Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Havana & Acapulco

While Mexico City is teeming with enough possibilities, places to go and things to see to easily fill every day of a six-month stay with something original and engaging, it's always good to get away from the chaos for a couple of days, a long weekend, and take advantage of being on this side of the world to enjoy some of the once-in-a-lifetime places that are within a few hours' travelling time. In the last couple of weeks we've been lucky enough to visit Havana in Cuba and Acapulco on the south coast of Mexico (although as I mentioned a while ago in my post about our trip to Mazatlán the whole north-south-east-west system is pretty hard to apply in Mexico). I'm actually writing this post, or a draft of the first couple of paragraphs at least, from the lobby of our Acapulcan hotel (see above), drinking bog-standard beer out of a tiny plastic cup (the downside of going all-inclusive), while waiting for Rosalía to join me for dinner.

Travelling to Cuba turned out to be pretty straightforward, perhaps as things there have opened up significantly since Raúl Castro took over power from his brother in 2008, perhaps because none of us were US citizens. We travelled in a group of four: me and my son who are both British, and my wife and her friend who are Mexican. We'd read about the need for visas, travel insurance, exit taxes, Canadian dollars or Euros, and various other complications that had me worried up until the moment we arrived safely back in Mexico City and could state in retrospect that it basically was as easy as just buying a plane ticket, booking somewhere to stay and showing up on time.

Some practical information: We did have to buy something called a tourist card (Tarjeta de Turista) for around 350 Mexican pesos, but we did it last minute at the airport in Mexico City, after checking in. No need to arrange a meeting at the Cuban embassy in advance as I originally believed. At no point did anyone ever check our travel insurance, supposedly a necessity for entry into the country. Exit taxes were included in our ticket (we flew AeroMexico), meaning there wasn't in fact any need to keep back a big chunk of Cuban pesos until the last minute. Try spending $100 in the departure lounge at Havana airport, there are only so many sausage sandwiches and beers you can get through in an hour and a half. We'd heard that Canadian dollars and Euros were the best currencies to take, with the most favourable exchange rates; that might well be true, but a couple of quick calculations on the back of an envelope (I mean on our cellphones obviously) showed that we were better off converting our Mexican pesos directly into Cuban pesos rather than going through any another currency. The combined commission and dodgy rates from carrying out two exchanges outweighs any potential gains. At any rate (pun, yeah!) it was actually pretty easy to find ATMs in Havana--again somewhat contrary to what we had read beforehand--so we ended up coming back with several thousand Mexican pesos in cash, the stupidity of which was highlighted by the fact that in the confusion of getting off the plane with baby Noam we left behind a bag with a good chunk of aforementioned pesos under the seat (at least we made someone's day presumably).

Havana itself was a unique and wonderful experience which I'm sure none of us will ever forget. Apart from the baby of course, he's probably forgotten already. We stayed in a great Airbnb apartment, surprisingly modern and fully equipped with everything we needed, including, crucially, air conditioning. My wife's first reaction on seeing the place was 'This is better than most of the hotels we've stayed in in England' (for some reason we always end up in one of those dingy B&Bs round the back of Paddington station). We were in a mostly residential area, somewhat removed from the tourist zone, which allowed us to see a little bit what life is like for normal Cubans, and meant that we got to experience several thrilling taxi rides to the centre in 1950s era cars, which felt like little more than metal cages on wheels, driven manically by cocky young guys in tank tops and sunglasses blasting out the latest cheesy Cuban pop music on the stereo.

We spent two days exploring the city, making sure to tick off all the plazas in the old town, the key monuments of the revolution and the famous malecón (sea front). We soaked up the atmosphere in bars and restaurants and listened to talented local musicians. We admired the curious mixtures of old and new; of young and old; of run-down and preserved. We suffered in the heat, humid and oppressive from the moment we woke up till the moment we went to bed. The trip was difficult for Noam, he struggled with the change of scene (much like our first few days in Mexico), the lack of familiar food (it was surprisingly difficult to get hold of decent fruit in Cuba, the one thing we thought we would find in abundance), and being carried around for hours on end in the blistering heat with nowhere to crawl or practise a bit of toddling. The highlight for me was watching vintage cars cruise down the wide avenues; it really did feel like being transported briefly to a bygone era.

Our final day in Cuba we decided enough sightseeing was enough and instead paid to spend the day lying round the pool at a nearby hotel. This seemed to be more up Noam's street, he had a whale of a time splashing round in the water. It also proved to be great practise for our trip to Acapulco, where we rocked up at the hotel mid-afternoon Friday and stayed put until check out lunchtime Monday. To be fair, after driving five and a half hours and 380 kilometers to get there from Mexico City, I feel we deserved the break. I did get to see a bit of the city on the way in and the way out and it's undoubtedly a fantastic place if you like the seaside (who doesn't?). It's much bigger than I imagined, with bay after bay lined with luxury hotel after luxury hotel. It's easy to see why Frank Sinatra sung about flying down to Acapulco for a honeymoon back in its heyday in the 1950s.

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