Everything I Know about Cuba -- By My Friend George Lu

We stayed in Sirenis La Salina in Varadero during Nov 21-28, 2008. This is a review about traveling in Cuba.

Local Currency

Cuba is like China 20 years ago. They have 2 types of currencies: CUC (convertible peso) for foreigners and CUP (national peso) for local residents. 1 CUC equals 25 CUP, but lots of goods can only be purchased by CUC.

You can not use foreign currency (U.S. or Cdn $) anywhere. Everything must be exchanged into CUCs first. You can exchange money at the airport, in the hotel, or in the bank. The airport exchange office and the bank have better rates than the hotel front desk. But sometimes the bank also has a branch office inside the hotel.

When we traveled in November 2008, we pay $1.43 Canadian to buy 1 CUC. It is suggested not to bring U.S. dollars to Cuba because there is 11% additional service charge just for U.S. dollars, as a government anti-American policy.

Tips

Cuban’s average monthly income is about 15 CUCs. They all expect tips. Based on some research, I usually do the following:

Maid/cleaning lady – gifts (soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, baseball cap) or 2 CUCs each day

Bar tender – 1 CUC every 2 orders

Waiters – 1 CUC in the buffet, 2 CUCs at the a-la-carte

What to bring

Gifts – soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, candies

Sun screen – bring at least 60 SPF, 500ml per person for 1 week stay

Mosquito repellent – keep spraying as soon as it gets dark

Thermo mugs – it keeps your beer cool, and also saves you a lot of trips back to the bar as their cups are very small

Cloth line – so you can dry your cloth

Custom

When you go through custom, you have to go to see the officer one at a time. Only very young kids are allowed to go with their mother.

Do not bring any walkie-talkie or any two-way radio device into Cuba, they are not allowed.

When you exit Cuba, make sure your luggage does not exceed the weight limit. Cuba airport is very strict about luggage weight, and will charge you extras even if your luggages exeeds allowed weight by 1 pound.

Money exchange

When we arrived in Varadero, the custom went quite smooth. While my wife and kids were waiting for the luggage, I walked to the departure area to exchange some CUC. The money exchange place is called “cadesa” in Spanish. For $600 Canadian, the cadesa lady only gave me 400 pesos, when the exchange rate that day was 0.70. So she gave me 20 peso short. With long line-up waiting behind me, and my family waiting outside, I didn't have much time reasoning with the cadesa lady. So if you want to exchange at the airport, make sure you count the money in front of her before letting the next customer go to the counter. The cadesa lady would not count in front of you, that is the only way she steals your money. When I talked with my friends who had visited Cuba before, they all had similar experience of being short-exchanged.

Hotel

One important thing about selecting a hotel in Cuba is the hotel’s age. Being a communist country, all hotel works get paid the same so there is no interest in keeping their hotel in good shape. Therefore a 5 year old hotel will look like a 20 year old hotel in Canada, as damages such as water leak does not get repaired in a timely manner. The trade-off of picking a new hotel is the location, since the downtown area is usually occupied by older hotels. Newer hotels can only be built in remote districts, which means more taxi costs if you want to visit downtown a lot.

Sirenis La Salina is a very new hotel at far east end of Varadero. The hotel consists of 20 small 3-floor buidings, each has about 36 rooms. The buildings are located like a “8” shape, with the beach on top (north) and the lobby and buffet at bottom (south), and all the buildings along the way. The 2 swimming pools are in the middle. It is so big that it takes me 15 minutes to walk from lobby to the beach. They have golf-carts going around the hotel so you can hop onto one if you do not feel like walking. The problem is, sometimes you have to wait for long time before the next gold cart to show up. So before you book the room, you should think what you want the most, and then ask for a room either near the beach (if you go to Varadeo because of the nice beach) or near the buffet (if you plan to go out of the hotel very often), or somewhere in the middle (like what we did).

Room

Because of Cuba’s nice weather, there are lots of insects and lizards living there. So if you are not a nature lover that enjoys seeing a gecko climbing on your wall, you should ask for a room on the 2^nd or 3^rd floor of a building (all Sirenis La Salina’s buildings have floors)

Their rooms are very big. Make sure you ask for extra beds when making reservation if you are travelling with children. We have a king size bed, and also got 2 single beds for our kids. Electricity in the hotel is 220 volts, so you need to bring a converter if you bring electronics that only accept 110 volts. There is a safety box in your room, and you will pay 2 CUC per night no matter using it or not (that is the only payment you have to make to the hotel when you check out).

Each person will get one white towel and one blue beach towel. You will pay 60CUC penalty if you lose your beach towel.

Every room has a nice balcony outside where you can hang your swimming suits to dry. Make sure you bring cloth line and pins to hang your cloth.

The maid usually cleans your room well, you should leave a tip or a gift on your pillow and the maid will collect it when she cleans your room. The maid also fills your mini fridge with pops and bottled water. When you leave your room, always bring the bottled water with you, as they serve tab water everywhere else. Do not drink tab water in Cuba, it is not safe for our stomach. I let my kids drink coke in the restaurant to avoid drinking tab water.

Food

Buffet

Like most Cuban hotels, there is a huge buffet restaurant in Sirenis La Salina. In the morning the omelets are very good. For lunch and dinner there are lots of different meat (beef, lamb, pork, rabbit, chicken) and seafood, but the variety for vegetables is limited. They have salad too but with vegetables such as bok-choi. For dinner the food is better than lunch, sometimes they have lobsters and crabs. I found that some lunch food is actually dinner left-over’s from previous night. Most people complain that the food is too plain or too salty, simply because Cubans cook differently than western, so expect the difference as part of culture.

