La Habana 2024

The [Cuban] “revolution, which grew up always punished, amounted to what it could under the circumstances, instead of to what it wanted.”

—Eduardo Galeano

Introduction

Population: about 2.5 million

Second city: Santiago de Cuba

Cuban population growth is negative due to both low fertility rate and migration.

The majority of the population (64%+) is classified as white.

Education is free at all levels

“The city's economy first developed on the basis of its location, which made it one of the early great trade centers in the New World. Sugar and a flourishing slave trade first brought riches to the city, and later, after independence, it became a renowned resort. Despite efforts by Fidel Castro's government to spread Cuba's industrial activity to all parts of the island, Havana remains the center of much of the nation's industry.”

The data on the impact of the decades-long embargo ranges from a ‘negligible’ effect to ‘an extreme’ one. “Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has passed a non-binding resolution every year, except for 2020, condemning the ongoing impact of the embargo and declaring it in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law. There was no voting on this issue in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Israel [surprise! surprise!] is the only country that routinely joins the U.S. in voting against the resolution…187 countries voted in favor of the resolution in 2023, with only the United States and Israel voting against it and Ukraine abstaining.” (Wikipedia)

A long-stay account by a solo traveller – part of an extended summer in Cuba

Note: In this account you will not find a description of touring Havana by the famous classic American car or Havana Bus Tour. Neither will you find an account of the luxury restaurants in El Paseo del Prado, for example, a trip to Varadero or the best beach book you should take with you.

It is essential that you have at least a survival Spanish level.
Myth: “Cuba is communist.” We have been told. Fact: Capitalist relations are dominant. It is not even socialist: state ownership of the key sectors of the economy and subsidised food and a system of rations do not mean socialism. The idea was to establish socialism, but now socialism remains only a rhetoric, for socialism can never be established in one country, let alone in a small, poor country surrounded by global capitalism. The myth is based on an ideological war that goes back to the ‘cold war’, not on historical reality.
Visiting Cuba as a tourist does not make you know Cuba and its people. Modern tourism does not break prejudices. It is likely that it reinforces them.
As a tourist you would be ripped off by a few companies and you would spend tens of times more than if your were a solo traveller or avoid doing tourism.
Contrary to what Cubans think, Cuba is expensive when you withdraw money from an ATM/use the official rate of exchange in paying by card.
As a tourist you would be perpetuating a consumptive industry
Che Guevara is not Cuban. He is Argentinian.
Although they study it at school, Cubans speak very limited or no English.
The very low salaries are not a measure, as a majority receives remittances from abroad in different forms and amounts and earn extra money through other means.
Living in Havana means safety and friendly people, but it is not easy: it is expensive, shopping is frustrating (scarcity especially of vegetables and eggs, for instance), a dirty environment in the centre, high humidity and pollution …
The following is an account of an honest solo traveller whose objectives were to feel less complicit in crime while in Britain and to experience life in Cuba
Know some history, context and conjuncture. I recommend Richard Gott’s Cuba – A New History.

A sample from modern tourism (Hotel El Nacional de Cuba, 8 August 2025)

A guide with 4 French women:

A tour by the convertible car (€25 per person). They return by taxi paying €10. When them of the woman asked about how the Cubans travel in the city, he advised them not to take public transport
“A guide will take you to a house to change money.” That means the guide will get a commission of between 30 and 80 pesos for every €1.
a non-guided tour of Havana Vieja
Book for a show at the hotel (food and drinks not included)
A demonstration of cigars and ‘savouring the cigar even if you don’t smoke’
A guided ‘history visit’ of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba (it’s mainly about the personalities who once stayed in the hotel)
the money exchange and how to pay: do not change money at the hotel, for example. Ideally, you change €1 for 250 CUP, ideally for 300. With two other groups the guide bought 1 euro for 250 pesos.
One of the groups reserved seats in a cabaret

What do 30 minutes in the morning tell you about Havana?

the sound of the man downstairs, who for two days now has been manufacturing a faucet body for a water pipe

the incessant pre-recorded voices of street vendors roaming the neighbourhood day and night selling ice-cream and the ‘Cuban pizza’

the two black men you get across while leaving the building you live in

the young white girl wearing white trousers getting into a car

the bundle of fabric that was left the men who yesterday were manually sealing a king mattress on a back of a truck

the grocer with green shutters at the corner has just opened

the very same three vegetables of yesterday and only one fruit and never tomatoes or onions

the state shop with a blue door that is still closed and you recall the black man who runs it with his same salute: thumb up for OK.

the man who kept looking at you and you think he must have thought I was a foreigner

the rubbish you throw on a heap that has not been collected fir a month, the army of flies you disturb and you feel guilty

the man looking into the rubbish wearing Qatar Airways shirt and you wonder what he was looking for: food to eat or things that might sell

the main road and people trying to catch a taxi

the shop that you couldn’t buy from because it frequently had problems with network connection or a power outage, that reminds you of the suffering of people and businesses in Cienfuegos due to chronic power cuts

the bodega (state shop) that has just opened and looks almost empty-shelved and a few men and women queue to get their rations or any subsidised items available

the usual long queue at the Banco Metropolitano and the voice of someone who has arrived shouted “la ultima persona?” before joining the line.

the bakery, opposite, that makes only white bread and only in two shapes

the crumbling building that has been supported with pillars of wood so that it does not fall down

the very modern newly-(re)constructed but small church that looks more like a bank or it is just a temporary worshipping place as the main iglesia, Iglesia Nuestra Señora del Carmen, is being restored.

the luxury Bicky restaurant with one of the best and cleanest pavement in the area

the electric motorbike that you don’t hear when they pass

the noisy and fume-emitting old motorbikes

the old lorry that hoots louder than a train

the almost only shop that always has eggs and sells them 30 pesos more expensive than all the shops and the fruit and vegetables street vendor who sells one avocado with three times the price you get from a house 5 minutes away. Are there the future entrepreneur that will establish first private ‘Cuban Walmart or Carrefour’ once a ‘regime change’ takes place and will be bragging about how they were hard-working and self-made millionaires and billionaires?

the huge avocados displayed on cart

the huge and most tasteful avocados I have ever had in my life displayed on cart

the man with mental health issues ‘managing’ the traffic and you wonder what made him so

the black bust of Antonio Mella’s stern look and sharp eyes, the communist student leader and one of the Communist Party’s early leaders, assassinated in Mexico

the stairs of Havana University and how many students, you wonder, might have climbed it and how many of them left the country

the shiny refurbished house you pass: how did they find the money? Was it a loan from a bank? Was it money from abroad?

the baseball pitch that you passed by yesterday and you noticed that it had only one hoop

the broken pavement you walk on and the hazards that have become familiar to you

the dogs waste you avoid almost every 10 meters

the smelly corner you pass by

the old woman, a beggar, sitting on the steps of the hotel Habana Libre shaking a pot filled with some coins asking you to give her some money

the flags adorning the entrance of Habana Libre: Russia, Angola, Spain, Canada and the Caribe, the hotel that in the 1960s accommodated revolutionaries from all over Latin America

the dollar shop next to the hotel, one of the shops whose origin was the blowing up of a civilian airline by terrorists on 6 October 1976 killing 73 people, including the Cuban fencing team

the men in yellow offering taxi rides

the new and probably biggest hotel in Cuba on the other side and that is almost ready to open: an example of (primitive) capital accumulation whose effects have not trickled down

the beautiful young girl in a miniskirt sitting on a brand new electric scooter, waiting.

the man pushing a barrow full of rotten green bananas

the three men leaning on a wall discussing the price of something

the old woman sweeping the ground in front of a state building and you wonder whether she’s got a son or a daughter abroad

the two men in yellow offering taxi rides

the woman with a classic American car hunting tourists for a city tour for €25 per person!

the air-conditioned hotel lobby with a very welcome at the door

the coffee you don’t like because of the locally-grown coffee just doesn’t taste nice

the huge TV screen that was there for months, showing the worst of clips and American culture, is not there today and you wish it will never come back

the Cuban man who understands English and used to attentively watch the news on CNN when he was not playing something so loud from his phone is now sitting quietly thinking – is he missing the TV screen?

the beautiful curvaceous hotel woman in white that blows a kiss to a man she knows

the new above the old, the modern atop the decaying, the uneven and the combined of the impossibility to construct socialism in one country, let alone a small island in the ocean of capitalism

the very small square where two out of the four benches are only holes, which remind you of El Parque de La Fraternidad

the market where you have never found tomatoes or carrots in

*************

Air France forgot my big bag in Paris during the connecting flight. So, you should not pack all of your eggs in one basket. Take the essentials with you to the cabin. Liquids from toothpaste to shampoo are available in Havana. You need a few T-shirts only as tops.

Official vs. informal exchange:

Official rate (ATM) €100 about $14000 (CUP)

€1 for 300 Pesos / a better rate at the Terminal Del Omnibus:

€100 for 340.000 pesos or CUP/ €1 for $340 (CUP means Cuban Peso).

Online it said that the exchange rate went went up to 385 CUP for €1. $100 > €0.30

500 CUP > €1.50, but I could not find such an exchange on the ground. In Cienfuegos the maximum I could get was 345 pesos to the €1. Two months later the rate went down to 310 pesos for one euro.

In short, if you are from the Euro zone take dollars you had exchanged before you left, and some euros. In Cuba the dollar and the euro are often bought at the same exchange rate. Thus you would have to sell your euros at a loss.

Remember that you should spend all of your Pesos before you leave the country.

Incident:

$1 for 200 pesos in a café, the waiter said.

A bill of 2000 pesos cost a young American couple $10 dollars. If I paid, it would cost me $5.80 US. I wanted to say: you Americans deserve it, but I thought they might be ‘progressive Americans’!

An old Cuban man is touring them Havana. Apart from lunch near a monument, he was planning for them was a suggestion they bought a Cuban cigar for $100 US!

Officially, if they draw from an ATM, the bill would have cost them at least $12.5 US. Now, imagine how much a week in Havana would cost them?

Another example: suppose you want to eat in one of the restaurants on the ground floor of Hotel El Nacional in Vedado, ‘Meat cuts’ dish alone costs 3,600 pesos. You are paying in dollars/euros or with a credit card (Visa or Mastercard). You are told that the rate to the dollar is 120 pesos. Your dish – without drinks and dessert – would cost you $30 US. If you changed your dollars/euros for 340, for example, your ‘meat cuts’ would cost you $10.5 US/euros*. At the same hotel in a restaurant downstairs a cerdo (pork) dish alone costs 1000 pesos if you pay in pesos/3 € in the same exchange rate, which is not expensive compared to many restaurants in Havana. If you pay by card, it costs between €7 and €8 .

