Well, then you include Cuba in your travel planning with the idea that there is something special to be found there because there are not so many tourists yet. But what can you expect in a country that has been under Fidel Castro's socialist regime for over 50 years and has been boycotted by the US for over 40 years? And what is the influence of tourism, which has grown tremendously in the last 10 years? How free can you travel around and how easy (or difficult) is it to enter the country by your own boat? Are we welcome? We can't imagine it in advance and we find it quite exciting. What does it turn out to be after more than a week in Cuba? Our expectations have been exceeded by far. What an overwhelming experience Cuba is! Attention: this has become a rather long travel story so sit down for a while ...

Tourists are very welcome! We immediately notice this when we enter Bahia de Vita on the northeast coast of Cuba after an excellent sailing trip of more than 48 hours. And yes, during this trip we actually caught our first tuna! It took a while, we'll say ... The harbourmaster kindly waves at us from his water scooter (with outboard engine?!), yes they have it here, and shows us the way to the marina. In the meantime we are summoned by VHF radio to anchor in front of the harbour entrance so that the doctor can come on board first. After a few minutes a very friendly doctor passes by, who speaks good english and checks if we are all healthy. He takes a cup of coffee but not too much because he has high blood pressure... If that's OK the yellow flag is lowered and we can moor in the harbour. It is a simple but fine marina with more than 30 places with the front point at a buoy and the back with two lines to the jetty. We are not allowed to disembark until the entire clearance process with the other five officials has been completed. Less than an hour later they all come on board and soon the table inside is completely buried under the papers. What a bureaucracy ... but fortunately they fill in everything themselves and all we have to do is sign a lot of autographs. They are also very friendly. The woman from agriculture checks all the food and finally a man with a drug dog comes by. If he doesn't smell weird everything is finished and we are allowed to set foot at the bottom of Cuba! Our neighbours are Canadians with children of the same age. They show us the way and arrange bread (which you as a tourist are not allowed to buy at the cheap Cuban bakery). Also the Jan van Gent is there with Piet and Mike, they had left the BVI's with us at the time. And so we immediately have a lot of claim and conviviality.

Our first experience with the country of Cuba is when we are picked up at the marina in the afternoon by a car rental company to rent a car for the coming week. We drive to a tourist resort 10 km away where we handle the administration of the rental. The first thing we notice is that there is almost no traffic. The roads are so very empty, unbelievable. And what's driving are mainly old trucks and old buses, also from the Netherlands with the inscriptions 'Noordwijkerhout', 'Lemelerveld' and 'Geen Dienst' still on them. We also see a lot of horse-drawn carriages, people riding a horse or a donkey, or cycling on an old bicycle or walking. Later this week this streetscape will be completed with many different old American cars, old Lada's and what surprises us the most ...trucks with tarpaulins over the body and benches on the side in that body where people are being transported sitting and standing. All busses and trucks are overcrowded and often there's a whole group of people waiting who also have to come along. Hitchhiking is also done a lot and later on we hear that every Cuban who has a car (and there are very few of them) is obliged to bring hitchhikers. Owning your own car is simply unaffordable for most Cubans. Yes, why is that and how do you explain that to your children?

