I'm going in '10.

I just got back a few weeks ago. It was my second visit.

It has a two sided effect. The immediate feeling is... there is no other place on earth like it, and its true, it's wonderfully unique. But you soon learn to hate Castro and what he's put his people through.

Theres no freedom for Cubans and after a week, it gets to you. Cubans cant just get on a bus and go from Havana say to another town... they have to go through a day of paperwork, so they're tracked and measured by the state. Nobody can earn more than $18 a month, no matter if you're a doctor or a street labourer... and the food is woeful. If you want to eat okay in Cuba, you gotta pay for it.

But, having said that, its a place I've felt incredibly alive in, it has an air of abandonment, alot of summer rain, Atlantic views, music all night from the taverns and squares and of course, amazing cars. Havana really is a living museum of American wheels. You can watch them from a balcony all day long swing about the street... bit like bird watching.

bump

I thought thickpassage did a pretty good job of it actually...

He did, but that's just one persons experience.

I went in 94.
Had a week in Varadero, which is a tourist enclave, though you can go into town. Then we went to the south side, had one night in an awful Soviet-built worker's paradise hotel before hopping a taxi to Havana for a week. Went straight up Highway 1, an almost empty eight-lane freeway. Booked into a place right on the seafront, had a ball on our own. Met some great people. Cigars, rum, old Cadillacs, all that. Great coffee, some pretty average food.The old places like the Nacional are still there, too. Some great historic stuff about the revolution.
But yeah, what ThickPassage said- the dual economy gives you the guilts after a w
hile. I spent US$20 on a couple of six packs of (excellent) beer and a pack of smokes, and then realised it was more than my Havanan friend Eugenio earned in a month.

Leave it until April, I hear the sun is best around then.

It will treat you so right.

So right.

Yeah, we decided to leave it off the itinerary.

Mexico will be enough.

Yeah, one Spanish speaking country is as good as another anyway, right?

Enough what?

Spicks

Oh.
I thought he might mean enough of those cheap white cotton trousers. Which, confusingly, are called chinos, not latinos.

White cotton trousers should never be seen on a man, unless you're running through the surf on an Acapulco beach at sunset with a Stevie Nicks lookalike.

Hmm, in that case PG will have to grow her hair.

Enough what?

Taco Taco Burrito Burrito

Any updates?, Seriously thinking about heading there mid 2010

Just got back from a week in Cuba. Wow. Saw first hand how the health system is completely ill equipped, a girl in our tour group developed paranoid schizophrenia in Maria la Gorda and had to witness it all fall to shit. long story.
That being said I met some ace Cubans, and the place does have an amazing vibe. but yeah, it'll take me a week to digest it all.

i too have just returned from a couple of weeks in cuba...made friends with a couple of guys from the olympic team, a basketballer and boxer. They wanted me to buy their uniforms so they could afford to buy basketball shoes and clothes.

you can eat well at (illegal) private restaurants in peoples homes. one night i had lobster and fried banana and 4 other plates of deliciousness for about 10$, but generally i cooked in my apartment i rented.

had the best nights sitting on my door step, drinking 11year old rum, smoking cigars with neighbours watching the street footballers...

I'm quite enjoying the online Granma newspaper. Especially the ''reflections of Fidel''

i loved it there and recommend it. money doesn't matter there to residents and there are clearly 2 economies (and currencies). The food and services to tourists are crap - even in the highfalluting hotels, BUT the food cuban residents eat is fantastic.

best advice is stay in a private home with a family - you'll eat fabulously and get to see the real cuba - we were invited to listen to cd's of local music in the home of the daughter of the lady we stayed with, and they told us where to go dancing with locals not tourists etc. 2nd bit of advice - learn the language as best as possible. 3rd bit of advice - practice dancing and drinking before you go!

Practice drinking rum especially

and on the health comment - the healthcare system to cubans is one of the best in the world -TRUE. I guess the healthcare for tourists is less so given the comment above about the person who had a paranoid/schizo turn.

people go on about how cubans earn so little, but bear in mind that money doesn't matter to them - they don't have to 'buy' food or pay for healthcare etc.- it's given to them a hard thing for westerners to get their puny heads around because $ dominates our society - an old guy on a local ferry gave us some of his local currency - he didn't care about money. then it finally sunk in and i saw everything completely differently

You couldn't be more wrong, severe medicine shortages, ambulances that take 8 hours, smashed up repulsive hospitals, nurses leaving to become Casa owners and earning decent money.

sounds like a western health system...... take the world health organisation opinion. the thing i like about it is that it is universal healthcare - i saw an old guy in threadbare clothes wearing a state of the art arm brace. some other viewpoints

money money money, it's not about money in cuba

MA03, are you, or have you ever been, a member of a socialist party?

nope . btw i meant to reply to a comment you made in reply to me a few days ago, but i couldn't be frigged, ran out of time and now i've forgotten what it was. i treat m&n as a brainless break.