A more simple example: at the official exchange of 1 € for 120 pesos an americano and a 500 ml bottle of water cost €3 . With an informal exchange rate they cost me €1.06 . (post picture of an Americano and a cake in Havana August folder)

*Both currencies are usually exchanged for the same rate in the informal market. Already a rip off if you have euros.

Paying in restaurants and cafes with a Visa or a Mastercard credit card costs double or triple the priced of paying in cash. The fees for international credit cards are so high. A foreigner/visitor should use a, international card only to buy a viazul bus ticket, for example, or to shop at the dollar shops such Panamericana, Minimax, Centro Comercial in Avenida de Italia, booking an apartment using a VPN, paying in hotel/restaurant where there CUP price is converted to dollar such as at the famous Hotel Nacional de Cuba.

If you are lucky, you find apples. In Cienfuegos I occasionally found in a dollar shop. They cost $0.49 US each. 6 apples cost about $3 US on my Mastercard. When apples appear in a shop or on the street, they cost around 300 pesos each, i.e. $2.5 US or a price of a coffee with milk. The 6 apples would then cost $15 US in the official dollar/euro exchange of 120 vs. $5.5 US in the informal exchange and slightly above $7 US if the exchange rate is 250. The same apples cost between 2 and €4 in London, depending on the category.

Budget

For a single person, 20,000 / 25,000 pesos a month are enough to live on in Havana, a young Cuban told me. He, of course, did not include rent because the vast majority of Cubans own their houses. The monthly amount is not that far from the 32,000 pesos a 2023-study by Columbia School Law suggested. For a foreigner I would say between 30,000 and 50,000, with use of a Master/Visa card at the dollar shop from time to time – not only for food, drinks and toiletries. You might need to buy new trainers, for example!

Wifi/Internet

A SIM card is essential. Most places do not have an open wifi.

One of the options if you are renting from someone, they purchase hours of Internet for you. 24 hours costs 300 CUP. If you are staying in a hotel, you get access to the Internet. The wifi in the place I stayed in Infanta was good. However, generally, it is complicated if you don’t have a Cuban SIM card, which works only with some phones..

Capri Hotel has a superfast wifi at the lobby. It is a better connection than many places in London. An hour costs 100 pesos – about €/$0.80 at the official exchange rate. It is more expensive at Habana Libre where an hour costs €/$1.6.

I stayed in 6 different places in Cienfuegos and Havana. In Cienfuegos the houses did not have wifi in the rent. I had to use ETECSA scratch cards. In Havana, one of the houses had wifi with ETECSA yet I still needed to use scratch cards. In two houses the wifi was partially part of the rent: a number of hours were free then I gave the house manager/owner money to purchase more hours for me. In the last house, there was wifi and 30 hours usage free, but I every time I needed to use the Internet I had to let the owner know so he connect me to the server and the connection was bad half of the time and frustrating.

Alternatively, you could buy scratch cards. One cards lasts one hour and costs 25 pesos. They are not always available even at an ETECSA office. Having a Cuban phone line from day one is always the best thing to do.

ETECSA was bad in central Havana. I had better connection in centre Cienfuegos.

Most websites are accessible. However, you cannot reserve an accommodation and pay on airbnb and you cannot access Versobooks website, for instance, but you can access the Financial Times or marxist.com, for example! You need a VPN to by-pass a blocked website.

Safety

Havana and Cienfuegos were so safe. I in fact always felt safer than in London. In the entire months of my stay I was not even approached by a suspicious / potential pickpocket. However, sometimes Cubans asked me to hang my shoulder bag in front of me, especially in crowded places such as as the weekly market in Cienfuegos or before boarding a bus. During those months I never witnessed a incident of theft, either. I have done tons of travels and the only times I got robbed were in London, my place of residence!

Power outages

Unlike the frequent power outages in most parts of Cienfuegos city, in central Havana the first power cut I had was 35 days after I arrived. It lasted 5 hours. It rarely happened afterwards and it did not last more than 10 minutes.

Shopping

Use card to buy pasta, tomato sauce, olive oil, rice, tuna, chickpeas, beans, chicken breast, washing stuff, etc. at the dollar shops and commercial centres. Price tags are in US dollar, but Cubans say peso, which is confusing at first and when it’s out of context, because when you pay a taxi or a grocer, for example, you pay cash in peso.

Transport

Yello big Taxi collectivo of 13 passengers: 5 pesos (about 2/3 cents). They are state-run taxis thus the very cheap fare. By taxi the journey from La Rampa to Cerro costs $1000 . I waited for an hour, but my turn did not come. There is a Ruta – the taxis’s name – every about 15 minutes, but there are usually more people in late afternoon and therefore there were not enough Ruta taxis.

Taxi collectivio entre $100 and $200. 100 from Estado Latinoamericano to the centre.

Unlike Cienfuegos, for instance, in the centre of Havana you don’t see the horse-drawn cart as a means of transport. There are many types of taxis. A few of them do not have the sign of Taxi. Watch and observe the Cubans waiting for or waving to a carro – the generic word for a vehicle.

There are a few bus routes, but they are not frequent and they are usually packed. The heat might put you off from getting on one.

Warning: most drivers will not give you priority when crossing the road. Even a big and limping old woman wasn’t given priority. I was guiding blind man to cross Calle 23 and a speeding car driver passed centimetres behind me and when I turned around after leaving the blind man another car driver hooted at me while he was taking a turn into a street. Once a pregnant woman was trying to cross the road and inly the third car stopped to let her pass.

I was offered a lift by motorbikes twice. It is common to see a couple on a motorbike, and unlike in Tunisia for instance, everybody wears a helmet here.

To go to La Playa del Este and Guanabo, there is a tourist coach that costs €10 for a return ticket . There is a public transport bus A40. I waited for it for 15 minutes once and when it came it did not stop. It was packet. It is cheaper than the taxi. The bus stop is on the Avenida de Belgica. There is a small fruit and vegetables market just on the street before the stop. The taxi one is on the side of the train station La Estación Central de Ferrocarriles.

‘Where are you from?’

When someone asks you this frequently used question, they might be trying to open a conversation then they want to sell you something or ask you for some ‘dinero para comer’ (some money to eat). They might be just curious friendly Cubans. Sometimes a chat with the same person drags a bit long, but at the end they suggest you buy something, e.g. changing money. ‘offering a chica’ or give them a few pesos. Some of those men who approach a single man are pimps. Most Cubans are very friendly and they would not bother you. On the contrary, they might even spontaneously initiate a friendly conversation with you.

Architecture

A lot of Havana is Spanish colonial-style buildings. A wide range of Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Roman could be noticed. “Some of the larger homes were built with basements or mezzanine levels in order to accommodate the house slaves. Space did not permit for detached quarters to be built on the grounds, so this accommodation needed to be built into the house itself. The infrastructure for mining and processing the necessary materials to replicate the style simply did not exist, meaning that Cuban baroque has a roughness not seen in its European counterparts. Many of the French who had fled Haiti after the uprising there settled in the Cuban capital, bringing French influences to Havana architecture. In the years that followed, neoclassical styles also made their mark on the capital, resulting in rather a lot of columns. Seriously… Havana is sometimes called the city of columns.”

After independence, “the influences of Spain were cast aside, and indeed the influences of Europe too. Havana architecture from this time actually has a number of American influences, and this is true of a number of government buildings that were constructed prior to the Cuban Revolution, most notably the Cuban Capitolio Nacional (the Cuban Capitol Building which looks incredibly similar to its counterpart in Washington DC).”

The Plaza de la Revolución, has many monumental modernist buildings including the National Theater that reminds of the Royal Festival Hall in London.

After the 1959 Revolution there “was more a movement towards monuments and infrastructure projects in typically austere socialist styles. But these types of buildings hardly changed the face of Havana, just as no singular style of building had done before it.”

Clavel, Cerro

Super-friendly and helpful host. The flat has all what you need even for a long stay. There are an air-conditioner and two big fans.

The airbnb host took me to Vedado – ‘a middle class’ part of Havana.

Cappuccino in BonéMa in Vedado 650 Pesos (about €2 ) > expensive, espresso 380 pesos (1.15 euros)

Cappuccino + 2 espressos = 4.70 € (an expensive café).

Frapoccino y cappuccino 1485 pesos

One hundred meters from BonéMa, in Hotel Capri restaurant, you get get a cappuccino + 2 espressos for 400 pesos (€1.20). BonéMa is private. Hotel Capris is a state-run one.

Internet via ETECSA 200 Pesos (0.58/0.66 €) for 4 hours depending on the exchange rate you got for your euros. 24 hours wifi would cost 3.48 €. That’s more expensive than a monthly internet in UK. For a long stay one needs a phone line like a Cuban.

5L water mineral = 750 P (2.50 euros). I got it half of that price in Cienfuegos

30 eggs for 3400 P (€10/11 depending the rate of exchange of the euro you obtained. 1 corona beer: 500 Pesos (1.75 euros) in a bar in Cerro. A can of beer is 180/220.

I bought some food from a privately-run shop: a whole chicken, a kilo of rice, 500 g. of pasta, a tin of tomato paste for 3000 Pesos (€10 ). I bought 2 cloves of garlic for €0.33 . Very expensive. 1Kg of chicken costs 800 Pesos (€3.5).

Other prices: A can of butter beans: more than €2. One small roll of toilet paper €0.33. Agua 5L $200. 500 gr of chickpeas costs $850 (about €2.5)

I had a corona beer in a bar with two big screens and loud music. I asked for the menu to see the prices. I was told that there was only a digital menu!

Watched a jeweller making a silver ring using very basic tools.

First experience: queued at state food distribution. People either get the rations allocated to them in a card. Some pay for extra stuff – imported one – and prices are in dollars. Outside this dual state tiendas, there are the particulares – the private shops and stores. You pay in Pesos for local and imported stuff. Cubans who get access to the dollar through money sent from abroad or through their deals in the black market – shop from these tiendas.

Scarcity of goods, but expensive imported items such as pasta, olive oil, shampoo.

The barrio Clavel is inhabited by working class and poor Cubans. It is common to see people walking slowly dragging their feet towards a market or a shop. There is not much to buy, a few things are in bad quality and the purchasing power is very weak.

