Cuban dollars aka CUC ( used by tourists ) , Cuban pesos aka CUP ( used by Cubans, especially useful in rural areas of Cuba and simply to buy fruit of street vendor). To tell the truth, there are still no rules on when exactly a tourist would be allowed to pay with Cuban pesos, but it is worth a try, just for a thrill of it. DAY 2, Friday : At around midday we have already organised a taxi to take us to HAVANA... DAY 1, Thursday : Plane lands in SANTA CLARA… unbelievable heat and overpriced cab to the centre ( no point getting even slightly upset ), we check in to our hotel ( we had booked our first night in advance, but it was the only night we spent in... We buy some fruit from a street vendor ( thank to Magda’s spanish language knowledge ) and we successfully pay in Cuban pesos, the price for few bananas reaches an equivalent of roughly 5p. As good as it was, we will not often be able to pay as... Before the day is over we are able to hear through our hotel window live music being played on the central band stand of Parque Vidal as well as modern Cuban music on the roof terrace of our hotel. It is a little walk away from the Parque Vidal which is at the centre of Santa Clara and also the location of the biggest building and only hotel unsurprisingly called: Hotel Santa Clara Libre.
Money – Cuba has two currencies: the Cuban Peso and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC). If you are going to stay in a Casa Particular (the private homes where Cubans rent rooms) and they say there’s only a baño cubano (or Cuban bath) just know that there will be no running water. The Cuban Convertible Peso, known as CUC, is the international money, the currency conceived by Fidel´s regime to contain the devaluation of the nacional currency. One Euro is worth around 25 Cuban Pesos. 50 CUC coins or Cuban Pesos bills at hand. There are also currency exchange offices in almost every town you go to. With two currencies coexisting in the country and a lot of people receiving money from family members abroad, exchanging is a part of Cuban´s lives. The bathrooms there may not have running water, toilet paper or toilet seats, but there’s always someone taking care of it and expecting that you leave a tip for their services (sometimes that even gets you a little piece of paper to dry your hands). Now, if you want to travel on a shoestring, stay in private houses and use the almendrón (the Cuban colective taxi), than you can calculate 50 CUC per day, including meals and lodging. (Read more: I´ve never seen a currency exchange house in Brazil selling Cuban money. For the average Cuban, who earns around 25 Euros a month, the beverage costs a real fortune (and yes, you can find Coke everywhere in the island). Baño Cubano (The Cuban bathroom).
American dollars no longer circulate, but there are two different Cuban pesos: the CUC, which is what we foreigners pay with, and non-convertible Cuban pesos, which the folks use. I was participating in the Canadian Studies conference, which included a one-day teaching workshop with students and faculty (I was one of the teachers) and then a couple of days of conference presentations. Cuban universities look and feel a lot like universities anywhere: students look like students. The conference is sponsored by the Canadian Studies Centre of the University of Holguín, in collaboration with The University of Western Ontario, and it is also supported by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) and the Canadian... Cubans who work in the tourist industry have access to CUCs and the goods that they can buy, so clearly those are much-desired jobs. It sounds as if Cuban students and professors discovered what it took me literally decades to realize: that Canadian literature is just as fascinating as British and American. Ordinary Cubans take cranky old buses, ride in old cars (some as old as the 1940s), or use horses and buggies to get around. Another interesting Canadian-Cuban connection is the Canada-Cuba Literary Alliance. There was more variety of food, more consumer goods to buy, more openness to entrepreneurship and to Cubans owning small businesses. Cuban students and professors are passionately interested in all things Canadian. My conference paper the next day was on place-based identities in Mėtis literature where I focused on theorizing the connection between particular geographical locations and Mėtis stories, including life stories. One CUC is equivalent to about 25 non-convertible pesos, so that tells you something about wages and cost of living.
This great folly makes all the possibilities of increasing the economy unrealistic because creating this new form of work without the necessary preparation means that what the State sells for 80 cents in national money (Cuban pesos), the vampire... Incredibly, the private market doesn’t run out of product, while in many cases the State has no products to sell, forcing the Cuban to bleed financially. 00 Cuban pesos by the self-employed. But other limiting measures to prevent buying in large quantities, that affect the population, come to light, like limiting the purchase of packages of croquettes — 4 packages per person — which are acquired at 5.
