8 January 2025, Havana
La Mansion del Centro €25 (R495)

We travelled between Santa Clara and Havana by bus reserved before we arrived in Cuba.

Odd sods
Many, many people have cell phones and seem to spend endless hours on them. We have found coverage to be almost universal, except in the eastern mountains.
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Stats only mean so much and are easily over-simplified. For what it is worth, one source puts Cuba's gross national income per person per annum at $8920 (the lowest in the region) vs South Africa's at $6750. The world average is $13900.
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There is a variation in wealth in Cuba, as in all countries, from the destitute eating out of bins to people dancing salsa in pubs with live music; from the way-too-thin begging from tourists to the softly-rounded sporting fake designer watches.
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It is, as always, the cities that attract the very poor. The day we spent an hour at a rural bus stop hoping for a ride, we saw a tiny village, low-income but not uncomfortably so. A 90-year old sat at the stop, holding court. Neighbours popped by to sit and chat awhile, indicative of time for leisure. A couple of horses roamed free, eating from the verges or pushing their way through a gate into a fenced yard to eat the garden grass. We learned in Africa that fencing your yard is a big step up from not. No-one asked us for money.
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What is distinctive and disturbing about Cuba are the controls that severely limit choice. Shops and shopping remain a mystery. Finding bottled water can be a challenge. The only bread we have seen on sale is from a street vendor, though we have seen (closed) shops labelled bakery. The only item easily, cheaply and everywhere available, is alcohol.
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Yet things are better than they were just three years ago, the post-Covid period bringing hardship and forcing change. According to Cuba Study Group: "Over the past two years a new kind of revolution has been quietly taking place in Cuba: Private businesses, banished from the island by Fidel Castro more than 60 years ago, are making a strong comeback, employing more people than state enterprises, gaining trust from foreign creditors and helping put food on Cubans’ tables at a time of widespread scarcity."
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Sadly, ideology continues to trump sense. Seeing the success of the private sector, from January 2025 the government will be partnering with four international companies to act as wholesaler for all private imports, creating a muddle-man middle-man likely to put paid to success.