The quality of the vegetables in the area is not good and the variety is so limited. The same with fruits. Cabbage and pepino are abound though. However, if you get hold of ripe tomatoes and cucumbers, for example, you would find that the taste is better than a lot of tasteless vegetables you buy at the London supermarkets. The same good taste applies to sweet yellow bananas. I enjoyed some cheap, wonderful, succulent and big avocado. When I thought of a recipe of avocado with raisins and bell pepper though I had to dismiss the idea because the two ingredients do not exist.

Here there is no such a thing as an organic industry that makes a killing and whose products are afforded only by few people. The problem in Cuba is lack of investment in agriculture and productivity and a weak purchasing power of the Cubans. The country imports between 70% and 80% of its food. (see Cuba Then and Now)

Once with someone’s help we tried at 6 shops to buy cooking oil, but with no avail. What is available is imported olive oil. A litre costs between 4 and 6 euros. A couple of months later cooking became more available at the same price in London! This is a country where imported apples are rare, and there are no pears, oranges, mushrooms. Chickpeas is rare too. I found carrots on the 5th day, sold by a street vendor on a cart, not at a grocer’s.

It turned out here that the ‘couple’ were not a couple. I now speak French with the landlady. We understand each other better when it comes to daily issues.

She has a girl, a meteorologist in the US and a son, studying IT engineering in South Korea.

The man has the oldest car in Cuba. Like 99% of Cubans he’s got a card to get access to state provisions and buy things from shops at lower prices and he also works in the black market.

I went to reclaim the bag: a woman searched for cells phones. The security images, she said, showed you might have two cell phones. There small boxes in the bag, but no cells phones. It could be an excuse to look for drugs. Two shops before the entrance of Terminal 3 Departures. Prices are in dollars, apparently only Cubans with cards can buy from them.

All along the route to and from the airport I did not see a single building site, not even a house being constructed or refurbished.

The street here is noisy. Cubans play loud a music. Dogs bark almost all the time. A garage near by: cutting, welding and hammer sound are frequent, A cock is can be heard in the early morning. Vendors/buyers pass by in the morning. In the area where I stayed for a few weeks, the pizza vendors used to pass from 6 in the morning until after 10 in the evening. They use a whistle and a pre-recorded call to alert potential buyers.

Poor countries displays similar features: the rubbish bins in this a barrio (quarter) is like the ones in Hammamet, Tunisia for instance. Some streets are cleans others are so dirty. One or two big rubbish with no cover and half standing. There are no rubbish bins in front of the houses. A few sell little items such bread, biscuits, soft drinks from their house.

A Cuban man told me that “Cerro area is dirty because of people’s mentality.” I heard the same thing by a waiter in Hammamet, Tunisia speaking about the streets in the city. Similar political economy develops similar way of thinking. In the 1970s, England streets were dirty. People would throw rubbish on the street. Councils provided both rubbish bins and enforced fines. ‘Mentality’ changed. Today very few people throw rubbish on the street. Some do it out of rebellious and indifferent behaviour.

Among the people of the barrio some wear expensive trainers and nice clothes. The trainers might not be original Nike, for instance, and would cost 15 euros.

In the morning you see queues for food and other stuff at the state-run tiendas (shops) and people holding their tarjetas (cards) in their hands. That is contrasted with the new scooters or cars you see around. Queues sometimes take place at the dollar shops.

The digital is there and it is, like in Tunisia, a reflection of ‘uneven and combined development’. The old exists with the modern, the crumbling exists with the advanced: An air-conditioned bus exists with a cart drug by a horse as a means of transport, a new KIA car parked in front of a very old house, in a street where a stench of rubbish in broken bins permeates the air.

In Cerro there are so many huge buildings, most of them are empty.

About 150 meters from where I stayed – and for hours – two lorries were unloading big white sacks of something, probably flour. The machine used to roll the sacks into the depot is making an annoying loud noise.

Back to Cerro, El Barrió where I am staying. People here spend a lot of time outside. You always hear chatting and chattering. Children play. People also do things with no regard to other people around them: making noise or talking loudly at an early hour of the morning. Some vendors pass by the flat I stayed in more than once. Vendors who made things at home and sell them on the street to make ends meet.

The shops nearby open at 9am. I went to look for bananas to to the papaya I have, and some vegetables. None of the vegetable was worthing buying. Even the banana was in a very poor quality. Luckily, there was a street vendor going around with a cart full of better quality vegetables and bananas. To my surprise, there were carrots too. It was the first time after 5 days to see carrots.

In comparison, Tunisia so far is probably 20 times better when it comes to affordability and variety of goods even when we compare supermarkets in both countries. Also, for a foreigner Tunisia is easier to purchase stuff using international bank cards such Master Card and Visa. Easting out is slightly cheaper in Havana than in Hammamet, Tunisia.

La Rampa and Vedado

The peak of Neoclassicism came with the construction of the Vedado district (begun in 1859). This area features a number of set back well-proportioned buildings in the Neoclassical style.

Initially, I could not find a wifi. The one in Habana Libre Hotel asked for 200 pesos per hour, 4 times the 1 hour of Esteca card. A can of beer for 220, about 0.80 euros. Low quality chocolate cake for 160 pesos and 200 for a 1l-bottle of water.

Habana Libre enjoys a vast reception with a cafeteria and a restaurant – Prices are affordable for a few Cubans – as well as a few dollar shops for the privileged, and an area with two TV screens. All are on the same floor. The terrace of the cafeteria is too noisy and fumes are emited by the old cars reach the terrace, as the location is the intersection of four roads in La Rampa. When you see the number of Cubans who can affords meals here you might think there are no poor people in Havana. The service here, unlike in most private restaurants, is excellent. The staff is lovely, reflecting the good heart and spirit of Cubans, despite the meagre state salaries they earn.

Food is served and generally OK by Cuban standards. Expect vegetables to be imported canned/bottled vegetables. The service is excellent.

It is in this hotel too that the TV show Piso 6 takes place. The hotel Habana Libre is the former Hilton hotel (Habana Hilton) built just before the Revolution in the once posh Vedado district. It was Latin America's tallest and largest hotel. In the 1960s the hotel, wrote Richard Gott, “was awash with revolutionaries from all over Latin America, both serious guerrilla activists and armchair voyeurs.” (add pictures)

The shops at Habana Libre sell imported clothes. Trainers, for example costs between $40 and $114 US. Once on the way out I asked a woman who had just left how do Cubans manage to buy trainers given that the medium monthly salary is $25 US and 70% of the workforce is employed by the state. She pretended not to know at first. Then said that those who had a family member abroad help acquire such items

There are big Coppelias serving ice-cream and soft drinks. They were heaving with people on Saturday. Around La Rampa, one finds big villas and cleaner streets lined with trees. There are hotels and restaurants too. Yet heaps of rubbish, smell and uneven pavements are not uncommon in Vedado itself. All is part of many years of neglect in infrastructure. And what deserves a socio-psychological study is the number of people, you g and ‘mature’, who throw something straight out of their hands onto the street or the road – a social behaviour I have never seen in my travels from China to Egypt, from Vietnam to Turkey, from Romania to Morocco …

The very imposing new hotel under-construction was almost finished in August. Work began about two years before the pandemic, when the state thought that the tourist sector would thrive. A lot of investment, but two years after the end of the pandemic and tourism was still not what it used to be. One of the paradoxes of such a type of ‘development’ is the amount of glass, steel and concrete of this massive-labour-congealed hotel when you raise your head to look at it from a nearby street and the man sitting on the pavement – one of many trying to eke out a living by selling or in the hope of selling three or four old items of their or even collected from a rubbish bin – when you finish gazing at the hotel.

T., owner of a huge house is in her 70s said that the construction of the hotel began 10 years ago! She, with her husband, in fact rent out at least two sections of the house. They were both former state employees. She told me that apart from the land and most of the workforce, all the rest for building the hotel comes from abroad. She thinks that the main economic problems Cuba faces are caused by the US-led embargo. “They are suffocating Cuba,” she said grabbing her throat by her left hand. “It’s been happening since 1959,” she added. That reminded me of that Cuban man in Cienfuegos. He didn’t believe that embargo had anything to do with it. She made clear also that she was not supporting socialism or capitalism.

Nearby the grand hotel is a Methodist church (Iglesia Methodista Universitaris). One Wednesday morning it was packed with about 400 people. There was chanting and three screens showing the event live. It was a fasting meeting, I was told. A man told me that it was not a religious gathering.

Up the same street in the direction of the university, there is a nursery. Lovely angels were playing legos and other games in the courtyard. Outside the nursery a heap of rubbish and a disgusting view and smell!

Coppelia de la Rampa is a huge ice-cream place with different areas, ground floor and upstairs. A clean place a cool in late afternoon.

Expect a long wait before being served. We were about 35 people. Most of them came at the same time. A woman took the orders, but were not served according to first-come-first-served order. Then they expect you to have the same thing again, but you don’t have to. A few people order another set of bolas. Low quality of ice-cream. Three bolas one costs €0.07. I gave double to leave the change as a tip (a propina). Obviously, this is a state-run company hence the very low price. And there are always people there. Sometimes there are queues downstairs. In contrast, three balls in the private Amore Cafeteria costs more than €2.

The one I had at a small private heladería was much better. I was told that the best ice-cream in La Habana is the one at 1ra y 46 playa El Gelato Heladeria, Dulceria , Panadería, near Hotel Miramar.

Spontaneity: a mother has just asked me if she could share the table with me although there were free tables. Her daughter wanted another table. A moment later, a girl of 12/14 years old just came and sat at the table with me.

Every table is first served with a glass of water for each person – mind you, it is tap water. I was advised the day I arrived not to drink tap water in Cuba. Boiling the water to make a tea or coffee seems OK. It has not caused me any harm, but I did not like the look of it, as a cloudy layer appears on the surface. Also, the bottom of the container where the water is boiled would hold another visible layer. I personally took a water bottle with filters with me.

Opposite Coppelia is a student restaurant. Next to the restaurant is Yara cinema. (see pics in camera). On Sunday they have shows for children such as the one by El Circo de Cuba. Next Yara a pattiserie and a sandwich shop. Unlike in Cienfuegos, there are a few pâtisseries in Havana and the quality is much better.

Restaurante La Roca, opposite BonéMa en calle 21 Vedado and a few meters from hotel Capri: good food, good service, basic food and inexpensive. You might need to queue. It depends on the day and hour. Mostly Cubans eat there. If you are lucky, you might have live music by a pianist. Mineral water is not usually available though. Given that tomatoes are expensive and hard to get hold of good ones, the restaurant unfortunately does not serve green salad. I didn’t see green salad in El Nacional de Cuba Hotel restaurant, either! La Roca had an issue and it was closed for the whole month of August. I left Havana in September and it did not reopen.

