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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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