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SunBeach Varadero Cuba



 
 
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Old January 3rd, 2004, 08:35 PM
Achim Nolcken Lohse
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Default SunBeach Varadero Cuba

We booked two weeks all-inclusive at the Hotetur Sun Beach Varadero
(formerly called the Bellamar), Cuba on November 13, 2003 for December
8 to 22. We chose Varadero because we couldn't get a direct flight to
Havana from Calgary, and Sun Beach because it was shown as associated
with the ACUA Dive Centre, offering CMAS SCUBA courses. We planned to
get my wife Open Water Certified in the first week, and to visit
Havana and do some dives together in the second.

HOTEL COMMUNICATION/INFORMATION:

As detailed below, it took more than three weeks to confirm the FAX
number for the Hotetur Sun Beach Varadero, and to get an e-mail
address for it. It's doubtful we would have been able to achieve even
this without some knowledge of Spanish.

Hotel voltage - the ALBATours page on Sunbeach Varadero
(http://www.albatours.com/destination...basunbeach.asp) stated that the
"newly renovated" hotel ran entirely on "220V (converter required)",
so I left the battery chargers for my digital camera and dive light at
home. Consequently I used the canera sparingly, and it still died two
days before the end of our stay. My dive light failed on my last dive
excursion.

When we arrived, we found that all the rooms at Sunbeach now have 110V
flat-prong outlets.

Internet - happily, we were able to find out the e-mail address for
the Sun Beach just before we left, and so were reachable while there.
I doubt we could have found this out from the front desk staff. There
are two PCs in the lobby with cable-internet connections, but I've had
faster connections on a 14K dialup. Access costs US$2 for 15 minutes,
or US$3 for 30 minutes, and then you wait amid the second-hand smoke
until there's a terminal free. There's no reservation system.

There's no provision I could find there, or at any of several cyber
cafes I visited in Varadero, for connecting alaptop directly to the
internet so you can use your own e-mail client. My mailbox
accumulated more than 1200 e-mails in my 16 day absence, and my ISP's
webmail page only displays 10 headers at a time, so it was impossible
to read any except the most recent messages without spending hours and
a small fortune online.

There's also no provision for clearing the browser cache on the
hotel's PCs to make sure your private information is not accessible to
others.


Smoking - the hotel's website gave no warning that other than the main
dining room, all public areas are smoking zones. If you're sensitive
to tobacco smoke, sitting anywhere in the lobby or corridors is
extremely unpleasant.

Security/Charge Cards - we had no warning that we would have to pay
for items such as airport transfer fees and safe deposit boxes in
cash. At US$2 per day and $30 key deposit, the safe deposit box took a
chunk out of our avaiable cash. When my wife had to fly out of Havana
airport unexpectedly, the Sunquest representative also required cash
for the $25 airport transfer fee. So instead of the US$50 in cash we
had budgeted for the exit tax, we ended up tying up $153.


SUNBEACH ACCOMMODATIONS

We arrived at the hotel about six in the evening after a gruelling
five hour flight in a Skyservice plane packed like a sardine can. We
wanted only to have supper, then relax in our room and get a good
night's sleep.

Our room was on the eighth floor of one of two towers, with windows on
the side street (Calle 17). We were just settling down to rest when
the nightly stage show began. The volume was incredible! We closed our
windows, turned the air conditioner to maximum and plugged our ears
with foamies, but the sound was still loud enough to give us a
headache. Past experience in measuring such noise suggests that the
readings at ground zero would have been 130-140 decibels - enough to
cause permanent hearing damage in the course of the two hour show.

We asked for a quieter room and got moved on day three to a much
smaller room on the third floor above the staff quarters at the
opposite end of the compound, facing away from the showstage. This
muted the show music, but brought new noises.