Like any buffet, you get bored after visiting the same place for several days. But the kids always love the pastas cooked fresh in front of you, and I can always find some nice meat dish at the grill station as I am a meat lover.

Tip is usually 1 CUC for every meal for the whole table.

A-la-carte

Every room is allowed to have one a-la-carte reservation in a nice restaurant. If you have your birthday or wedding anniversary .

there, you can have 2 bookings. In Sirenis La Salina the restaurants are Cuban, Italian, Japanese, Mediterranean (seafood), and French. We visited the seafood restaurant and found the lobster to be salty and dry, but the salad bar is better. Most people say that the Japanese restaurant there is the best, but we couldn’t get a reservation because it was booked for all 7 days when we were there.

Remember that there is dress code for the a-la-carte restaurants. That basically means no shorts, no jeans, and no sandles.

Because of its higher class, tip is usually 2-5 CUC for every table.

Bars

There are lots of bars, and everything is free: the main lobby bar has nice environment and glassware; the piano bar is more classic with a lady playing piano all the time; the theatre bar has loud music so people can dance, and of course, our favorite swim-up bars right in the middle of the two swimming pools. The swim-up bars not only serve drinks, but also snacks such as hamburger, hotdog, fries and pizza.

I tip 1 CUC for every 2nd trip to the same bar. Every time I go, I make sure that I get drinks for everyone in my family.

Drinks

I love Cuban beer. They brand, Crystal, is one of the best beer I liked. Of course we also had lots of wine. Cuba’s most famous cocktail is called mojito (sounds like mo-hee-do), you must try it. My kids loved Daiquiri (I told the bartender not to add any rum).

Pool

They have 2 pools: quiet pool and activity pool.

All activities, such as salsa lesson, water volleyball games, and fun games are held in the activity pool. There is also a 3 storey high slide in the activity pool. That’s where we spent most of our time.

The quiet pool is only relatively quite compared to the activity pool, since it also plays music. But it certainly has less people so we enjoy peace there when we are tired.

Beach

The beach is beautiful – very smooth sand but sometimes big waves. Watch your steps when you walk into the sea as there are few rocks hidden in the sand. The sport centre is on the far right side of the beach. You can rent snorkeling equipment, kayaks, petal boats all for free there, but limited to 1 hour per person. If you pay 15 CUC, they will take you out to a snorkeling cruise in a small island 20 minutes away, where you can see lots of fish in the sea.

In the morning there is yoga class on the beach. In the afternoon there are dance lessons there.

Nightlife

Evrery night there is a show between 9:30 and 10:30. The water ballet show takes place in the activity pool, while all the other shows happans in the theatre. So far we watched a magic show, a romance show (ballet), a international show (pop dance), a arobic show, and the water ballet show.

After the show time, the theatre turns into a disco. I have not stayed very late, but heard that the disco dance will continue there until 2am.

Most young visitors take taxis into downtown for clubs at night.

Varadero Tour

There is a double decker bus going around in the city of Varadero. For 3 CUC you get a day pass. The kids love to sit on the top floor as it is open-top. The bus will go on the main street of Varadero, passing 3 flea markets and some famous buildings such as the Al Capone house and the Dupont house.

When you get to downtown, you must visit the beach as the sand is so smooth and white. There are horse carriages that you can sit on. When you ask the price, they will tell you 10 CUC. But when you pay, they will say that it is 10 CUC per person. For our case, after visiting the first flea market, we want to go to the next one without waiting for the bus. So I asked the wagon driver outside of the flea market. When the driver said 10 CUC, I asked “is it for 4 of us”, and he said “that is for one person”. When I tried to walk away he said “kids half price so 30”. I was still not interested then he said “OK 20, I will be your tour guide”. Finally we only paid 10 as I insisted not wanting him to be the tour guide, as I cannot understand their English anyway.

Havana Tour

Havana is so beautiful. If you take the tour bus it will be 69CUC per person (lunch included). We rented a taxi to go there by ourselves, 200 CUC for the whole day. When we were in downtown Havana, the driver arranged a horse wagon for us for only 10 CUC for 1 hour. Be careful when you buy snacks on the street as they will charge you the same amount in CUC when they charge local Cubans in CUP. We were brought to an expensive place for lunch as they gave commission to the driver. The food is great though and although it might be extremely expensive for local Cubans (20 CUC for main course), it is affordable by us J

Dolphinarium / Catamaran

Most people go to a catamaran trip for 89CUC. They take you to a remote island called Cayo Blanco on a catamaran. On the way there you stop in the middle of the sea to do some snorkeling, and also stop in one place to swim with dolphins for 5 minutes. When you get to the island, which they claim to have the whitest sand in Cuba, you also have a lobster lunch there. It is the most popular excursion, but we did not have time to attend. It is highly recommeded by everyone who has attended the tour.

There is a closer place for swimming with dolphins, a place called dolphinarium right in Varadero. We took the double decker bus there. It is 89CUC which includes 30 minutes dolphin show, and 30 minutes swimming with dolphins. Unlike dolphins in the sea, these dolphins are trained to do tricks, such as pushing you into the air, or jumping over on top of you.