Story and Photos by Lewis McCool
Cortez Journal managing editor

Depending on whom you talk to, tourism in Cuba is up or down. Some say it is booming. Others say it's down, blaming the Bush administration's crackdown on legitimate and illegal travel by U.S. citizens to the Caribbean island.

Cuban government figures indicate that 1.9 million tourists visited the island during 2003, a 12 percent increase from the previous year.

I spent eight nights at tourist hotels in four Cuban cities in March. They seemed moderately busy. On only one occasion, in Santiago de Cuba (the country's second-largest city), did my hotel seem crowded. Several busloads of Germans arrived, packing the elevators and common areas of the 15-story Melía Hotel Santiago.

Cuba's political leaders are banking on tourism to lift the Third World country out of the economic gutter, and those who visit there seem to think that it's a destination worth seeing and worth recommending.

Once a haven for Russians and fortunate travelers from other Eastern Bloc countries, Cuba now draws more Western Europeans and Canadians. Travel restrictions - long imposed by the U.S. government on its citizens - keep most Americans away.

Tourism is a double-edged sword. Foreign currency (the U.S. dollar is the medium of exchange for tourists in Cuba) is in great demand. The dollar is invaluable in allowing Cuba to buy scarce, essential foreign goods. Tips given to Cuban service workers in the tourism industry can multiply their income hundreds of times beyond their meager government monthly salaries, paid in Cuban pesos. But the de facto dollar economy is creating disparate economic classes of citizens: those who work, legally or illegally, in the tourism industry and those who don't.

In Old Havana, where tourists most often mingle with Cubans, enterprising individuals offer a variety of services, from guide services to sexual favors, and black-market products (mostly cigars and rum). And there are beggars.

Police wander casually along the streets, frequently hanging out at intersections. The modus operandi of the unofficial vendors is to approach tourists mid-block, make their pitch quickly and complete the transaction before getting too close to the cops, who ignore all but the most blatant activity. Any tourists feeling especially put-upon need only head for the nearest cop. The sales pitch will quickly end with the vendor fading into the shadows.

Beggars stake out the hotels, standing as near the doorway as the doormen will allow. Techniques range from an expectant look with a simple hand extended palm up to a woman carrying a child insisting on a dollar "for milk for the baby."

Havana, like any other large city, has its share of parks, museums, galleries and nightlife. It's just that you find them amid dilapidated buildings and subsistence housing.

The National Fine Artists Museum of Cuban Art is rich with paintings and sculptures representing the country's diverse cultures and history. Nearby in a huge glass enclosure at the Museum of the Revolution is Granma, the boat that took Fidel, Che and other fighters from Mexico to Cuba in 1956. An engine from the American U-2 spy plane shot down by the Cubans during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is on display. There are full-size figures of Che and others. And there are a few exhibits poking fun at American leaders, past and present.

We discovered a large crafts show near the Malecón, literally the levee, the broad roadway along Havana's seawall. Later that day, artists lined up their works along the half-mile boulevard, Paseo de Martí (also know as Prado), that leads from the Parque Central to the Malecón.

Take me out to the ballgame

There was béisbol (baseball). The Cubans are good, and the sport is very popular. We saw the Havana Industriales battle the team from Santiago. Box seats set us back $3. Cubans pay next to nothing. The stadium, Estadio Latinoamericano, seats 55,000, about the same as Denver's Coors Field, where we'd have paid $40 for box seats. A vendor with a thermos of strong, sweet Cuban coffee came by, offering tiny paper cups of potent coffee, espresso really. Having no pesos, one of our group gave him $1. Delighted, he poured coffee for everyone in the vicinity.

Later in the evening, we took in a musical act at the Hotel Nacional, perhaps the best known and most recognizable of Havana's hotels. The touristy act, dubbed "the Buena Vista Social Club," was an attempt to capitalize on the 1996 documentary movie that introduced many foreigners to Cuban music.

Musicians, working for tips, play at bars throughout the tourist areas. Invariably they will have CDs of their music for sale. The going rate is $10. Most are made using personal computers, and about half the time won't play when you get them home. I was one for three.

