# [C] Cuba | road infrastructure



## mexico15 (Jan 21, 2009)

when my dad was in a travel to Cuba for work he saw a big bus named guagua or guira i dont know, does anybody here knows the name of the buses?


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## disbesa (May 19, 2008)

manuelmonge said:


> when my dad was in a travel to Cuba for work he saw a big bus named guagua or guira i dont know, does anybody here knows the name of the buses?


Well, that´s mainly what the word "guagua" means in Cuba, a sort of public bus. Actually, there are just moreless 500 guaguas circulating due to actual economic crisis.










The other major public transport that has been posted before here is commonly best known in La Habana as "The Camel" (el Camello), and usually consists on a truck + trailer with 2 humps, therefore its name. The Camel was invented by a transport minister at the beginning of the 80´s to relieve the transport critical situation in the capital. Each "camel" can hold 300 ppl in one trip...now it´s up to you to suffer over 30º degrees inside it with no conditioning air :laugh:


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## Gag Halfrunt (Jun 25, 2006)

^^ Until a few weeks ago there was a Russian bus website which had a gallery of recent photos of buses in Cuba, but it's disappeared. Anyway, it seems that the Camellos in Havana have been or are being replaced by three-axle and articulated buses.


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## Mateusz (Feb 14, 2007)

Pictures of Habana really reminds of Driver 2 game, classic times. I can remember some places from game, like this Harbour Tunnel and old US cars


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## Jonas84 (Aug 14, 2009)

Here's some pics taken by me when I visited Cuba in July 2005. First photo's from Havana, the rest is from a road trip we made around the countryside in a rental car.

Malecón, Havana









Another photo of the infamous Malecón beach promenade. A lot of lanes here!









Intersection in Havana









Wide street in Havana









Picking up the rental, a VW Sharan 1,8t









30 minutes later and we're already lost. :lol: No signs and nobody speaks a single word of english. This photo is from a typical small village located a little west of Havana. Notice the potholes, they made our Sharan cry.









We finally made it to A1, Cubas main east/west highway. This highway has six lanes, in some sections even eight. Lane markings however doesn't exist, and traffic is minimal. The speed limit is 100 km/h, but beware of potholes, you don't want to hit them at that speed!









More Cuban "Autobahn"









We leave the motorway and take som country roads. Here we're stuck behind what's the most usual kind of public transportation in Cuba.









Another country road, banana plantage on the left side.









This section of A1 going east from Havana is really wide.









More A1 east of Havana. The road was straight as an arrow for kilometers after kilometers.









There are many ways to use a public highway in Cuba!









And many types of transport aswell!









Nice straight road, pavement here was quite ok. People, horses, donkeys and dogs wandering in the middle of the road made it dangerous to drive at high speeds though.









This impressive causeway took ten years to build, and connects the island of Santa Maria to the mainland of Cuba.









The causeway is 48 km long and was a delight to drive. After passing a checkpoint with guards armed with AK47's, you could blast away over the caribbean sea. :cheers:









Speed limit on the causeway was 90 km/h. 









Several bridges made it possible for life under the sea surface to cross the causeway.









Last photo shows a flooded highway not far from Santa Clara, east of Havana. The photo was taken a few days after a hurricane. The Sharan managed to drive thru it.


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## Jonas84 (Aug 14, 2009)

I want to post photos from a cuba trip, but the forum just tells me that the message must be approved by a moderator. I posted 24 hours ago and nothing have been approved yet. Anybody wanna tell me what to do?


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

They have been approved 

Funnily enough, they didn't show as "new posts" here. That's why I couldn't approve them earlier. Happy foruming.


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## Jonas84 (Aug 14, 2009)

Thanks alot, Chris! But as you might see I was impatient enough to push the button more than one time. post #66-68 may be deleted


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## Buddy Holly (Sep 24, 2008)

Why do posts in this thread need approval? Nice pictures Jonas.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

Jonas84 said:


> Here's some pics taken by me when I visited Cuba in July 2005. First photo's from Havana, the rest is from a road trip we made around the countryside in a rental car.
> 
> This impressive causeway took ten years to build, and connects the island of Santa Maria to the mainland of Cuba.
> 
> ...


I am about 99.9% certain that those guards are there mainly to keep ordinary Cubans away from there, an area reserved for only foreign tourists and Communist Party bigshots. That causeway is located just outside of the Cuban city of Caibarién.

Such is life in Cuba.

hno:

Mike


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## Pansori (Apr 26, 2006)

Judging from the photos in this thread Cuba must be the only place in the world where you can regularly see old Soviet and American cars.


