The country famed for vintage architecture, rum, cigars and '50s cars has a new spin.
Cuba and its tourism industry are ramping up with hip hotels, Chinese-made tour buses and restaurants serving trendy international dishes, partly in anticipation of an influx of Americans and their greenbacks.
At the rooftop pool of Havana's Hotel Saratoga, where rates run $200 and up and two-story suites have humidors and marble bathrooms, young Brits order mojitos. On the street below, near crumbling apartment buildings of Old Havana, a boy peers through the hotel restaurant's window and stretches a hand toward patrons nibbling delicacies unavailable to the average rice-and-beans-eating Cuban, miming hunger.
In the 50th anniversary year of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro into power, tourism is the No. 1 moneymaker, while locals might subsist on $20 a month and omnipresent food rationing.
U.S. citizens can't legally travel to Cuba because of a 1962 U.S.-imposed trade embargo with the Communist island 90 miles south of Key West.
But the regime favors U.S. tourism, and stateside hotel and cruise execs are quietly scoping out the scene.
Illicit Americans walk the cobbled streets of Old Havana, photograph pastel-colored Spanish Colonial buildings and historic churches, buff up their salsa, puff on mellow cigars and lie on the largest Caribbean island's white-sand beaches.
They slip in via Canada, Mexico and other Caribbean countries, and immigration officers keep them out of trouble back home by not stamping U.S. passports with the taboo "Cuba" imprint.
About 41,000 of last year's 2.3 million visitors were from the USA, including legal Cuban Americans, Cuban officials say. Cuba welcomes U.S. tourists, attracted despite the chance of fines or surrender of passports if caught when re-entering the USA.
Visitors are drawn by Cuba's "unique flavor, sensualism, beautiful people," says Christopher P. Baker, author of Cuba guides, including Moon Cuba.
"In Cuba, everyone is happy, even if they've got nothing," says Havana-bound Liuber Leiva, 33, of Miami, in gold earring and baggy shorts, at the Miami airport. He shows how to get bags shrink-wrapped to thwart theft and negotiate daunting lines of Cuban Americans with stacks of gift-loaded suitcases. They now can visit without restriction.
"Here, you make money, but you might not know your neighbor," he says. "There, you just go on over and have a party. At my family's house, there's gonna be 50 people drinking, eating a pig's head."
Havana says 'hola' to hedonism
Indeed, past white-capped nurses checking fliers for flu at the Havana airport and roadside posters proclaiming the glories of Che Guevara, Fidel and brother Raul Castro (who now nominally runs the country and supports U.S. tourism), radios blare merengue and pachanga, and a mother is glimpsed through a window boogieing while breastfeeding.
Lovers entwine on the sea-front wall on steamy nights, escaping un-air-conditioned apartments shared by extended families. And what pleasure seeker wouldn't love a city whose many museums include ones dedicated to chocolate, tobacco and rum? Visitors are encouraged to join the party.
Many a Havana restaurant features a band, even at lunch. At Café Taberna — one of the vintage eateries gussied up in Old Havana by a Cuban firm called Habaguanex — New Jersey Cuban-Americans leave their husbands and plates of chicken and pork to spontaneously sway their hips to the Septeto Matamoros band. At El Floridita, a tourist trap billed as the home of the daiquiri, a singer accompanies the sipping of the $6.50 lime concoction.
Travelers who recall Cuba's musty hotels and often unpalatable fare are surprised by the upgrades (though old-building plumbing can be iffy).
The Saratoga has a spa and menu of pillows. Hotel Telégrafo boasts rooms with boutique-chic touches. And Hotel Raquel is a Jewish-themed lodging with a rock from Jerusalem in the lobby.
The Old Havana spiff-up "is a bit artificial, but I enjoy seeing the real neighborhoods" of the nearly 5-century-old city, says Danish tourist Thomas Bligaard, 20, sunning on the Raquel's rooftop.
Wi-Fi and in-home restaurants
He and other visitors savor Cuba traditions, such as dining in restaurants in private homes. These paladares, started to bring in extra cash for families, have become institutions. Antique-filled La Guarida, in a run-down apartment building, is romantic and sophisticated. At La Cocina de Lilliam, you ring a bell at the gate of a home in a residential neighborhood and dine on smoked salmon and tiramisu.
Havana's grande dame, the 1930 Hotel Nacional de Cuba, modeled after The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., is still imposing, with columned arcades and stone towers, even if many rooms could use an update. That's where Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg and Benicio Del Toro stayed during cultural-exchange trips. Americans with special visas can visit without penalty in certain cases.
Though it now has Wi-Fi, the Nacional is a throwback to Havana's pre-Castro glamour-tourism days, when gambling was legal (the Castro regime outlawed it). Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner honeymooned at the Nacional. Today's visitors still order drinks while overlooking Havana's harbor. Tablemates might include made-up, miniskirted ladies looking to meet a businessman or two.
Another tourist magnet with the mystique of bygone days is Ernest Hemingway's villa outside the city. It's frozen in time, with bottles still on his drinks cart, shoes in the closet, stuffed animal heads — even his fluctuating weight written in pencil over the bathroom scale. Hemingway regularly visited El Floridita for a cocktail.
But Cuba isn't always a daiquiri-fueled fiesta. Residents tend to be fearful of speaking their minds about politics to visitors, looking over their shoulders to see if they are being overheard in a country where freedom of expression is limited. The phrase "no es facil" (it isn't easy) is used when travel glitches — waiting for luggage, trying to figure out attraction schedules or to change tour plans — arise. Bureaucracy is big here. So is surveillance of tourists and journalists. And while service is more efficient than in years past, it is not always a strong point, which may not play well with American tourists known for wanting their own way, and pronto.
"More work is needed to bring (Cuba) up to standard" to handle a horde of Americans, says hotel consultant Charles Suddaby of Toronto.
The tourist hustle, love for sale
Despite black flags signifying U.S. "terrorist" acts planted outside the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, most Cubans profess love of Americans, if not U.S. policies. So do touts called jineteros. The nickname is based on the Spanish word for jockey, meaning they ride on tourists' backs. A Havana fixture, they're as annoying as the smell of garbage that permeates some parts of the city.
Jineteros nuzzle up to visitors offering cheap cigars, a room in a private home or their "sisters." "I love you!" they may yell in English at a foreign woman, in hopes of getting into her pocketbook.
At Casa de la Música, a popular downtown Havana nightclub/dance hall that lures locals and vacationers, attractive twentysomething Cubans snuggle with visitors of either sex. Some relationships last for a night, some for years, with the foreigner returning to proffer presents and cash to make his or her beloved's life easier.
While everyday Cubans may chat or invite you into their homes, in the tourist zone, lots are "out to make a buck" or a wrest a tip, says tourist Simon Murphy, 40, of Dublin. He and buddies spent the night before fending off hustlers and provocative local ladies.
Tour guide Ludwig Díaz Montenegro, an efficient 35-year-old with a good command of English, keeps pesterers at bay as he proudly shepherds visitors through attractions such as cigar factories, not to mention the bureaucratic maze. "Americans want to see what Cuba is really like versus the information they have been fed," he says. "U.S. tourists are welcome here, not just in terms of economics, but socially. Here, (we don't) deal with a person's mind-set versus another person."
Says United States Tour Operators Association president Bob Whitley: "If Americans don't like the policies of the government of a country, they (can) choose not to go. But a lot of people want to see Cuba because they've been denied the right."
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