Country Info
- Havana
- Capital
- Cuban Peso (CUP)
- Currency
- 11,184,023
- Population
- CU
- Country Code
Cuba Slideshow
Travel Blogs from Cuba
Travel by night
This is a top pick! ... for private cars to carry foreigners. The cop planted by the door of the station required discretion. Lots of things are prohibido in Cuba. As far as I can tell, it stops absolutely no one from doing any of them; things just take a little longer, become ...
Departure
This is a top pick! I can't imagine a day more exactly split between pleasure and discomfort. Everything before mid-day is a joy. We luxuriate through a final Cuban breakfast of fresh fruit and coffee at our semi-outdoor dining room, followed by a farewell tour to our ...
Beach bum
This is a top pick! ... at other resorts. The Iberostar Tainos, named by a Spanish conglomerate (apparently without irony) after the original inhabitants of Cuba whom the Spaniards effectively decimated, is a kind and tranquil affair, where the friendly staff are still very ...
Loss
This is a top pick! I wake bewildered, a truck rumbling past my head. Strange walls, heat. Cuba, it suddenly occurs to me. But in the predawn, it's not the island but dead classmates that occupy me. Mark Crawford, a high school character, died the day we left on our trip. ...
Final Day
This is a top pick! Tuesday is our best day in Havana. We're out early and back for a siesta before the early afternoon heat. Cuba's a great country for kids, with its languid tempo. Our destination this morning is the Capitolio Nacional, a vast domed structure many times ...
Vedado
This is a top pick! ... stop. We try giving her a mouthful of water. Nothing stays down. This continues for hours. Poor Rosemary spends her first day in Cuba a hostage in her own hotel room. In the end, the hotel doctor gives Lucy an injection of some Gravol-like substance and ...
The magnificent and the crumbling...
This is a top pick! ... group. We dance like white people - and I'm not even white. The salsa seems like a national institution in Cuba, its distinctive beat ringing out through the music houses and back streets alike. Naturally, Cubans can dance salsa. ...
No news is good news
This is a top pick! The last days at Varadero, the wind and cold set in . The warm, clear water of Wednesday, when mom and I floated about in the turquoise ocean, its depths opening beneath us, seems a distant memory. Dead Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish wash up and bloat on ...
Not a happy birthday
This is a top pick! ... bag of oranges from a guy selling them from the roadside, and we all slurp away in silence for a time, watching Cuba passing. Flores drives the highways between Vinales and Havana, between Varadero and Trinidad -- between all the main tourist places ...
Boozing in Brothels with Burmese Billionaires
This is a top pick! ... neighbourhoods and he was taking us into peoples houses and showing us some of the best and worst things about life in Cuba, basically the houses had been beautiful but some were literally falling down around the occupants, at one stage Erica was left ...
Valle de los Ingenos & Peninsula de Ancon
This is a top pick! This morning we met up with Leigh & Kara around 9:30 at our usual coffee shop and enjoyed a nice espresso. We had to haggle quite a bit for a reasonably priced taxi for our day trip, but we got one for 22 CUC. We went to a former sugar ...
Finally, a moment of calm
This is a top pick! ... on this trip -- no early morning flights, no plans to do anything other than slow, easy drifts about the island of Cuba. But Lucy's odd, unidentified illness, which has seen her temperature spike to 40 degrees Celsius since arriving here yesterday, has ...
The long day
This is a top pick! I'm awake at 4:30 a.m. I only sleep eight hours typically, so when we settle down with the kids at 8:30 p.m. it means a lot of laying in the predawn, my mind wandering over strange topographies and ideas. By 6:00 or 6:30, I usually give up even trying to ...
Transported
This is a top pick! ... We wallow about the three lanes of tarmac, which is intent on slowly melting into the gently undulating land about us. Fidel's Cuba has double the freeway's tenure, but the biggest obstacles it faces are evident all about us -- warped roads, crumbling ...
Running into people all over the world.