A dropping stone from La Rampa is the heart of Vedado where a few ministries are housed there. Villas are common, but again occasionally you might face bad smell emitted by a pile of rubbish. Big bins are uncovered. After a week I got across a small litter bin. The first of its kind, but it was in front of hotel El Nacional. When I mentioned it to a group of men sitting by the hotel’s wall, one of them said: “because it’s a revolutionary bin.” Everybody went laughing.

In L/L y street in Havana I queued at Minimax shop for a 5l bottle of water – hard to find elsewhere except occasionally at the liquor and wine shop next to Habana Libre. A minority did not respect the queue. I protested. A young man – an actor by profession – assumed that I was a ‘Westerner’ said that the cause was that people were not civilised. I explained that it was not related to ‘civilisation's’: The so-called civilised nations that respect the queues and do not throw rubbish on the pavements, etc. engage in state terrorism, institutional racism, high level of financial corruption, hypocrisy… The young man was surprised by my comment. The middle-aged men and women nodded in agreement.

Minimax staff frustrated me: it happened twice that I queued for more than 15 minutes did my shopping and at the till they told me there was no service for international transactions. No prior announcement. No notice on the door.

From Minimax, Clinica Internacional is visible. It offers many treatments, including dental treatment. I was very welcomed and everything was explained to me beforehand. A member of staff even gave a tour of part of the centre and introduced me to a dentist. I had the opportunity to see the place, the instruments, etc. before I booked an appointment. I was told at the reception that the cost of a cleaning session would cost $30 US. No check up was mentioned. Credit cards accepted are Visa and Mastercard.

However, when I returned the following day, the doctor showed me the prices. A ‘consultation’ and cleaning cost $75 US. I was given the time to make up my mind and whether I would go ahead with the treatment. The dentist was skilful and very friendly and the place was of a high standard in hygiene, and the cleaning process was much comfortable because she used only two tools in my mouth at once, not three – the third being the ‘water aspirator’. Admin work – taking your details and registration – might take a while. Everything was done in Spanish and I did not find a problem in communication. Nevertheless, the total cost was not as I had expected in comparison to the cost in London. It was more than double of a good treatment I had in Hammamet, Tunisia in 2023.

A few meters before the clinic there is Amore ice-cream cafeteria (heladería).

From here, Liña y, pass collective taxis and buses that go to the north west of Havana. A a few minutes walk there is Teatro Bertolt Brecht. Of the main Liña there is a synagogue. A block of flats for the military personal partially reflects the life of the ‘privileged’ in Vedado. The Ministry of the Exterior is not far away from the huge United States Embassy. The latter is at least six times bigger than the former.

Ironically, facing the embassy a mural with ‘Patria o Muerte’ written on it. A few meters away the office of the Tribuna Antimperialista (Anti-imperialist Platform) – probably a unique office that exists only in Cuba. The not-very-visible mural is adorned with ‘golden’ plaques of figures such as Karl Marx, Mark Twain, Vladimir Lenin and others

Here too the bodegas are almost-shelved shops and dark (probably to save money) compared to the small private shops and cafes/cafe-restaurants in the area. A few of the poorest in Vedado inhabit what you cannot call houses.

The market in Vedado opposite FOCSA building: only 5/6 varieties of vegetables. Handling of meat is very compromised: no health and safety rules. A customer was herself filling a plastic bag with chicken thigh using her bare hand! Tomato is very hard to find. A very limited range of fruits and vegetables. Unlike in Cienfuegos, green pepper is rarely available and when it is the size of a pepper is as small as the smallest mushroom.

The same scarcity and quality I found in San Rafael market. It is striking: I remember vividly in 1970 and 1980s Tunisia how in weekly markets in two neighbouring cities, where we used to shop for fruits and vegetables, displayed mountains of tomatoes, onions, potatoes, carrots, fennel, green pepper, turnips, cucumber, and all the fruits of the season. That was in a country with two thirds of its area is desert. Conversely, Cuba has one of the most fertile lands yet agriculture, even taking into consideration the tropical climate, is not even at the Tunisia’s of 1970s. Today, despite the water problem due to lack of rainfalls, Tunisia still manage to produce a good variety of fruits and vegetables.

After all, tomato, for instance, originated in Mexico.

Complete lack of hygiene/minimum of health safety measures is illustrated on Saturday market in Valle street: a man chopping meat in open air and flies landing on the meat. (See photo in iPad Havana August folder). An old man noticed my disapproval. I said that it was not a good thing to do. The man said: “Here we don’t think of health and safety while we cannot afford to eat.”

In mid-September, one stall in the market was selling grapes. There were about two kilos. Two or three stalls were selling oranges, but all of it was green.

A middle-aged man approached and showed me a tablet of pills for sale.

In the same morning, I passed by someone selling cleaning liquids on a pavement. He had huge plastic cans and buyers hand him their own plastic bottles of 1l/1.5l to fill in. (See photo in Havana August folder on iPad). These two photos/examples when placed upon the photos of El Hotel Nacional de Cuba or a panamericana store reflect what uneven and combined development is. The new is placed on the old and they both mix together on a daily basis. It is also reflected in transport: an electric bus in Havana (written ‘zero emisión’ on its side) could placed on a horse-drawn ‘taxi’ in Cienfuegos.

Under global capitalist pressure local regimes are ‘compelled’ to pursue economic policies of prioritising some sectors of the economy over others. The objective is the accumulation of capital – also called ‘primitive accumulation’. In the process, sectors of the economy, social provisions and areas/cities/regions undergo combined and uneven development. Centralisation too is exacerbated. Poverty, internal migration, migration to the rich countries, inequality, infrastructure, social struggle – and even the way people form their ideas about themselves and the Other – are some of the consequences.

Fundamentally, it is not about corruption as a few Cubans believe the problem is. It is not about the embargo either. Although the two are factors, the main one is the economic model pursued and imposed.

In hotel Capri I met K., a Cuban who works as a secretary in a state art centre. She is earns 3,200 pesos a month (the equivalent of about €10 at the informal market exchange rate or two meals and a drink at a state restaurant like Capri or Imperador in Vedado). Automatically, a contribution to the union and the energy bill, for example, are deduced from the salary. She had graduated in agronomy, but said that the working conditions in the country did not, and still don’t today, encourage someone to work. She has never seen another city apart from Havana where she was born. She has never travelled abroad, mainly because she cannot afford it. She was desperately waiting for her salary to come into her account. She had only 7 pesos.

Why does she not leave her current job and work with private? K. told me that working with the private is not a secure job. You start work with a company or restaurant, for example, and in a year or two, the employer closes the place down and leaves the country.

Fortunately, K. is supported by her the family. They rent out the two spare houses they have, but rent is not a stable income especially now that tourism is down. Her daughter’s education at university is free of charge. She also talked about being is very acceptable at her workplace. There is solidarity spirit among the staff.

I observed with K. how one Saturday afternoon one person after another came to withdraw money from an ATM (un cajero) on 23 street. No one could withdraw a single peso because there no money in the three machines. Short of liquidity is the main reason. Banks do not have or unable to collect enough liquidity to issue depositors. Since, K. had experienced this a few times before and has become part of her daily life, she kept saying: “Qué triste!” (How sad!). Even when a line was formed and people told each other that there was no money to withdraw, a few still persisted in trying.

In Vedado I stayed in an apartment that was part of a huge house. Only a husband and house lived there. They also rent out another part of the house. The man used to be a university professor. He believes that ‘all of religion is illogical’, which I find a strange opinion given that he must have learnt the Marxist approach when he was a student – I wondered what/how Marxist ideas are taught in Cuba.

Hotel Nacional de Cuba

15/17 minutes walk from some of the destitute neighbourhoods in Havana such as San Rafael, San Francisco and San Martin street. The hotel was a gambling and an entertaining complex before 1959.

The hotel occupies a vast area and has a view over the sea. Some famous figures resided in the hotel: Yuri Gagarin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Winston Churchill, Steven Spielberg, Kate Moss and others. There are photos of them in the lobby. There is also a photo of Fidel Castro and a couple of quotes about peace.

One of the bars is decorated by many photos of figures who were guests in the hotel, including Vladimir Putin, Ahmed Ahmadinejad, Bashar Al-Assad, Winston Churchill, Yuri Gagarin, Jean Paul Sartre, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the boxer Mohamed Ali …

Bars and restaurants serve a specific clientele many of whom are Cubans. The prices are again another proof that official state salaries are irrelevant. A large draft beer costs 500 CUP. A coffee with milk and small bottle of water costs 600 pesos. It double the price at Habana Libre or Capri. Dinner could cost between 4,000 and to 6,000 CUP. An individual room in the high season costs at least €57. The prices in pesos are much higher once the official rate is used and you use or Visa or Mastercard.

If you are willing to spend extra money for a view of the sea and shade in the garden go in late afternoon. Sometimes only card payment is accepted for an obvious reason – a better rate for the hotel.

There is no lack of options for drinking and eating. However, the quality of the sandwiches might not be of your liking. Two Spanish women once left their bocadillos almost untouched. I asked them what was wrong with the sandwiches. “We are from Spain. We are not used to this type of sandwiches,” one of them replied. Cubans themselves sometimes comment on, complain about or ask for a change to made in the sandwiches.

The hotel keeps chicken and peacocks. You see them wandering around in backyard. There is a swimming pool and another is being built. Obviously, they don’t seem to have a problem with water reaching the hotel taps as for many households in Infanta, Havana or in Cienfuegos.

A man, a doctor originally from the Netherlands, has lived in Cuba for 25 years and he has a daughter of 12 years old. He finds life in Cuba ‘difficult’. He expressed his frustration because the mother had objected the daughter travel abroad with him. The law is with the mother. He has been in a few countries. He though believes that Muslim women wearing a headscarf are ‘extremists’ and how his daughter himself enjoy is freedom. While a genocide was going on in the Middle East, our ‘liberated’ Dutch man in Havana is worried about Muslim women wearing a headscarf.

When I pointed out that in France, for instance, ‘extremists’ in the top echelons of power and defenders do not allow Muslim women to wear what they want whereas other women go almost naked and that was hypocrisy, that in general there has been a significant rise of racism and the far-right in Europe, that he doesn’t have the freedom to take his daughter abroad, he got a bit nervous, quickly ended the discussion and bid me farewell.

Next to us there was a white Danish man talking to his black Cuban friend about a mean who wore a pink shirt. The Danish man said that a man who wore a pink must be gay.