Our new room overlooked the shipping courtyard, and every night, at
12:30 am, loud metallic screeching noises emerged from this area
intermittently for about an hour. It may have been the huge steel
sliding doors being opened and closed, or the movement of garbage
dumpsters. In any case, it was enough to prevent sleep or interrupt
it.

The walls transmitted every word from the adjacent rooms. So sleep
delayed by the courtyard noise was often further postponed by
neighbours returning in a boisterous mood anytime between midnight
and 5:30 am. Throughout the night there were dog fights and
intermittent barking in the Cuban neighbourhood across the street,
joined by the crowing of roosters beginning anywhere from 4:30 to 5:30
am. By 5:30 or 6 am the truck traffic would also start to build, so
that we were always awake by 7 am, no matter how late we fell asleep.
We never enjoyed a single night of uninterrupted sleep during our two
week stay.


SUN BEACH DINING

Eating at Sun Beach was a struggle. Finding a cleared table was always
a challenge. Finding one with a clean table cloth was often
impossible. Sometimes we had to bus our own tables, often we had to
search the room for clean cutlery or serviettes. Spoons were always in
short supply, often bowls and even coffee cups were not to be found.

You had to line up at the bar to get filtered water (our Sunquest
representative advised against drinking the tap water). Lineups for
the dinner special of the day could last up to 30 minutes if there
were shrimp or turkey (once or twice in 14 days). Mostly the food was
plain, boring, fattening. Pork chops, chicken, and unspecified "fish"
predominated. Occasionally there was green salad, but mostly it was
cole slaw. Dessert consisted of the same puddings and heavy sugary
pastries every day.

The only bread an buns were tasteless white stuff, and the breakfast
croissants were hardly better.

Vegetables consisted of canned peas and green beans, and occasionally
brown beans or corn. Sometimes there were passable baked potatoes. For
breakfast there were eggs, sliced cheese, pancakes and rice pudding,
but never bacon or ham. There was some sort of sliced particle meat
that I never tried.

There was usually decent yogurt at breakfast, if you could find a bowl
and spoon with which to eat it. The coffee was dispensed by machine,
and all the variants I tried (espresso, cafe au lait, coffee,
capuccino) were barely drinkable.

Sometimes there was delicious Guava juice available at breakfast, and
usually there were always lightly fried bananas to fall back on.

Two brands of weak beer, "Crystal" and "Buccanero", were dispensed in
small plastic cups by a single barman in the dining room, but usually
only one or the other was available at any one time. Red and white
wine were also available. I never tried them. One sometimes had to
line up for five or ten minutes to get a drink. If I hadn't found a
decent bottle of Port wine to buy in town, I would have drank less
alcohol in Cuba than I normally consume at home.

The bar in the lobby also dispensed cheap fruit and coffee liquers,
rum, and mixed drinks, as did the poolside bar. After breakfast, the
lobby bar was the only place to get hot water to make a cup of tea,
and this required lining up in a heavy smoking area. The poolside bar
was the only place to fill one's water bottle - a very slow process.
Sometimes even this filtered water appeared yellow.

The only whole fruit provided were bananas and, occasionally, oranges.


THE BEACH

The beach is across the street from the Sun Beach hotel, a five minute
walk from the lobby. There were rarely enough lounge chairs for all
the guests. Serious sunbathers grabbed their chairs early. Shaded
spots, provided by thatched sunshades, were much harder to come by.

The beach is very shallow, so even a slight breeze will cause
breakers, and the red flags go up at the drop of a hat. Getting into
the water on red flag days requires some stealth, as the "lifeguard"
will pursue you blowing his whistle. The best strategy is to pretend
you don't see or hear him, and keep heading out. The pursuit is
half-hearted and soon broken off. I never saw a lifeguard actually
enter the water in pursuit. On a calm day, visibility in the water may
be 20+ feet, but there's not much sea-life to see.


