Cruise ship passengers break away from guided tours to see real life in Cuba

Cruise ship passengers break away from guided tours to see real life in
Cuba

While still basking in the glow of the enthusiastic welcome they
received from hundreds of Cubans at the dock in Havana, some Adonia
passengers began to wonder if two days of guided tours gave them an
accurate picture of the harsh realities of everyday life on the
communist-led island.

"I didn't feel any oppression at all. No military presence. But I did
feel the guided tours were a little staged, as you would expect," said
Indiana restaurateur Diana Twyman, one of more than 600 passengers on
the maiden voyage of Carnival's Fathom brand of "social impact" travel.
"There is so much desperation just below the surface."

That desperation is tied largely to economic hardship in a nation where
even doctors may make no more than $35 a month. Since the relatively
small but luxurious liner Adonia left Port of Miami on Sunday afternoon,
at least 18 Cubans in small boats have made it to shore in the Florida
Keys. More than 3500 Cubans have been spotted or interdicted at sea
since October 1, according to the US Coast Guard.

To get a peek into the sense of despair that drives many Cubans to risk
their lives at sea, adventurous Adonia passengers had to break away from
the tours.

A cruise ship from the US heads across the strait separating the two
countries for the first time in 60 years, in another sign of the renewed
ties between the two Cold War enemies.

They walked Old Havana streets where crumbling buildings are still
inhabited, hired taxi drivers to take them to places well off the
tourist paths, and fought through language barriers to learn how Cubans
resolve problems with invention instead of money.

"We bailed out of a museum tour, found a taxi driver with a 1949 Ford
and told him to take us to a local bar," Rick Meares, a businessman from
Jupiter, Florida, said as he sat on Adonia's sun deck as the vessel
headed for Cienfuegos, the next port on the weeklong cruise.

Even without fluent Spanish, Meares said, he and his wife Susan "got by
and we learned a lot."

The model for Fathom's participatory travelling was previewed last month
on a trip to the Dominican Republic, where passengers spent several days
in one port volunteering to work on community projects such as planting
trees.

The Cuba cruise is different. There are no cooperative service projects
here. There were two days in Havana, and still to come is a six-hour
stop Thursday in Cienfuegos and an eight-hour visit to Santiago de Cuba
on Friday. The Adonia returns to Port of Miami on Sunday morning.

Fathom brand President Tara Russell acknowledged that the maiden voyage
has exposed kinks that need to be smoothed out. Complaints that surfaced
Monday about authoritarian tour guides - employed by the state-run
Havanatur agency - and about poor planning on excursions to the
Tropicana nightclub are being addressed, Russell said.

But ensuring that travellers can get an understanding of how most Cubans
live will be a challenge, Carnival officials acknowledge. Travellers
"hunger for travel that goes deep, and want to make a meaningful
difference in the world," Russell said on the first day of the weeklong
trip.

"We've been doing that in the Dominican Republic. In Cuba it's just
beginning."

During tours, Adonia passengers reported that some guides seemed to go
off script, giving candid answers to questions about incomes, education,
health care and the dual currency system in which most people are paid
in Cuban pesos, and not the dollar-equivalent money that tourists can spend.

But many travellers longed for more. "I wanted to go to a market where
Cubans shop, or see a school," said Susan Meares.

Twyman said the economic desperation she sensed just below the surface
in Cuba was brought home to her even before she began to explore Havana.
As the Adonia pulled into the harbour Monday morning, she said she
watched as a boy, about 10 years old and wearing a red shirt, raced
along the Malecon, waving and shouting as he kept pace with the liner.

That sight, said Twyman, symbolised the pent up desire for change she
felt in later talking to Cubans on the ground. "What this ship and other
ships to come are doing is letting the genie out of the bottle," she said.

"That boy in the red shirt was excited", Twyman said. "Change is coming.
And he knew his life was about to change too."

Traveller.com.au

Source: Cruise ship passengers break away from guided tours to see real
life in Cuba | Stuff.co.nz -
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