Cubans enjoy taste of tourist life as hotel ban ends

VARADERO, Cuba (Reuters) - Cubans bathed in the turquoise-colored sea at their country's best beaches this weekend thanks to the end of an "apartheid" ban that had excluded them from tourist-only hotels.

At Varadero, the communist-run island's top resort, some Cubans checked into five-star hotels for the first time since it opened up to international tourism in the early 1990s.

"There are more things here. We couldn't have them before, it was closed (to us)," said Jessica Lopez, 15, visiting Varadero for the first time and struck by the affluence as she mingled with Canadian and European tourists who sipped mojitos and daiquiris as they soaked up the Caribbean sun.

Cubans who could afford to do so were also able to rent cars for the first time to drive to Varadero, 90 miles east of Havana, another liberalization step taken by the government of Cuba's new president, Raul Castro.

Since succeeding his ailing brother Fidel Castro in February, Cuba's first new leader in 49 years has moved to lift what he called "excessive prohibitions" in the socialist state, allowing Cubans access to DVD players and cellular telephones, and hotels that were previously off-limits.

Until a few days ago, Cubans were barred from walking on some strips of beach close to the most expensive hotels.

"It's a joy to be here, it's amazing," said Jessica's father, Lazaro Lopez, who lives in Miami but returned to Cuba on vacation and took his daughter and other family members to stay at Varadero's $210-a-night Melia Las Americas hotel.

"Look how happy they are. Their eyes shine when they look at the hotels here," he said.

"You couldn't do this before. They stopped you at the door and looked at you as if you were some strange animal. Even though you were Cuban, this was not yours," Lopez said.

His former father-in-law, Pedro, said the government had wisely removed a source of frustration for many Cubans and grounds for criticism of Cuba from abroad.

In a country where the average salary is just $17 a month, few Cubans will able to afford hotels, he said.

"But at least the opportunity exists now, if one works and saves up money," said Pedro, who did not give his full name.

TREATED LIKE TOURISTS

In the Cuban capital, once a playground for Americans before Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution closed Mafia-run casinos and brothels and Cuba embraced Soviet communism, hotels opened to Cubans a week ago for the first time since the 1980s.

"A number of Cubans have stayed here. They get the same treatment as any tourist, and they feel good," said Armando, a poolside barman at the Riviera, a hotel built in 1957 by Mafia figure Meyer Lansky.

Next door, at Havana's modern flagship hotel, the Melia Cohiba, a Cuban couple spent one night on a $240 whim, to just see what it was like, an employee said.

Foreign managers of Cuban hotels welcomed the lifting of the restriction because it will help them fill half-empty hotels during the low season in the summer, when tourism from Canada and Europe dwindles.

An unplanned consequence of allowing Cubans to stay at hotels could be to make life easier for sexual tourists who had previously been forced to stay at private lodgings.

Cuba cracked down on widespread prostitution that arose when the country of 11 million was plunged into a deep economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Until now, the only Cubans staying here have been women with old men who arrive late at night," a porter at the famed Hotel Nacional in Havana said of the new reform.

(Additional reporting by Mario Fuentes; Editing by Kieran Murray)