What does socialism mean for the people of Cuba and what is the difference with our capitalist world? We explain to the girls that the people here are not really poor because they get all the basic services such as a simple house, simple food, schooling and hospital care from the government. This week we see 'distribution' houses in different places where basic food is distributed. But nobody is rich here either and you can't get rich here. They earn very little money and the more luxurious things like soap, glasses to drink out of, soft drinks, biscuits, oil to cook with, a TV, a fridge, petrol, own transport etc. cost relatively a lot of money. Tina, manager of the marina, explains everything about money and the two money systems in Cuba the next morning. Tina speaks very good English, which is still quite special in Cuba. What turns out? She is university educated in english, has worked as an english teacher for a while, but a few years ago she chose to come and work at the marina because she earns more because she gets tips from tourists every now and then. Unbelievable, how is that possible? Well, a Cuban's monthly salary is between 10 and 30 euros a month. Even well-educated people don't earn more than 30 euros a month. Basic amenities like bread, fruit and vegetables are very cheap. They get rice and sugar for free, among other things. Tourists pay western prices for many things. For example, we pay 20 euros for a night in the marina and also the car rental, soft drinks and water from a bottle are of a (cheap) but western price level. To be able to keep these two prices next to each other there are two money systems. The Cuban pesos is for the Cuban and can be used to buy facilities for the Cuban himself. One pesos is worth a little less than 4 euro cents. For the tourist there is also the 'Convertibel Pesos', also called CUC (pronounced 'cake'). One CUC is worth about 80 euro cents (24 times as much as a pesos. The special thing is that the Cuban himself also needs CUC's for the more luxurious things. As Tina says ... it is not only 'nice', but a 'must' for people to have CUC's. Those 'more luxurious' things you can only buy in special shops where you can only pay with CUC's. Later this week we will see the shop windows of these shops with soap products, glassware, toys and household appliances on display. Cubans can change pesos in CUC's themselves, but that is very expensive for them. It is easier to get some CUC's through tourists. So Cubans are very happy that tourists come to Cuba. Besides that they are sincerely interested in us and our background. Tina advises us to spend the night in so-called 'Casa Particulares' and to eat there as well. That is in people's homes who have received a 'licence' from the government and pay 250 - 300 CUC tax per month for it. You can recognize them by a sign with an inverted blue anchor in front of the door. There are also red anchors but only Cubans are allowed to sleep there. Don't sleep there either, warns Tina and don't sleep with people without this official sign. Let Cubans help you if you need it ... that's safe everywhere. That's how she thinks you get to know the real Cuba.

Armed with this wealth of information, the rental car and a set of road maps we set off. The roads are pretty good, but here and there also very bad with lots of holes and potholes. It's quiet because it's not crowded at all, but we have to be careful for unexpected pieces of bad road. At some places there's signposting, but often not at all and also at essential places there's no sign at all, so we regularly drive the wrong way. With common sense, looking at the sun, the occasional blackberry (with the GPS-position to know which wind direction we're driving in) ... and with a lot of questions we always find the way in the end. Later we hear that the Cubans steal those aluminium signs to use for car repairs and the like. Along the side there's no billboard at all, except for 'old looking' signs about Fidel, Che and the revolution. The roads, villages and towns therefore radiate a lot of tranquillity. Basic, basic, everything has been reduced to the basics. So is the 'nightlife' in cities; there is no terrace to be found. State restaurants are behind closed doors with the curtains closed, cafes for a drink do not exist. Only tents where you can buy soft drinks, beer and ice cream and where there are plastic tables. Social life takes place on the streets, on the pavement in front of the houses, and many on the centrally located town squares with benches. Regularly we buy a can of beer and soda to drink on a bench on the square. That is a very nice place to sit and watch Cubans. Often there are many children running around and once (in Santiago) our girls are also invited to play with each other for a while. Very nice to see! The food you can get in state restaurants is very sober with little choice. So we eat the most delicious food by far at people's homes.

Sleeping and eating in people's homes is a great experience. With so much service and friendliness in the middle of their own home and home atmosphere. We sleep in three different Casa Particulares and get a good picture of the home life. We have our own lockable bedrooms with bathroom, fan and air conditioning. We eat (breakfast and dinner) in their living room and also enter the house through the front door and their living space. Breakfast consists of fried egg, bread, cheese, fresh fruit, orange juice and coffee/tea. Dinner is very tasty and extensive. We eat three times chicken, once pork and once lobster(!!!), with rice, fried banana slices (is just like french fries), and once we even eat delicious homemade fries. Also always with lettuce (cucumber and tomato or white cabbage). It looks very well taken care of and it really feels like a 'private restaurant'. The beds are of inferior quality, clean, but not so good mattresses for our backs. Sleeping costs 20 CUC per room, breakfast costs 3 CUC per person and dinner is 7 CUC per person.
We don't think there are any supermarkets. But in every town and village there are several food distribution buildings, recognizable by the counter with scales. The Cubans can get paper here with coupons of rice, beans, eggs, chicken and toilet paper. Vegetable fruit and other meat and fish they buy at the market. Bread is sold at a kind of bakery (vaguely messy building with kind of counter) where you can also get cakes. People walk in the streets with these cakes on their own pieces of cardboard ... All other luxury non-food items have to be bought in the CUC shops. Chips, cookies and candy we haven't seen ...

