Cuba: People to People Sunday March 12 – Friday March 17, 2017

Designed for the Greenwich Country Day School

Duration: 6 days/ 5 nights Start: Havana Finish: Havana Price From: $7,295USD per person (based on double occupancy and 20 travelers) $1,300USD per (person single supplement fee.)

In order to adhere to the US government requirements for travel to Cuba, this trip does not allow for the degree of flexibility we build into all of our other itineraries; as a guest, you will have a full schedule of enriching people-to- people educational exchange activities.

Please note that your final itinerary may vary slightly from this one as we continuously research and develop each trip. Inclement weather— though we’d like to think there won’t be any—may also necessitate minor alterations. All pricing in U.S. dollars. ©2015 Butterfield & Robinson Inc.

1-800-387-1147 | www.butterfield.com

Your Journey

In a fast-paced world where old seems to give way to new at a moment’s notice, there is a beauty in the patina of those few pockets of the globe that still truly feel vintage. In Cuba, there is simply no mistaking this feeling. After half a century spent on the periphery of modernity, its doors are finally opening, the island practically beckoning for discovery. As a Canadian company, B&R has long been wise to its charms; after years of waiting patiently (and politely—we are Canadian, after all), we’re thrilled to finally share this place with our closest friends.

Havana

Any Cuban journey must start in Havana. Her faded beauty is legendary – this is hands down the most winsome city in the Caribbean. It's also rising up from its ruins: a chunk of the tourist money that has hit the Cuban coffers over the last two decades has been showered on sprucing up Habana Vieja, the old colonial centre. Once fortified against the threat of pirates and colonial rivals, the seductive city has risen from the ashes with the painstaking restoration work of city historian Eusebio Leal, who had to bring some restoration artisans out of retirement to realize his dream and pass their wisdom on to the next generation. Cobbled streets lead to now immaculately polished Baroque churches, castles and palaces. Plazas have been returned to their former glory, their fountains flowing once more, their facades re- rendered attentively. Along the seafront of Havana, the malecón, the strains of salsa waft from the rebooted sound systems of vintage Cadillacs and Buicks, and the facades of grandiose seafront buildings are being slowly resurrected. Admittedly, the restoration money hasn't quite reached most of the rest of the city yet. Just west of Habana Vieja, the gritty working class district of Centro Habana is a picture of

ruined, rutted beauty, and the well-heeled districts of Vedado and Miramar, west again, are more peeling and faded than salubrious cousins in more solvent cities.

Street life in Havana is key: on-the-ground socializing is the top Cuban pastime, whether that's domino playing, gossiping, or arguing loudly about baseball, so from the Havana belles to the beauteous buildings, there is always something to captivate and beguile. There is also something to do in Havana as well. There are realms of museums and cultural spaces, and you can enjoy virtuoso ballet, Afro Cuban dance, flamenco, jazz and timba. After years of boredom on the restaurant scene, panoply of new private restaurants, paladares, are pushing the envelope on the culinary scene as the government loosens the laws governing small business start-ups. Your time here is going to be perfectly timed as well; this is a place in flux!

Day 1 - March 12

On your arrival you will be picked up at the international airport in Havana and brought to your hotel for check in. Welcome to Cuba and the crown jewel that is Havana. After arriving at the hotel you’ll have the option of strolling around the capital to stretch your legs and get acquainted with this wonderful city. Walking around Havana feels like strolling through a painting of some mythical land; past the fog of the doldrums, the buildings fade out on the edges in loose lines and scattered twitches, as if left by the stroke of a brush. It remains a city of secrets, of mystery, the perfect labyrinth in which to set a story. You can see why Hemmingway had his way with the place—it is a tropical muse. This afternoon we will meet at 3pm in the lobby of the hotel and drive to El Vedado, a neighborhood in Havana that is one of our favorites. Here we will meet with a few local friends who will take us through their home and walk with us to El Cocinero. El Cocinero is a new fabulous restaurant on top of the FAC (Fabrica de Arte Cubano) a contemporary arts space.

