The Cuban Idiot Crisis | Budget Adventure Travel
This blog post would normally have been about my honeymoon trip to Cayo Santa María, Cuba.
Beaches of Cayo Santa María, Cuba
It would have mentioned the great all inclusive resort stay we experienced at the Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort and shown you some lovely photos of the resort and its splendid facilities.
Reception desk at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
Pool area at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
Pool area at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
Typical suite at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
Main dining hall at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
Yumm!!
Lounge singers at Sol Cayo Santa Maria resort, Cuba
I would not tell you that this dude is a super super chick-magnet among tourists and staff alike! Id leave that for you to figure out on your own, dude.
And I of course would have shown you some behind the scenes photos of the village of Caibarién just outside our resort enclave.
Local Tavern at Caibarién, Villa Clara, Cuba
(NO! THATS NOT DAVID HASSELHOFF)
Local transport at Caibarién, Villa Clara, Cuba
Town of Villa Clara, Cuba
Town of Villa Clara, Cuba
Uhn Uhn! I ain’t sharing any stories and pics about my trip there. You can just imagine it yourself.
Oh! and I would have concluded my post with the main highlight of my trip – a visit to the Town of Santa Clara, the reported burial-place of the famous Enersto Che Guevara
Source: http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/tag/che-guevara/
Che as a child
Source: http://www.thechestore.com/Che-Guevara-full-biography.php
Apparently, I looked like young Che above myself as a kid. So I was told.
Mausoleum of Che Guevara in Santa Clara, Cuba
Mausoleum of Che Guevara in Santa Clara, Cuba
The one and only high rise building in Santa Clara
Inspired by Miami Art Deco style
Cuban Cigar stash
Nope this post ain’t about all that stuff.
What it IS about is about the most sinister thing that can happen to tourists when visiting the resorts at Cuba.
It is the Canadian Tourist!
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/Stupid-Canada_Billboard_crop.jpg
So while Tourism Canada wants all non-stupid people residing outside its borders to visit Canada, the nation’s stupid people are traveling down south to Cuba.
Let me explain.
We were on our bus tour of Santa Clara and other villages and towns. The tour guide was explaining about the daily rationed life of the Cubans and that the highest paid profession in the country are doctors and they earn the equivalent of $300 per month.
However, medical service and education and basic welfare is free.
So there was this loudmouth Canadian lady in our bus who kept complaining how pathetic everything looked around, how they could not desire for a better life like she had in Canada, how can the Cubans put up with this nonsense and yada yada yada…….
Man, somebody give this lady her daily dose of maple syrup! Like seriously. Nothing to ruin an immersion tour as the snarky passenger at the back of the bus.
Now the bus was full prior to that and when we had originally boarded our bus at the resort, there was a couple who didn’t get adjoining seats so they had to split up. Ok. So me and wife got off at one point from the bus to explore one of the stops. We left behind our water bottle on our seats. Upon returning to the bus, which was almost full, we realized our seats were taken by that same couple. They had moved our water bottle out and left it on the floor. Now we kindly requested them that we were seated there earlier.
The woman yells out that the seats are not designated and they were split up earlier and so now they want to be seated together. So to not make it an embarrassing situation for both of us, me and the wife decided to split up and had to sit that way for the rest of the way. Imagine our state of mind. And where was this couple from!
From Canada!!
Source: http://gocanada.about.com/od/canadawithkids/ss/maple_syrup.htm
And don’t even get me started on the Canadian family at the dining hall, the Canadian kid at the pool and the Canadian couple at the bar.
After all that I wanted to go Sparta on these folks! Seriously!
Source: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/4448064795_600e450f7d_o.jpg
So there! The snarky rude obnoxious Canadian idiot tourist is the most sinister thing to happen to you in Cuba. Be warned.
“Until victory always”
-Enersto Che Guevara
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Category: Budget Adventure Travel, Cuba Travels
It’s tough traveling with a group. We had a family who always had to sit in the front seats wherever we went, complained about the food and the accommodations. After a while, all the other people on the bus were rolling their eyes every time one of them was late getting on the bus which was daily. Geesh! ps Your resort looks beautiful. 🙂
Yes the wonders of mixing north American clientele in a developing country (leave aside a communist one that too) and the all-inclusive affair and you got a recipe for disaster.
I presume you were also on a guided tour then.
Yes the resort is beautiful and people were generally friendly and helpful.
I went to a resort on Cayo Santa Maria in March, it was gorgeous! Most of the other tourists were all French Canadian, so I got to work on my French while there. Luckily I don’t remember anyone being overly obnoxious!
Yes we had several French Canadians as well when I was there. The rude couple on the bus in this story were also.
Oh that’s not cool! Almost everyone else at my resort were French Canadians, they were all pretty cool though.
