Travels

Hotel Pernik

The hotel's pool

Courtyard at the Pernik

The streets of Holguin

Holguin

The vast majority of tourists see the city of Holguin from a bus window as they are being whisked back & forth to their resorts. But yes, there is a city too. We arrived in Holguin airport from Toronto in the dark. We grabbed a taxi while the rest of the plane piled on to buses for the 1 hour + ride to their respective resorts. Holguin airport feeds the Guadalavaca beach area amongst others.

Hotel Pernik - Review

We stayed in the city on our first night. It is a 10 CUC cab ride from the airport. Technically a 3 Star hotel, the Hotel Pernik is a multi-storied hotel on a hill on the eastern edge of the city.

Accommodations: Pretty basic smallish hotel rooms. Typical European style twin beds. Noisy AC & small color TV with satellite. All Spanish channels. Spanish CNN etc. Bathroom tub & shower worked & were fine. Our room was 43 CUC per night which included meal plan for breakfast.

Restaurants: A buffet restaurant. About 10 CUC per person. Just OK. A poolside diner with cheap drinks, pizza & sandwiches – Cuban style of course.

Activities: A large swimming pool. Local Cubans can pay for day use of the pool area.

The Negatives: Soviet-era style. Slats on the door vented to the hallway so it was somewhat noisy. The hallways open to the outside & were dark & dismal.

The Positives: Cheap & pretty clean. Good access to Holguin & surroundings & easy to find.

An essential stop in Holguin is at the official cigar store. It is a Caracol store in the Plaza De La Marketa on Callejon del Mercado 2. Not easy to find but I persevered. On the first day, I bought numerous sampler cigars to try during the week & on our way to the airport the last day, I bought a stash to take home. They also sell rum, water & soft drinks. For more info on buying Cuban cigars in Cuba see the Marty Mix Cuban Cigar Website. Do not buy cigars on the street. Resist the urge when you are approached & you will be at some point. They will be counterfeits.

Holguin is a fairly large town. A lot of it is rundown, but it is clean. Not too hard to get around except the area around the main square is all one-way streets which always leads to some circling. I parked in a taxi zone - no parking - for 20 minutes & all we got was a shake of the head from a cop when we returned to the car. As we walked the streets we came upon businesses - like a big bicycle shop - no sign or other markings - just a doorway on the street. B walked into a busy supermarket that was selling just about everything - white goods, fans, clothing etc - in a very small store on the square. In the bank beside it, we were given 'tourist' treatment & didn't have to line up when we exchanged some CDN$ for CUC. Wherever we went, we never felt the resentment that you do in other Caribbean destinations.

Our travels in Cuba

Palms & bananas

On the road near Cueto

Driving in Holguin Province

Driving in Cuba proved to be no different than elsewhere. With a few exceptions:

There are no speeders. None that we saw anyway.
The highways are good overall but tend to get bumpy on occasion & sometimes much worse. One road - it runs north from the Ceuto/Mayari road to Banes - was reduced to gravel & mud tracks. You had to weave your way from shoulder to shoulder to find the least bumpy route. This went on for 10 miles or so. And then, a little later, there was a giant mud hole right across the road. I patted myself on the back for renting a 4WD Vitara & pulled through with ease.
There are no lane markings. There are no highway signs either so you better be on the right road. Only highway crossings & town signs gave us directions, so take a good map.
There are no billboards. We only saw one small group of billboards outside Banes. Revolutionary heroes, of course.
You will come upon groups of people waiting at every major highway intersection - even in the middle of nowhere. They are waiting for transport on the many buses & trucks you see on the highways. Traffic wardens keep it flowing. In fact, there are very few cars anywhere - except in the towns & near the resort areas.
If you have room in the car, make sure you pick up hitch-hikers. Our first pick up was a grandmother with her grandson on the way to the hospital. He beamed when B gave him a toy car we had brought as give-a-ways. We also picked up couples, workers & even teenaged schoolgirls. Everybody hitchhikes without fear in Cuba. It makes the drive more interesting for all & their help with directions saved us from a lot of detouring . . .
Getting gasoline is an adventure. There are very few gas stations & they might be out of gas when you get there. See It's not easy below for our adventure in buying gas.
The best road was the direct line to the Guadalavaca beaches from Holguin airport.
To pass a vehicle - gas powered or horse-drawn - you sound your horn as you pull out - just like in Naples, Italy. Haha.

