Old Doc Keller goes to Cuba

As I said on my work blog, I am off to Cuba for the next 4 days, to attend a scientific meeting and look around the place.  Arranging travel has been the first hassle; charters from Miami to Havana, a mere 90 miles, run once a day, and sometimes change with little notice.  So, when I arrived at the airport, 4 hours before departure, as recommended by the tour company, I discovered that my return flight was bumped from "arriving at 12:30 PM" to "arriving at 5 PM", without telling me.  Fortunately, I was able to change my flight home, although now I am getting home at Midnight.  Bummer.  Still, it's Cuba.  And the adventure begins.  

Julie and I were able to visit the island in 1996;  this was my initial impression of the island back then:

The flight to Orlando and then on Nassau was uneventful. In Nassau we began meeting the group that was to become our traveling companions. First was Alan Meyers and his wife Gail S. They are from Boston City Hospital and the Boston Visiting Nurse Association respectively. Alan has much experience in Nicaragua, Salvador and Guatemala, both as a health care worker and observer of health care systems. In addition to that he is a strong patient advocate within the Boston City Hospital system. Next, Tom Whitney and his wife Alison joined us. Tom is a pediatrician from Maine who set this all up. It turns out that he was a resident under Evan back in Rochester many years ago and knew a number of people that we also knew. The rest of the folks arrived in spurts. We had many interesting conversations regarding antecedents.

We then began the rather lengthy process of checking in so that we could board our Cubana airlines TU154. I was a little concerned because this a Soviet made plane, but I reassured by several people that the Cubans keep them in good condition. We walked out on the tarmac and I took several pictures of the plane. We then entered the plane. No assigned seating. No first class seating (Viva the Revolution!). The seats were soft to the point of being uncomfortable but the flight was, in general, not unpleasant. The beer was free as were the Canadian peanuts. We sat next to a Canadian from Toronto, Jim Sorenson. He works for the Delta Hotel Company, which is apparently Canada's largest privately owned hotel company. They run hotels in Canada, the Far East and Cuba. He has been involved in Cuban affairs for about four years and has been coming down here one to two times a month for the last year and a half since his firm opened the first of what are now five hotels and resort hotels on Cuba.

While waiting for this flight, I should mention that our tour guide, Vivian, recognized Stokely Carmichael, also known by a Islamic name at present, waiting in the airport lobby with his foot propped up. I asked her if to ask him if it would be okay if I took his picture and he agreed. His foot has what sounds like severe claudication and he was on his way to Cuba so that the Cuban doctors could help him with his problem. On the airplane, we heard of another man sitting one seat over from us who had retinitis pigmentosa and was going to Cuba for treatment of this condition. When I went over to take the former Mr. Carmichael's picture, I told him what an honor it was to meet him in person and that I was happy to see that there were still people for whom the dream had not died, even in these days of Gingrich. He replied that Mr. Gingrich was going to be, in the long run, making radical change much more possible by making conditions for real people in the United States much worse.


We landed at the airport and went through Customs and Immigration. Waiting for us at the airport was Rachel Cohen and a doctor from the Department of Public Health who helped to arrange the itinerary for our trip. We saw the itinerary which includes opportunities to visit the Children's Hospital, a facility for long-term care of children with leukemia from the Chernobel accident in the Ukraine, a visit to a school, and other real neat-looking activities. We then collected our luggage and went outside the airport to get on a bus to go to our hotel.

A few random impressions from the bus ride: First, the bus was made by Mercedes-Benz and was very comfortable to ride in. The driver did not seem to have a delayed windshield wiper setting and had to manually turn the wipers on and off. The road was a divided highway with two lanes. The lane closest to the edge was generally for a bicycle, motorcycle or occasionally a car. Whenever a bus came up on a car moving too slowly in the second lane, he would flash his lights and move on by him. The speed limit on the road was 90 kilometers/hour. The cars driven on the road were either new Toyotas, Mercedes-Benz or Japanese cars, or old cars held over from the revolution. We saw one vintage Dodge stalling repeatedly while attempting to execute a three point turn. This was in keeping with Mr. Sorenson's description of Cuba as a place that was frozen in 1959 and desper-ately needed fixing up. Apparently, the supply of automobiles is so limited that these vintage cars are driven "into the ground" under conditions in which we would not usually drive them. The bicyclists wore no helmets and often bicycled two a cycle in order to get through the streets. This was observed at approximately 8:30 or 9 o'clock at night on our ride to the hotel. We had been transferred into a new facility that is still in the process of being built. Our rooms are very nice although there isn't very much storage space. We were the last to get our keys and when we got down we went straight over to dinner at about quarter of ten. The restaurant, actually the hotel, was willing to make dinner for 18, even at a late hour. I had some sort of Royal Chicken with rice and beans. A good meal marred only by the fact that Julie couldn't get her meal for a long time.

A couple of other thoughts about the state of things in Cuba. On our drive to the airport, we passed three cars that were pulled over to the side of the road changing flats. While this may be chance on the part of the Cubans, it is also possible that repairing old equipment is becoming increasingly difficult within the Cuban system.

Anyway, we then quickly unpacked and went out to dinner. The food was good but the service was terrible. We reviewed the plans for tomorrow and talked until about midnight. The folks at the restaurant clearly had difficulty with organization of the menus as well as difficulty figuring out where our bills were. It ended up costing about $10. each for a very good dinner of chicken and rice.

I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but in addition to the many bicycles we saw heading home at 8 o'clock at night on the road, there were motorcycles with side cars as well as vintage automobiles. We saw three cars with flat tires and several cars pulled over the side of the road with their hoods up. In one instance, we were stopped beyond a Dodge that was about 40 years old and was trying to turn around on the street, and kept stalling as it moved through the three point turn. The infra-structure is clearly aging. The hotel is a new hotel, just finished being built, and much nicer than we thought it would be.

Wonder how much it has changed?  We will see.  Still isn't easy to get there, I can tell you that.  I will be trying to blog stuff relevant to mental health on the other blog, and more touristy stuff on this one.  We will see how that works.