Obviously it was highly important.

I'm not convinced. In fact I don't believe any ''stats'' that come out of a communist state. Our (Cuban) tour guide hammered on about how good the system was like a used car salesman, only to see it fall to shit before my very eyes, in the end I wanted to punch him out. To say most Cubans don't care about money is absurd,

Oh, it was probably about fascist agrarian overlords.
Highly pertinent to the current conversation when you think about it.

You do realise that guy gave you his Cuban money because it's worthless and he uses American money to buy things instead?

nope it was a few days ago and now you're just being silly and wanting the last word

funtimes - as i said first up - it's a different economy/world there for tourists. if you were on an organised tour you would have seen a different world

tourists there get shit food and it seems bad hospital service

Why would the organised tour take funtimes to the dysfunctional parts of Cuba?

If I wanted to talk to zombies and be shuffled around to tourist zones I would have gone to North Korea

The best parts of Cuba are outside of Havana, unless you like tourist traps

so we can all agree on what i wrote first up:

best advice is stay in a private home with a family - you'll eat fabulously and get to see the real cuba - we were invited to listen to cd's of local music in the home of the daughter of the lady we stayed with, and they told us where to go dancing with locals not tourists etc. 2nd bit of advice - learn the language as best as possible.

You said that tourists would get a totally different view of Cuba from people who stayed with a private family. And that they'd get a shit view of the medical system. That doesn't make any sense - why would a (I'm presuming) state owned tourism company show a less-than-best-possible view of one of the industries the Cuban state is most proud of?

in cuba residents are far more important than tourists. i am now bored

Wikipedia seems to strongly disagree with you.

The rapid growth of tourism has had widespread social and economic repercussions in Cuba. This has led to speculation of the emergence of a two-tier economy and the fostering of a state of tourist apartheid on the island. This situation was exacerbated by the influx of dollars into the Cuban economy during the 1990s, potentially creating a dual economy based on the dollar (the currency of tourists) on the one hand, and the peso on the other. Scarce imported goods - and even some of local manufacture, such as rum and coffee- could be had at dollars-only stores, but were hard to find or unavailable at peso prices. As a result, Cubans who earned only in the peso economy, outside the tourist sector, were at an economic disadvantage. Those with dollar incomes based upon the service industry began to live more comfortably. This widened the gulf between Cubans' material standards of living, in conflict with the Cuban Government's long term socialist policies.

western wikipropaganda. because you’re a westerner you look for such things and give them undue weight to subliminally reinforce your sense of superiority

Like how you quote the WHO?

I'm planning to go to Cuba for two weeks at the end of Novemebr. Flying to LA, then Cancun and finally Havana, Cuba! Any advice from folks who've been?
From all the reading I've done it's best to stay with a local family and try and eat with the locals. How have you found accomodation? Book online in advance or sort it out when get there?
Any particular destinations/towns that were highlites and away form the tourist traps?
Any information is welcome!

Any advice from folks who've been?

Explore Mexico instead. Cuba's a shithole.

OK. interesting advice. Anything particular in the said shithole that contributed to it being thought of as such?

The food, the people, the poverty, the attractions... I appear to be in the minority but I couldn't wait to get out.

to be honest, I'm more keen on Mexico, but my traveling buddy wants to go to Cuba. I'm also having a moral dilemma re: traveling to a country under disctatorial rule, whose emigres are actually asking people not to travel there so as not to support the government. hmm.

Tiger Tiger: I stayed in a casa (local's home) on my visit a couple of years ago, found it through Google. The one I was meant to stay at had been double-booked, but they referred me to another nearby with no troubles (and later, that place organised another casa for me in Trinidad). In Havana I was in the Vedado area - quite a good spot if you're unsure where to look. You should probably book ahead for the first stop, but might be able to wing it from there.

If you want them to prepare your meals (and you should as it'll probably be miles better than anything you can get elsewhere), expect to pay around US$4 or so for a big breakfast (awesome coffee, eggs, toast, fruit) or $10 for dinner (had lobster/plantains one night from memory).

Try and bring a bunch of spare clothes if you can to give away (as you'll probably get asked this more than once by people you meet).

nice one CB. mucho gracias!
how long did you spend in Cuba?

also take soap as presents. as said previously: stay with a family and eat their food + learn spanish. ENJOY!!

^^ Not all that long, just over a week I think. If I make it back there I'd love to check out some other parts of the country. Have fun there!

Anyone had trouble having Cuba on your itinerary when you're travelling through the states beforehand?

Be something like LA, NYC, Mexico then return flight from Havana.

^yeah, this would be good to know but in reverse. i.e. entering the US after having been in Cuba.

entering the US after having been in Cuba

Yeah i'd imagine this would be more difficult, but i'm only guessing at this stage.

They don't stamp your passport when you enter Cuba, you get an 'entrance pass' that you return when you leave. If you book the flight from Mexico separately then it won't need to be on your itinerary.