We were guests of the government's Ministry of Tourism for a first-class lunch (filet mignon) and a tour at Marina Hemingway on the western outskirts of Havana. Left over from Batista days, the facility is being converted into an upscale, self-sufficient vacation destination for foreign yacht owners. There are several restaurants, shops, bungalows, a small amusement park and a jogging track - but no golf course, even though there's space for one. Rumor has it that Cuban tourism officials are aware of the importance of golf to upscale tourists and plan courses in the near future.

Varadero: Luxury European-style

A fine round of golf is possible, but you'll have to leave Havana to find Cuba's only 18-hole course (outside the U.S. Guantánamo naval base). It's at the international beach resort city of Varadero, adjacent to the former Dupont mansion Xanadu, now the club house, restaurant and hotel.

Varadero is almost as alien to Cuba as is the U.S. base, though in a far different way. It's pure luxury, beautiful beaches, five-star hotels, pricey restaurants and boutiques, topless sunbathers and no Cubans, except as workers. There is a village nearby where Cubans live, isolated from the tourist area. Cubans work in Varadero but cannot vacation there.

Traveling through the Cuban countryside brings surprising scenes: billboards, not sporting product promotions but rather revolutionary slogans; bus stops packed with people waiting for some form of transportation, usually a truck already packed with people; aging but functional tractors from Russia or Belarus; old men on bicycles, horse- or ox-drawn wagons; fields of sugarcane, orange groves, papaya and other tropical fruits; farmhouses ringed with cactus fences enclosing chickens, goats and pigs; lush vegetable gardens; and palm trees, the national symbol, so chosen for its resistance to storms and "unbreakable character." There are more than 100 varieties.

What you won't see much of is junk. There are a few abandoned cars on Havana streets, but Cubans seem to have a way to keep things running.

Classic taxi ride

Two fellow journalists and I took a cab from downtown Santiago de Cuba to our hotel on the outskirts of the city (a dollar each) in a 1930 Ford roadster. The driver, who appeared old enough to have bought it new, and spoke no English, kept referring to Al Capone. Whether he was trying to tell us that the gangster once owned the car, rode in the car, killed its previous owner - or that he was Al Capone - was left to our speculation.

San Juan Hill, allegedly the site of Teddy Roosevelt's triumphant ride against the Spanish in the Spanish-Cuban-American War, was a short distance from our hotel. Our guide informed us that it was the only monument in Cuba where informational signs were in English, and indeed they are. Plaques and statues, erected decades ago by several U.S. states, honor the Americans who fought and died there.

Morro Castle guards the entrance to Santiago harbor and provides a spectacular view of the Caribbean and the island's rugged southern coastline with the Sierra Maestra, the country's highest mountain range (Pico Turquino, elevation 6,578 feet), in the distance to the west. It was there that Fidel and Che organized their rebel army and began the revolution.

North of Santiago, a couple of hours by tour bus, the better part of a day if you're taking public transportation, is the city of Holguín, Cuba's fourth largest city, with nearly 200,000 inhabitants.

It was holding a book fair, part of an annual national event that travels from city to city. Residents were crowding the booths to see what books had received the government's OK and were for sale. Huckleberry Finn and science fiction by Jules Verne were prominently displayed. Entertainment was part of the fair with local performers appearing in two city plazas. In the main square, two young, female clowns and their comic routine had the crowd, children and adults alike, in stitches.

Signs of surplus

Of the places we visited in Cuba, I found the city of Camagüey the most interesting, perhaps the most prosperous (outside Varadero) and the most optimistic. A farmers' market where growers could sell surplus crops was packed with vendors, a hundred or more booths with vegetables, grains, fruits and meat. Well-dressed workers streamed past our hotel in the commercial district as I watched from the rooftop observation deck that doubled as a bar in the evening. A major restoration project (one of the few I saw in the country) was under way on a church. Another church, obviously well-tended, had a beautiful altar and massive mahogany ceiling beams. A neighborhood square had life-size metal statues of people in lifelike scenes, enjoying an afternoon on a park bench. At night, the lights from the city's ballpark indicated that béisbol was under way.

I learned that the public squares in Camagüey aren't square and the streets aren't parallel or perpendicular. The city is something like a huge maze, intended to confuse marauding pirates centuries ago.

The city's tourist bureau organized an evening's entertainment for us. It featured a renowned Haitian-music group, Desandann. The hometown group has toured the U.S. and Canada. The lively, rhythmic and soulful performance brought me to tears. Their CD is the one that works!