Just a cool driving story . . . We were in Mayari, looking for the road north to Cayo Saetia. The map showed a turn north but unbeknownst to us, we had already driven by it west of the town. I pulled over to ask a motorcycle cop. He tried to explain but our Spanish was not up to the task, so he gestured to us to follow him. He gave us an escort thru town honking & waving at people on the way. We think he was enjoying it. When we got to the turn, he showed us the way & politely but firmly refused a tip. Very nice.

The countryside for our drive was beautiful. Shortly after leaving the brown & dismal environs of Holguin, we drove into a lush hilly farm area. Small farms with simple houses with vegetable gardens & banana trees & date palms. Cattle farms. We also passed miles & miles of sugarcane fields. A gorgeous country.

Well, the pictures will say more than I can here . . .

Cayo Saetia - Enclosure entrance

Cayo Saetia - grounds

Suite on left - Dining room on right

Some of the cabins

Dining room - big game on the wall

Our cabin #12

Peeking in

Bed swans

Cayo Saetia

You can't just go to the resort website & book a night. The ongoing US Embargo has made this process difficult. You can book thru an agent in Cuba or Europe or Canada & your VISA (No US bank cards accepted) is charged by another company in Europe in Euros. Then they issue a voucher which is what you use in Cuba. Ditto for car rentals. Link to Booking Agent in Habana that we used: Vacacionar Travel

Overview: A 42 sq km nature reserve/resort located 120 kms southeast of Holguin between the Bahia de Nipe & the Atlantic Ocean. Expect a 2 – 3 hr drive from Holguin or Guadalavaca. The closet town is Mayari. The resort consists of 12 cabins in 4 levels – small rooms 35 CUC , standard 45 CUC, superior cabins 60 CUC & 1 suite cabin 80 CUC.

The peninsula is very dry with mixed open plains & forest. We only had 5 minutes of rain one evening during our 4 night stay.

The cabins & main building are all found in an enclosure an 8 kms drive from the main drawbridge that is the only access to the peninsula. The fenced enclosure keeps the wildlife away from the cabins, although the ostriches wander in on occasion & curly-tailed lizards abound everywhere & a family of 3 iguanas resides near the main building. Oh & two large parrots + a baby fly in & out at will.

The beach is a 6 km drive from the main resort over a gravel road. In sections, the road has been washed out & not re-graded which makes for a very slow & bumpy ride. It twist & turns through forest & some open plains where you can spot deer in the distance.

They have a small gift shop in the main building. The main building also houses the restaurant & a large room with a bar & a TV which the staff use to watch Spanish language game shows. We sat here to have coffee after dinner & I usually flamed a nice cigar from my stash of 'samplers'.

Accommodations: We stayed in Cabin # 12 – a superior – that stood alone near the fence. It is a cedar & pine 3 room cabin with a double bedded room, a bathroom with tub & shower, & a main room with a dining table, kitchen area with sink & hotplate & small fridge. A pullout couch & smaller couch for sitting. are also in the main room. A porch with 2 rocking chairs faces the Bahia Cristo in the distance. Satellite TV & phones in every room & laundry service is available.

The are a couple of other cabins & then some rooms that are in a couple of rows. These are the cheapest. The single suite is raised on posts & offers the best view.

This is classed as a 4 star resort & deserves it.

Restaurants: The main restaurant serves breakfast & dinner. The beach restaurant serves lunch. A meal plan is available & necessary since the closest town is 20 – 30 kms away. Breakfast is served ala carte with egg dishes, toast, juices, coffee etc. Dinner is a nightly choice of meat dishes – beef, pork, chicken, fish & antelope stew. All somewhat plain but good with very large portions. French fries, rice, bread & a fruit & vegetable plate accompany dinner. Wine is available for 10.50 CUC.

The beach restaurant serves a buffet with a good selection – breads, rice, various meats & meat stews.

Liquor is extra & inexpensive.

Beach: The beach is stunning white fine sand & well kept. It is 6 kms from the main camp. Various pocket beaches allow for privacy. Tour groups arrive by boat & helicopter & often share lunch with guests. They tend to take over the beach area when they arrive & it is a relief with they disappear around 3 PM. Bar service is available from around 9 AM until around 3 PM.

Activities: This is no pool, tennis courts, beach volleyball etc. This is a nature resort. Jeep safaris are available at 9 CUC per person. The day tours go midday, but the guide gave us a private tour at 5 PM when more animals are active as the heat of the day subsides. Various species of deer, antelope, water buffalo, zebras, ostriches, parrots & a resident camel can be seen. The crocodiles are gone but they warn you that 2 escaped & might live somewhere. Guests are forbidden to drive or walk unguided in the reserve except on the road to the beach. We inadvertently drifted off this route on our first drive to the beach & got our jeep temporary stuck when I looked back at a monster iguana & ran off the road. 4WD saved us. Other wildlife which we saw near the enclosure include the jutia (hutia) – a large Cuban rodent & horses & cattle are always wandering around.

