Havana Sightseeing

Our first attempt at getting to Cuba didn’t go very well. We committed to doing everything fully within the boundaries set forth by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The way we did this was by booking a four night cruise through Royal Caribbean that was going to Havana, Nassau, and one day at sea. After all, if the cruise is leaving from Florida most of the passengers will be Americans like us so we figured they would have the whole thing sorted out and legal.

Cost of cruise:  $1266 for a two person inside cabin
Tip:  $14.50 per person per day

When arriving the day of departure we were instructed to have Cuban visa applications. The form spells out what we needed to do to comply with the law.

We booked a 6 hour bus tour that would take us to Old Havana and the cemetery.

Cost of tour:  $84 per person
Cost of visa:  $75 per person

We were instructed to be very careful filling out the visa because mistakes could easily be rejected by the immigration officers and that would require purchasing a replacement for another $75. The joke was to have the ladies fill them out so my daughter happily obliged.

Royal Caribbean explained the immigration process in a forum in the theater. We missed it but fortunately it was rebroadcast on the ship’s TV for the entire time we were sailing to Cuba.

There were some interesting details we didn’t expect, such as all ATMs and the casino were turned off upon entering Cuban waters. Also, no American credit cards would work anywhere on the island. The only recourse for us would be to either convert cash to Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC) or spend US dollars. There is a different peso used in Cuba called CUP that we were told to avoid so I didn’t really pay attention to the reason. I just remember the memory device of “nobody wants to CUP”. The value of the CUC pesos is pegged at the US dollar so theoretically it’s a 1 for 1 exchange. However, the cost of exchanging is 13%. What a racket!  Convert $100 into $87 CUCs and if you don’t spend them and want to change back you pay another 13%. We converted a total of $50 each and took a stack of US small bills thinking that if we ran out of CUCs we could just pay with USD. We paid for dinner with a mixture of currencies but they penalized us with an exchange rate of 20%.

Upon departing we went through immigration, had our photos taken, our passports scanned and stamped, the visa retained, and eventually we went though a security inspection. No food and only sealed bottles of water were allowed.

We exchanged our currency and were led to the buses.

Much of the day was spent on the tour bus with a few stops along the way to get out and walk around. Rather than bore you with an endless scroll of photos, I figure a gallery would be easier to review. Enjoy.

At the conclusion of the tour, after a trip to buy rum and cigars, and another at a market selling souvenirs, we were released to sightsee on our own. Our ship didn’t leave until 5:30AM the next morning so we didn’t need to rush back. Returning to the ship through immigration was easy and, since the visa was good for multiple entries, we could have returned to the ship and gone back into the city at a later time.

We enjoyed our trip and it was really nice to be able to say we did it legally.

~ Freddy