The better snorkeling sites in Varadero, we were told, are on either
side of the golf course by the Hotel Xanadu. On days when it's too
windy on the beach side, you can still snorkel on the bay side, beside
the highway. The fish there hang out around rocks only 20-30 feet from
shore, in four or five feet of water, which is just about the range of
visibility.

MASSAGE:

This was a bright spot in my stay at Sun Beach. The massage
therapists, Lesmi and Marie, were friendly and inspired confidence,
even when Lesmi did neck manipulations, a technique only used by
chiropractors in Canada (if you have reservations about this
technique, better let her know before starting the massage).

They showed genuine concern for the back problems caused by my cramped
flight from Calgary, and made special efforts to fit me into their
schedule.


TRANSPORTATION IN VARADERO

Finding out the actual costs of getting around in Varadero was like
pulling teeth. Questioning our Sunquest Tour representative and other
official agents seemed to limit the options to the following:

1. taxis at US$1 per kilometer

2. Double-decker bus at US$5 per day

3. rental cars at US$100 and up per day

4. mopeds at US$25 per day

We were assured that there was no point in shopping around, because
all prices were the same, but even the most cursory investigation
proved this to be untrue. On one occasion we obtained quotes ranging
from $8 to $5 for the same taxi trip. Car rentals also varied
significantly. Simply walking across the street could lower the price
from $100 to $85.

Variable scooter rates were actually displayed on price boards on the
street. Unfortunately, even so the prices were outrageous, and
dickering with the taxi drivers and rental salesmen was so unpleasant
that we ended up renting nothing and walking most of the time.

On the bus back to the airport I learned from a repeat visitor that I
could have rented a moped for $13 a day (which I would have done
gladly) at a shop only two blocks from my hotel. He also told me that
I could easily have gotten a taxi into downtown Havana from the
regular Havana bus station for $5. I had been told officially that it
would cost me more than I saved on the Havana excursion fare to catch
a taxi into the center of Havana.

Finally, he said it's easy to find beautiful rooms to rent for a night
or two at $10 a night in Havana. Had we known all this, we would
certainly have gone to Havana for two or three days. We would have
enjoyed ourselves much more, spent a lot more money, and perhaps even
gotten at least one good night's sleep.

Instead, we walked the streets of Varadero , stinking of diesel fumes
and smog caused by an endless parade of mostly empty buses and taxis,
and pestered continuously by aggressive and obnoxious taxi, tricycle,
and horse carriage drivers.

Out of sheer boredom we examined the pathetic contents of the few
stores, the identical mass-produced tourist souvenirs of the many open
markets, and the meagre and tedious offerings the various
"bookstores" had to offer. Nowhere in Varadero could we find a current
newspaper in any language.

We brought over $500 in cash, and several thousand in disposable
credit to Cuba, and spent almost none of it, simply because no Cubans
we encountered showed the slightest inclination to cater to our
particular interests or to help us contact someone who would.

FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS

Short-changeing and price-gouging seemed routine in Varadero. We
bought some groceries at an outlet of the Caracol chain, a
modern-looking store with lots of spiffily-dressed staff, and got
change in centavos for payment in dollars. So instead of $0.40, we got
approximately $0.02 in change. We thought we'd avoid this by using our
VISA at a larger grocery store in the Plaza America. However, this
backfired, as the store simply added a large surcharge to the bill.

Neither store provided a detailed printout of the purchase, only a
total, so we never saw how the excess payment was accounted for.

The Sunbeach hotel staff also overcharged us on the safe deposit box.
We only rented it on our second day, but were charged for the full 14.
No receipts were offered, so I can only wonder whether the extra
dollars went into the hotels coffers or private pockets.

We inquired in various bookstores for a detailed map of CUBA and/or
Matanzas, but finally had to settle for something with a scale of only
1:230,000. It didn't even show the Caves of Saturn or the Coral Beach
we hoped to visit just west of Varadero. We were charged $5 for this
"Geographical Tourist Map of Cuba" at the Hanoi Bookstore, favourably
mentioned in the Lonely Planet book on Cuba, only to find later that
exactly the same map sold in our own hotel for $2.90!

