We set sail at 5 pm with salsa music, dancing and a barbeque on deck for the 200 mile overnight sail to Havana, Cuba. Cruising to Cuba is easy. The night sail was uneventful (Yay!), the drinks and dinner were plentiful and good (Double Yay!). We woke up the next day in Cuba. Disembarkation was a little slow as we had to go through security AND immigration. Here they will take your visa papers, check your passport and take your picture.
Immigration lines
Luckily we were in a fast line and in a few minutes we were out on the Havana streets. The tour buses pick you up right outside the immigration building. Since we decided to create our own tour, we crossed the street and spoke to several tour vendors who had set up shop right outside of the cruise ship terminal. Some of the options included: horse carriage tours, private vintage car tours, newer car taxi tours, and a hop on hop off bus tour. The private tours ranged from $40 to $80 (in CUCs which are tourist pesos). The hop on hop off bus tour is $10 in CUCs per person. We chose the hop on hop off bus tour to get an overview of the city and then if we thought we wanted the private tour we could take that later. The hop on hop off bus comes right to the cruise terminal.
Across the street from the Cruise Terminal
Horse Carriage Private Carriage tour
Vintage Tour Cars
If you take a private tour make sure your driver/tour guide speaks english as we spoke to people who were on private tours where the guide spoke very little english.
The infrastructure in Havana is crumbling. Sadly enough, the housing is really pretty bad throughout Havana. In the 1930s Havana was dubbed the "Paris of the Caribbean", if overlook all the rubble and you can envision back 80 years ago the buildings had to be beautiful. Below are some typical Neighborhoods.
The photo above is a closer look at the photo before it. If you look closely you will see a blue water barrel. They are all over on the rooftops. We were told from fellow cruise ship passengers that their tour guides told them that water rationing is prevalent and water is only available every other day. The electricity is not always available either.
Hemingway and Cuba
On day two of our Havana experience we decided to check out some of the Ernest Hemingway haunts. Hemingway called Havana, Cuba home from 1939 to 1960. He lived on a 15 acre property about 15 miles from Havana called "Finca Vigia". Since we have been to the Hemingway House in Key West we wanted to see the Hemingway House in Havana. So, we got off the ship and headed across the street from the terminal to get a taxi. The taxi coordinator told our driver (who didn't know any english and we knew limited spanish) where we wanted to go. We hopped in his yellow russian car (with air conditioning) and set off. We ended up at Hemingway Marina, the opposite direction from the Hemingway House. We walked around the marina since we were there and we had several friends who had arrived on sailboats in April. Unfortunately, the house was pretty far away so we didn't get to see it. A fellow passenger told us that they visited the house but didn't get to go inside. We decided to visit Sloppy Joe's and La Floridita. A local told us that Hemingway didn't frequent Sloppy Joe's, his hang out was La Floridita.
La Floridita
Inside La Floridita
La Floridita "The Cradle of the Daiquri"
More Havana Photos
Malecon - A long walkway along the shore
Vintage Car tours
Norwegian Sky
Streets of Havana
Bicycle Taxi
Havana Street
Fort and Morro Castle
Laundry Day
Sorry for the fuzzy photo. The guy in white is carrying (right hand) his chicken dinner home with feathers.
No comments:
Post a Comment