Third day in Havana, we are gonna exchange money. The line is a bit long!!
You have to bring your passport. Then the person will give you a piece of paper with the total amount and how
many and which bills and coins you are gonna get, then you get the CUCs. After this you can exchange the CUC by Cuban Pesos.
1 CUC can be exchanged for almost US$ 1,00. Meanwhile, 1 CUC can be exchanged for 24 Cuban Pesos.
1 Cuban Peso is the same as US$ 0,04. But you can have lunch for 30 Cuban Pesos, which is like US$ 1,20.
Really cheap if you are using Cuban Pesos!!
Yesterday we were supposed to party, but apparently on the weekends you have to get there really early,
otherwise it is gonna be full and you can't get in. At around 8PM we bought a bottle of rum and started
doing drinking games. When we realised, it was around 11PM already, so we didn't go out.
Yesterday we didn't go out, but tonight we are gonna go!! Today is a day for... - Party
Breakfast with Rafa.
We found this cuban Shopping Mall to see how it is, if it is anyhow differente, but as you can see, it isn't
that differente from any Shopping Mall anywhere else. Obviously a small Shopping Mall and from a
poor country, but not that different. Now we are gonna get out and keep walking to the train station.
Yesterday we found out that you can travel by train in Cuba, but the train breaks all the time.
So it is a nice experience, but dangerous. What we are gonna do is to go to the train station, as tomorrow
we are gonna go to Viñales and I found out that there is a train to Viñales. Here in Cuba you should only get a
train if it is a short distance. Actually, they say you shouldn't get a train at all. But let's see the prices.
- Hello. Tomorrow we wanna go to Viñales and we would like to know what time, how much and how long it takes by train.
- Pinar del Rio. - Sorry?
- Pïnar del Rio? - Si, si. Pinar del Rio.
- Tomorrow at 7AM. From the train station next to this one.
- Should we pain when inside of the train? - You have to be there at 6AM or 6.30AM to buy the ticket.
- How long is the trip? - It leaves at 7AM and gets there at 2PM.
- How much is it? - 5 Cuban Pesos. For you CUC 5.
- Thanks. - Where are you from?
- Brazil. - Do you like Brazil?
- Of course!! - The soap opera that is playing...
- Here all the soap operas are from Brazil. - Yeah, in the place we are staying we saw the soap opera "Vítimas"...
- Mentiras something... Rastro de Mentiras!! - I am watching...
- Nico is a... - I am watching... No, but my favourite brazilian girl is Pitanga.
- She is my favourite. - She is THE brazilian woman.
- She is my favourite. All of them are good, but the one I like the most, how she works, is Pitanga.
- Here in Cuba we say La Pitanga.
- Well, good luck and have a nice day. - You too.
We are not taking a train for sure. There are two other options... Three, actually...
We can take a "Guagua", which is the local bus, cheaper. We can take a Viazul bus, which is for tourists and
expensive. This options is not gonna happen also. Or we can take a shared taxi.
More people who are going to the same place, so they share the taxi.
It costs around CUC 10 each and it takes like 2h to get there.
Now the idea is to walk around Havana Vieja, the most touristic place in Havana.
So we are in Havana Vieja and behind me is the Capitolio.
Some people believe that Raul Castro lives there, but actually he doesn't. He is at the Plaza de la Revolución.
There are some ministries. Here is actually a museum that they are fixing.
It looks like it is closed for restoration.
One of the most touristic things here is to take an old taxi like this and go around the city.
- Now we are going to the Museum of the... - Revolution.
Those are bullet holes. In 1957 some revolutionary students attacked Fulgêncio Batista. This was actually
the government palace. They attacked him. They didn't succeed, as Fulgêncio Batista only scaped from Cuba in 1959.
Fidel came here, took the palace and started to rule the country. It was here in this room where Che Guevara was
turned into a cuban citizen, as he was from Argentina.
We just left the Museum of the Revolution. So, are you feeling revolutionary?
Yes, I am. I am ready. Just invite me and I will do it.
So it is a really basic museum, full of pictures and text. There aren't any videos, but it is interesting.
The first floor only has the ticket entrance. The second floor shows the post-revolutionary period.
Which were the first actions of the government, like turning into public property everything that
belonged to the pro-Batista people and to the americans also. One curiosity is that the americans supported
the revolution, thinking that like this they would bring more democracy to Cuba, but when the revolutionary
started making everything State property, then the americans became against it.
The second floor shows the story of the revolutionaries before the revolution. The main ones, not all of them,
like Camilo Cienfuegos, Che, Fidel, also talks about some women that participated in the revolution.
And here they show the Bastards Corner. The first one is Fulgêncio Batista, the dictator before the revolution.
Ronald Reagan, which started the anti-communist actions here.
Bush father and Bush son, a bit nazi and also stupid, reading the book upside down.
From there you can access the Granma Memorial, which shows the Yatch Granma. For those who don't know,
Granma was the yatch used by the cuban revolutionaries in 1956 to come from the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba.
It is made for 12 people, but 82 people came on it, including Fidel and Raul Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.
They got in Cuba in a place nowadays called Granma, which is also the same place where Jose Martí
landed 61 years before to fight for the Cuban independence from Spain, so this made a poetic sense
to the landing of the yatch Granma. This is the story they tell in the museum.
Of course there is no criticism to the revolution as we are in a dictatorship. But you can always check on
Google to see if those informations are correct and have your own conclusion.
Shit, we are in a really touristic place. Probably everything is really expensive around here.
The problem is we are starving, as it is already 3PM, and for sure lunch is not gonna be here. We are gonna try to
find a Paladar (private family owned restaurant) to have lunch.
Cheap food in a Paladar. Let´s see, because some of them are expensive. Usually they cost 30 Cuban Pesos.
That one is one of those expensive Paladars I was talking about. It costed 9 to 18 CUCs, we are used to pay around 1 CUC.
One more thing we just realised here is the safety of Cuba. Take a look at my camera. Actually, some time
ago the camera was even out of this case. I was walking all around with it and the locals told us that here is safe.
Teresa, the owner of our accommodation, told me that one tourist that was staying at her house got robbed.
When she told me that, I thought she was talking about armed robbery, but she told me that those things do not
exist in Cuba. What happened is that he was really drunk and some people pickpocked him.
So, it is really safe to travel here in Cuba.
Raining a lot. We are trying to get a taxi to a club.
- We managed to get the taxi and tonight we are gonna... - Go party!!
So we came to Fábrica de Arte, which everyone says it is cool, but it is looking really "cult". I am not seeing anyone
drinking, I am not seeing people drunk, partying, dancing. I am not seeing anyone dancing. - But it looks cool!
I am talking to the camera, by the way.
Drinking a revolutionary beer in a fancy bar. Bullshit. It is a Heineken!!
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