Date: 8th of February 2023
Author: Peer
Position: Cienfuegos Marina
Nautical position: 21°57.4N 080°27.5W
Ship: Pelican of London

Today we visted one of the most beautiful and exciting cities of Cuba, the capital city of Havana. We were woken up at 0600 to pack our things and to launch the rib. After going ashore, we arrived at our bus which brought us to Havana. Our 4-hour trip already started at 0700 and the bus driver drove us through Cuba on its uneven streets. We finally arrived at 1100, right in the middle of Havana and we split into groups to explore Havana. Streets full of art, museums and many classic cars are waiting for us.

Havana – Streets Full Of Art And History

As we explored the streets of Havana, we found out that in our area a lot of museums and art galleries exist. Also, a lot of street art, especially art with Cubas cigars and portraits of Fidel Castro. The streets were full of local people, the buildings are small and very colourful. In every corner there is one small shop or café. The streets are very narrow and full of small shops on wheels and a lot of tuck tucks and motorcycles make their way through the full streets of Cuba. We walked through the street and enjoyed the fabulous atmosphere and finally, we found a small sweet park where we could eat our lunch. We stayed there and after that we visited a museum inside of a fortress. It was built to protect the marina. The fortress has an untypical form which we didn’t know. We learned much about the shipyard history of Cuba and about the interesting story of the fortress. They also had many ship models – bigger and smaller ones. We were pretty surprised as we saw one big ship model which was used to explain the many functions of each area of the ship, such as the sails and ropes although the most stuff is already familiar to us. We also walked on the roof of the fortress where the cannons stood which protected Havana and we enjoyed a fabulous view over the buildings of Cuba and the blue ocean.

Good Act Every Day

As we finally found a shop near the capitol where we could buy postcards and write to our family, we had a funny meeting with an American from Orlando who needed our help. He wanted to visit the Cuban capitol, so he wanted to buy the tickets in the postcard shop. Sadly, his American credit card didn’t work supposedly because Cuba denies American credit cards in Cuba. So, the American couldn’t use his credit card and couldn’t buy his tickets for the capitol. He asked us if we could buy him the ticket if he gave us the money, because we came from Europe and our credit cards worked perfectly in Cuba. But he had his money in his hotel, so we wanted to meet 30 minutes later. We would borrow him the money, but we are still talking about 20$ and we didn’t want to get scammed. So, we wrote our post cards, and he came already 5 min later. „OK guys, the situation has changed. There is another guy who has the same problem like me. He would give you 60$ if you bought three tickets for us.“ We accepted and bought the tickets. They were really happy and he came to us after that and asked us what we are doing here in Cuba, and we explained him that we are from Ocean College and that we sailed from Amsterdam to Costa Rica. He was really interested and we talked about our lives on bord, school, good and bad things, experiences where we have already been and how it is being on the other side of the world while our family is at home – almost no communication.

All in all, it was a fabulous day in the capital city Havana.