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Other Miscellaneous
Dollar Stores: As a foreigner, you can go
right into dollar stores without waiting in the enormous lines outside.
Pools: You won’t be stopped from going into
any expensive hotel and using their pool (or attached beach), unless you
bring a Cuban with you, in which case they will have to present their ID card
and pay $2-5, as it’s assumed they’re a prostitute. And this is apparently no
longer the case in Havana, where you may be asked to pay as much as $15. (I’m
not sure how they know if you’re staying there or not.)
Left Luggage: The dollar ticket offices at
train and bus stations will watch your luggage for you for free; great if
you’ve got hours to wait.
Laundry: The larger cities have laundromats
(“lavaterias”) if you get tired of the rinse-in-a-bucket routine. I chanced
upon a few, though unfortunately none coincided with my need to wash clothes.
They cost a few pesos.
Baseball: Don’t miss a Cuban baseball game if
you have the opportunity. They’re very colorful and a lot of fun.
Discos: berg.chabot@pi.net
recommends taking a bodyguard with you if you go to a local disco (one not
created primarily for tourists, like those in hotels or run by one of the
tourist organizations) that has more men than women, as they tend to get
drunk, start fights, and get arrested, in which case you’ll be arrested too,
though you’ll be released later because you’re a foreigner. This happens less
in discos with more women, because the women keep the men from fighting.
Locals who go to discos with foreigners are often detained by police, even if
they aren’t jineteras, so keep that in mind if you invite your friends out on
the town.
fv@telin.rug.ac.be reports that
entrance fees for discos have risen as high as $15, and many do not allow
unaccompanied males in, in an attempt to crack down on prostitution. In some
cases they allow you to bring in a Cuban girl waiting outside (and pay
double), but in some cases you can’t.
Ancestor Searches: If you’re Cuban-American
and are returning to look for your “antepasados” at the Cemetario de Colon in
Havana, make sure you have the full name (including mother’s maiden name),
and date of death (at least month and year) as their files are not
computerized. The cemetary is in disrepair like the rest of the country.
(Info courtesy of Julia Bravo: jbravo@rea-invest.com)
Internet: Don’t get your hopes up too much at
the prospect of finding the streets lined with Internet cafes from which to
check your e-mail while on vacation. Cuba does have the Internet, at this news story describes, but it’s very tightly controlled. A
local explained this about how the net works in Cuba: “We have an ISP called
CENIAI (www.ceniai.inf.cu) with two channels, a 64 KB one with SprintLink.Net
and another of 256 KB with TELECOM, Italy. There are a very large group of
PPP accounts most of which are rented by foreign and joint venture companies
and other private institutions. There are also fixed connections that are
rented by Research Centers and other government institutions (cultural,
educational, medical ). The connections are rather slow. It is almost
impossible to get connected through PPP accounts because the number of
connections to the ISP is limited to a dozen and when you get connected, the
bad conditions of the phone lines cause the loss of the connection most of
the time.”
People are slowly beginning to gain access to the internet. Chris (csb2001@netzero.net)
reports success in hooking up with a local who had net access at work and let
him borrow his computer at night.
Disabled workers occasionally get browser-free laptops to work from
home on. A few public sites are
popping up, as well. The Hotel
Nacional sells internet access for $5 an hour (from aronteo@tin.it) and the Capitolio Building
in Havana charges $3 for a half hour (from ealonso@unodostres.com).
Postage: Post offices outside of the tourist
areas in Havana will let you buy stamps for pesos (50 centavos to send a
postcard anywhere in the world!); otherwise they’ll make you pay 50 cents.
Mail seems to take the longest to get to the US.
Prostitution: Like everywhere else in Cuba,
single foreign men will attract lots of Cuban girls. It’s rarely about
friendship. Most Cubans simply assume that single male travelers are there as
sex tourists, an idea confirmed by many tourists who do just that. Cubans can
get in serious trouble if they are caught renting their rooms for
prostitution. The police have recently cracked down on the practice, and
often assume that any Cuban woman with a foreign man is a prostitute. Some
foreigners have been fined $40 for walking down the street with a Cuban.
Guidebook recommendations from John
Robertson (jon@bishop-co.com):
Carlos Soldevila’s Cuba (Ulysses, Montreal, 1997). Very good. Better
at explaining the black market such as prices for cars, meals, and housing.
David Stanley’s Cuba: A Travel Survival Kit (Lonely Planet, 1997).
Very good. Better at describing the sights, better maps.
Special Considerations for Americans
Yes, it’s illegal for Americans to go to Cuba without special permission,
which most people can’t get without some effort. The two best ways of
obtaining a permit are for humanitarian or religious reasons. If you say you
are bringing a few boxes of medicine, or want to speak at or share
information with members of your religious group, cuba@together.net reports that you will
probably get permission. To apply, contact Office of Foreign Assets Control,
US Dept of the Treasury, 2nd Floor Annex, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington DC 20220. The entire process can take a couple weeks or a few
months. One benefit of getting a permit is that permit holders are entitled
to bring up to $100 of cigars, rum, etc. back to the US.
For non-permit holders, you must go through Mexico, Canada, or a Caribbean
island, and arrangements have to be made through a foreign travel agent.
Cuban visas are obtained through travel agents (the Cuban embassy in Mexico
City does not issue them), and are actually tourist cards (“tarjeta de
turista”) that you keep in your passport and they stamp on the way in and
retain on the way out. They historically haven’t stamped anyone’s passport
unless specifically requested to, but since the summer of 1997, travelers
have reported that they have had generic, innocuous-looking stamps put in
their passports, untraceable to Cuba or a specific date, but stamps
nonetheless. They are stamping passports without asking and, in some cases,
despite protests. No one has reported trouble with US immigration at this
point over these stamps. And keep in mind that re-entering the US from Mexico
or Canada does not require showing a passport if you’re a US citizen.
Word has it that the US government isn’t actively arresting or fining people
who go to Cuba, though it’s not a good idea to tell immigration that you went
there. If they search your bags, they will confiscate Cuban cigars or rum if
you’ve brought them back, and possibly fine you. Mexico only sporadically stamps
passports, and they don’t indicate where you came from or went to, so there’s
no way for US officials to glean that that 2 week gap between Mexican exit
and entry stamps wasn’t just your returning home before going back to Cancun.
One creative traveler suggested a complex system of using your birth
certificate to leave from and return to Mexico from Cuba. Canadian
immigration may stamp your passport with TRANSIT, potentially leading to
questions on the US side about the origin of your journey.
Non-Americans may not be so lucky to escape consequence for their travel. I
received a fourth-hand report that a French student on an A-1 visa was caught
and told that after he finished his studies here he would not be allowed to
return because he had traveled to Cuba.
For the official word, check out the consular information sheet put
out by the State Department.
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