Meals: Dinner

Day 2 - March 13

This morning we will walk from the hotel into Havana’s Old Town. The city was founded in 1514 by Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, though its original iteration morphed over the years, until it settled deep into the ground and became the city you will see today. Along the way you will see the highlights of the city, the Capitolio, Gran Teatro, Museo de Revolution, Parque Central, the Bacardi building, Art Museum, Calle Obispo, Plaza de Armas, Plaza de la Cathedral, Plaza San Francisco de Asis,

Plaza Vieja and Hotel Ambos Mundos. During the walk we will make a stop at San Francisco Square and will peek into the Basilica to meet 20 of our friends of the Camerata Romeu, an all female chamber orchestra, who will perform a few classic and folk songs on their stringed instruments. Then we will have lunch with one of our local friends, who invite us into their home for a home-cooked meal. Often in Havana the meals in homes are far better than in the restaurants. Due to the decades-long embargo, the food in Cuba has a less than stellar reputation. But there are a lot of delicious traditional dishes, which we’ve helped dig up through a network of chefs we know and local friends. After lunch we will visit the Convent of Santa Clara of Assisi and Santa Teresa de Jesus Cloisters. The Convent of Santa Clara of Assisi is Havana’s very first convent.

After visiting these sites we will return to the hotel to freshen up. This evening we will go to a special place for dinner. Our friends, Pamela Ruiz and artist Damian Aquiles have invited us to their villa in Havana’s embassy district for the evening. This house is the center of a few different worlds in Havana, the art world, movers and shakers, and a home away from home for many visiting politicians coming to work on the US Cuba Relations.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

HOTEL | Hotel National, Havana Havana's Hotel National is the icon, the one in the movies, the electric soul of the city. Eclectic style building with marked neoclassical features, located on the water.

Trinidad

Trinidad is far and away the most handsome town in Cuba, with multi coloured pastel hued terraces and rust-red roofs. This fertile land of mountain and sea has always brought wealth to lucky locals. In the colonial area, especially between 1750 and 1850, sugar cane was huge, and fabulously rich Spanish families raised gorgeous mansions around Trinidad's main square off the back of their sugar mills in the valley. Now their descendant rent rooms out to hordes of visiting foreigners. Mountain and sea collide around the Topes de Collantes, producing rich soil for crops. As produce is bountiful, so the home-cooked food has always been superior, even in bad economic times. As the state restaurants in this town are below par, investigate the private restaurants – paladares – even the meals offered by your own casa particular, or that of other visitors you encounter. Bell towers intersperse the picture-book houses, offering winning views to mountain and the hazy coast. It's a short drive from Trinidad to Playa Ancon, one of the loveliest beaches on the island, and if you can cope with all-inclusive hotels, it's possible to stay there too, though day trips are the better alternative.

Day 3 - March 14

Today we head out of the city and go due south, into another world of Cuba, south and central to Cienfuegos, a laid-back city situated on the huge bay of the same name. Today’s drive will take us on country roads lined with mango orchards and palm trees. As we get closer into Cienfuegos we will pass by sugar cane farms, ending with a boat ride that will deliver us right into the old town of Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos was settled late in the colonial game when Louis de Clouet, a Frenchman who had immigrated to New Orleans, established it in 1819. After the 1959 revolution, Cienfuegos received substantial investment from the Soviet Union and a large industrial base developed, including the impressive Karl Marx Cement Factory. Cienfuegos is also home to 12 sugar mills with a capacity to grind about 40,000 tons of sugar cane each day. In stark contrast to the industrial development is Cienfuegos’ charming town centre and the impressive architecture of the buildings around Parque Jose Marti. One of

Cienfuegos’ most famous sons was the singer Benny More, whose name also adorns the Meson (café) El Palatino on the town’s main square.