We make a tour of 7 days and 6 nights through the east of Cuba. The first day we drive via Holguin to Bayamo. The next day we drive from Bayamo through the mountains to the nature hotel El Salton. Then to Santiago de Cuba, the 2nd largest city in Cuba on the south coast. Then via Guantanamo through the mountains to Baracoa. And the last day along the north coast back to Bahia de Vita. Below per day the experiences.

Holguin is a nice town with some squares and a church. We walk around and eat some and get our first urban Cuba experience here. Very often we say to each other ... watch this or see that. We hardly get out of talking about what we see and what differences there are with our society. After lunch we drive on to Bayamo, a town at the bottom of the mountains of Sierra Maistro. Immediately at the parking of the car we are helped to find a Casa Particulares for the night by a very friendly gentleman. He knows all the addresses and takes us with him (we drive in the car behind him on our bikes). Great address with a real Cuban family. We walk through Bayamo and sit for a while on the central square in the middle of town. We still have some time left and drive a little bit out of the city into the mountains to Lamo Piedro ... (that's a green star on the map, so it's a sight but which one?) ... after some questions we get there ... it turns out to be the tank where Fidel Castro in 1958 from the province of Granma successfully carried out the coup on the government. On the way back we take another unpaved road, bump through villages. We don't see any other cars, only horses and trucks. In the evening we eat delicious chicken with rice and lettuce, and tea. We eat it at the living room table. The family walks by every now and then, watches TV and lives on, while we sit there in our private restaurant.

The second day we drive to Hotel El Salton in the middle of the Sierra Maistro Mountains. Is there really a hotel there? According to the description of a trip we found on the internet, there is. We start to have doubts about it on the way there. Over 30 km unpaved with deep potholes and holes and large stones. Our little car only just made it, thanks to Toine's steering skills. And then suddenly in the middle of nowhere a beautiful nature hotel rises up out of nowhere. A very nice place, where we have a wonderful time. In the afternoon we all four(!) go for a ride on a horse with a guide through the rough landscape, over rocky steep roads and through a small river. The girls love it and are not afraid at all. After 2 hours we all have a wooden butt and some bruises. On the way back we pass a small house where we drink a cup of coffee from the beans that grow there in the garden. Toine is allowed to grind coffee herself, in this case stomping into a hollow tree trunk. When we return Toine and I enjoy a lovely firm (East German) massage every half an hour and that is very good for the muscles. Before dinner we play pool billiards together with the girls. The food is simple but good and we are in bed early.

The third day we make the morning with a guide and two other NL couples make a nice walk of 3 hours in the surroundings of the hotel. The guide has been doing this work for 18 years and speaks very good Dutch. He learned that from the tourists. Very handsome! He is a very enthusiastic man who tells a lot about the plants, trees and birds, and about the farming villages in the area. We go and visit one farming family and are allowed to see everything. These farmers are allowed to own their own piece of land and the proceeds (fruit, vegetables and meat) they can keep for their own use and sell to the state. But there is such a thing as the illegal black market, where the stuff is better sold. They are shabby houses, but everywhere there is electricity (for a basic part for free) and therefore even in the most shabby houses there is a refrigerator, sometimes a TV and lights are on. That's one of the great achievements of socialism. And they earn some CUC's from visiting tourists because we pay for the hospitality and the coffee and fresh orange juice we get.

After lunch we drive in 3 hours to Santiago de Cuba and then we find out that there is a much better access road to the hotel. Well, that is what you get when you arrange everything yourself instead of traveling organized. In Santiago de Cuba we happen to find a very nice Casa Particulares. In an old colonial house, with Martin and Lilly who also have two children of 10 and 8 years old. The woman speaks nice english and this way we can talk to each other very well. We stay there for two nights and have dinner at their ... very nice! We haven't eaten that good in Cuba yet and we can't get it in the state hotels. Which are also more expensive and impersonal. Just before dinner we spend another hour on a square and a lot of Cuban children between 6 and 10 years old play there. Our girls are soon invited to join us and that is very nice to see. Later we hear from Lilly that the outing for the Cuban children is a visit to the town square to play with other children.

