Communa Terraza

We headed west on the main highway after our morning tour of Havana. We had two stops en route to Vinales. The first was lunch at a family run place near the 16km marker on the highway. It was a cute little restaurant in the middle of nowhere with a great view of the surrounding hills. It was full of locals on a Monday afternoon. The food was good. The meal included fried fish and a really good dish of crabmeat in a tomato-based sauce.

The bathrooms at the restaurant weren’t fully functional - the commodes didn't have seats, and there was no toilet paper. There was a woman stationed outside the toilet whose job was to pour a bucket of water into the commode after each person used it. During our stay in Cuba, we encountered a number of toilets that were like that. Both toilet seats and toilet paper appeared to be in short supply. Sadly, toilet paper was one of the items I took out of my backpack after I arrived home in Honolulu from Asia because I thought I would not need them on a package tour.

Our second stop was Communa Terraza, a commune in the mountains. According to Tony, the government encouraged rural people to settle in communes to help one another get by and be as self-sufficient as possible. The commune itself was set in a pretty forested area with a lake. Tony brought us to a ration store, where people get their rations for essential goods such as rice, cooking oil, sugar, salt, eggs, coffee, and even clothes and shoes. With respect to clothes, one nonsensical choice men have to periodically make is between handkerchiefs and underwear; you can choose one in any given period of time, but not both. Apparently, eggs have been in short supply since the recent hurricane as hens have been too stressed to lay eggs. Tony showed us a ration book, how rations are allocated based on age and family size, and how the book was used. Other less essential items, or excess allocations of essential items, have to be purchased with cash at normal stores. This was very fascinating to me, as I had never encountered rationing before. In fact, I've rarely encountered scarcity. It made me all the more aware of how privileged I have been all my life.

From what I could surmise, rationing happens in Cuba partially because the state controls production and makes sure that essentials are properly distributed, and also because economic sanctions and various other economic and logistical uncertainties have caused various degrees of scarcity over the years.

After visiting the ration store, we had coffee at the commune and we all bought wifi cards as they were more readily available here. After the commune, we drove about 1.5 hours to Vinales.

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