In the United States, if one has an iPhone or Android, you have access to the internet regardless of where you are, so long as you are not in a cave or on the top of a mountain. But Cuba is not like that. Internet is sparse, and where it does exist it is slow and sold for about $8/hour.
There is a hotel near our house where all of us on the trip lived called Hotel Presidente. They have a lovely patio with outside tables and chairs, live bands in the evenings and they sell internet for 8.50/hour and when you buy it they give you a $4 coupon to the bar.
So in theory, you walk into the hotel, ask for a card, pay $8.50 and connect to the internet: check your email, Facebook and deal with everything outside of Cuba within that time. Sounds simple.
In reality, you walk to the hotel and go inside to be told they aren’t selling internet cards that day. After leaving the front desk and sitting next to your friend, they tell you they just got two cards for a lower price, you just have to ask the woman with the highlights, not the woman with the long pink nails.
So, you finish your drink and you go back inside to ask the woman with the highlights for your card, but she isn’t there and you are told again to come back tomorrow. But tomorrow when you come, the internet is down and you lose all the minutes you paid for.
It is so frustrating, and once you get online everyone asks the same question separately of “How is Cuba” and you want to answer, but you keep looking at the clock, calculating how much time you can give to this one person while still encapsulating your experience and how you’re feeling so you end up just saying “It’s good. Hows life with you? :)”
But I guess at the end of the day, I came to Cuba to be in Cuba. And here, you can’t be in two places at once… There is no virtual reality and Cuban reality at the same time, there is just Cuba. Period. So I am left with the now, and right now I am in Cuba. So I am enjoying every moment of it I can.
And in this moment, enjoying Cuba means soaking up the sun, cooling down with a daily ice cream cone and making conversation.
La revolución hasta siempre.