Adonia stops in Cienfuegos as cruisers seek adventure and making history

Adonia stops in Cienfuegos as cruisers seek adventure and making history

Some passengers aboard Fathom's first cruise to Cuba were attracted by
curiosity and sense of adventure
Others wanted to awaken hazy memories from years-past visits
Still others wanted the opportunity to truly engage
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@miamiherald.com

CIENFUEGOS, CUBA
The Adonia arrived at this waterfront city on Cuba's southern coast
early on a rain-swept Thursday but passengers had only around 3 ½ hours
at the port of call. The city has scant cruise ship infrastructure —
there's no cruise terminal, just a small building to check in — and
passengers disembarked down a short gangway to a parking lot.

After a quick tour of some of the highlights of the city known as Perla
del Sur (Pearl of the South) — the exotic Palacio del Valle that was
influenced by the Alhambra, the Yacht Club, the statue of native son
Benny Moré, El Prado, Parque José Martí and the neoclassical
architecture — passengers attended a concert by the Choir of Cienfuegos.
The choir sang a mix of Cuban, American and classical songs and the
travelers rewarded them with a standing ovation.

The program said passengers were supposed to visit a pharmacy and ration
store to learn about Cuba's dual currency system, but time was so short
for some groups that they were only able to see Cienfuegos' main
shopping street to get an idea of what is for sale on the island and
visit a crafts fair as they walked to and from the Teatro Tomás Terry
where the choir performed.

Some of the Adonia passengers came for the adventure or the cachet of
being part of history; others booked Fathom's first cruise to Cuba
because they were the kind of folks who hung posters of Che Guevara on
their walls during college.

Still others said they were aboard the week-long trip on Carnival
Corp.'s Fathom Adonia — the first cruise from Miami directly to Cuba in
more than 50 years — because they wanted to see Cuba before it becomes
just another Caribbean island with too many chain restaurants.

But for Irma Martínez Krollpfeiffer, of Fort Lauderdale, it was simply
nostalgia for a place she visited just once in the mid-1950s when she
was 7 years old.

Krollpfeiffer — who grew up in Ybor City, the daughter of Cuban parents
— has hazy memories of that trip but a few things stand out.

She remembers they went on a car ferry called TNT that left from Key West.

"Then I remember El Capitolio, and seeing this huge diamond that was on
display. I was surprised when I got off the boat, everyone was speaking
Spanish," said the retiree. "I saw the island through the eyes of a
child. Now as an adult, I'm really looking forward to seeing what I
think of the place."

When Carol Neumann, 72, and her sister Margie Rissler were growing up,
their family liked to take family vacations, and they were planning a
big one in 1959 — a trip to Cuba.

With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on Jan. 1, 1959, the trip never
happened.

"We always thought it was unfinished business," said Rissler, who lives
in Rochester, N.Y. As soon as they heard about the cruise, they booked
it. "I have been so excited, I could hardly stand it," Rissler said.

Maritza Guerra, of Pembroke Pines, was 8 when her family left Cuba in
1963. She had been back just once — in 2001. She said she found a Cuba
of crumbling buildings, one that was "totally destroyed."

Still, when her sister Terry, a Carnival employee, asked her to
accompany her on the cruise, she wavered a bit and then said yes. "I
came back for the experience," she said. "I wanted to make history with
my sister."

And slowly, she said, Cuba seems to be climbing out of the stagnation of
the past with new paint on some of the buildings and repairs underway.

"It's a big change," Guerra said after spending two days in Havana on
the first leg of the trip.

Norman Wilson, an Orlando pastor, also was enticed by the historical
significance of being part of the rapprochement between Cuba and the
United States. "When I heard this was the first cruise in 50 years, I
said that's for me. I just love to be a part of history and Cuba is a
place I've always wanted to visit. The thing about being part of history
is they can never take that away from you."

One of the big attractions for Wilson is the many vintage American cars
chugging along Cuban streets.