HELICOPTER EXCURSION TO TRINIDAD/COPES DE COLLANTES

This excursion cost us US$150 each. The best I can say about it is
that I'm glad we didn't take the bus version with an overnight stay in
Trinidad. The flight in the old Russian MI8 helicopter is fun,
especially if you get a seat by the open door, or can sit by an open
window (only if no fellow passengers complain). But except for the
short stretch in the mountains, you're flying pretty high, and don't
see much detail. Oh, and in Cuba even helicopter crews solicit tips.
One wonders how the rest of the Cubans manage to survive.

The chopper lands in a mountainous national park, where you get a
bumpy ride in the back of an old Russian six-wheel drive transport
truck followed by a two hour walk through the jungle on a slippery mud
path. Look out if you have back problems or brought light footwear!

There's a scenic waterfall and a little swimming hole along the way,
and you get to see lots of trees and bushes, and a brief glimpse of a
bird or a rodent, if your lucky. This is followed by a simple meal,
another truck ride, and then a bus ride to Trinidad.

In Trinidad you get to see some old streets and dilapidated houses,
and a dreary museum housing three bookstores with the same selection
as Varadero. Later you visit two open tourist markets with lots of
linen needleware, and more of the same mass-produced tourist
souvenirs, and you get to meet some unabashed beggars.

If you want to be popular in Trinidad (and probably hated by your
guide and fellow travellers) bring a bunch of old ball-point pens. I
had three people ask me to give them the one in my breast pocket, and
had to explain to them that it's worth $40.


SCUBA COMMUNICATION/INFORMATION:

We wanted to arrange an Open Water course for my wife in advance, but
could find neither e-mail addresses nor FAX numbers for either of the
two SCUBA schools listed for Varadero (ACUA/CMAS and Barracuda/ACUC).
Nor could we find an e-mail address for the Sun Beach hotel. So we
tried FAXing a message to the number listed on the hotel's WEB page
(the same provided by our travel agent at tripcentral.ca).

The FAX didn't go through. Someone who didn't speak English picked up
the phone, and I asked in Spanish whether I could send a FAX. They
said "no" and hung up. I phoned again, and asked whether this was the
Hotel Sunbeach, and how I could get a FAX to the Sunbeach hotel. The
answers were, respectively "not particularly", and a new FAX number
(53-45-614998). I then sent the FAX off to the new number.

The response arrived by e-mail on December 6, the day before our
departure from home.TWENTY-THREE DAYS TO ANSWER A FAX!

The e-mail merely assured us that all arrangements could be made upon
our arrival, and that (contrary to the WEBsite information), Sun
Beach's association was with the Barracuda Dive Centre.

While awaiting this tardy response from Sun Beach, I searched the
Cuban dive pages looking for ways to contact the two listed Varadero
dive schools, and ended up sending various e-mail inquiries. One was
to ACUC headquarters in Spain, who informed me that they were unable
to provide an e-mail address for their Varadero affiliate. Another
went to CMAS headquarters, which never replied at all.

One of my e-mails to various SCUBA-oriented Cuban agencies got passed
along until it reached Carmen Jane Pena of Gran Caribe in Havana. Ms
Jane persisted valiantly in trying to put me in touch with the
Varadero dive schools.

On December 1, after more than two weeks of inquiries, I finally got
an e-mail from a Dany Guitar, diving instructor,
), informing me that the ACUA diving
centre was now SCUBACUBA-CORAL, that it had merged with the Barracuda
shop, and that both were now offering only ACUC certification. I doubt
I would ever have received any reply, except for Ms Jane's prodding. I
followed up with an e-mail to the same address on December 3, asking
for more details, and that e-mail remains unanswered.

