Moving Around Cuba

Moving Around Cuba

Transportation in Cuba is unique and very strange to Americans or to others in the western world. We have mental pictures of the 1950's cars kept running by Cuba's street mechanics for all these years, but because they once plied our streets, they aren't really so foreign to us. If we think of them as strange, we may be too young to remember when they were common here. For the 50's cars, strangeness is more of a time warp effect.

But the first time I saw a camello, an old fashioned Cuban bus, I thought, "that's really weird." I've mentioned camellos before in these blogs. They are basically tractor trailers where the trailer is fitted out as a bus. The center part of the trailer is lowered to make the step up from or the step down to the street surface easy. The front and back of the trailer are raised to give head room to the passengers riding above the wheels. This gives a two-humped (camel-like) look, and thus the Spanish name, camello, or camel in English.

When I first visited Cuba, camellos were common. They could hold a prodigious number of passengers, and you might guess one was coming when a busy corner on a main artery would be packed with a couple hundred commuters. The old tractor would limp to a stop and pandemonium would ensue as one hundred who wanted to leave the bus had to get by another hundred trying to get on the bus—all through the same set of doors. When finally everyone was on or off as he wished, the tractor would accelerate, grinding up through its gears to repeat the drama at the next bus stop.

Thankfully camellos made their last runs a few years ago, and today a fleet of sleek Chinese buses get people where they are going.

Cuba's intercity buses and trains have some of that weird flavor too. You can ride them and pay in the old Cuban Pesos or pay for a higher class of service in CUC's, Cuba's convertible currency, mostly used by tourists. If you use the old Peso buses, you have a much lower class of service. If you pay in CUC's, you ride in a different train or bus, generally with well-to-do people. This was being discussed recently in our email, and I quote Nora's words to describe the low class service:

Dear Les,

Of course it is much cheaper, but for this very reason it is a very difficult way to travel. Normally they are problematic—as much for the schedules, which are not respected, but for the people who operate them and the people who use them. I would not recommend this option—much less for a vacation in the eastern part of Cuba. As a Cuban, I would never use those trains or regular buses (paid in Pesos).

Nora

Of course many third world countries have trains and buses most of us would avoid, but Cuba may be the only one with two classes of service paid for with two different Cuban currencies. Adding to the transportation weirdness are Co-co taxis, basically a motor scooter for three, Asian style human powered pedicabs, and bicitaxis, a strange cross between a bike and a pedicab.

It's all part of the fun of being in a strange place.

Les Inglis