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## pijanec (Mar 28, 2007)

Potholes are nothing special in the Caribbean (even on rich islands) because of everyday pretty strong raining.


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## H123Laci (Dec 6, 2007)

traffic jam and congestion seems to be an unknown expression there... :lol:


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## pirro62 (Sep 29, 2009)

the roads in Cuba are really bad I am from Mexico and Iam very sad


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## christos-greece (Feb 19, 2008)

Cuba roads few of them, needs a liitle renovation...
The A1 motorway if i seen right has 3 lanes in each direction?


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

I travelled from Havana to Guantanamo city six years ago by road. I can't remember exactly how long it took, but it was a slow journey.

From memory, there is a freeway of sorts from Havana about a third or half of the way. In parts it looked as though building had been halted once the southern carriageway had been built, though the route for the northern carriageway had been cleared and bridges built.

The surface was in very poor condition and there were no road markings, though the alignment engineering etc was good. I don't know if it had always been like that or if it had just deteriorated over the years. At one place there was also a level crossing (!) on the freeway and horse-drawn carts were not an uncommon sight. People told us that driving at night could be dangerous because of cattle wandering onto the road.

Around half way to Santiago the freeway ends in the middle of nowhere and you have to go onto small country roads to get to another, older, highway for the remainder of the way.

Between Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo there is another freeway, again incomplete.

I was rather puzzled by why they had started building such a freeway, it seemed highly over optomistic (or extravagant maybe a better word) as there was little traffic. Especially there were very few cars - most of the traffic consisted of trucks. Even without Cuba's economic crisis and the lower emphasis of individual vehicles in favour of public transport of socialism it seemed over-engineered considering how far it is between population centres.

On the other hand, the road to Barracoa through the mountains was well-maintained.

One thing that was nice about roads in Cuba was the nice artistic monuments and plantings next to them at the entrances to towns and villages with the name of the town etc.

Autopista Nacional










Road to Barracoa through the mountains










Cuban petrol station










Near Boyeros Avenue in Havana


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## Fargo Wolf (Oct 23, 2009)

Mateusz said:


> Pictures of Habana really reminds of Driver 2 game, classic times. I can remember some places from game, like this Harbour Tunnel and old US cars


Considering they used 1000s of pics from each city in the game, is it any surprise?   The same for Driver 3. Wonder if they are gonna make a Driver 4. I wanna know what happens to Tanner after Jericho shot him. Anyhoo... Back to the thread.


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## treichard (Sep 5, 2009)

Have there been any autopista section openings since the beginning of 2010, and are any planned by the end of 2011?


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## bogdymol (Feb 4, 2010)

*Cruising in Cuba:* The National Highway in Cuba has many stretches where you will not see another car for miles. Then when you do see one, it is an old classic like this 1950s Buick, which looks at home on the open road with the Cuban landscape of fields and mountains in the distance. (James Kao/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/06/national_geographic_traveler_m.html​


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## Road_UK (Jun 20, 2011)

Gag Halfrunt said:


> ^^ Until a few weeks ago there was a Russian bus website which had a gallery of recent photos of buses in Cuba, but it's disappeared. Anyway, it seems that the Camellos in Havana have been or are being replaced by three-axle and articulated buses.


A lot of Dutch local buses have been exported to Cuba...


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## Tenjac (Jul 3, 2014)

italystf said:


> I've read that in Cuba restaurant and bar waiters who get tips in hard currency from foreign tourists are much richer than a doctor paid by the state.
> It's probably like it was in the former Eastern Bloc. My father visited Czechoslovakia in 1985 and said that everyone wanted USDs or Deutsche Marks as tips.


That is, of course, true. But the whole thing is by far more complex then that. And it is applicable if you compare two capitalist countries too.

For example, I am working for 800 €/month in Croatia. In Germany, I would, for the same job, got much more then that (someone from Germany can tell how much). In Switzerland or Norway even more. In Cuba, I would get around 70 US$ officially for 40 hours per week, unofficialy for 20 hours per week (first hand information; majority of Cubans are far more lazy then you can even imagine).

I am assistant professor at university (though, I am underpaid because of restrictions imposed by the government).

But if I go to the store in Cuba, 1 $ will buy the same amount of goods as 20 € in Croatia. I have to pay 500 € for housing and far more in the store. I have barely managed to buy myself a new car (C3, nothing special) but that's only beacuse i am still childless and my wife is also employed. And, it would be almost impossible for me to loose the job in Cuba while in Croatia I have 5 years contract which will be extended only if I accomplish some defined tasks.

