How Cubans move from one place to the other?

How Cubans move from one place to the other?
"No es facil", the Cubans used to say when these kind of topics come up.

All the drivers of cars who are owned by the state of Cuba (blue and light red) have to take all hitch-hikers with them, after they finish work. Can be (empty) tourist busses as well the trucks.
That's why you see alot of hitch-hikers standing next to the road on the autopista or at crossroads in the inlands.

To be sure of a fast ride people bring all kinds of merchandise like garlic, chickens, money, cheese ... everything they can trade to get a fast ride.
The perfect solution when a country as Cuba has a terrible public transportation like busses and trains.

Remind that by Cuban law, a Cuban without a taxi-licencee is NOT allowed to take you, a foreigner, with them in their car. Not even when it is your best friend.
Of course you will meet Cubans who want to drive you to where-ever, but it is not allowed. The risk you take is that when the police stops you, the driver gets a fine and you have to out of the car, even when it is in the middle of no-where!

EL CAMELLO CUBANO

Differents kinds of transportation in my country.

Here are some photos of different kinds of transport in Cuba. It is not just fabulous old American and European cars, although those are to be seen everywhere you go.

Horse and cart




Horseback riding is still an everyday form of transport
in Cuba



Why don't they build cars like this one anymore?



The Astro and Viazul buses are a comfortable and
affordable way of exploring Cuba.



Let's get this old Fiat started!






There are lots of extended Soviet Lada taxis in Cuba



In our opinion this is a much nicer "yellow cab" than
the one in the previous picture...



I guess this could also be called "yellow cab"







This "Super Ford" is actually a bus



Truck used for human transport



A trike used to transport pigs to the market place

Poor public transportation

Public transport is one of the sectors slowest to recover from the economic crisis that hit Cuba in 1991, when it lost its former socialist bloc partners in eastern Europe. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell by nearly 35 percent, following the sudden halt in oil imports from the former Soviet Union.

The other side of the coin is that 49.4 percent of all trips within Cuba in 2006 used “alternative means,” such as state vehicles at “embarkation points”, bicycle taxis (actually tricycles with room to carry two passengers) and animal-drawn carts. The figure does not include private collective taxis, known as “almendrones” (big almonds) because so many are large, long 1950s vintage cars.

Camellos and public transportation in Cuba

“Camellos” or camels, a form of urban transport that arose at the worst point of Cuba’s economic crisis in the 1990s, appear fated to disappear from the center of Havana, to the relief of residents and the benefit of the environment.

Huge, heavy and cumbersome, the hump-backed camellos are 18-wheeler trucks with flatbeds converted into bus-like carriages able to pack in up to 300 people.

Now, a few months after the government publicly acknowledged that urban transport in the capital was on the verge of collapse, the camellos are gradually disappearing from the city centre, and being replaced by imported articulated buses.

“They’re much more comfortable than the camellos, and they come by more frequently, every 10 or 15 minutes. The only problem is that they’re hotter inside,” said a 43-year-old Havana woman, who said she actually hitch-hiked (“viajar en botella”) more than she travelled by “guagua” (bus).

“Women are always in a bind. On the buses, if you don’t get a seat, you’re traveling in a press of people and scared that some man is going to feel you up. And when you hitch-hike, you have to be prepared to put up with indecent proposals or sexual innuendo from the driver. It doesn’t always happen, of course, but it’s a risk you face”.