Here we will visit the Reina Cemetery. Much was left for the living to see in this neoclassical cemetery, a poignant example of Cuba's many endangered sites that are far removed from Havana. Reina is novel in that burial niches are aligned vertically in three-story groupings. In addition to these edifices, there is a noteworthy chapel and offices, as well as elaborately wrought vaults and tombstones. Many headstones feature cast iron, marble, and/or slate bas-reliefs. Ornamental cast iron works that surround vaults reveal a high level of local artisanship. Great winged marble sculptures create a skyline within the grounds. Reina was rendered obsolete in 1926 when a newer cemetery opened nearby and today it is used only by families who own plots. Because the grounds are near the shore line, flooding is a regular occurrence; several inches of water are always present in most vaults. The cemetery and its sculpture are being lost to water damage and a general deferral of maintenance. Flood control and reconstruction would once again make this cemetery a better place for the living and the dead. Then we will walk down the airy Prado to the Palacio de Valle. The Palacio de Valle is a mansion built from 1913 to 1917, in the so-called Moorish Revival style, largely by craftsmen brought from Morocco. Lunch will be at Palacio’s restaurant, specializing in lobster.

Then we continue down the road past rolling hills following the coast into Trinidad, which will feel a world away from Havana. It is a quieter sort of city, along the lines of Sedona, San Miguel De Allende, those dry desert, wonderfully light, feng shui places around the globe. Over the following days we will get to know Trinidad, Cuba’s best-preserved colonial city, founded in 1514 and hardly changed in hundreds of years. We will get ample opportunity to stroll through Trinidad’s charming cobbled streets and sample its wonderful nightlife. Tonight we will trip the light fantastic with some music in this capital of culture. Dinner will be at 1514, and afterwards there is dancing in the streets—no kidding! This town likes to get down with salsa and rumba, where you will have the chance to show off some of the skills you learned in Havana.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 4 - March 15

This morning we will drive from Trinidad to the valley (20 minutes). Not only did the United Nations declare Trinidad a World Heritage Site, but it did the same for the adjacent Valle de Los Ingenios (Valley of the Sugar Mills). Our ride to the Torre de Manaca-Iznaga takes us on a rolling, quiet road past endless fields of sugar canes set in front of a back drop of palm trees and high mountains in the distance. This is

one of the most spectacular and interesting sights of Cuba and a great chance to see a landscape and lifestyle remarkably unchanged and unspoiled by the events of the past century.

We will visit San Isidro de Los Destiladeros, one of the old grand sugar mills in the valley. Sugar mills were an industrial force in the Trapiche region of Cuba beginning in the late-eighteenth century. San Isidro was a typical sugar plantation, operated with slave labor. For generations, the local economy was sustained by a network of such mills. Sugar production ceased at San Isidro around 1890 and its fields were used to grow a variety of crops. Remnants of this thriving and historically underappreciated industrial heritage survive: an impressive owner's house, three-story tower, cistern, main sugar factory, ancillary buildings, and dikes. Almost all are in ruins or in imminent danger of collapse. While nature continues to subsume the buildings, another threat comes from future tourism. Without adequate upkeep and restoration of San Isidro, the buildings are vulnerable to vandalism and the effects of too many people visiting an ill- equipped site.

Then, you’ll have a chance to climb the Torre de Iznaga to take in the spectacular views of the village below and the surrounding sugar cane fields. Originally built as a tower to observe the slaves working in the surrounding fields, the Torre de Iznaga once stood as the focal point for the region’s 43 working sugar mills when this area served as Cuba’s most important sugar-producing region. That era ended with the collapse of world sugar prices in 1880, but many of the traditional methods remain in use. Dinner tonight will be with friends at their home, a classic BBQ, Cubano style!

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

HOTEL | Finca Kenia, Trinidad One of the oldest private houses in Trinidad, we take the place over for our time there and turn it into our own hotel by brining in our own staff, concierge, chef, and all the accoutrements.

All Roads Lead to Havana Day 5 - March 16

This morning you’ll be driven back to Havana, roughly a four-hour drive, so you will depart the hotel after breakfast in order to arrive into Havana by lunch, where you will dine in the old town. This afternoon you will head to the National Arts School. Born out of the political utopian aspirations of the Cuban Revolution, the dramatic brick and terracotta National Art Schools on the site of the Havana Country Club represent a particular, fleeting moment in the history of Latin American modernism. Founded in 1961 by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara after a round of golf on the course that was to become the site of the schools, the domed and vaulted forms of the National Art Schools were designed to bring cultural literacy to Cuba in the heady days following the revolution. Castro chose Cuban modernist architect Ricardo Porro in collaboration with Italians Roberto Gottardi and Vittorio Garatti to build the schools, which were dedicated to modern dance, plastic arts, dramatic arts, music, and ballet. It was envisioned that students from other nations would be drawn to the schools because of the ideals espoused by learning in an environment meant to foster creativity in service to social improvement.

