Shifty

Actually, if you read Lynette Chiang's book you'll see how people live there, and that it is FAR from the police state image you and conservatives try to paint. The poverty that the country lives in is the direct result of the US imposing (or trying to) "freedom" on a sovereign state, shouldn't they be FREE to chose their own system????. Chaing does not make a political statement, but was interested in the land and how people live there.

heather b

Hey skookum - I notice that this forum has been swamped with discussion re the politics of the Cuban situation, when all you really seemed to want to know, was whether anyone had been there lately.

This may be too late - you may have been to Cuba and come back - or maybe you decided not to go - but for what it's worth..............

My husband and I spent July and August 2005 touring the island on bicycles and would recommend it as one of the most interesting places that you could go.
As Australians, we had no restrictions on our travelling there, except of course that we had to go on a fairly lengthy flight from Oz to the US to Canada to Havana, as flights from the US are not an option (we could have opted for a more expensive route via Mexico)

Cuba is a fascinating place - it operates like no other country in the world. We've travelled fairly widely in Asia, India and Europe, also in the Soviet Union in its old days - but Cuba was an experience on its own.

We had absolutely no trouble with accomodation - Casa Particulars seem to be operating more freely than ever and we were never in a town for more than a few minutes before we were offered a room. Apart from the bigger tourist cities (Havana, Santiago de Cuba etc), the people touting for our custom were almost invariably polite and friendly. In the smaller towns, as soon as we were within a sight of the town square, a bike would be along side us offering a room. In 8 weeks of travel - we did not strike a single casa that was not pleasant, clean, comfortable and run by delightful people. We generally paid between US$15 and $25 a night, mostly with air-con.
We stayed in state run hotels about 4 times - these varied but were never all that expensive - $20 to $28 for a double room...the food in the hotels ranged from quite nice to pretty awful - but as you know, when you're cycling you think anything's ok.

In the bigger cities, the constant hassles for money can get you down - but when you see how the Cubans live, and what little they have in the way of the "stuff" which we have in obscene abundance, it's easy to understand why so many choose to ditch their jobs and try to get their share of the tourist dollar.
If you don't have access to dollars in Cuba, either from family overseas, or from a finger in the pie of the tourist trade, then life is very sparse indeed.

Food in the casas was always wonderful - not varied, (chicken, beans, rice, avocado) - but always great and plentiful.

The food situation seemed to be much better than we had read about - especially seems to have improved a lot since Lynette Chiang's "Handsomest Man in Cuba" tour. Riding through the small towns and villages, we would notice that the bread shops always had racks of bread, even late in the day, and roadside stalls selling produce were commonplace. Any town large enough to have a few shops would have a street side pizza seller. Well...........a slab of dough with some red stuff and some yellow stuff (both of unknown origin). Hey ......we were cycling - they were great.



It probably took us a a couple of weeks to get the hang of how the place works - to work out where we could spend Cuban pesos - to recognise a shop amongst the decaying ruins of Havana's buildings - to learn how to find the privately owned restaurants that might just be a dining room at the back or on the rooftop of somebody's house.

We travelled with bank Visa Debit cards from 3 different Australian banks (just in case) and were able to get money with all of them. In even the smallish towns there is always a Cadeca (money changing bureau) and in nearly all of these it is possible to do a Visa cash advance over the counter.
I believe this will NOT work if the card has been issued by an American bank.
We travelled with some cash in US$ and some British Pounds. We were able to change both of these easily. It seems Euros are widely used as well. However there was really no need to travel with cash, other than an emergency stash.

We lived well on a budget of about US$60 a day for the 2 of us - and that included a lot of beer money and a couple of expensive bus tickets. I imagine we could have done it on half that if we'd had too.
Some days we were well under budget, so we drank the gap.

We had no trouble flying our bikes in - though Air Canada managed to throw them around a bit - some minor but fixable damage.
On Viazul buses - the expensive air-con variety - bikes fit upright in the bins. Cost depends on the whim of the baggage handler or driver.

The roads are mostly good - nearly all are paved, and traffic outside the bigger cities is either non-existent, or consists of bikes, horses, horse drawn carts, bullocks or people walking.
Car drivers expect to see all manner of vehicles travelling on the road, or just plain stopped in the middle of the road, and they drive accordingly.

