Adventure #11 - Exploring Cuba

We are now back in a snowy Sweden after a very fascinating 3 week trip to Cuba. This was the perfect ending to our adventure year!

We had booked flights and the first two accomodations, in Havanna and in Playa Larga. We had an idea of the route we planned, but no more details booked. And it turned out to be extremely easy to travel in Cuba. Everyone is friendly and helpful, so there was never any problems in finding a place to stay or getting transport to the next place. And staying in people's homes (casa particulares) was the best decision - we met so many interesting, fascinating and caring people.

This is how we travelled:
Havanna - Playa Larga - Cienfuegos - Trinidad - Santa Clara - Varadero - Havanna - Vinales

Havanna
The fascinating capital of Cuba! We started our journey here and returned for a couple of more days later during our trip. Lot's of interesting places to explore. The highlight was wandering around the alleys of Old Havanna and observing the lifes of the people in Havanna.

View from our casa particulares

Playa Larga
A small village at the Bay of Pigs, with a small and charming beach. We were almost alone at the beach, even though it is high season for tourism in Cuba we seemed to select the more desolated places. Here we stayed at our favourite casa particulares - Casa Frank. We ate all meals here and the casa owners took great care of us. We loved sitting on the terrace and just watch the village life on the street below.  Lot's of sounds - roosters, salsa music, horse carriages, vendors shouting "banana" or "pan"...

Cienfuegos
A French colonial city "The Pearl of the South", not so many tourists and lot's of well maintained houses and old colonial buildings. Highlights here were a trip to the beach Rancho Luna and the mojito on top of the Palacio de Valle. Also very helpful casa owners, and luckily for us they spoke English! We got some great advice from them that helped us during the rest of the trip. We ended our stay in Cienfuegos with an interesting taxi ride to El Nicho, a beautiful waterfall, and then continued on to Trinidad. Our taxi probably broke down around 15 times before we finally reached Trinidad.

Trinidad
A relaxed town which is easy to like! Colorful buildings, lot's of Cuban music and nice restaurants. Trinidad is included on most tourists' agenda, so there were more people here. On Christmas Eve we spent the day on the beach Playa Ancon. Otherwise it is no problem to spend time in Trinidad. As always, just walking by foot and observing the town is our favourite thing to do. For the first time in Cuba we found a restaurant that served really good vegetarian food, so our vegetarians were happy!

Santa Clara
The main reason to visit Santa Clara is to see the Che Guevara monument, and that's why we stopped here for a couple of days. We liked the atmosphere in Santa Clara, even though there is really not much to do apart from the monument.

Varadero
Varadero was not on our planned route before we left. But after visiting busy cities we wanted to spend some days at a beach. And the casa owners in Santa Clara recommended Varadero. We thought there were only all-inclusive resorts there, but it turned out that it is also a "real" city in Varadero with plenty of casa particulares. So we took the bus here and found a nice place to stay not many meters from the beach. The beach is over 20 kilometers with beautiful white sand, blue water and palm trees. And not that crowded! At least not the part of the beach where we spent our days.

Vinales
Our final stop was east of Havanna in the tiny town of Vinales, one of our favourite places in Cuba. Unfortunately it rained a couple of days here, but we still got to explore the fantastic landscape around the Valle de Vinales. We hired a taxi for one day and visited all the mandatory sights, with the Santo Tomas cave as the highlight. Every other house here is a casa particulares, and our casa was great! The owners helped organise everything we needed, "No problema" was their standard answer!

All in all, this was an amazing trip! Would we do anything differently next time? Yes, I would study some Spanish before leaving - that would make things a bit easier. Otherwise, we can definitely recommend Cuba for a different experience! Viva Cuba Libre!

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Let the Cuban adventure begin!

We’re in Cuba! Instead of spending Christmas at home with snow and cold weather, we have escaped to Cuba. Why Cuba? Well, because we are fascinated by this complex country and its people. We wanted to learn more and at the same time have a relaxing vacation.

We arrived in Habana on a Saturday and were greeted by Isabel at our Casa Particulares, which is like a hostel. The Cubans have for some years now been allowed to rent out a couple of rooms in their home for tourists. It’s a great way to stay in Cuba, you get to know the people and the casa owners are helpful. The Casa in Habana was clean with nice rooms and a friendly casa owner who spoke English.None of our four family members speak Spanish, so that was a bonus.

We started with two days in Habana to get a feeling of the city and to get used to the Cuban life. Habana is like no other city we have visited before. It is a relaxed feeling, salsa music from every corner and people everywhere, but no one seems to be in a hurry. The houses around our area where we stayed in Centro Habana are old and in desperate need of renovation.

On the first day we took a walking tour together with David, a guide who found us at one of the squares in Habana Vieja (Old Habana). He was amusing and informative, so we had a nice walk around the alleys in Habana Vieja, exploring museums, cathedrals, stores, hotels and residential areas. Very fascinating!

One thing you notice in Habana is the lack of stores. There are no supermarkets, goods are sold in different small markets, on the street and “hole-in-the-wall”-stores. There are tourist stores, but they don’t really sell much either. I guess there are many reasons for that, but one major reason is of course the US embargo.

On our second day we focused on understanding the Cuban history, politics and the revolution. We visited the Museo de la Revolucion and the Museo 28 Septiembre de los CDR. Very interesting, of course “mucho” propaganda, but Cuba definitely has a complex history and a complex present as well.

After a couple of days in Habana we boarded the Viazul bus to Playa Larga, a small village by the sea. It is one of the two beaches at the Bay of Pigs where the US invasion attempt took place in 1961. This is not a fancy resort beach, but more a small beach with a cheap resort and some bars. We stayed in a great Casa Particular “Casa Frank” in two big rooms and with a great terrace and our own bar. Not bad! The weather was a bit cloudy, but we spent a couple of days relaxing, swimming in the ocean and just watching the village life from the terrace and by walking around. We ate all our meals at the casa, nothing fancy but big portions and well prepared food. You don’t go to Cuba for the food, but we really enjoyed the meals at Casa Frank.

Now the plan is to catch a bus tomorrow to go to Cienfuegos. Hopefully our casa owner here in Playa Larga will help us find a nice place to stay tomorrow. And hopefully the bus will not be full when it arrives here. But we’ll see – that’s part of the adventure! We’ll be back with more when we find Internet connection again!

Christmas adventure in Cuba

Our adventure Light my fire year is coming to an end, but we have one final adventure left. We will leave the snow in Sweden and spend 3 weeks around Christmas in Cuba. Cuba seems like the ultimate destination for us, easy to combine different interests. Relaxing on the beach, hiking in the mountains, exploring the cities, learning about politics and history, meeting fascinating people...

We will start in Havanna with three nights at a Casa Particulares, a guesthouse in the centre of Havanna. After that we only have a rough idea of what to do next. We have made an itinerary with some cities and places we would like to see and visit. But we haven't booked anything more, so we will decide the plan step by step when we are in Cuba. Hopefully we will get some ideas from people we meet along the way.

We leave next weekend, so right now we are making the final preparations. According to the guidebooks it is not easy to find internet access, so we have downloaded books, games etc to be able to access off-line. I am a bit worried about the teenagers having withdrawal symptoms from internet, so we need to find other things to occupy them with. We have packed the mahjong game, Scrabble and cards so hopefully we'll be fine!

This will be such a great adventure! Just spending time together, but also exploring a different culture. I'm not sure if we will be able to blog while we are there, it depends on the internet access. But we'll try to share some stories if we can. We would love to hear any recommendations for places to visit!

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