A few different nationalities ‘choose’ the hotel. Residents who come in organised and officil trips for political, cultural or cooperation reasons are noticeable.

Terminal del autobús

Café at the station: a weak cappuccino for €1.50 or $500 whereas a bunch of 11 bananas, 5 small onions, two sweet potatoes, a whole of papaya for $530. A bottle of 400 net cooked chickpeas imported from Spain for 680. 1L of cooking oil $1300/ €3.8. More expensive than in London! It went down to around €2.5 a couple of months later. Reminder: the price you pay depends on the exchange rate in the informal market. The official rate make the above prices more than two and half higher.

There is no open wifi at the station.

Many fat women. It reflects a diet of working class people in the country. They eat unhealthy cheap food because they cannot afford better food. People drink too much sugary soft drinks whereas mineral water is hard to find and expensive for many. People filter tap water.

In state institutions/companies, you might hear staff members calling each other compañero/a. I was mistaken for a Cuban once and was called compañero. I liked it. I used it once with a waitress in Havana. She forcibly said: No, I don’t want to be called compañera.”

I met J., a young guy, a theatre student, when I was looking for direction. We talked about ‘the political economy’ of Cuba. We agreed that the economic development of the country depends on three parties: the US, China and the Cuban regime.

I met Frank, a married Cuban, but has relationship with another woman. His friend used the offensive word, though not offensive in Cuba, mulata – a woman of a mixed race – to refer to the woman. The word is offensive according to the Gran Diccionario Oxford.

At Capri I had fish and brown rice (pescado y arroz moro) for €2.35 (of my euro exchange of €1 to 340 pesos). A nice dish, nicely cooked. Cafés without milk and tea range from 20 to 150 pesos (0.15/0.40 in my exchanged euro rate): 5 times less than the coffee in BonéMa, a café not far from Capri. The service might be slow though and you would not necessarily be served by the same person. Also, you rarely see the same waiters working two days in a row: I saw different ones everyday! There is a big screen inside. Channels include CNN, one that most Cubans do not get access to.

In Hotel Capri restaurant I had left a 100 CUP tip once. Another day a change of 80 CUP never came back. I wanted to see it go to the camarera (the waitress). 80 pesos buys 16 bus / Ruta taxi fares.

Cubans are still ‘behind’: unlike in London, for instance, hardly anyone uses their phone while walking.

Always ask for a menu with prices. In some tiendas they may charge you more than the real price if there is no price list or you don’t know the price, especially when they spot you are a foreigner.

Almost a week now. I feel healthier than in London: not a single cough or watery eyes. My gut and bowl are healthier too.

Havana enjoys some parks and (very) wide Avenues. No lack of space. Like in many countries outside the city centre there are rich and poor neighbourhoods.

At El Terminal del Omnibus I met a Russia who is also an American citizen from Texas. Like many other tourists he was heading to Varadero., one of the famous tourist attractions/resorts in the country. He thought Cuba was socialist and communist. He said that China too was communist! He struggled to consider the American state a criminal state when I mentioned its wars and the ongoing support for Israel, but he found it easy to consider the Russian state criminal.

The Texan barely spoke or understood English. He did not understand what ‘mass incarceration’ in the US means. He also thought that tourism, not service, is the biggest economic sector in Cuba. He did not like it when I told him that he should read and know more about Cuba and the subject. He is a sample of those visitors who come to Cuba with prejudice and barely know basic facts.

Fortunately, I was not in Cuba as a tourist.

In 2021, Cuba generated 0.38% of its GDP from Tourism where as Tunisia did generate 2.7%. Mexico 8.7%. Vietnam 2%. The main economic sector in Cuba is the service sector, which accounts for 74% of the GDP, followed by the industrial sector with 23%.

“Economists estimate that nearly everyone in Cuba is involved with the black market in one way or another. Cuba provides all of its citizens with basic food rations through a system known as the libreta. The libreta is shorthand for the ration book that marks the distribution of food and the amount that each person is allowed to purchase.

A serious problem for most Cubans is that the majority of goods – including soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper – are sold in pesos convertibles/dollars at the dollar shops, while Cubans are paid low salaries in Cuban pesos (moneda nacional). The markup on the goods is huge (around 240 percent on average), and thus makes daily necessities unaffordable to many Cubans

Tourists have to purchase a ticket through Via Azule using an international credit card. Cash is not accepted. If you want to save your cash because you are in Cuba for a long stay, pay by card even though there are transactions fees. Alternatively, outside the station you would be offered a seat in a collective taxi for €30 if you were travelling to Cienfuegos, for example. Cienfuegos is a city 250 kms from Havana. The ticket costs €20, i.e. around 6,800 pesos. A Cuban could pay as less as 75 pesos (between 0.10 and 0.30 cents) if they put their names in a waiting list called ‘second class’ list or something of that nature. This is something almost unique to Cuba: I did use inter-city transport in China, Turkey, Morocco and Thailand, for example, and there was no such difference between the cost of travel for a resident and a non-resident. However, in Cuba using the public transport within the city, one pays the same as a resident and in the local currency.

The worst quality of toilet paper I saw cost 105 pesos a roll. That is €0.30.

Like in other ‘third world’ countries, poverty pushes some Cubans to collect empty cans and bottles and sell them for few Pesos.

Los Presidentes Avenue, where José Miguel Gomez monument is, a few Rutas and buses pass. Yet there are not enough of them: you usually see many people at the bus stops even at 11am. The avenue is a good place to rest. There a few benches and the area is green. Fumes and noise though would not leave you at peace.

An Americano at Café Luna costs around €0.80 (€1 for 340 pesos exchange rate) more than twice the price in some places in Vedado (e.g. Capri restaurant, Centre Cultural Brujula). Some Cubans could afford to drink here. There were 5 schools kids at the café. You might get pressured to consume more after a while or if the staff think that your stay has ‘timed-out’.

Again, the wifi is not open in this café. In Café Luna you get access to the wifi if you ask for the passcode. They use Netgear – it reminds me of 20 years ago in London. They don’t provide access to their wifi. Some places do provide access to the Internet. Some others do not. If you are staying for long in the country, the best way is to get a Cuban phone line with ETECSA and browse the Internet like Cubans do.

On the same Avenida down, there is a monument dedicated to Salvador Allende, the Chilean president murdered in 1973 by a coup led by Augusto Pinochet and supported by the U.S.

A logic of a Cuban man I met: “since you are a tourist from Tunisia in Cuba, it means Tunisia is not a poor country. Cuba is.”

Fish with rice, a draft beer, a chocolate ice-cream and a 500ml bottle of water for 1220 CUP (in my exchanged euros €3.60).

Near the hotel I saw a grocer selling aubergine, turnips, carrots and other vegetables.

To my surprise, I saw aubergine in Cerro. Turnips too. People were queuing for their monthly ration/state provided cheap stuff such milk and rice.

I purchased a ticket to Cienfuegos for £17.17 (€20) using a UK Mastercard. The fare for a Cuban was less than €0.30.

Avoid the café facing Viazul ticket office. It is expensive, from 3 to 10 times the price of a coffee you find in other cafés.

On the side of the big Coppelia in La Rampa, there is a student restaurant. There is no sign or name at the entrance. I queried inside. It is a restaurant for students only.

Even in a not a poor area such Vedado you see street vendors: a man selling ice-cream (helado) on a bike. A woman was selling household items such buckets and brooms as well as beach toys. Here too you might get across a pile of rubbish (basura) and a stench of dark blue water.

A woman in Centro Cultural Brujula café tried to cheat me: she asked 500 pesos for a black Americano. The price you pay for a café at the expensive in Bus Terminal. I said it was impossible. Then she asked me to pay whatever I wanted. As a visitor/foreigner you are in a stronger position. She would be sued by the police for charging 4 times the price on the menu.

Dulces are sweets/pastries sold at Dulcerías. No quality. I have seen the worst croissant in one of them.

A great show at the Centro Cultural Buruja in Vedado. A group of Cuban and Aruba dancers, performers accompanied by a band. See raicesprofundacione at Centro Cultural Brujula (see video and photos). The performers and singers spoke a variation of Spanish Yoruba, originally from Benin.

After more than a week, I finally found a café that sells 1.5l of still water. It costs the price of a similar bottle in London: €0.73 in my exchange rate, not euros withdrawn from an ATM or exchange at a bank. Then I saw hundreds of big water bottles being delivered to a hotel. I guess the sale is either monopolised or shops do not sell them because most Cubans cannot afford the price. A place where to buy inexpensive big water bottles is at Gran Caribe (part of Habana Libre Hotel). It is a shop that sells mainly alcoholic drinks.

Prior to that I had to spend an hour with the military and military police because I mistook the military headquarters for the National Library whose building I had seen from a taxi two days before. And because it is common to see state buildings guarded. I was not stopped by two guards who were at the vicinity, but the ones at the entrance of the building were surprised to see me there.

My ID passed by three hands. Three people in uniforms took notes about me: the date I entered the country, where I come from, places of residence, etc. The final stage was an interrogation in an office. The man write down with pen on a thick notebook a few more details about including my profession and my objectives of being in Cuba. I blamed the two guards who did not notice or stop me.

The incident brought memory of Cairo 2013 when I was arrested for 5 days for photographing a power station and the 1990 arrest in Tunis when the state was a police state then.

All went on in Cuban Spanish. Outside the officer told his colleague that I spoke Spanish very well!

A visit to National Library (La Biblioteca Nacional) requires a booking by phone. And it is a guided one.

I inquired for a second time in a library about using wifi. There is no public wifi. You have to have your own like most Cubans. That requires a phone line with the state company ETESCA.

You can have lunch for 300/400 pesos, rice, chicken and cabbage, for 600/900 pesos for a better quality, or – this is my favourite – for $900/2000 main dish then add a beer and dessert, with a total between 1100 pesos and 2500 pesos (€3.50-$7.00 (based on exchange rate of €10 for 3400 pesos). All of the above is available in Vedado. You only need to look for the places and ask to see the menu although it usually available at the entrance.

Got 1 sprout and 1 green bean in a salad along with green pepper, brown rice and grilled chicken breast. Somethings you see only in hotels and some restaurants.

When someone starts talking you into buying something be cautious. They may take to somewhere they said to be over there (allí). You need to know where to stop and not to be carried away. However, most Cubans would be kind and willing to help when you approach them. Knowing/conversing in basic Spanish is crucial though.

Having an ice-cream, a ‘Cuba’ pizza or a can of cerveza is very common among Cubans.

