An unexpected trip to a famous holiday location: Cuba. Trip to Havana and Varadero
Arriving in Cuba almost by chance with a trip not included as an appendix of a tour in Central America including Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Indeed at the end of the route the Central I and a friend of the Sorrento peninsula, we found in Cancun in advance on the return flight and we decided to spend a few days in Cuba reached the airport of Havana with a one hour flight we directed in a residential neighborhood in the city through an agency where we had booked in Cancun for rent. The house was clean and tidy as well as the room, the nice lady but strict with his guests so that made it clear, accustomed as he was with the Italians in search of easy adventures that would not be possible to bring girls from her. The same evening we took a long walk on the promenade realizing the extreme poverty in which he lives to this country. Every person we met in the street offered to help in finding anything from the restaurant, the ballroom, the girl to spend the night. Closer to the center passing near historic houses presenting facades crumbling ruins, crumbling terraces, gates bumpy but with traces of fine architectural ornaments in memory of their glorious past. A sad end for these buildings on the waterfront was once the residence of aristocrats, and now brothels. Is' yes, because here in Cuba, prostitution seems to be the only bisness possible and so every house is a brothel, and every girl you meet on the street is a potential prostitute. Never mind that prostitutes make it seem that he likes you or if you hooked on the street trying to convince you to possess it, the important thing is the reward that follows them because this often is the only way to survive. So you can not be surprising if the family members are condescending or even if you favor this mercinomio. Certainly for someone like me to come to Cuba for tourism purposes only everything looks very bleak, especially in the main pedestrian course, the Prado, where in prostitution are children of course declare all eighteen. Eat, how we do almost every night, a lobster restaurant in a hotel that once was certainly luxurious. Cuba is expensive for what it offers because foreigners are charged with the convertible peso, a currency coined just for them and of course this bill has a value greater than the local pesos, 16 times stronger! Obviously not disdain even the U.S. dollar but is officially banned. The hotel where we eat lobster more than we would offer a nice terrace on the Prado, but the course is dim because here we have to economize on electricity and darkness promotes prostitution. We return to our home by taxi. The next day we visit Havana but we have a guide with us and so many interesting things to jump. The capital city during the day is better, the prostitutes do not see, or are devoted to something else, have a job, attend school, in fact a normal life because the metamorphosis takes place at sunset. Come on in the university district where there is a beautiful marble staircase, a library scuriosiamo eyeing anti-American books, we inform you on the bus for the beach where we morrow, and point towards the center. By day the Prado there are children playing, mothers carrying babies for a stroll in a wheelchair, the tourists who make the "tanks". What else can a tourist in Havana, the shops are few and those that are nearly empty or with things that we used it twenty years ago and that goes for the discs, there are those in the window of vinyl 60s . In the bars then you are afraid to come because besides not be nothing in places where they are hosted temeresti sit. Although there are local tourists, but those are only to use them and certainly do not represent normality. Beyond the Prado opens a large leafy square in Havana because it and it is poor but rich in public parks. Here are the statues of the Cuban history and the Capitol, similar to that of Washington with marble columns, the stairway and dome.
Let's go to our home the next day we wake up early because the taxi to reach the bus station and go to Varadero, Cuba's most famous resort The beach is long but nothing exceptional, just local color and so international tourism . We bathe and eat in a hut on the beach that serves seafood at moderate figures. Disappointed we return to Havana, we take a ride on the Prado and return all'affittacamere.
The next day we avoid like every day the kids who have very favorable exchange rates but are likely scams, and discover that the center of Havana still has much to offer us. Almost by chance we find the old town and it seems another city, in a few tens of meters we screened fifty years after the rest of the capital. The central district is the patrimony of mankind and is kept neat and tidy. There are beautiful buildings in Spanish style patio with flowers, monuments, squares, green parks, cafes and restaurants where they performed folk groups. Moreover, this historically set in Santo Domingo was the principal city Caribbean and is now the best preserved. The area is completely pedestrian, has museums and memorial houses and a beautiful cathedral that we also visit inside because, like others, claims the remains of Columbus. Here the broad avenues crossed by large American cars 50s are replaced by narrow alleys and pedestrian streets traveled by horse-drawn carriages. Every time you see some old mulatto woman wearing a distinctive dress and a multicolored headdress smoking a huge Cuban cigar. Havana is a fascinating history and we are sorry to have discovered only now. Let us return to our lodging for the last night, the morning after we reach the airport via the huge square, where rallies are made popular dominated by a high obelisk and the famous image of Che on the façade of a building. At the airport take the plane and go back to Cancun in Mexico to continue our journey in Central America.