By 1965, Soviet-influenced members of Cuba’s Ministry of Building Works began to favor standardized, functionalist forms over the experimental, unconventional nature of the buildings, leading to the abandonment of the project. Of the five schools designed, only two were ever completed. Although both the completed and unfinished buildings stood in near ruin for years, work to restore the iconic structures and reclaim this piece of Cuban history has been undertaken. Shortly after the National Schools of Art landed on the 2000 Watch, the Cuban government vowed to restore the buildings. The renewed interest facilitated the declaration of the buildings as a Protected Area by Cuba’s National Council of Cultural Heritage, which was the first stage in being inscribed a National Monument. World Monuments Fund organized a session on the future of the schools in 2002 during the annual international conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture held in Havana, Cuba. From 2007 to 2009, led by the original team of architects, the Schools of Plastic Arts and the School of Dance, the two schools finished in the early 1960s, were restored and rehabilitated by the Cuban Ministry of Culture. The three remaining uncompleted schools, which suffer the most serious threat of damage from the elements, have been cleaned and stabilized. Although the economic climate in Cuba has delayed the restoration of the entire complex, it is widely believed that the restoration and completion of the architects’ original designs will occur. The National Art Schools are perhaps the best example of architecture from the early period of Cuban Revolution, embodying the creative and cultural ideals the leaders sought to embrace to signify change. World Monuments Fund participated in interviews for the film Unfinished Spaces as an educational and advocacy effort to bring attention to the National Art Schools and provided some limited support to the final production stages of the film.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Adios! Day 6 - March 17

Homeward bound! This morning you will be driven to the airport and bid farewell to Cuba!

Meals: Breakfast

The Details

Price From: $7,295USD per person (based on double occupancy and 20 travelers) $1,300USD per (person single supplement fee.) Start: Havana Finish: Havana

*PAYMENTS FOR THIS TRIP CAN BE MADE BY WIRE OR CHECK, CREDIT CARD IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR THIS DEPARTURE.

LEVEL OF ACTIVITY This trip is appropriate for people who enjoy a good walk or ride, and feel comfortable while on the move. Daily biking distances usually vary from 20 to 30 km and walks are 8 to 10 km, with some longer afternoon options available along the way.

WHAT’S INCLUDED WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED  All hotel accommodations  International flights  Meals as indicated  Cancellation insurance  Services of B&R guide(s)  Items of a personal nature  Support vehicles during bike rides?  All special events and private tours  All transportation from rendezvous to drop-off

Please note that your final itinerary may vary slightly from this one as we continuously research and develop each trip. Inclement weather—though we’d like to think there won’t be any—may also necessitate minor alterations. All pricing in U.S. dollars. ©2015 Butterfield & Robinson Inc.

1-800-387-1147 | www.butterfield.com

INFORMATION ON PEOPLE TO PEOPLE

A General License for US travel to Cuba is created through a do it yourself process rather than by submitting an application and awaiting approval. Fast, free and convenient, a General License simply requires you to prepare all of your own documentation in a way that meets all OFAC guidelines.

U.S. organizations can now organize trips to Cuba for educational exchanges not involving academic study to promote people to people contact. This is one of the new amendments to the 12 categories of legal USA Cuba travel implemented on January 16, 2015. Previously, organizations subject to U.S. jurisdiction had to apply for a Specific License for People to People Travel to Cuba to organize such Cuba travels.

The trip should consist of a full-time schedule of activities intended to promote the exchange with the ordinary citizens of Cuba. This full-time schedule must also include educational activities that result in meaningful interaction in between U.S and Cuban nationals. The trip to Cuba must be escorted by an employee of the organization must escort the trip.