A cheap café in La Rampa (behind Coppelía). It also serves the worst kind of pizza for €0.60. Two young guys (dos muchachos) were eating pizza and watching a clip on TV: a singer with a very luxurious background images of a swimming pool, a woman in bikini, etc. That Russian from Texas should explain this bourgeois culture in his ‘communist’ Cuba.

The coffee I had was so small, weak and sweet although there was no sugar in it. I have yet to find good coffee here. I miss Costa quality. In another café I was told that the coffee beans is imported from Venezuela and the water used is filtered.

My neighbour on the same floor was an old woman of 85 years old living on her own. She has two/three daughters and two sons. A son in the US and another in Spain. From the first day she told me not to hesitate if I needed something. She once asked me whether I had an iron to iron my clothes. I did not understand what she meant. She had heard the washing machine was on the previous day. So, the following day she knocked on my door. She was a holding an iron in her hand.

One of the slogans you see displayed in big in Havana is ‘Patria o Muerte’ ( Motherland or Death).

Focsa

“The Edificio Focsa (1956) represents Havana's economic dominance at the time. This 35-story complex was conceived and based on Corbusian ideas of a self-contained city within a city. It contained 400 apartments, garages, a school, a supermarket, and a restaurant on the top floor. This was the tallest high-strength concrete structure in the world at the time (using no steel frame) and the ultimate symbol of luxury and excess.” The building has 39 floors.

Part of the ground floor and next to the hotel there is Emperador – a bar-restaurant that serves inexpensive meals, including fish, shrimps/prawns and langouste/lobster. But like in La Roca, for instance, the rice served is not of a good quality. It is not a private restaurant and caters mostly for Cuban customers. They have a good service though.

Fosca’s ground floor is also a home of some three pr four shops shops, a post office, an ATM with a long queue all the time …

Café-Restaurant inside the building in the ground floor of Focsa is a place attended by locals. It is ‘economico’ (money-saving) to eat here as a Cuban told me. The place has a bar, a stage and a big screen playing video clips. Ordered croquettes as a starter – came with a dip – pork with brown rice and a beer – came in a can and served in a glass. Quality is again an issue: the taste is not good. I think because of the cooking oil. Cost: €2.60 in my exchange rate, tip included.

A few places are well-decorated, with lightening, comfortable chairs, air-conditioning, even a good service. The irony: that is contrasted with the mediocre quality of the ingredients available. Are in those restaurants and hotels that offer expensive menus the quality is better? Perhaps. One has to find out.

On the 33rd floor there is El Torre restaurant and bar. It has a view over Havana and the sea. It accepts only card payment, i.e. the prices are more than two and a half higher than when you pay at one of the restaurants at the ground floor using cash exchanged informally. The official rate in El Torre restaurant is 120 for your euro or dollar.

One day in front of Focsa I had a discussion with two people. It began with me asking a man in his early thirties about life in Havana. He expressed his dissatisfaction saying that everything was bad. When I him to give the reasons he just said that it was like that. He the reiterated what I heard a few times in Cienfuegos: “life was better before.” Again, he could not explain by giving the reasons.

The discussion development into the topic of the economic model in Cuba or in any other country. He did not believed that the embargo was a major cause in the economic situation of Cuba. I insisted that the question was about productivity and industrialisation. The man did not know that the main economic sector in Cuba was the service sector. He thought that the main driving production in the U.S. was weapons production with “60 to 70% of the economy.” Only when he asked him to use the Internet he starting changing his mind. The arms industry in the US between 2022 and 2024 amount to only between 3% and 4% of the US GDP annually.

At the end of the discussion I suggested they look for the uneven and combined development in and of global capitalism

A doctor assistant on Avenida de los Presidentes was waiting for a bus for half an hour. He told me that to get your teeth cleaned by a private dentist could cost something between 10,000 and 20,000 CUP. He spoke the salaries in Cuba, the long wait for the bus, etc. He said he wasn’t interested in Israel’s war on Gaza. He is busy thinking of how to make ends meet.

Cafe-Restaurant Rey y Gaby in Los Presidentes have only a digital menu. A coffee costs $1000 – the price of a coffee in London. There were some Cubans there.

Café-Restaurant Buona Sera: a 500ml bottle of water. The label on the bottle said ‘Purificada’ (purified). The water had a weird taste though. Opt for Ciego Montero agua mineral or the 5l big bottle.

A small pack of tampons made in Cuba sold in La Rampa for 500 CUP. How many Cubans could afford that? Similar hygienic stuff costs 3 dollars or more. Flip flops are sold for 3000 pesos.

Restaurant-Bar El Conejito [The Snapdragon] in Vedado, opposite the famous Focsa building: A waiter was getting my order and in the middle of he asked whether I needed to rent a place. He showed me photos of a nice apartment off Revolution Square, Calle 20 de mayo. A well-equipped, modern and big apartment. He would rent it out for €500 a month. The waiters here wore anti-virus masks. You do not see that so often. The food was not what I expected for 1320 pesos (4 small pieces of fish, rice with beans and hardly any side to speak of. Hotel Capri quality and quantity is better in the area. And it is cheaper. Half a pint of beer for 120 pesos. Even a better place is La Roca next door.

Apart from walking in Havana’s long streets and roads, there are various ways to travel around: collective taxi is perhaps the most practical and the quickest to find. Individual taxis are available, but expensive. They are the old famous cars with different colours. Most Cubans use buses and there very old and very news ones, big and small, blue and orange. Along with Ruta taxis, they the cheapest means of transport – 5 pesos as of April 2024. Ruta is a big taxi for 13 passengers. Another means if transport is a tricycle, electrical ones are many. It is used for both to cary people and goods.

In 10 days I never felt the smoke of cigarettes. It is the complete opposite of Hammamet (add link) or Sousse in Tunisia, where I often struggled to find a non-smoking area or not being bothered by smokers, as smoking in cafés and restaurants is not prohibited there.

A few cafés-restaurants seek a short-term gain when they notice you are a foreigner – they overcharge you and do not aim at making you come back.

A glass of beer could cost be as low as 100 CUP, but a pack of biscuits costs between 400/450 CUP. Paid 500 CUP to get to the coach station 1.5 km far from the place where I stayed in Havana. It was not a taxi, but an old tricycle.

For a guided visit of the National Library in Havana call for a booking: 78817657

Infanta to Boulevard San Rafael

This area is less than 10 minutes walk from Habana Libre and La Rampa. Its main characteristic that strikes a visitor is poverty: a big section of Havana that has been abandoned and deprived. It is an area that extends from the University of Havana in the west to El Prado in the east. Like Cerro, for instance, this part of La Habana should be contrasted with Tercera.

When I moved in an apartment in Infanta, there was a big pile of rubbish at the corner of the street, very smelly one and it had been there for long. Thirteen days later a miracle happened: the rubbish was collected, but the broken blue bins remained.

In Infanta, Bicky restaurant, a patisserie and a bar all enjoy a shiny clean walls, windows and very new and clean pavement. After three months in two cities, I found that the first street with organised set of rubbish bins. They were covered and used by Bicky. Another example of priority is accorded to business whether private or state-run one. Bicky is not a cheap restaurant. Another exception: a very new/reconstructed and shiny church on the same side of the street. At first, I thought it was a bank.

Opposite Bicky is Alma Mater Library. A library with a small collection of books and nothing special.

Here power outages are not as severe as in Cienfuegos, for instance. However, Mart shop that sells most important goods from a plasma TV to a juice had no connection to process payment for 4/5 days. On the third all the store had a power cut!

Also, prepare yourself for noise in some neighbourhood even after 10pm until dawn. Loud music is played with no consideration to neighbours, especially over the week-end or even in the morning. It is a social norm here. (see section in Cienfuegos)

I saw a few times men scavenging in the big blue rubbish bins. In one occasion a man was eating food straight from a plastic bin. Once I saw a man literally eating from a leftover skin of a mango he found in the rubbish bin.

Walking down toward the Malécon, there is a grocer and butcher at the same place. The butcher sells meat, but also parts of the animal I like: feet, liver and kidney. However, they are all uncovered exposed to dust, fumes and flies, especially that 20/30 meters from the shop there is a huge pile of stinking rubbish and flies are all over it. Unevenness characterises the area, as two hundred meters away, the close you get to the Malécon, the cleaner the area is. For instance, there is a litter bin in front of Bueníssimo ice-cream parlour and hardly any litter on the street.

Further down the same street and down the hill of Hotel Nacional de Cuba, there is Bueníssimo– a very modern ice-cream parlour that also sells cakes and it is air-conditioned. It has a big terrace facing the seafront. Prices of ice-cream range from 275 to 530 pesos, a coffee with milk for 290 pesos. International credit cards are not accepted. Neither are they accepted in the supermarket next door.

In the morning someone could be seen handing out or dropping in free copies of Granma, the Communist Party’s paper.

From Infanta, part of Cayo Hueso of La Habana, towards El Centro I walked through streets so filthy like in some barrios in Cienfuegos. I wondered again how malaria does not break out here. I did my shopping at Mercado San Rafael more than once, a 15 minutes walk from Infanta and about the same walking distance from Panamericana store and El Época commercial centre near Parque Fe del Valle. Around the market stench and a pile of rubbish. On the whole, Havana city centre is probably the filthiest city centre I have ever seen in my visits of almost 50 cities. The other dirty area that remains in my mind is the town of Inzigan Morocco, in 2008.

The simple fact that people through buckets of waste into the street bun or outside it without using a plastic bag makes the situation unprecedented in a city centre. Every morning I used to walk from home to the centre and Vedado. It is only a 10-minute walk. Yet not a day passes without passing by tens of dog wastes on the sidewalks and the street. Like the piles of rubbish, poverty and the struggle for the basics, locals got used to such a waste and such a view. One day a cute small dog approached me and jumped on my legs in a warm welcome. The owner – noticing my positive reaction – asked me whether I liked dogs. I replied: Yes, but I the streets in Havana are very dirty. She totally agreed.

Moreover, as described by some analysts, indeed there has been a big neglect of infrastructure maintenance. For two months in Infanta, anything that broken down (e.g. a sewer blown up) stayed broken. Meanwhile, typically, the tourist areas are looked after although Vedado too has been neglected in this respect.

On San Rafael, and walking towards Infanta, there is Paladar San Cristobal. A well-decorated, shiny restaurant. The former American president Barack Obama ate here.