Level of corruption in Croatia is high. Political freedoms are not very high. You can be fined for displaying symbols and slogans against liberal democracy and capitalism (the same what will happen to you in Cuba if you speak against the revolution) - there is expression in Croatia which would describe this as "same shit, different package" - and you most probably will not get a job if you are syndicalist in private company.

Roads are OK but because of 0,06 €/km of tolls I can barely afford myself driving on highways. I use them but very, very rarely.

Stores are full of goods which I cannot buy and majority of people has lower wage then me.

So...


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## keber (Nov 8, 2006)

Tenjac said:


> But if I go to the store in Cuba, 1 $ will buy the same amount of goods as 20 € in Croatia.


Apparently you haven't been on Cuba yet. Things are generally somehow cheaper in stores, but not much cheaper than elsewhere. 1 $ will buy you maybe one can of Coca cola. Basic things like rice, flour, oil, sugar, cigarettes etc. is given to Cubans only on basis of monthly coupons in special stores. 
I've been on Cuba 14 years ago and as I've heard from others, not much has changes since (see my 7 year old post on first page)
I remember when you drive on motorways it feels like US Interstates from 1940ies (concrete, no dashed lines, no guardrails, almost no signalisation), albeit with traffic of Alaska in more remote parts.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Tenjac said:


> Political freedoms are not very high. You can be fined for displaying symbols and slogans against liberal democracy and capitalism (the same what will happen to you in Cuba if you speak against the revolution) - there is expression in Croatia which would describe this as "same shit, different package"


Apology of nazi-fascism and hate speech (i.e. racist speech) are illegal virtually everywhere in Europe. 
Some former communist countries also banned the apology of communism.
So, it's not a problem just of Croatia, you probably would be fined for that even in Switzerland or Germany.
If you were Cuban you wouldn't be writing there, as internet is censored in Cuba.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

Tenjac said:


> While they, indeed, got only 20 CUC = USD per month, the state subvensions provided to them by using CUP make the prices to be only 4 % of normal. Cars are, of course, an exception. Together with free education and health care, their living standard is effectively equal to that in Romania.


The state "subventions" were always meager at best and were food rationing system used a social control mechanism based on the need to eat. Now, they are almost non-existing, with the monthly ration lasting less than a week and forcing people to "invent" to be able to subsist and buy some basic items in CUC (dollars) at very inflated at the dollarized stores belonging to the military and run by dicitator Raul Castro's son-in-law.

There is nothing free in Cuba. That's a propaganda myth used by the Castro diciatorship to justify its humans rights violations and its absolute and never-ending power. Cubans are charged foe eduction and health care not only through the miserable salaries they recieve but through unpaid work that is "voluntory" (a little bit voluntary and a whole lot mandatory), "red sundays", "productive work" and "social service". Healthcare professionals are rented out to other countries and the dictatorship keeps from 75% to 90% of their salries. And those foreign enterprises that do buisiness in Cuba muist hire and pay for employess through state "labor agencies" using a predatory formula that results in the satte keeping 92 cents of every dollar that the foreign business pays in salry for the Cuban worker.

The helathcare system for Cubans is atrocious. The hospitals are run down, they have no equipment or medicine and there are not enough doctors because most are in other countries doing quasi-slave labor that nets huge profits to the Castros (in Brazil alone, they net $34 million a month in salaries that they take fronm the doctors). By contrast, the helathcare system for foreigners that pay in dollars or euros is much better than the one for Cubans, with hotel-like hospitals, medicines, equipment and good doctors.



> President Castro also said that there will be a move to eliminate CUP and that all wages denominated in CUP will be payed in CUC in the same amount. That will bring Cuban wages to the level of 500 US$ per month without subvensions. Still, education and health care will remain free, and the cost of living will be very low.


Neither Fidel Castro nor his brother Raul who inherited power from Fidel by dynastic succession are presidents of Cuba because they have never been elected to the position. They are, plain and simple, dictators. the last demoocratically elected president of Cuba was Carlos Prios Socarras in 1948. Weeks before the 1952 election, Batista usurped power with a coup d'etat and since 1952 Cuba has had 3 dictators. The "lections" staged regularly in Cuba are no such thing because there is only one party (the communist party) and the people only get to elect the local delegate (something lie a neighborhoord chief) and don't get to vote for any higher position.

The story of the reunification of currency is sort of like Cubans call "el cuento de la buena pipa" (the story of the good pipe) that goes in circles without end. In 1958, Cuba had some of the highest salaries in the world which the castro diciatorshop managed to sink to the lowest level. Now, the Cuban peso, (CUP) which used to be stronger than the US dollar is worth 4 USD cents and the new salaries of $500 CUC being promised but never delivered will be ridiculous compared to the pre-1959 salaries Cubans enjoyed before the Castros destroyed Cuba and its economy.

