Havana in 35mm

There’s something mysteriously alluring about a place your country has spent fifty years restricting you to travel to. Over the years, since being opened to Americans, Cuba’s secrecy enveloped my mind in the form of an eruption of the past brought to the present. I hauled my 1970’s Canon AE-1 35mm camera onto 13 flights and countless cities around the US to finally capture Havana’s old soul in film. To me, the results were worth the extra weight in my pack.

Havana is like a stage set in beautiful disarray. No one could have invented it. It’s bold, contradictory, and somehow gorgeous – despite 50 years of neglect. Every nook and cranny is washed in faded Caribbean colors – turquoise, pinks, sea green, soft blues. Driving along the Malecón, the city’s broad seafront boulevard stretching 8 km along the coastal seawall, old mansions are pinned together as close as clothes on a line. The architecture found throughout the city is a mesh of Moorish, venetian gothic, rococo, and art nouveau – featuring the intricacy of stone balustrades and wrought iron balconies, molding and columns – some restored, some barely holding on to peeling scraps of paint, some completely dilapidated.

Colonial mansions in the city’s Vedado neighborhood, once inhabited by Miami’s 1950’s mobsters, stand with cathedral-sized doors opening onto a jumble of beams and rubble on a Spanish tile floor. The smell of Cuban cigarillos and cheap aftershave lingers around every corner. Local salsa and rumba bands pack their way into hole-in-the-wall bars and restaurants. 1950’s Chevrolets, Buicks, and Fords buzz around the streets in masses.

A melting pot of the Caribbean – I learned that there are no set of characteristics that define Cubans. The echo of Castro’s rule is seen everywhere, but perhaps to a different beat now. Havana’s combination of politically charged history, vibrant Cuban culture and magnificent colonial European architecture is unlike any I’ve experienced to date, and quickly made it to the top of my list of favorite places.

 

 

What to know

• Brush up on your Spanish – there is still virtually no English in the country. I took it as an opportunity to improve after learning it nearly 10 years ago.

• There is no public Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi access can be bought via a scratch-off card for a few CUC per hour – and connected to at several of the park squares and main hotels in Old Havana. It took me two (very confusing) days to figure this out as it isn’t an advertised or well known factor in traveling.

• Visas: I booked my flight right before the Trump Administration announced the rollback of travel to Cuba for Americans (June 2017) so fortunately my visa was all included in the JetBlue Cuba package – a quick signature at the Fort Lauderdale airport check in and I was good to go for the rest of my trip. I’m not sure what American visa restrictions will happen in the future, but rumor is that American travel will begin to be very limited again.

• Download the google map offline area of Havana, or anywhere in Cuba, before going. Or bring a map or guidebook into the country. Lack of public and efficient Wi-Fi limits downloading ability after getting into the country. There are no modern bookstores and according to my Airbnb host, “not a single Lonely Planet in the country”. There are also free apps available that offer offline maps and points of interests for travelers, but I didn’t find this out until after my trip. I wandered around the city sans map or directions.

• Book places to stay and any onward itineraries before entering the country. AirBnb doesn’t work within the country, and Wi-Fi connections are too slow to book flights. Travel agents are not widely available on the streets like most other countries.

• Sim cards are not available. Locals still use land lines and pay phones or cell phones brought from outside the country. Very rarely do you see anyone on their phone except in Wi-Fi areas. I embraced it and found it as a great excuse to unplug for most of the time I was there.

• Travelers to Cuba have three main options for lodging: the large, expensive, historic government run hotels, rooms or small apartments via AirBnB, and locally run casa particulars. Low-to mid-range backpacker hotels don’t exist. I chose an AirBnb in Vedado, a nicer and well-known neighborhood outside of Old Havana. This afforded me a cheap room in a gorgeous Spanish mansion with a local Cuban family that was kind enough to show me the ropes of the city, and I was able to meet other travelers to explore with.

• It’s easy to walk the four main squares of Old Havana in an afternoon to take in a lot of the city’s history and local life – each featuring a plaza with ruins or cathedrals (some even built in the 1600’s) scattered around. These include Catedral De San Cristobal and Plaza de La Catedral, Castillo de la Real Fuerza and Plaza de Armas, Iglesia y Monasterio de San Francisco de Asis and Plaza Vieja.

• For some day-trip beach going, Playa Santa Maria is stunning and about a 45 minute taxi ride from the city center. There were a lot of people but the good music and dancing vibes made it feel less overwhelming.

• I was pleasantly surprised with the liveliness of Havana’s art scene, and wasn’t surprised when I later read it to be one of the most up and coming art scenes in the world. From street art, to local vendors, to dozens of art and craft museums in the city, it’s easy to see that Cubans still find value in preserving and exonerating this aspect of their culture. Fábrica de Arte Cubano is promoting emerging artists as well as established creatives. I also strolled through Callejón De Hamel, Havana’s Afro-Cuban art and music hub in Centro Habana. On my last day I stumbled across a few dozen local artists selling their work one afternoon on the median of the Paseo De Marti, one of the main drags through Old Havana. This was some of the most impressive and most original work I had seen in awhile, and included paintings, drawings lithographs, woodcuts, and copper intaglio etchings.