Boat & horseback tours are also available & scuba excursions to the Atlantic reef on the north shore can be arranged from what we saw.

The Negatives: You must have a car. You have to helicopter, drive or boat to get here & the beach is a 6 km drive from the cabins. The roads are very rough gravel, so a Jeep would be a wise rental. There is no pool. There is no entertainment & many of the usual resort activities are absent. The nearest town is a 45 minute drive over poor roads & gasoline can be an adventure to buy. The station in Mayari was out of gas & we had to drive to Levisa to get some with the aid of a hitchhiker for location.

The Positives: With only 12 cabins, you leave the crowds behind except for the tours that arrive at the beach from Guadalavaca on some days & the people that arrive have a somewhat ignorant we-own-it attitude. Not pretty but they do go away.

If you want isolation & a quiet holiday, Cayo Saetia might be a good choice. The staff was excellent. They live onsite on a 3 day rotating schedule. Other tourists seemed to be exclusively from Europe – Germany, France & Spain were represented during our stay. Highly recommended.

Levisa Medical Clinic

It's not easy to give away a suitcase filled with drugs . . .

NJT – Suitcase Drop Off Report – Mayari, Cuba

NJT - Not Just Tourists - http://www.njttoronto.ca/ - is a Canadian volunteer organization of doctors & others who collect medicines & medical supplies for delivery by tourists to small clinics in needy countries. While Cuba has a good medical system, supplies are limited & small clinics appreciate donations.

Since we were staying in the Cuban Hinterlands, we had decided to drop our case in the town of Mayari, which doesn’t see many tourists. Our adventure started at our resort when we asked a staff member where a clinic might be. He suggested a good candidate in the small town of Levisa where his sister Ana worked as a nurse at the town’s Policlinico. We needed gas for the car, so our first destination was a station I had seen in Mayari.

So the next morning, we headed towards Mayari, picking up various hitchhikers along the way (common & acceptable in Cuba). Hitchhiking is encouraged in Cuba & every age group does it – from school kids to grandmothers. Cuban residents must pick up hitchhikers - there are traffic 'wardens' at intersections that seem to control the flow. Tourists are encouraged to do likewise. The station in Mayari was out of 'tourist' gas & they told us that they wouldn’t receive more until the next day or the day after. Btw 'tourist' gas is real & the local gas is a mix of gas & diesel from what we heard & the smoking trucks & cars on the road appear to confirm this.

So . . . with less than ¼ tank of gas we headed towards Levisa. A hitchhiker directed us to a station just past the town on the road to Nicaro. Success! He then directed us to the Polyclinico which we would never have found otherwise. It is in a very run down single story building. Clean but decrepit with crumbling plaster & moldy paint. Ana was out when we arrived - with her brother from the resort it turned out - & after some fumbled negotiations (my wife took a Spanish course prior to our trip) we were gratefully welcomed & ushered into the Director’s office. Note that no one spoke any English here or at any of our stops during this odyssey. He locked the door with us & his assistant inside & had one question once we had explained our mission – Why? After some back & forth talking he warmed up & explained that while he would like to accept the supplies, he was not authorized to. He said that we would have to go to the Directario Municipal de Mayari back in Mayari to obtain this permission.

So, off we went, again picking up hitchhikers who helped us locate the Directario in Mayari. They were expecting us & after some explanation, a woman jumped in our car & we drove elsewhere in town & she left us at another office. These offices btw were also quite rundown but everybody was very friendly when they understood our mission.

After a 10-minute wait in this busy unknown government office we were taken outside & next door, through a conference room – complete with plywood conference table – and into a back office. This was the first air-conditioned office we had visited. We were introduced to a very pleasant & professional lady whose secretary scampered off to get us coffee. After another round of explanations - mainly notes between her & B & her dictionary btw - we realized that we were talking to Carmen Rosa Artiles Sánchez, the Presidente Asamblea Municipal of the Poder Popular of Mayari. She was essentially the mayor, responsible for the entire region of the province of Mayari.

She started to do an inventory of the goods but we explained that it was not necessary. She did have her secretary do up an official receipt – in duplicate - which we signed. She signed it & stamped it with her official seal of office. She thanked us profusely on behalf of her populace & the Cuban people & we were on our way with our task completed & our official receipt in hand.