Interestingly, the Castro family and its closest associates seem to have no limits on their income. Last month, for example, Antonio Castro Soto del Valle, who is Fidel Castro's son vacationes in the Mediterranean Sea in a 160-foot (50-meter) yacht on which he arrived to to Bodrun, Turkey from the Greek Islaes. In Bodrun, he stayed in a luxury resort with his entourage and spent in lodging alone 30 thousand euros (6 suites at 1,000 euros a night for 5 nights) which is the equivalent of 160 years of work for an average Cuban. While there, his bodyguards assaulted and insulted reporters and photographers that dared to document his rich-and-famous lifestyle, specially when his father and uncle are always forcing the Cuban people to make more "sacrifices for the revolution". Likewise, dictator's Raul Castro's granddaughter was photographed in the United States carrying her $800-dollar Louis Vuitton purse which is the equivalent of three-and-a-half years of work for an average Cuban. It seems like in the Castros' "egalitarian" Animal Farm, like George Orwell said, some animals are more equal than others.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

italystf said:


> I've read that in Cuba restaurant and bar waiters who get tips in hard currency from foreign tourists are much richer than a doctor paid by the state.
> It's probably like it was in the former Eastern Bloc. My father visited Czechoslovakia in 1985 and said that everyone wanted USDs or Deutsche Marks as tips.


That is true. The maximum salary for a doctor in Cuba who is either a second-degree specialsit or has more than one specialist is $1500 Cuban pesos ($60 dollars a month).

Lots of doctors and other professionals try to get into the tourism industry for that reason. Since Cubans cannot directly contract with foreign employers and must go through a state labor agency, there is a corruption avenue (among many in Cuba) to sell jobs in the tourist sector to the highest bidder. I personally knew a doctor who dreamed of becoming a bellhop at a tourist hotel in order to earn hard-currency tips carrying in tourists' luggage.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

italystf said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if 6 or 8-lanes highways in Cuba had been built primarily to serve for tanks or planes in case of war.


Wen they began building the "ocho-vias" (8-lane) highway in the 1970's it was with the purpose of using it as runways. Thus, the highway has no dividers. It is a ribbon of concrente 8-lanes wide with no lane markings in most places and you made your own lane.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

Falusi said:


> BTW I took some pictures of that motorway, and other roads in January, I can upload them if you want.


Please do.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

Falusi said:


> Our tourist guide in Cuba said, that indeed the original goal of the Autopista Nacional was to connect the two big cities Havanna and Santiago de Cuba to respond faster in case of an attack from USA. But the construction was very expensive and on the Santiago de Cuba side was really slow, so the works had been stopped. Of course they couldn't say that, so they figured out a story, that this motorway serves as a very good runway to possible invading aircrafts, and that's why they had to stop constructing it further.


Fidel Castro did all kinds of absurdi and downright insane things to keep people in a siege mentality of "yankee attack" in order to rally nationalistic support using the tried-and-true playbook of fascist and communist dictators.

In addition to the 8-lane runway, which was to be used by Castro's MiG fighter-bombers, he had conscripted young men in the obligatory military service, dig and blast tunnles and storage caves in the Havana-Matanzas heights along the northern shore of those provinces where weapons, tanks, planes, missiles and explosives were stored and where radar units and anti-aircraft missile batteries were set up. In Havana, the tunnels that began to be excavated for the Havana Metro (subway) were transforemed into the "tunnels of the war of all the people", a North Korea-sounding name given by 
Fidel Castro to his psychotic outburst. The Cubans were kept on edege, digging tunnels and shelters and doing drills to prepare for the "yankee attack" that would never come. Now, one of those tunnels is used to grow mushrooms for export but you can see the consequeinces of the mindless and reckless blasting in buildings that suffered fatal structural damages a s a result, the most prominet being the Pedro Borras Children's Hospital in G and 29 streets, a beautiful Art Deco hospital built in the 1930's when Cuba still had a first-class health care system.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

Tenjac said:


> In Cuba, I would get around 70 US$ officially for 40 hours per week, unofficialy for 20 hours per week (first hand information; majority of Cubans are far more lazy then you can even imagine).


If you make $70 USD ($1,750 CUP) in Cuba you have a tremendous salary higher than the highest salary that doctors get.

Cubans have become incredibly lazy because they don't see any fruits form their labor for the state. While the state pretends to pay them, the Cubans pretend to work. Cubans prefer to "invent" which is diverting resources from the state, that is stealing anything they can get away with from governemnt enterprises or warehouses. When it comes to "inventios" the creativity of Cubans has no limits.



> But if I go to the store in Cuba, 1 $ will buy the same amount of goods as 20 € in Croatia.


That might be in a government "bodega" which are usually bare and have little, if any, food available through the ratining booklet. If you go to the dollarized stores, you will have to pay very inflated prices higher that you would pay for the same producti in American supermarkets.



> I have to pay 500 € for housing and far more in the store.


In Castro's Cuba, there is a major housing crisis. Several generations live in the same housing unit, often in ruinous buildins that collapse in the rain because they have recieved no maintenance or even a coat of paint since 1958. There is a lot of overcrowding, rains often bring building collapses and unjust evictions, confiscations and destructions of self-built housing are very common.



> And, it would be almost impossible for me to loose the job in Cuba while in Croatia I have 5 years contract which will be extended only if I accomplish some defined tasks.


Jobs in Cuba are very easy to lose nowadays, specially for political reasons. In the 1960's, everyone who applied to leave in the Freedom Flights was automatically terminated from their jobs. In the 1980's, they were expelled from their jobs through so-called "acts of repudiation", an evil act copied by Fidel castro form Hitler where government-controlled mobs beat people up and destroy their property while hurling rocks, eggs and insults at them.

Now, nobody wants to work for the State in Cuba except for those "mayimbes" and members of the nomenklatura with all sorts of privileges. The desirability of a job in Cuba is not measured in salry and benefits but in the opportunities it offers to divert state resources.



> Level of corruption in Croatia is high. Political freedoms are not very high. You can be fined for displaying symbols and slogans against liberal democracy and capitalism (the same what will happen to you in Cuba if you speak against the revolution)


Level of corruption in Cuba is extremely high and is a way of life for most everybody.. Political freedoms do not exist. You can be arrested, beat-up, fined, jailed and even killed for expressing opinions different to the official orthodoxy of the Castro dictatorship or doing political activities like marches or petitions thay are strictly prohibited there.


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## Corvinus (Dec 8, 2010)

^^ Sounds really like the Eastern bloc during Cold War Europe. No incentives to perform - resulting in poor labor quality and a generally decaying infrastructure.

BTW we could add the [C] to the thread title, even if very few (if any at all) Cuban vehicles ever needed a decal. Are there any testimonies of Cuban reg. vehicles driving around in a foreign country? (or vice versa?)


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## Kanadzie (Jan 3, 2014)

LOL how does a tiny impoverished dump like Cuba get the full C and a G7 democracy like Canada gets only CDN :lol:


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

@El Tiburon: are you a Cuban political refugee?
You seem to know very well the situation of that country and you gave a very sad picture of it, but probably very realistic, much more realistic than happy holiday reports.
Interesting report.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

italystf said:


> @El Tiburon: are you a Cuban political refugee?
> You seem to know very well the situation of that country and you gave a very sad picture of it, but probably very realistic, much more realistic than happy holiday reports.
> Interesting report.


Yes. I was born and raised in Cuba during the Castro dictatorship and came to the United States after high school.


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## El Tiburon (Mar 21, 2010)

Corvinus said:


> Are there any testimonies of Cuban reg. vehicles driving around in a foreign country? (or vice versa?)


Not that I know...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Kanadzie said:


> LOL how does a tiny impoverished dump like Cuba get the full C and a G7 democracy like Canada gets only CDN :lol:


The allocation of codes is a bit weird and in some cases outdated. 

For example, Burundi has the code RU, which stands for Ruanda-Urundi which existed until 1962 as a Belgian colony. BH = Belize, known as British Honduras at that time. Benin's code is DY, which stands for Dahomey, which was the name of that country until 1975.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

A googled picture of the 8-lanes motorway near L'Havana. :nuts:










Motorway rest area :lol:


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## Corvinus (Dec 8, 2010)

El Tiburon said:


> > Are there any testimonies of Cuban reg. vehicles driving around in a foreign country? (or vice versa?)
> 
> 
> Not that I know...


I've found one 










(Photo src: nacion.com)


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## Benyo (Oct 28, 2014)

*Driving over 50km causeway to Cayo Santa Maria*


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## Losbp (Nov 20, 2012)

A nice drive from Jose Marti Airport to the city


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## Benyo (Oct 28, 2014)

*Timelapse Driving in Cuba - From Playa Larga to Santa Clara*


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## Benyo (Oct 28, 2014)

*Full Ride - From Playa Larga over Santa Clara to Caibairen*


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