I got stuck in Cuba for a week with only $100 and no ability to phone out as phone calls cost $1 per minute, and the internet has a filter that stops Skype (where you can actually find internet).
It was 2018, and my girlfriend and I rented an Airbnb in Cuba and flew down for an adventurous week. We had no idea we would spend literally all our money in the first day, and then we completely stuck, begging strangers in local hotels to spare us $20 for a meal.
What started as a nightmare quickly became one of the best experiences of my life. When your back is against the wall you have to innovate. So we got out of the tourist economy and met the locals. At that time I didn’t speak Spanish, and there was almost zero internet in Cuba, so we made friends with sign language. We purchased meals out of people’s backyards, it was $1.10 for two plates of food and two drinks, about 50 time cheaper than in the restaurants.
We ended up meeting a translator who became a friend. He later married a guy from Italy and got out of Cuba. Since then we have been back, and he calls locals and arranged them to take us on tours at ‘locals prices’, where they take the day off work and take us on private tours. It’s all government run, so instead of the normal $2 per day they earn, we pay them more like $50 or $100, and they organise the most incredible adventures for 10% of the normal cost.
Banking in Cuba
We eventually solved the banking issue, but it was crazy. The only country that can send money into Cuba is via Western Union is the USA (ironic, I know). They must send it to a Cuban local. So we had my cousin in the US military send money to our cleaner in Cuba. No doubt that raised some flags at the Pentagon. The cleaner withdrew the $600 and held in her hand her entire years wage. We gave her $50 for her trouble, and finally we had cash again.
This makes it seem simple, but as I previously said, we couldn’t actually call out of country. We had no money to pay for a phone call, and Skype didn’t work. What we discovered was:
1. You could buy internet access for 20 minutes in major hotels. It was weak, and slow, but it existed.
2. If you used a VPN you could get past their internet filter & use skype
3. This solution still had Skype drop out every 2 – 3 minutes
4. Convincing your cousin to send money to Cuba is on par with convincing them your are a Nigerian price in need of a small deposit to rescue a family fortune.
Cuba is an amazing country, and nowadays we live only an hours flight away. We’ve visited many times, and love the people and the culture. We wouldn’t have had that appreciation without the adversity we had to overcome.
Immediately after arriving in Cuba we realised we might have a problem.
Airbnb had just been allowed into the country, but required a host who was responsible for checking on you. Our host asked what we wanted for breakfast and we asked for a basic bacon and eggs. She looked at us like we were crazy, and explained that to possibly find those two ingredients would require visiting several stores and even then the possibility was slim. This was about the time we realised that despite asking our 3 banks if we could withdraw money in Cuba, and being assured we could… the information was not correct.
Later, when we had departed Cuba I called the three banks. The staff on the front desk had no idea why it hadn’t worked, and assured me it should have, but when escalated to their managers it became clear that was not correct. In one case they advised us because the unwriting bank was from the USA, then all transactions from them were blocked in Cuba.
The front desk staff were not to know, but it was a bit of a nightmare. On a subsequent visit we took US currency with us… this was another mistake as they can exchange any currency, but the government imposes a 10% ‘tax’ on US currency, so we lost again.
One other funny tit-bit of a mistake in Cuba. We brought my drone with us on a visit a couple years later. We captured some great video and didn’t think anything of it.
A few weeks later one of our travelling buddies sent me a newspaper article. It turns out that bringing a drone to Cuba is as illicit as dealing drugs, and a number of foreigners had been thrown in jail. We got lucky and nobody mentioned anything, but it was super closer. You can see the video here:
