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We're coming into this lady's house so TIGHT on these back streets. You never know what could happen. But it turns out it's not a bar anymore. It was abandoned at the bar, but now it's a house and this lady lives here. Some doll here with a TV sitting on the bar. Come up onto one of the rooftops of the hotels in the center. No wor. Going back in time here. Look at the bathtub. Sad state of affairs here. You sleep here.
Do you believe that it's mainly America's fault that this situation is so hard here now? Cuba, a country plagued by economic crisis. Not enough food, medicine, or fuel. No freedom of press or freedom of speech. The largest protest since Fidel Castro's revolution swept Cuba. Hundreds have been arrested. Healthc care shortages. We're short on creams, ointments, and antibiotics. Petrol and gas crisis.
Petrol shortages in Cuba became so severe cues of the petrol pumps stretched for several city blocks. Collapsing infrastructure. Building in Havana's historic district collapsed at midnight Tuesday, leaving at least two people dead. at the disintegrating buildings of Cuba's once magnificent capital. A country stuck in time for decades. Sanctions choking the economy. We will not lift sanctions on the Cuban regime. Biden has authorized sanctions against communist Cuban officials.
Since the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s, fueled by hope for a better future headed by Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro was the world's longest serving dictator. Now in 2025, things aren't looking as people hoped for. Follow me on this journey as we time travel to Cuba. Hello and welcome back to beautiful Cuba here on the coast of Havana right now the capital city. If you saw the last video we went out into the rural areas.
A completely different life to the capital city here. But today we're back in the capital. We're going to go deep into some mysterious streets. Some of the streets here are so fascinating and there's a thousand stories to tell. So, we're going to be going into some of the back streets here, meeting people, getting a look in some of the locals houses. Here's an example of a lot of what Cuba Pavana looks like. Obviously, there's buildings that are nicer, but there's everything in between. Hola, Seor. Hola. Change. I have no change. All right. Okay. Uh maybe one second. Where you from?
Uh no. New Zealand. There you go. That's That's 50 for you. That's all I have, sir. No change. No, no, I have no US dollar. Okay. No change. No, I only have peso. Only Yeah. Solo No. Uh US dollar. I already change into peso. That's okay. So there's a really good example. You'll run into that multiple times a day. You see, you know, he's trying. You understand? You can't blame them for
trying that hard in these circumstances. And you see it ended amicably. He was kind. you know, he was grateful for the 50 pesos. Let's go explore some of these beautiful old buildings here. We're coming into this lady's house. She's kindly invited us in. So tight. Wow. Where do you sleep? Oh, hello. Hola. Good boy. YEAH. UP YOU GO.
THIS IS YOUR BEDROOM. OH, your daughter. YEAH. You're amazing. Can you ask if she likes living here? She's living for years here and she likes it. And you're doing some renovations at the moment. A SINGLE ROOM AND she gave this to another floor. What do you normally cook for lunch and dinner? Beans and egg. Pork. And you got a whole chicken poo. Nothing. Is it a good life in Habana? Yeah. Happy. Yeah. She likes it. She likes to live here. She has two children. The daughter that is there and she's pregnant and a boy.
Oh, the daughter's pregnant. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're going to be a grandmother. Yeah. Congratulations. Okay. Look at these old buildings. So much life in these alleyways. Music playing. one month until the birth. Okay. Good luck for it. Okay. What's your go? These are the kind of entrance ways that you'll see. You can see that Havana was once a beautiful well-maintained architecture pathways that lead up. A lot of them are these old doors. Sometimes you'll see bike locks holding them together. Um you see old rusty things that are falling apart now but just it's still so beautiful but you can imagine once what was
another one of the issues here is uh public transport. So you'll see lots of uh people waiting at bus stops big cues because the public transport is few and far between and that's also down to the gasoline shortage. So, we've met a local manu. I'm Nick Lenny. So, you're 71 years old. From six to seven. He work out every day. Michigan. What's the difference between Michigan and Cuba? A lot of freedom in America. How many years in 14? 14. Yeah. 14 years. So, uh, why did you come back? That crazy, man. I live in Detroit, Michigan, Atlanta city.
Atlanta city. Yeah. I'm in Tesla. Texas. Reno, what was your favorite? Miami. I live a lot of people. Cuban Miami. Lots of Cuban people in Miami here. You're very fit and lively for your age, I would say. What's the secret to a happy healthy life? I smoke, you know. I smoke some sometime, you know. No drink, no drinking. No drinking, no smoking. Good food. Yeah. Okay. So, so we were just walking down the street for a lady sitting outside this bar here, but it turns out it's not a bar anymore. It was abandoned as a bar and she's moved in here. So, he's living
in an old bar just right there next to where they serve the drinks and everything. Gracias. This used to be a bar here. You can see they got the Vana Club rum sign, but now it's a house and this lady lives here. Some doll here A lot of these religious style figures with the TV sitting on the bar here. There's the bed, the remote there on a fan hitting there. Another fan. It's really hot today. A fridge there. The mystery of Havana is amazing. I just want to take a quick second and say thank you to NordVPN for sponsoring this video. I know most of you know what a VPN is by now, but if you don't, a VPN or a virtual private network is
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world where you can't access certain websites, as I'm sure you're all aware of. As somebody who travels a lot, I also use NordVPN when looking through flight websites. I flick between different countries on NordVPN, and you'd be surprised at the money you can save. So, you can get 4 months extra on a 2-year plan if you use this link, nordvpn.com/indigo, and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. Thank you to NordVPN for sponsoring this video. Now, let's get back to it. We've met a couple of Jose and they kindly invited us into their house so we can see what it's like. Gracias. Is it safe? Because I've seen on the side of the building it seems to be collapsing.
This is the way it is here. This a very antics home and they are not taking maintenance to any of these buildings. So that's the way it is here. Now we're heading even further up the apartment building to meet Jose's and see his house. No running water. Here's Jose's apartment. And you can see this is significantly different to downstairs in Man's apartment. What's there? Oh, capital building. Happy. Jose's house here is in a much worse condition to downstairs at the other lady's house. And obviously, he's living a harder existence. It's got the old TVs here. Yes. Brutal life. An old toasty maker. I mean, this is uh like going
back in time here. Look at the bathtub. I guess that's some kind of a hot water cylinder, but quite a sad state of affairs here. The side of this building is completely collapsing. Few vegetables there. A little bit of meat. Not too much. Oh, you got some sausages and some vera there. Oh, in this here. There's Jose's bedroom here. You sleep here, right? Wow. Workshop. Got some tools here. See the roof is collapsing there. You can see the reinforcement beam showing. Then they're rusted. These buildings collapse all the time in Havana. It's a big
issue. There would have been many people similar situations asleep at night. Just the house collapsing. I'm coming. Rescue workers working Wednesday morning to gain access to the building where two people remain trapped. At the time of the collapse, there were 54 people in that three-story building. The area has deteriorated buildings due to time and lack of maintenance. No running water here. Since some months ago, he has no water. Pretty hard. Why? Why no water? The tubes are broken. Water is not coming here.
The sanctions is a cause of a problem. The US sanctions on Cuba in Cuba are the problem. Do you have electricity? The electricity is cut for 3 hours daily. Is it hard to put food on the table every day? People who has no family outside gets no money here is pretty hard. Especially when they are elder like this. The money he has is not enough for bringing the food to the house. He's 68 years old. He works in a truck doing moving. Do you get a pension every month? And how much is that? 3,200. A chicken is 2,000 and a bottle of oil is 900. So that's like almost the entire pension on like a few meals, right? And
uh what would you like to see change here in Havana? Yeah. The sanctions are really hard now. So what he would like to change is the situation. They are not taking the rubbish every how on the streets. Yeah. On the streets the way they used to do it before and economy is really bad. After Fidel died and the co came everything has been harder. Do you believe that it's mainly America's fault that the situation is so hard here now? I tensions are a main problem, but also the way they are doing things here are really wrong. Every time they try to change something here, the ones that suffer are then good. So, we're going to go up to the rooftop to have a look.
Seems to be locked. Wow, what a tiny Man, what's the other one? Tiko, you are head of the beast, man. Wow. This is where the locals come where they can use the governmentisssued food stamp. I see a lot of these around the town. There's big lines outside. There's big lines outside the bank here. You see behind me. Then also another one here where these people also waiting to go to the back. Believe it or not, there is a Chinatown here for the Chinese cars. Some of the views you see in this city feel like time travel. The old cars going on buildings and then here's got the Chinese art share the gate.
Absolutely remarkable. that this still exists in 2025. You can come and see scenes like this still on this planet. Habana is absolutely beautiful like I've mentioned, but of course there are so many areas like this. You see like the collapsing old buildings up there and just everything falling into disrepair. resources don't seem to be flowing to allow the upkeep of such a beautiful historical stunning city with some of the most incredible architecture I've seen in the world. It's quite sad. It does add the charm of course that it's falling apart and uh it gives it kind of that rugged, grimy, gritty kind of vibe, but at the same time, how much longer can it stay up like this until
everything just starts crumbling because the state of the streets is quite horrific. So, we've actually seen quite a few Chinese looking people walking around. They speak in Spanish to each other, but you can see they've still got some of the language here. You can see these Chinese people speaking Spanish. They got these full traditional Chinese restaurant here. Absolutely amazing. So cool. See, this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the mystery. You just get lost in these streets and you just never know what you can find, you know? It's absolutely incredible. David, so you have Chinese heritage here.
Canon. Wow. And are there a lot of Chinese descendants here? I see you're busy, so I'll let you go. Gracias. So, you'll see the streets. Some of them are in pretty bad condition. Some of them are okay. But what you'll always notice is cameras on the block side. So you see cameras in the most random locations in this country in the middle of like highway under bridges and things like that and on the street corners under surveillance. Come up onto one of the rooftops of the hotels in the center here and got a papaya juice and just check out the views. Unreal.
One thing that I really have to emphasize about Cuba is it's extraordinarily safe. Uh people there's from what I my understanding and what I've seen you can go anywhere in the city and feel pretty much 100% secure. People wouldn't take the risk to do anything especially to a tourist because that would result in them going to prison. So that is one really positive aspect from the tourist perspective that it is very safe in Cuba. I've never once felt in danger can be in these streets here with all these guys everywhere and these back streets you know ordinarily in a place in Latin America that looks like this for example in these back streets you never know
what could happen but in Cuba you've got no worries. that's super safe even where it might look dangerous. At least that's from my experience. It would be pretty amazing if anything was to happen to a tourist uh in terms of crime. Another mind-blowing day in Cuba's capital city. A massive thanks to all the locals being so hospitable, inviting me into their homes in order to share with the world what life is like for the average person in Cuba. It's been an absolutely incredible trip. My heart goes out to the Cuban people. To state the obvious, what they face is incomprehensible. I'll leave some links and resources in the description below if you want to donate or read up on some
charities that do good work in Cuba. I am in no way affiliated with these charities, but I will leave them in the description if you feel the need to help out. A huge thank you to Lenny, my right-hand man and translator here. Lenny is a street photography wizard. Check him out on Instagram linked below. His photos are out of this world. I'll also leave my Instagram linked below if you want to see some of my photos of Cuba. I had so much footage of this trip, especially of this last day. I'm going to put it up on my Patreon. So, I'll leave a link to my Patreon below if you want to have a look at that. If you want to see some leftover clips after that, all there is to do is to thank you
for watching. I still appreciate all the support over all the years. Truly means the world to me. I'll see you in the next video from another country. another continent. I hope you'll join me.