This is a top pick! For those of you who have read my other blogs, you know that I'm pretty good at running into random people that I know all over the world. My favourite has been in Greece when I was walking through the market and ran into two girls that I was going ...
The Cuban Timewarp
This is a top pick! ... probably also showing that they have travelled or had the means to obtain such luxuries. The most recent hurricane destroyed half of Cuba's agricultural crops so fruit and vegetables are hard to come by, but Rakhel's daughter did manage to get some fresh ...
Cuba
This is a top pick! ... He purchased a Nikkon Coolpix L19, a pocket sized digital camera with all the whistles and bells you can get for $120. We flew to Cuba with Lacsa Airlines, with a stop over in San Jose, Costa Rica to change planes. San Jose has a lovely modern airport. It ...
Daytripper
This is a top pick! ... to be Cuban. In fact we seem to be some of the few tourists in this convertible restaurant. We spot a satellite Coppelia's here, Cuba's legendary ice cream experience. Unfortunately, we never make it there, as it looks more easily penetrated than the vast ...
A short stay
This is a top pick! ... The flight was delayed, cold and boring.. Cuban immigration was polite and a total breeze, I even saw the same thing as peacefrog entering cuba when the girl looked delighted when I asked for a Cuban stamp in my passport.. I had to wait a while for my ...
Slow train coming
This is a top pick! ... Belgium, Germany, France, and our home province (Powell River and the Okanagan). John, from the latter, is in Cuba for a beekeeper conference, working on a business proposal with the government. His progress through various levels of bureaucracy is has ...
Walking tour with Aurelis
This is a top pick! ... us to Revolution Square first and the tour started with a history lesson. On Jan 1st 1959 Fidel Castro took over power in Cuba after the Revolution. Because of failing health, Fidel Castro has now handed over power to his brother Raul Castro who is the ...
Water watching
This is a top pick! 13.03.10 The waves were crashing over the Malecon (Cuba's famous sea wall), when we woke up, so after breakfast I took my camera and photographed it in action. Some cars were being swamped with sea water. As I entered into an area near an old colonial ...
The Lost Day
This is a top pick! A long night. Lucy only yarfs once more after the injection, but my state worsens until I decide to pop Imodium (which I hate, reasoning it's better to get whatever is in my system out than leave it there to percolate). Our whole party is something of a ...
Return to Havana
This is a top pick! ... hotel for dinner. Were we ever glad we did! It was by far the best food we had the entire time we were in Cuba. It was a first-class meal. The paladar doesn't look like much from the outside (on Humboldt street), but once you go inside, ...
Cuba's biggest hotel
This is a top pick! ... casa -- it's been called Cuba's biggest hotel -- so the convertibles are spread amongst the populace. The result? More Cuba-aware (less touristy) travellers, less financially screwed citizens, virtually no begging (you make better money with a casa) ...
to the other end of the island
This is a top pick! ... a Saturday night in Santiago is ment to be hot and kicking. I was and still are unimpressed with the nightlife of Santiago de Cuba.. Apparently there was ment to be music flowing through the streets, maybe in the daytime theres a bit going on to please ...
Regressed to Cuba
This is a top pick! ... the return leg which is a cocaine route, so i had my bag wrapped up in cellophane which cost 9 bucks. I arrived back into Cuba and the immigration guy was totally silent and let me through within seconds, this time I hadn't booked any accomodation and ...
back to the caribbean sea but I never swam
This is a top pick! ... I was pretty bored for the short time I was there.. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna go back there and stay when I return to Cuba, maybe just for a daytrip and should've checked put a new town like Baracoa instead. I've been checking my calendar and the time ...
cobbly streets
This is a top pick! The bus to trinidad was nearly empty until Camaguey.. The nightsky was clear and had a great view of the stars, I only know one constellation by sight and couldn't name it.. I think it's a bow and arrow and it helps to find north or south.. I'll have to ...
The day that turned around
This is a top pick! ... - two anthropologists travelling with their two young children from the states. They explained the situation with the airlines - Cuba received a few airbuses from Venezuela recently so domestic air travel is nowhere near as sketchy as it once ...