose was mostly to milk money from the tourists - you even pay
to use washrooms in Cuba). We then moved on to a swampy area where we
boarded a small motor boat which was to take us to the Indian Village.
This was another fun trip driving down a river inlet at high speed with
dense jungle on either side until we came to a vast open lake (the
largest in Cuba). On the far shore (actually it was probably an island
in the lake) was a replica of an old indian village and we were given an
interesting historical account of aboriginal Cuban Indian tribes.
Arriving back at where we had left the tour bus we then walked through
what was described as a Crocodile Farm. Crocodiles are actually an
endangered species of reptile in Cuba and protected on two such farms on
the island. This was where we had lunch (which was included in the price
of the tour - $51 each).
Apart from tours and lazing around drinking, eating and sunning there
were plenty of other things to do at Las Sirenas (and in Cuba in
general). We were not into scuba (although I did exercise my right to a
free lesson at the pool) or golf but these are definitely big for many
visitors to Cuba. Sirenas as I have mentioned, has tennis courts (not
great ones - and make sure you bring your own rackets and balls). It has
ample facilities for children - a supervised play area for the younger
ones and pool tables and ping-pong for teens. We did not spend much time
at the beach but if that is your thing it is just a 2 minute walk
through the property and it has its own bar and shelters. One of the
more popular pastimes was watching the nightly shows. These each had a
theme (the one on Tuesday when we arrived was ghosts and monsters!). The
entertainers are only amateurs but it is still a pleasant way to spend a
few hours. On warm evenings these events are held outside but there are
also inside facilities.
The main complaint of our trip actually only happened on the day we
left. Our flight was scheduled for 11 am Tuesday and we were told to be
in the lobby of the hotel at 7:45 to catch the 8 am bus. Since the
breakfast buffet only opened at 7:30 and we also had to get our bags to
the lobby to check out this meant we could only gulp down orange juice
and a couple of slices of toast. Some people we met from Toronto had it
even worse as their bus was supposed to leave at 7:45. So the 4 of us
met up in the lobby at 7:45 and then proceeded to wait for our pickup.
For us the bus turned up at 8:30 and our friends were left wondering if
they would make it in time for their flight. None of us need to have
worried however. Even though our bus visited just about every hotel
between ours and the airport we still arrived in time to spend 30 mins
in line to check in and another 30 mins to have our passports and
boarding passes checked. Everyone gets told this when they arrive but
make sure you have $20 cash left when you get back to the airport for
the Cuban exit tax. Finally when we got to the gate we found out that
the flight had been delayed by weather in Ottawa and we had to wait
another hour even before it arrived. We finally got away about 1:30 by
which time we were starving.
Thanks to John for this trip report ...
February 2001
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