Among the important SCUBA questions that remained unanswered at our
departu

1. could I rent tanks and dive unsupervised (ie. without a divemaster
along) in Varadero?

2. are there any good shore dive sites in Varadero?

After two weeks in Varadero, I'm still not sure of the answer to the
first question. I think that it's probably legal to do so, since one
of the Barracuda pamphlets specifies that "novice" divers must be
accompanied by a divemaster. But my impression is that a tourist will
not likely be able to persuade a dive shop to rent him the tanks. I
learned from a fellow traveler that a Canadian used to run one of the
dive shops in Varadero until recently, and that prices have soared
since his departure, while quality of service has dropped. Foreigners
now pay SIX TIMES as much as Cubans for an Open Water certification.

The answer to question two is probably YES (weather permitting), as
there are a couple of places where there is supposed to be good
snorkeling close to the shore, and we saw scuba tank marks in the sand
at one of them. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad during our last
week in Varadero, and the red flags were out on the beaches almost
every day, preventing us from even snorkeling these sites.

Had I been able to clear this up before leaving, I probably wouldn't
have bothered bringing two complete sets of diving equipment with me
(except for depth gauge and weight belt - for more on this, read on).

THE SCUBA TRAINING/DIVING

THE GOOD

I never got to dive any of the Varadero sites, but made two two-dive
excursions to the Bay of Pigs. The visibilty was great (75-100 feet)
and there were abundant colourful fish and corals, the water was warm
(27C), and the shore entry was easy. I don't have much to compare it
to, being a very occasional and mostly mountain lake diver, but my
buddy on the second excursion, who's made 130 dives in various parts
of the world, declared that this was one of the top three sites he'd
ever dived.

Some of the instructors seemed conscientious and knowledgeable, and we
had some interesting technical discussions. Most of of the dive centre
staff were friendly and likeable.

THE BAD

Equipment: I had arguments with two equipment managers over weights.

The second told me I only needed 4Kg (I weigh 205 lbs., currently
score 22% on the Tanita fat scale, and wore an extra-large 2.5mm 3/4
length suit) and that the BCD would not be able to lift me if I
carried 8Kg of weights, as I intended. He reluctantly gave me the 8Kg,
and I had no trouble being neutrally buoyant at 100 feet.

When I suited up for the dive at the Bay of Pigs three hours later, I
discovered the plastic buckle on the weight belt I'd been issued
wouldn't hold. When I pointed the problem out to my divemaster, he
simply turned the tip of the belt back under the buckle and urged me
on. The belt ended up being too loose, and slipped and slid during the
dive, keeping me unbalanced, and making me waste air. When I surfaced,
I found the buckle had migrated to a spot underneath my tank, which
could have been fatal, had I needed to drop the belt in a hurry.

Before the second dive, I approached one of the instructors about my
belt problem, and his solution was to reposition the weights, and loop
the belt end back around itself after tightening the buckle. This
arrangement stopped the belt from slipping and rotating, but probably
wouldn't have permitted a one-motion right-hand release. I was
surprised that no spare belt or buckle had been brought along for such
a situation, and kicked myself that I hadn't brought either of my own
weight belts, two of which were sitting in my hotel room.

The rental depth gauge issued on this second excursion was also
defective. The needle never moved on either dive. Happily, I had
brought my own wrist gauge, which registered 100 feet on our first
dive, indicating this dive was right at the PADI NDL, and somewhat
beyond, according to the more conservative NASDS and DCIEM tables.

I also had difficulty releasing air from the rental BCDs on both
excursions. I'd have the inflation tube stretched to the max above my
head, and the air release button depressed, and nothing happened for
several seconds. Meanwhile, I'm floating toward the surface (8 Kg of
weights notwithstanding!). Finally, a large burst of bubbles would
emerge, and I'd be on my way down again. Scary!


The course:


My wife took the ACUC course in English, and we went over the Open
Water written exam (open book) together. The English of the questions
was so poor that it was impossible to understand the question in some
cases. In others, we found that the expected answer made no sense.