It was quite an adventure & not just a casual drop off. The remote area & our limited knowledge of Spanish hindered our task, but didn’t stop us. In fact, it was one of the highlights of our trip.

Carmen Rosa Artiles Sánchez
& our suitcase of drugs

Mr. Allen B. Graham

     President and Chief Executive Officer - Air Transat

Transat A.T. Inc.
Place du Parc
300 Léo-Pariseau Street, Suite 600
Montreal, QC H2X 4C2

Dear Mr. Graham:

As the CEO of a major air carrier, I assume that you must care about customer service at some level. Your job is obviously to oversee the operations of thousands of employees and millions of dollars of equipment for ultimately one purpose: To fill seats to make money.

I wanted to share my experience with you to illustrate what can go wrong, that will ultimately hinder your purpose above.

**********************************************************************************

The sordid details:

Outgoing: AT 542 YYZ to HOG Apr 7, 2006

Original Departure time: 6:30 AM
Ticketed Departure time: 3:30 PM

Actual Departure time: 5 PM approx.

Hmmm. Air Transat changed many flight times Apr 1, 2006. From our original booking we lost our first day, which we had planned to spend sightseeing in Holguin, Cuba. We had pre-arranged & paid for a rental car & had other plans for Apr 8. So, Day 1 was screwed up. Thank you.

Of course you can say, “But you got the time back at the end”.    Hmmm. Not quite, since it is an exit day & we had to pack & check out of the hotel room & we had to drive for 1 1/2 hours to get to the airport & turn in the rental & we had to be there 3 hrs in advance etc etc. Starting to get the picture? If you’ve ever taken a family vacation, you KNOW that the last day is useless except for last minute purchases that you will inevitably regret buying later.

Oh & besides, as it turned out, the Air Transat check in staff refused to take our bags any earlier after we stood in a ½ hour Pre-selected Seat line for what turned out to be a YUL flight. “No. We can’t check you in until the Montreal flight has departed.” In airport speak, savvy travelers will know this actually means “I can’t be bothered getting that flight’s paperwork. Can’t you see I’m busy? I’ll reopen for your flight once the shuttle buses start rolling in & the terminal is jammed.   That let’s me have the break I really need anyway & to walk around aimlessly as you will see. Hot in here, isn’t it? Hey mister. Move away from the counter. You’re sweating & pretty red in the face. Relax, go have a beer mister, or I’ll call security.” Thank you for this too.

Return: AT 543 HOG to YYZ Apr 14, 2006

Original Departure time: 11:00 AM approx.
Ticketed Departure time: 8:40 PM

Actual Departure time: 10:40 PM

Arrival time YYZ 7:00 AM Apr 15, 2006

Note that because the return flight was so late & weather (fog) closed YYZ we circled for 20 minutes or so & were diverted to London & spent several quality hours on the plane on the tarmac there before YYZ reopened & allowed flights again after 6:30 AM on Apr 15. Not your problem since the weather is out of your control but if we had been on time in the first place we would have landed like the SkyService flight that left HOG ½ - 1 hour before us. Oh. And the FAs were pretty good overall. Except for one: “Can’t you see we have a situation here? I think opening up the bar with these passengers is not wise” & this was spoken on the tarmac in London. You guessed it, another couple of hearty thank yous here too.

So . . .

Does the word scheduling mean anything to Air Transat? This is not my first experience with your fractured scheduling. A trip in 1999 to Cuba is also memorable for a 6-hour delay in departing. I’ve also read enough posts in travel forums to know that our experience was not an isolated case.

Do you care that your passengers might have connections or plans at their destinations that will be disrupted up by your seeming lack of attention to your stated timetables?

Do you care when customers (remember the word customers?) come away from a flight on your airline disgruntled? Judging from the forum posts on various travels sites, I can only assume the negative.

Do you care that you have seats that are the smallest – width & legroom – of any I have ever seen on any domestic or international carrier? I call them unsuitable for pygmy amputees. By the way, I am a frequent flier & I have flown many airlines & your seating is the worst I have experienced – even worse than American Airlines before they discovered that legroom (and the marketing of it) could sell seats. Have you ever flown coach in one of your own airplanes on an extended flight?

We are not merely seat fillers. We are walking, talking customers that have a choice. You operate an airline that has to fly full or your Board gets antsy. Do you see your problem here? If enough of us make another choice, your seats will not fill up & you lose.

Regretfully