On the same day I took Neptuno, a long street that looked a bit cleaner at first, but then a huge pile of rubbish appeared in an intersection of two streets. Big piled of rubbish are in fact everywhere in this area from Infanta to san Miguel, San Francisco, Zanja, Avenida de Italia and around, Dear tourist, Havana Bus Tour doesn’t take this route! It is a struggle to walk on the pavements. In Neptuno there are shops of different types, but most of them accept only pesos. There is even a laundrette.

Street vendors sell fruit and vegetable, bread, old books, ice-cream, pizza, dairies, and occasionally you see someone walking from one street to another trying to sell one or two items. Once A man was going around with a neon and a bulb.

Piles of rubbish that brought to my mind the heaps of rubbish in Italy and Lebanon we saw on TV years ago when rubbish collectors went on strike. But here the workers were not on strike: they are local authorities that are unable to keep the streets clean – in the Capital as well as in Cienfuegos. There is something structurally wrong with a state that cannot clear the rubbish off the streets, but at the same time hangs posters in a hospital earning people not to search in the rubbish because it might cause cancer! And there is no lack of means (see photo of 28/7 in Camera).

A truck with a cistern of water was delivered apparently drinkable water to the residents of San Miguel. Women holding cans and buckets were lining up.

Off Parque Fe del Valle there is Boulevard San Rafael: it the same filthy street where the mercado is. This part is where shops and cafes are in a huge contrast with the ones in the first part of the street. Then you are in Paseo del Prado / Paseo de Martí. Although there were a few bins in the parque, the morning I passed by rubbish was all over the place. An hour or so later, the parque was clean! In Havana in general sometimes you get across community workers sweeping the streets or removing grass off the side of the pavement, but the mountains of rubbish (basura) stays there ‘forever’ – in fact, they grow in size.

In San Rafael’s ‘modern’ section that leads to El Prado/José Martí one finds samples of the newly emerging private cafés-restaurants offering better quality food, and drinks, comfortable seats, music and air-conditioning, targeting a particular minority of Cuban customers and foreign visitors/tourists, reinforcing/taking social divisions in the capital as elsewhere to a different level. The picture is following: integrating in the capitalist way of doing things, normalising poverty and affordability and unaffordability, the haves and the have-nots further eroding what has remained of the ‘social justice’ objectives and deepening unevenness. And even here, one morning heading to have a coffee in the area, there was a blown up sewer and a strong smell.

A few people could be seen trying to sell small items such pens and jewellery. Once a woman was selling very few earrings, rings and necklaces one might assume that they were her own.

Piles of stenches of rubbish, streets spotted with dogs excrement, throwing used items willy-nilly in front of the houses, etc. becomes the fault of the poor who are not ‘educated’ and ‘civilised’. The same poor who cannot afford the cafes-restaurants of the the like of San Rafael, have to be content with the junky pizza. Over the years the poor develop habits: spending money on 4 cans of cerveza rather than fruits and vegetables.

Of the modern section of San Rafael is Avenida de Italia. Here there are shops but also a big commercial centre called La Época with almost everything, but payment is in dollars – Cuban or international cards (not American express, for example) are accepted. On Saturday there is a weekly market. Things you do not find in the shops and the commercial centre could be found here. For instance, there are no fruits and vegetable in the commercial centre or in the dollar shops in general, but sometimes spices are available. Thus one might have to do the daily shopping from 4 different places in the stifling heat and high humidity.

On the Saturday market there was a queue for spices at one stand – it was probably the only vendor.

Out of San Rafael and back into Avenida de Italia, turn left and walk 500 meters and then turn right. ‘China Town’ consists of 6/7 restaurants. International cards are not accepted.

Sociolinguistically, it is not an exaggeration to say that on the street or coming from people’s homes the most frequent words you hear after ‘where’, ‘but’, ‘hola’, etc. are pesos (the national currency), tarjeta (card), falta (need), Americano (means dollar) and agua (water). The latter refers to the problem of water not reaching the taps.

Havana Vieja (Old Havana)

In Havana Vieja I saw a blown up sewer of human waste. It is a touristic area and there are a few shopping stores, restaurants and bars. As far as I recall, the touristic section in 2024 looks much more developed than in 2015. A few museums and new buildings have been constructed or reconstructed. This tourist section looks clean and there small rubbish buns and sewage water. Thus one might conclude: here where money is being poured in. On my way down to the old town, I took Zanja. Almost all street off Zanja are ‘infested’ with huge piles of rubbish which have not been collected for weeks.

Some sections of Havana Vieja look like squares in Italian or Spanish cities and towns, but they are not as rich as they are.

There are a few touters and a single man might be solicited by a hooker. These two social phenomenon are a product of tourism and are not unique to Havana or Cuba.

Paseo del Prado and the Malecón

A huge Boulevard that leads to the National Capitol on the right and to the Malecón on the left. It houses one of the most luxurious hotels in Havana and the country, El Paseo del Prado. The Boulevard houses old crumbling buildings too. The old and the new are always next to each other, on the top of each other. A walk on the Malecón from El Paseo to Infanta, for example, with an attention to details, would probably fill you with ‘disgust’ and ‘admiration’. Uneven and combined ‘development’ at its best in this urban and commercial context.

I allow myself to exaggerate here: How many light years do separate residents (Cubans) living in San Rafael’s poor and filthy section of street – which is also the bigger section of it – or those around calle 68 in Cienfuegos and those residents in Hotel El Paseo? One can only compare what residents of the aforementioned hotels eat and what that woman in Cienfuegos said while she was buying cheap (quality) rice: “This rice is for animals.”

the luxury hotels and the large and fairly clean boulevards and nice villas. A huge section from, say, hotel Gran Aston to Melia Cohiba and Comodor. A few kms of stark contrast with the dirty centre and the dirty Havana Vieja. It looks that is here where a lot of investment have been done, abandoning the centre with the exception of the new gigantic ‘blue’ hotel on 23. Almost the same happened in Tunis, where Les Berges du Lac and beyond was founded as a ‘new city’ and old town and the city centre, including Avenue de Paris were left almost they were 50 years ago. Worse, the pavements of Bab Edzeera, for example, were ‘the same’ in 2022 as they were in 1990: broken and filthy.

A preliminary note: sometimes when I compare some barrios in Havana and Cienfuegos, how some people live – their houses, streets, shops, occupations, the level of poverty, the lack of clean water and the frequent power outages – and how some others in the same cities live – their access to the dollar shops, their houses, their cars or motorbikes, what they afford in hotels and private restaurants – I conclude how stark the (widening) gap is. It even looks that social/‘class’ division is even higher than in rich countries. A tourist would be happy to indulge in their ‘Orientalist’ view and in ‘socialism mean poverty’.

Alberto, a Cuban, a pilot in the army and has more than two qualifications, including one in mechanical aviation, had studied in the Soviet Union like a few Cubans. Because he is a combat pilot he cannot leave the country for security reasons even if gets a work contract from Spain, for example. He earns a meagre state salary. Before the pandemic he married a Spanish woman he had met in Havana. He was planning to move to Spain, but she died of the virus in Cuba. Alberto thought that a salary of a pilot in Cuba is the lowest of any pilot salary in the world. His daughter sometimes asks him: “Dad, why did you go to university?” He said that less and less young Cubans joined university nowadays.

Off El Parque Central there Hotel La Plaza and hotel Grand Manzana, La Plaza cafeteria-bar is not expensive and has live music. There was no air-conditioning, but fans were on. Uncomfortable black chairs, but nice chairs at the restaurant, where the prices were reasonable . Again, it depended on what rate you would have exchanged your hard currency.

Hotels could be private and part of a chain (e.g. Spanish or German), or mixed (e.g. state-owned but managed privately, or totally state-run hotels. And that affects prices but not necessarily the service. The prices in restaurants of the state-run hotels are lower that in the other ones. There are trade unions to defend workers rights and improve their conditions, but they are not independent unions.

Avenida 1ra

In front of Yara Cubena in La Rampa I took bus P1 on a Sunday morning. You pay the man at the front door when you get on. Get a small note of 5/10/20 ready. The single ticket costs 5 pesos (0.015 € in my euros). The bus was not as grounded as during the week, but there were seats available. Stops are not announced anywhere on the bus: no screen, no names of stops. The bus was exclusively full of mostly poor/very poor Cubans. Loud music was on. It was the first time in my travels on public transport within a city I experienced such an atmosphere. I was the only foreigner on the bus.

An old poster on the bus from 2017 read ‘Por Cuba: Elecciones Generales 2017-2018: genuina demostración de democracia (‘For Cuba: General Elections 2017-2018: genuine demonstration of democracy’).

I got off the bus around calle 60 where there is a big supermarcado and a couple of huge unfinished hotels. A new hotel is called MAREALTA boulevard. That was a sample of how they kept building hotels and the the pandemic hit. It’s 2024 and tourism has not recovered so that they can finishing constructing those hotels.

At the Supermercado all the meat was frozen meat and there were a lot of canned products.

The area is a western suburb of Havana: mansions, foreign embassies, diplomatic residences, etc.

There are a few cafes on the beach. The beach is not a sandy one. The area is characterised by uneveness: old and new buildings and houses. One corner looked had modern shops with all necessary items. On the opposite side, an old black woman emerged from her basement house. In fact, it looked like garage more than a house.

Back to Avenida 1ra, villas and from time to time a café or a restaurant. A famous heladeria (ice-cream parlour) called El Gelato is on the way. It has a very colourful range of pattisserie too. I continued towards Café Fortuna Joe. It drizzled from time to time than changed to torrential rain by midday. I had a settle in a café at the intersection with calle 24. Then it was a but flooded so I had to take my trainers off and walk bare feet for a few meters.

The area is fairly clean, but occasionally some rubbish is chucked away willy-nilly. Some hazards reflect the same general lack of maintenance and improvement in infrastructure. The contrast with central Havana poor barrios is big. It is a normalisation of disparity found in most cities of the world.

La Estación Central de Ferrocarriles ( a train station)

The station is closed as massive reconstruction was taking place. The station’s history gies back to 1837 when Cuba became the fifth country in the world to have a railroad, and the first Spanish-speaking country.

Opposite the station – also called el terminal – there is a park and a status of Antonio Mella. El parque is also a taxi station – yellow public taxis and private ones. You can go to Guanabo from here. A group of men were having a heated and loud discussion about the cost of living.

Around the station and 5 minutes walk from the luxury hotels and El Parque Central there are many crumbling buildings and even ruins. There is a market of pulses, a couple of fruits and vegetables, and alcohol drinks too, and 4/5 shops selling sandwiches and drinks. Most of the sandwiches are in two ingredients: bread and meat. There was a smell of excrement when I walked through the place. Then I passed a bakery with a huge crowd in front of it.