One example that comes to mind was a multiple choice asking which sea
creatures are "MORE" affected by pollution. The obvious choice was
"predators", but the "correct" answer was "all ocean life is
affected". This question also illustrates ACUC's extravagant focus on
"green" issues when there is barely time to give the student a minimal
grasp of safe diving procedures.

Dive supervision:

In the past decade there's been a lot of bad press for PADI in its
offering of abbreviated SCUBA courses, such as the SCUBA DIVER, and
other risky practices. We witnessed behaviour just as dangerous on our
ACUC-supervised dives.

Because of bad weather at Varadero all our dives were shore dives on
the reef wall at El Cenote, Bay of Pigs. On our first excursion I
spoke to a German who had only a resort course under his belt. He had
signed up for the Open Water course, but had yet to have any classroom
instruction.

I found out he had never heard of air embolism, and while suiting up,
tried to give him a short rundown on the dangers of holding your
breath while ascending.

The next day was supposed to be dedicated to classroom and theory for
both Harry, the German student, and my wife, so I didn't go along to
the dive centre. It turned out they all went to the Bay of Pigs again.
This time Harry, still without the slightest instruction in diving
theory, was my wife's "buddy".

They were swimming along the wall at a depth of 80 feet, following the
instructor, when Harry saw something interesting below and just took
off. Luckily, my wife immediately alerted the instructor, who went
after the runaway and dragged him back before he got too deep. Still,
both students were considerably below the maximum depth any of the
major certifying agencies sanctions for inexperienced Open Water
divers, let alone students who haven't yet been certified.

Harry probably touched or exceeded 100 feet, which is extremely
dangerous for someone with no knowledge of the risks of air embolisms
or the bends, and no training in emergency ascents or decompression
stops. The fact that he was buddied up with another uncertified diver
at 80 feet compounded the risk, and could easily have resulted in
multiple injuries or fatalities.

THE UGLY- my second bus ride to Bay of Pigs

My wife caught a cold at the end of week one, and then gave it to me,
so we had to postpone our diving twice in week two. Ultimately, I went
alone on my final excursion to the Bay of Pigs the day before my
departure. She had had to cut short her stay and fly to Europe the day
before, because of a death in the family.

I was still suffering some of the effects of the cold when I got on
the bus, but had taken a decongestant (12-hour Sudafed), and felt
pretty sure I could clear. I wasn't so sure about holding my bladder
for the two hour trip, but was reassured by the presence of a
washroom at the back of the bus, and by the expectation of a rest stop
at the national highway about half-way through the trip. So I was
sipping steadily from my water bottle to maintain adequate hydration.

When we passed the gas station at the main highway without stopping, I
started to get a little concerned. Twenty minutes later, I made my way
to the washroom at the back, only to be intercepted and told it wasn't
working! There followed some hushed pow-wows between dive staff and
driver, apparently debating possible emergency roadside stops. They
decided to press on.

I spent the rest of the drive pressing my knees together and
contemplating the embarassing possiblities. Happily, I managed to hang
on grimly until we reached the restaurant/dive centre at Playa Larga,
where it became apparent that I wasn't the only passenger in urgent
need of relief.

I'm struck by the perverse stupidity of the situation. Why didn't the
driver warn us that the washroom was unusable? Why didn't he ask
whether anyone needed to stop before we passed the service station at
the half-way mark? He sacrificed the comfort of his passengers and
risked spoiling the experience for some in order to save some 30
minutes on a drive of almost ten hours (pick-up to drop-off). Yet he
had a basket for tips displayed prominently at the entrance to the
bus.

Sadly, this attitude seems most representative of the service we
encountered in Varadero.

Our two-week package tour cost CDN$3000, but I wouldn't repeat our
stay at Hotetur SunBeach even if I were PAID that amount.







Achim



axethetax
 




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