Santiago de Cuba (Part 1)

Ferry dock middle foreground by the red truck

We had arrived in Santiago de Cuba on Thursday 31 January and Charlotte was due to join us on Tuesday 5 February, so we had a few days to explore the city, recce for the mammoth food shop we needed to do before Charlotte arrived and do some of the long list of jobs on the boat.  With Charlotte arriving in the evening of 5 February, we essentially had 5 full days to do everything.  It sounds like a long time but the days passed in a flash.

Task number 1 was to recce Santiago city for food shopping, tourist sites, bars, music, everything really. The easiest way into the city is via the ferry that runs from the quay close to the marina in Ensenada Gaspar. The quay is used by lots of ferries each day en routeto or from Cayo Granma in the centre of the harbour.  Only 3 ferries run to Santiago, departing at 0620, 1220 and 1720 and returning from the city at 0700, 1300 and 1800.  Not wishing to be up at dawn, we caught the 1220 sailing, planning on returning at 1800. For the princely sum of 1CUC per person each way we had nearly door to door service and a great view on the way in (a taxi is about 10CUC each way).  At this point we had no Cuban currency but Nicky approached some German sailors who were at the marina bar and swapped a €5 note for a 5CUC note. In terms of exchange rates, they did slightly better out of this deal than us but at least we could now get into town!

The ferry dropped us close to the cruise ship dock and from here we strolled up the hill to the centre of the city.

Top: buildings in various states of (dis)repair line an atypically empty street.  When we visited
Santiago was busy with pedestrians and traffic and a surprising number of horse-drawn carts.
Bottom: Fidel Castro’s principles of citizenship painted on a wall overlooking the market building.
We had previously seen a sign with all the principles written on it in the Guarda Frontera
office at the marina

Santiago de Cuba is not a wealthy town and there’s plenty of industrial activity around the harbour [Ed:  and BV suffered from the smoke-stack outpourings from one of the factories in the form of brown spots all over her deck].  As we walked up the road from the harbourfront, we noted that whilst many of the buildings were in use, few of them outside the main city centre had seen any form of exterior maintenance over the past several years and many were just shells.  However, there were plenty of people around and the roads were busy with cars and lorries.  Most of the vehicles were of 1950 American vintage or marginally more modern Russian Ladas and Moskvitchs but we also saw a good number of truly modern cars, primarily government taxis.  There were also plenty of scooters, some motorbikes and bici-taxis and a surprising number of horse-drawn carts.

Plaza Céspedes with (right) a bank (orange) and the Hotel Casa Grande (white) and (left) the cathedral.  In contrast to lower down in the city this plaza and some of the area further north has been smartly renovated

Our first port of call was the Cadeca (currency exchange office).  Cuba has 2 currencies, both closed, – the CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso), which was introduced for use by tourists, and the CUP (Moneda Nacional), local currency.  There are 25 CUPs to each CUC.  Now, most shops have prices in both CUC and CUP but in the markets items are priced in CUP; using the CUC here would be madness – we bought a papaya for 7CUP (0.28 CUC) and a pound of tomatoes was priced at 5CUP (0.20CUC). Apparently, the government is trying to move the whole country to the CUC but given the prices of food in the markets, and what we saw of rural Cuba later on, quite how (or whether) that could possibly work we can’t see.  Right now, the big problem is that Cubans working in and around tourists have easy access to CUC being tipped and paid for their services in that currency. However, the average monthly wage is, apparently, the equivalent of about €30 which doesn’t go far should you want to buy, say, UHT milk (price approx. 1.50CUC per litre).  It could be argued that having the 2 currencies is helping to turn Cuba back into a country of haves and have-nots, which is usually the unintended consequence of such a monetary policy, but presumably the same sort of thing would be happening even if there were just the one currency and, quite likely, the local food markets would suffer more from food price inflation. Either way, Cuba’s transition from Fidel Castro’s communist country to a more modern era of (semi-?) capitalism is going to bring difficulties to many.

Heeding the warnings in our guide book about possible problems with credit cards (though it seems that the issues relate primarily to US issued cards), and also noting that currency exchanges from the US dollar to CUC incur an additional 10% punitive charge, we arrived with some Euros.  Nicky exchanged those into CUC and then converted some of these to CUP.  In hindsight, we should have checked out the prices in the market before heading to the Cadeca.  We exchanged far too much into the local currency and had to work hard to spend it, frequently using it to buy goods priced in CUC and CUP in ‘supermarkets’.

Plaza Dolores

We took a stroll around the town, passing the Plaza Dolores where our sailing guide recommended we stop in the afternoon to listen to music.  In the morning there were no musicians and few other people either.  In the afternoon it was busier but and there were plenty of people sitting with instruments but not much music being played.

Taverna Dolores

By this stage it was well gone our lunchtime, so we stopped at Taverna Dolores to eat.  It was very busy with locals which buoyed our hopes and the surroundings were most attractive.  However, the food, when it came, was very average (I think our sailing guide would say ‘typically Cuban’) – roasted or fried chicken, fried plantain, rice with beans and a small tomato salad, plus a beer each (Cristal, rather good lager).  Total cost about 20CUC – tourist prices, there is a cruise ship dock here.