University of Havana

It is a walking distance from the famous Calle 23. Snack bar Los Perritos is one of the places near the university. It offers food, drinks and coffee (probably cappuccino, for it depends on the availability of milk). Opposite there is a nice café called Terraza Café. There are more cafés around the university.

Opposite the university there is Plaza Mella and a monument dedicated to him. Mella was a communist student leader and one of the Communist Party’s early leaders, described by writer and journalist Richard Gott as “a brilliant student orator shot in 1929 when in exile in Mexico City, assassinated on Machado’s orders. Out walking with Tina Modotd, the Italian photographer, he died in the house of [the famous Mexican painter] Diego Rivera.”

Giant columns characterise the university. A few green spaces too. It is a complete opposite of most of the London School of Economic, for instance, where glass is everywhere. Climate is partly a factor in such a difference. From outside, the structure and the building of Havana University seems to endure because of the dry weather.

Enrollmemt is free for all students. So is accommodation for those who come from outside Havana. There is a big dormitory, for instance, on the street Los Presidentes, only a few minutes away. Meals are also provided, but ‘the quantity is very little’, a student told me. Students from Havana pay if they wish to in eat in the comedor (the university restaurant). Those who come from outside Havana usually bring food from home with them. The dormitory provides basic cooking facilities.

The very few students who were there in mid-September looked healthy and wore nice clothes. That is part of the interesting aspect of Cuba: salaries of the majority of the parents mean nothing, but a few manage to find money for buying clothes and eating out.

On my way down, one of the guards asked me not to take photos using a camera, but I could use a phone. He chatted with me a bit then asked me to buy him a refreshment! His monthly salary must be no more than 2000 pesos (around $17).

The environment and health

The state insists on maintaining hygiene and prevention from from disease, but it cannot even clear huge piles of smelly rubbish from the neighbourhoods.

A shocking view is the huge rubbish ‘bin’ just opposite the most famous monument in the capital, the country one would say, El Capitolio in central Havana. The container emits a very bad smell and a few meters away a sewer has blown up. The big park nearby, El Parque de Fraternidad, has half of its benches broken and unusable.

Like in Cienfuegos the number of Cubans who throw paper, a can of soft drink and other similar used item is incredible. All around El Parque de Fraternidad and where there are arcades and behind Boulevard San Rafael is very dirty and stinking. There are a few shopping areas as well as fast food shops. Exceptionally, there is a small and nice pattisserie. There are a few dollar supermercados too. One small dollar shop has a strong bad small just at the entrance. The sheer number of decaying and abandoned building is huge.

Opposite El Capitolio a huge construction site.

I personally would not consider living in central Havana unless I would have to restrict my movement around very few areas and streets. I would live somewhere in the north west of the city – Avenida 1ra or 3ra.

In a visit to a policlinic, a public health centre off San Lazaro on Calle Aramburu, I noticed that the building inside is not bad. What struck me, and confirmed what some Cubans had told me in Cienfuegos, is the poor equipment and instruments I saw in one of the dentist’s clinic. The private clinic in Sousse and Hammamet, Tunisia are 20 times better and as advanced as the ones you see in London, for example. I inquired about the price. $50 US I was told. However skilled of the doctor might be I did not go for a cleaning session for two reasons: the poor equipments and not being able to pay by credit card. Yes, it is not like before: the health system and provision has declined. Investment is going into other sectors.

Unsurprisingly, the poor in these neighbourhoods undertake a lot of DIY using poor instruments and tools. Evidently, and like the stark example of digging a well in Cienfuegos, work on something takes longer time and more energy, which adds to the daily struggle in a tropical climate.

In San Lazaro almost every two or three houses there is a shop. They are selling almost the same thing. A few of them were selling very few items. People in this poor area are desperate to to make ends meet. It might sound an exaggeration, but it seems that every household in the poor neighbourhood of central Havana want to open a shop of they could.

In Infanta, for instance, from time to time you get across some road sweepers in Infanta, and they look more like community workers than road sweepers. However, they are very few to deal with the amount of litter on the streets.

****

When Cubans asked me whether I liked Cienfuegos/Havana/Cuba, my answer was always the unexpected: yes and no. All of them expected the cliché answer tourists give. As one man told me: “But foreigners like Cuba.” I agreed with him, but I added that those who said they liked Cuba they visited Cuba for a few days/two weeks. They enjoyed the sun, the beaches, the rum, etc as well as Holguin and Varadero. As a couple of a rental house in Cienfuegos said: “The visitors who come here do not know Cuba and go back home with very little knowledge of the country.”. That is modern tourism.

Art and ‘Culture’ (see also similar section in Cienfuegos)

There are no commercial ads on Cuban TVs only ads such as ‘say no to drugs’ or ‘no to violence against children’ by UNICEF or a promotion of a future event.

Some clips on Telehit MUSICA that can be seen, for example, on a screen at Hotel Habana Libre cafeteria – La Rampa – or at the lobby of Capri hotel project highly sexualised images/movements/depiction of women no different from what you see on Western TVs. Some women appear in music clips wearing pornographic outfits. Similar sexualisation can be seen in Cubanos en Clip on Clave channel, So, a question to those who think that Cuba is communist/socialist: how does this very explicit bourgeois/capitalist culture fit in the values of socialism? If Che was to see this aspect of Cuba, he might go back to the countryside and take up arms again as he did – albeit for different reasons – when he went to Africa and then Bolivia.

Singer Kylie Minogue was on Canal Habana/Cine+ channel. An Italian documentary about the singer and song writer Laura Pausini. From Baloise Session the American singer Laura Pergolizzi. Commercial and mainstream American movies include Top Gun and Interstellar and the American series Juvenile. But also a series about domestic terrorism in the U.S. – Manhunt Unabomber. An interesting movie from 2022: Women Talking.

There is a lot, a lot of sports on TV, not only games, but also documentaries such as the one about the American basketball team Chicago Bulls. Crime series are on Multivisión. Three Turkish TV series were running – two of them in the same evening (!). In one of the scenes two women were sharing a bottle of read wine, drinking directly from the bottle. One of the series depicts corruption and power struggle in business – characters representing mainly a section of the Turkish bourgeoisie. A British-American crime drama – Miss Scarlet and the Duke set in mid-19th century London. Also, the 2021 Italian drama Il Commissario Ricciardi (Inspector Ricciardi), a BBC documentary about Prince Andrew)’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

In a programme called La Vía on Caribe TV a professor from Havana University talked about ‘values, solidarity and responsibility’ in citizens in the city. For example, how should citizens behave while driving and respect of the traffic lights, etc. The images were selective and unlike what I had seen in the city centre, let alone in the poor areas. The big yellow public taxi, for instance, was shown more than once. That is the taxi that Cubans in Havana spend between 45 and hour in the queue before they get a seat. Once only imagine how much time one spends every day in commuting to and from work.

In programmes such as this there is no mention of socialism although the word revolution comes up from time to time. A few programmes on a couple of TV channels cover some history of Cuba and Latin America as well as Fidel’s era and ideas, socialism, anti-capitalism, imperialism, but Hugo Chavez too joins in the script. Fidel on Caribe channel, for example, is a cult. Another ‘programme’ on the same channel focused on community work and how to raise consciousness in dealing with the daily life issues facing the neighbourhood. Such programmes are regular ones. They might be called ‘awareness programmes’.

La Rampa Cine on 23 and Yara opposite La Habana Libre hotel are two of the main cinemas in Havana, located 500 hundred meters from each other.

Visa/tourist card extension

Make sure you had purchased travel insurance before travel to avoid the hassle in prolonging your visa.

The immigration office is in 19 street, one street from the big Copellia in the centre.

When I contacted them they asked me to provide travel insurance and a stamp of 625 pesos.

In buying a new travel insurance expect a long wait. I waited for more than two hours. Always coordinate with the others to know when it is your turn.

The office is called Esen and on Calle 23 n y o close to El Ministerio de la Salud (The Ministry of Health). The insurance is not expensive and gives you access to the emergency centre Camilo Cienfuegos if you had any emergency health issues. Payment is in cash or with a Cuban bank card only. The woman who issued me the insurance document was super kind and helpful.

Ensen was advertising a job vacancy on its door. The basic salary was 7,800 pesos. Again, another example that indicates that state salaries are irrelevant when it comes to real life and the cost of living. Certainly, there are some benefits besides the salary, but it is still far away from meeting one’s daily needs.

I had a problem finding the stamp. Two post offices, far from each other, could not sell stamps because of a technical issue!

My first experience: Google did not give me the Immigration Office in Vedado. I went to the one in Tercera, perhaps 5 kms far from the city centre. It was an opportunity to see the other Havana.

The collective taxi is a good option to reach the office. You take it in front of Havana Libre Hotel. It costs 200 CUP for a at least 5 kms journey. That is 40 times more than the fare of the Ruta 13 taxi. The first is the private, usually cars and you would need to bear the strong smell of the fumes. The Ruta taxi is part of the public transport. The fare is 5 CUP, but the driver might keep the change if he is given 10 CUP. The private taxi driver would make at least 2,000 pesos in a return journey. Compare that with many monthly state salaries.

The office in Tercera opens from 8 to 5 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and from 8 to 12 on Thursday and Saturday. You may find a long queue. The office is located in Tercera, and that’s what you tell the taxi driver before you get in. After three hours of waiting I met an officer from the Ministry of the Interior. She was crisp and forceful. Contrary to I was told by the Cuban Consulate in London, she said visa/tourist card extension could not be done a week before three months expiry, but 36 hours before. During the long wait I could feel Cubans speak/complain about the bureaucratic process and how it is frustrating. Unfortunately, I could not understand details in their conversation, as they were speaking fast and my Spanish was not even at an intermediate level. The officer did not mention at all what papers I needed to extend my stay.

A few days later I went to the office in Vedado. A woman told me another version: come and renew the visa when it expires. I was not convinced. She asked a colleague of her. He said come one day before the expiry date.

Opposite the Immigration Office there is an education centre of languages for foreigners. When I inquired I was told that there were courses in September. A woman there said she would contact me for private lessons.

José Martí departure

The queue at the security check was bit long, but the check itself was quick and one might say ‘loose’. There was no free wifi at the airport! And it is here where the use of the peso ends; only euro and dollar were accepted at the airport shops. Mineral water is more expensive than in London airports.

The flight Havana-Paris took 8h 25 minutes.

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