"I'm a car guy and this is car heaven," he said. "I am going to be
taking so many old car pictures, it will just be ridiculous. If they let
me, I would buy one."

Sandep Rao, 37, a doctor from El Paso, and his wife Swathi, 31, are
seasoned travelers but he said they are not really cruisers.

"I like to explore on my own, and I don't like prepackaged things," he
said. "Cuba is one of the few places I haven't visited."

But at the same time, Rao said, he was a bit daunted by the U.S. travel
regulations, reports he had heard that hotels are fully booked, and
concerns that he and his wife — both vegetarians — wouldn't be able to
find the food they wanted in Cuba.

For their first trip to the island, a cruise seemed the best compromise.

"We wanted someone to navigate this for us. I also felt like this would
be a different type of cruise with more interactions with people," he said.

They said they were disappointed with their first walking tour of Old
Havana because there was no time to pause and talk to anyone, but they
liked the second day when they talked with a worker at a private
restaurant and neighbors who had transformed a block near the seaside
into a string of small private businesses.

Rao also said a jazz club they had discovered on their own in Havana was
"awesome" and they were having no difficulties with their vegetarian
diet aboard ship. They've been taking advantage of shipboard activities
like salsa lessons and the screening of Cuban-themed movies.

Rissler also wasn't a fan of the first day's programming.

"That walking tour damn near killed me," she said. Guides, Rissler said,
seemed more intent on keeping to a schedule than letting travelers pause
and talk to people.

"The first two days we didn't get to talk to anyone except when we
wanted to buy something," said Neumann, her sister.

Both hoped that armed with some shipboard Spanish lessons and some key
phrases, they would do better with people-to-people contacts in
Cienfuegos and Santiago, the last two stops on the cruise.

Tara Russell, president of Fathom, Carnival's social impact line, said
that the Cuban programming was still a work in progress. For its cruises
to the Dominican Republic, she said, Fathom has had many months to work
out social impact programming with its Dominican partners and Carnival
also has a long history in the country.

Because it only got final approval for the Cuba cruise in March, she
said, it has only had a few weeks to work on programming with its Cuban
partner, Havanatur. Fathom is already in "heavy development of more
customized tours" for Cuba, she said.

Frances Zeigler, a travel agent from the Washington D.C. area, said she
decided to check out the cruise after she heard travel guru Peter
Greenberg say at a convention that cruising was currently one of the
best travel options for Cuba.

"I think people are more comfortable knowing what their travel and food
will be like," she said. "And I like being able to see multiple
destinations without having to pack up."

But she said she'll tell customers this is quite different from other
Caribbean cruises where there are shipboard casinos, beach excursions,
shows and lot of free time.

"This is a fact-finding mission for me more than anything," she said.
But if Fathom irons out some of the glitches in its maiden voyage to
Cuba, Zeigler said she's thinking of putting together a group to travel
to Cuba in October 2017.

Rick and Susan Meares, business owners from Jupiter, were intent on some
people-to-people contact so they struck out on their own after being
disappointed with their guided tours.

"I envisioned it to be much more hands on; that we would go to visit
homes," she said.

They even brought a stock of small toys to distribute to the kids they
expected to meet. They ended up playing with kids in a park and to the
children's delight, leaving the toys with them. The couple also had a
good conversation with a doorman at a private restaurant and took a ride
in a 1939 Ford convertible and stopped for a drink with the car's owner
and learned about his life.

"It did turn out to be people-to-people, but if you just chose not to
engage them, then it wasn't," he said.

"We wanted to be here before things changed," Susan Meares said. "The
people have been the most fantastic part about it."

Her husband, a seasoned traveler who has been down the Amazon River
twice, said he was looking for a "somewhat adventurous" destination.

"Clearly this was an opportunity to be on an historic ship," he said,
"and I was really interested to hear how the people made out during the
Communist experiment."

Source: Adonia stops in Cienfuegos as cruisers seek adventure and making
history | In Cuba Today -
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