That’s so funny, thanks for sharing your story. I try to avoid those all-inclusive hotels and I stay with families in Casa Particulares, that way I get to live with Cubans, be part of the family, get to know about their life and not meet so many other tourists.
That is the ideal way to do it.
You’r article is very good, very funny, made me smile, with great pics. I have encountered several times in Cuba the people you describe on it. On Varadero Beach, in a pretty decent Chinese restaurant (Lai-Lai), I saw 3 young good looking guys, they were behaving like idiots, they were pretty loud, idiotic and somehow retarded manners, macho type, the kind that takes all for granted, opinionated and criticizing everything (I do not know what exactly they though about the food). The most interested thing is that I don’t see that behavior usually in the streets of Canadian cities, they reserve that wild transformation for when they are in Cuba, or any other country.
While I was on a traditional farmer’s food restaurant in the Town of Remedios in Villa Clara province, a guided tour stopped for their lunch (I assume they came from Caibarién and were traveling to Santa Clara, or the other way around). This is a framer’s restaurant, it is not high end French cuisine, is what the regular Cuban person have eaten at their homes for centuries, specially people form the country side, and we know they are not rich people. It is very traditional cuisine, things that I found very nice, like a thin-cut pork steak, rolled on plantain then all is deep fried accompanied by garden salad, rice and chips. Also “ropa vieja”, which is pulled beef shank cooked with many spices, all of it over a bed of twice fried (very crunchy) plantain and very tasty Congri rice, and many other types of food that are not bad, however, while must people were eating on the table, I could spot a the occasional Canadian women totally disgusted by it, making faces, criticizing all the time, setting the food apart, gesturing with superiority, etc.
And all I’m thinking, yes Canada has great things like a juice and tender beef grilled steak, roast beef with Montreal style spices with french fries, corn bread on the side, but we have to stop and think the other way as well, for instance; I can tell you right now that for most Cubans a Tourtière, or red beans cooked with maple syrup is not even food, roast turkey with some gravy on top is not food for them either, it will come totally flavorless for the Cuban palate. What they will do instead is cook Congrí rice, which is already very complicated recipe, add fried pork or barbecued chicken, to all of these and stuff the turkey with it, and then, they will cook the turkey on his own juice, with a delicious blend of spices. We don’t see this, because is not the food that hotels give away on their buffet tables. Also one thing that Cuban won’t do, is making a face in front of a Canadian person offering them food, they will take it, eat it, and thank you for it with a smile on the face, even when they were totally disgusted by it.
Thanks so much for writing in with such informative and long commentary.
yes, its because of the conformity principle. and good old fashioned arrogance to account for such behavior. We want to see the world in the same lens as we see in our daily lives. Requires an open mind and large heart to be a global traveler. Generally Canadians are very open. Its the demographic of the tourist resorts that come with closed minds. Thus, I dont do resorts anymore.
Interesting – I’ve never encountered rude Canadians on a tour in another country. (Glad to say that because as a Canadian, I would be so embarrassed by such behaviour.) In my experience I’ve found the rudest and worst behaved fellow travelers to be (1) Germans, (2) Aussies after a few beers, and (3) Americans.
Germans and Aussies! thats interesting. whats been your experience.
Canuck travelers are nice. the rudest tend to be from big cities like Toronto and Montreal but that is due to volume of traffic from those places. the % of rude Canucks is very very small, so even one stands out.
My favourite “rude behaviour” story was about an incident on a tour in New Zealand a few years ago and involved a group of 3 Germans who were traveling together. One morning at breakfast I and several tour mates grabbed a table, left our packs and jackets on our chairs and went up to the buffet. When we came back, our things had been piled on another table and the German trio had taken our seats. Why? No idea. Maybe the light was better there.
arrrgh, that brought back terrible memories. oh well. Germans & Aussies tend to be super polite typically. goes to show bad travelers come in all colors
I am canadian , I don’t think you can pinpoint any country for having the rudest people .. or even city , it’s how people are raised , all our country’s have the idiots and I’m sure we have all been idiots in the eyes of others at some point in our lives..
Cuban people are always amazing people and the nicest I have ever met , ( I’m sure there are some idiots) but what I see is they don’t have the social media and see all the rude things going on in the world , they stay real to whom they are and how they were raise..
My two cents
Hi
yes what you say is true. I do not intent to mean this post as a reflection of entire Cuba of course. It is a point of view. Most blog posts, including mine here, cover the sweet aspects of a destination. Sometimes it is a bit too curated and sanitized in my opinion. As you said, a nation has both good and bad sides. I simply chose to point out a bad side based on my single experience on this trip, which consistently underwhelmed us and the point being that the rudeness came not from Cubans, but from fellow Canadians.