Traveling to Cuba this past May has been one of my favorite trips. It had so much allure, music, cigars, and rum. I was consistently impressed by the country’s charm, friendly people and breath taking beauty.
It looks like flights are still available through August. My roundtrip flight from New York to Havana was under $300. Even with the new restrictions, you can still get there via cruises according to the NY Times ”Cruises will apparently be unaffected by the new regulations because fees paid to the military for ports and airports will be exempt from new bans.”
Once on the island, you can stay at an Airbnb either by renting a room or the whole home. Most of the places that I saw in Havana were around $30-$50 a night for a room. The rooms were nice and clean, but simple. They had A/C and all the other amenities you’d need.
All our host were always very friendly. Some spoke English, others only a tiny bit of English. They would ask if we wanted breakfast or dinner prepared to enjoy a large Cuban-style meal.
If so they could charge $5-$10 for the meal per person. And it would be some of the better meals we ate in Cuba.
When I traveled I stayed in Havana for 2 nights and Viñales for 2 nights. Havana is a city so you have plenty of history and culture to explore. One of the things I noticed though was there you had always something that was fighting for your attention.
To get to Vinales we asked our host for a taxi driver, and we worked a deal with him. He was friendly and professional. We set a time and price, then the next day he showed up early and took our group of 5 to Vinales. He charged us $85 I think. It’s about 2 hours from Havana.
Once in Viñales we took a horse back riding tour of the farmland, ate lunch at this hilltop cafe, where they roast coffee.
This is Mario, the coolest barista i’ve ever met. Cuban coffee was so tasty.
We then checked out some tobacco fields and got to see where they dry and roll them at a smaller family farm.
That night we wanted to go out and went to the local club, which is literally inside of a cave.
The next morning, we had our host call us another taxi and he took us to the beach which was about an hour or so away. Beautiful clear blue warm water and white sandy beaches. It was an amazing relaxing time there.
I can’t recommend Cuba enough, I hope you will get to experience this place someday. Let me know if you have any questions.
