Running out of cash in Cuba and Sancti Spiritus impressions

Blondine and I have always been quite proud of our travel planning skills. Well, I plan most of our travels and Iâ€™m the nitty-gritty planner type who has an agenda working on every hour. However, we all know that an impressive travel itinerary is worth nothing without some dough. We have totally overlooked the banking situation in Cuba and on our 3rd day in the country we ran out of money. *Gulp*

Sancti Spiritus pedestrian zone.

We were supposed to withdraw a few hundred Euros each from the ATM in Madrid before boarding the plane to Havana but we lost time to lunch and then running across the airport (silly me in high heels haha) when we realised that our gate is located at the other side of the Madrid Barajas airport and that its just a few minutes to boarding time. Panic attack. We cannot miss our plane to Havana! The ATM was totally forgotten, flushed down the drain.

And meanwhile in Havana, Blondine and I were so nervous (well I was!) when the ATMâ€™s rejected our Maestro debit cards. Have you ever experienced like you think you have perspired so much but no fluid is coming out of your body? A serious case of emergency situation: We ran out of money! And the always reliable Maestro is not accepted in Cuba. Que horror! Why did I not know this beforehand?! My mind was racing, really racing hard, spinningâ€”HOW ARE WE GOING TO SURVIVE THE REST OF THIS CUBAN TRIP?!

Well, Mastercard graciously came to the rescue. For the rest of our Cuba holiday we used Mastercard as our primary source of funds by withdrawing money against our Mastercard credit cards. There is a transaction fee of course + forex rate difference but I think this is a much safer option than bringing in Euros.

Anyway, while in Sancti Spiritus we ran out of money again! Luckily, we still have some change for lunch and we still have enough gasoline to reach our next destination where we will spend the night over. So after checking out the local market we searched for a bank along the busy pedestrian zone. We found one but we got stuck in there for almost an hour. There seems to be no working communication line between Sancti Spiritus and Havana thus the bank could not continue the transaction. We went to another bank and it was the same.

We really had high hopes of getting some CUC$ but we have resigned to the fact that we will have to wait until we reach Camaguey later in the afternoon.

Here are some impressions of Sancti Spiritus centrum and the pedestrian zone.