The fourth day we drive around in the surroundings of Santiago de Cuba. We drive up the mountain to a viewpoint (Gran Piedra), but unfortunately that is in the clouds and it is also quite fresh (20 degrees). Luckily there is also a very nice museum on the grounds of an old coffee plantation. We are the only visitors and the museum is opened especially for us. The old plantation house with its furniture is still completely preserved. And also all the slaves' work and torture vehicles are on display. We are very kindly received and shown around with a Spanish story that we understand quite well. Very nice to see! Afterwards we drive along a real Cuban attraction ... a prehistoric park with fake prehistoric animals. We are the only tourists and lunch for the first time in a little restaurant where you can only pay with Cuban Pesos (it costs a total of 4 CUC). On our way back to Santiago we drive past an old Spanish fort (El Morro) that was used in colonial times to keep out unwanted visitors and that stands at the beginning of the bay of Santiago. In the evening we have dinner with Martin and Lilly again and after dinner we sit on the square for a while to listen to a classical orchestra.

When we walk to the breakfast table on Sunday morning (the fifth day) at 8.00 am (as agreed) Lilly apologizes that she hasn't quite finished yet because she didn't take into account that daylight saving time started last night. Do we? We don't understand anything about it all day long until at the end of the day we find out that Toine's blackberry went off at the time of Toine's blackberry and she automatically adopted the new Cuban daylight saving time last night without us knowing it, so we were on time without knowing it ourselves. Lilly knows a good Casa Particulares in Baracoa and calls to make a reservation for us. Very easy. It rains all day long and we don't see much of the beautiful surroundings we drive through. It is 260 km first along the coast along Guantanamo and then through the mountains to the north coast to Baracoa. Unfortunately a military officer doesn't allow us to drive the road to the viewpoint over the bay where the US navy base can be seen. We have to request a separate visa for this at immigration. Well, we don't. Too bad. After 6 hours of driving we arrive in Baracoa and at the petrol station we are already met by Alex who shows us the way to his house (turns out to be his grandmother's house). We walk a bit through the town, a nice little old colonial town on a large bay. This is where Columbus first landed and from here Spain started his colony in Cuba.

The sixth day we spend entirely in the nature of the Baracoa area. In the morning we drive on the advice of the boy who makes our food in the Casa Particulares to a national park where we can make a walk with a guide to the waterfall. We drive after again several times asking for the entrance of the park ... only we never get there. The last part of the road is impossible to drive with our car, so we walk. It is a beautiful road up and down hill, through shallow rivers (first time we take off our shoes, the next times we just keep them on, they will dry again), and through beautiful farming villages in the middle of the rainforest. Only that entrance of the park is not to be found. Every time people point us a few minutes further on. Until we're tired and we're done with it, because we have to go all the way back. It has become a total walk of 4 hours. Luckily it is completely cloudy, otherwise it would have been too hot. Tired we drive to a stand nearby and there we can eat some small food in a beach hotel. On the way back we pass a sign that points right for 4 km further 'El Yunke', and then we suddenly think 'oh, this is what the boy from the house meant' ... we still drive into the road and finally (10 for 5) we reach the entrance of the park. With a guide we walk half an hour to a waterfall, over rocks and wading through a fairly deep river (we get wet up to our waist). And then the day turned out all right after all! In the evening we eat again in the Casa Particulares.

The last day we drive 250 km back to the harbour, a total of 6 hours. The first part of the road is unpaved and very bad, but in a very beautiful environment with lots of nature and views. The sun shows itself again, and that results in nice pictures. Around 3 pm we bring the car back and half an hour later we are back on the boat ...
Yes ... Back in our own world. The boat's still fine. The Canadian neighbours have also just returned from a week of travelling around, so soon we sit together to exchange experiences and make a Bahama-journey plan... It has been a fantastic week, but also long enough. We are tired of driving and all the impressions. But it has been a very successful and special week! Tomorrow we will continue to the Bahamas. A 145 mile trip to Clarence Town on Long Island. That will take about 24 hours. The weather looks good and we are looking forward to the tranquillity of travelling by boat and the vastness of the sea again! During this trip we will let the impressions of Cuba sink in and relive ...