We spent the rest of the day doing a recce for food shopping.  There are lots of ‘supermarkets’ in town.  They each seem to sell slightly different stock, though there is something of an overlap in stock between the different shops.  We found the shelves full and the aisles often stacked high with more boxes of stock but on closer inspection one entire row of shelves might be filled with just one brand of, say, tomato puree. But the basics were all easy to find. Tinned tomato products, pasta, rice, fruit juices and fruit drinks (though the range was variable).  We didn’t find UHT milk at all in Santiago, the nearest we got was evaporated milk, and some friends of ours visited 6 shops in Cienfuegos before finding washing up liquid, but we did find capers and pichos (very good, small Spanish breadsticks for eating with dips) and, of course, rum.  But rule number 2 about shopping in Cuba is: if you see it and need it, buy it.  If the locals want it, they buy in bulk because they don’t know when the next shipment is due and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

As the afternoon drew to a close we headed down the hill towards the ferry dock, finding a government ice-cream shop, Coppelia, on the way.  The ice-cream was average, the flavour a version of chocolate or a version of chocolate, but the price – 2CUP (about 6p) for 2 scoops – was incredible. I can see the strap-line now: ‘Communism – ice-cream for all’.

The Revolutionary Fighters’ Museum (or some such similar name)

This area of Cuba is where the 1956 revolution had its heart.  Indeed, in Plaza Delores we had seen a large display celebrating the 60^thanniversary of the revolution, feature pictures of the revolutionary fighters then and in 2016.  Santiago also houses a museum dedicated to the revolutionary fighters and we searched it out as we wended our way down the hill (and back up again a bit, though some particularly rough-looking parts of town). Unfortunately, by the time we found it, the place had closed for the day and we never made it back there.  Another one for next time.

Various people we have spoken to and books we
have read have said that buying fresh produce
 in Cuba is really difficult.  In some places that
may well be the case but find a population centre,
especially a city, and you will always find fruit and veg
 markets.  This is just some of the stash that we bought
before Charlotte arrived – but Nicky bought with an eye
on not getting more before reaching Cienfuegos
in a couple of weeks’ time

So, if rule number 2 for shopping in Cuba is to buy what you need/want when you see it, THE best tip for shopping in Cuba became clear a couple of days later when we went shopping for Charlotte’s visit with one of the other cruisers in the anchorage.  John had said that he needed help locating fresh produce and offered to show us where to jump off if we took the bus into town.  At a much more convenient time for the markets than the ferry schedule, the 0900 bus from outside the Hotel Punta Gorda is definitely intended for locals.  The price into town is, technically, about 0.7CUP (approx 0.3CUC or about 2p) but we weren’t looking for the change from the 2CUP we passed the driver!  The 3 of us and about 12 locals got on the bus at the hotel.  By the time we got to town and John was shouting at us to get off from his position at the back of the bus (where he had had to move to make room), the crush of passengers made the Tokyo Metro in rush hour look positively empty.  We managed to squeeze off before the bus spirited us onwards and headed down the hill to the market.  John had no CUP so we subbed him and were repaid in CUC (excellent, some of the mountain of CUPs spent!).

We hit the market first, guessing that there would be more produce available earlier in the day.  Nicky whistled around like a whirlwind with John following, somewhat shell-shocked, in her wake, occasionally asking the pack-horse (me) what something was.  Disappointingly, there were no pineapples (we should have bought some on our first visit, see Shopping Rule 2) but there were oranges so Nicky bought lots.  They were excellent and, interestingly, they were pretty much the only oranges we saw in Cuba.  We bought some excellent papaya (or fruita da bomba as it is called in Spanish-speaking countries), guava, mountains of long-lasting veg like cabbage, carrots and peppers and plenty of other things that wouldn’t last so well.  We were surprised, and pleased, to find lettuce but the onions were small and damp and still had their leaves attached.  We bought some but the onions from St Martin lasted far better.  Potatoes and eggs are difficult to get hold of in Cuba but in every market we visited someone would sidle up, a bit furtively, almost as if he were about to offer to sell you something on the black market, and whisper ‘patatas?’, ‘huevos?’.  Show an interest and he would rush off and bring in the goods or he would whisk you off to a back room to show you the stock and complete the transaction.  So much fun!

But that TOP TIP for shopping in Cuba? Bring your own boxes or plastic bags to take meat home and egg boxes for eggs.  Bringing shopping bags for the fruit and veg is pretty obvious but you need them and the stallholders will just tip your produce into your bags once they have weighed it.  Egg boxes, again, are pretty standard requirements for shopping in markets as eggs frequently come on trays of 30.  But bringing bags/boxes for your meat?  We hadn’t even thought of that……right up until the machete (and pork bone shards) had stopped flying and the ‘butcher’ turned to us with outstretched hands clasping our 2kg ish of fresh, warm and wobbling pig!  Now what to do?  Happily, Nicky had the purses and valuables in a plastic bag in the bottom of the rucksack which could rapidly be pressed into action for a more urgent cause. [Ed:  we vowed not to forget to take boxes for meat when we shopped again but, inevitably, we did forget when we were in Cienfuegos.  However, there we discovered that the markets usually have a lady standing outside selling plastic bags, so all is not lost, though on that day in Santiago, John had to sacrifice one of his multi-use shopping bags to his purchase of lamb.].

After a quick tour of a few of the ‘supermarkets’, the shopping trip ended with another visit to the government ice-cream shop (another first for John) and a ferry trip back to Ensenada Gaspar and BV, where we managed, somehow, to stow all our goodies in preparation for Charlotte’s imminent arrival.

Santiago de Cuba, Cuba