Best part of the trip was down the east end of the island along the south coast road - from Holguin, Bayamo, Pilon and along the coast to Santiago.

Also, as one of the other posters has mentioned - the really beautiful and truly laid back fishing town of Gibara on the north coast at the eastern end. We went there for a day and stayed 4. This was the only town where we never saw anyone lock their bikes.

Everywhere else we were constantly told by passers-by to hold on to our belongings and never leave our bikes unlocked.

Crime in the cities is becoming an issue - we were constantly warned in Havana to be wary and never take valuables on the street with us. A girl staying in our casa was robbed on the street - had her purse snatched out of her hand - despite the strap wrapped tightly around her wrist.
And in our 2nd last night in the country, we were robbed while walking down a fairly busy Havana street - had my bag torn violently off me - lost our camera with memory card with 4 weeks of photos - Yes, I know! Stupid - but I guess we got careless on our last day - having made it through 8 weeks unscathed.
Moral - never travel without something portable to download your photos to.
There is a shop in Havana that we were going to the following morning, to have them burnt to CD.
We still haven't quite recovered from the devestation of losing half the photos
Doubly stupid - I had especially bought a small camera so I could carry it in my pocket. But was it safely in my pocket********** Eejit!

I am in the middle of writing up our journal on the crazyguyonabike site, but it may be sometime before I get to the point of publishing it there.
Hope some of this helps.

eos30d

I have been to Cuba about 8 times, am a canadian living in Toronto, every time am there I talk to people who are going around the country on a bike, now I want to do it, thats way I joint today,I totaly agree with heather b on every thing she said. I have to say to leave the politics to the politicians, and enjoy Cuba if you can.

Planing my trip for next winter 4-6 weeks, am not heavy in to cycling but I do alot of running, I think will start by buying the books

sanford_w/o_son

so what's the best way to get there for an american living in chicago, in terms of saving money (assuming it's done legally, of course)? drive or fly to toronto, and fly to havana from there? fly to mexico, and fly to havana from there? what's the best way for an american to book a flight from toronto or a mexican city to havana? thanks!

sanford_w/o_son

wow, just checked out flights from toronto to havana around december. $800 canadian (about $700 u.s.).

Boudicca

If you are going in December you might want to look into flying via Mexico or Jamaica rather than via Canada. I suspect someone returning from a trip to Toronto with a deep suntan might raise U.S. suspicions in a way that would not be the case if you came in on a flight from Montego Bay. I visited Cuba a while back when I was living in Washington. It was all quite legal -- I'm not an American, so there's nothing that Uncle Sam could do -- but I didn't particularly want to publicize the fact that I had been there either. I flew in on Air Jamaica, changed planes there and bought the onward ticket (for U.S. dollar cash) at the Montego Bay airport. I even bought Jamaican rum at the airport on the way back rather than Cuban, although nobody looked and nobody cared. PM me if you want more details.

Travelinguyrt

My personal rant about US relations with CUBA

Without the personal vendettas maintained by 3-4 CUBAN AMERICAN politicos from Miami Fl there would not be an embargo, and these few are always CUBAN AMERICAN never AMERICAN

When and if the current government departs, these same politicians and their close friends will be on the first planes to Havana to get in on the grown floor of the US aid money express

Having got rid of that rant..........a friend spent 2 weeks recently in CUBA, an American, went with a Spanish friend. detailed both the positive and negatives about the visit. It was far more expensive than he had planned, but had a fine visit, met and saw lots of other visitors mostly from Canada and Europe

Ate well, travel a bit primitive old clunker bikes and cabs but EVERYONE they met were friendly and granted the US dollars are very appreciated, its the national currency of choice,mostly they ate at private homes which are allowed by law and very modest costs

If one can separate the politcal atmosphere from their vacation aspect you will do fine, yeh its illegal, but since we are living in a society which borders on a police state our selves, another rant, but no more illegal than is stealth camping, or passing thru a red lite ,IMO

You can travel there with US church and educational groups, LEGALLY, if the group will accept you,AND YOUR CASH. Or you can travel thru the Bahamas, Mexico and Canada, and the border crossing agents are well aware NOT to stamp passports, friend told me a 10$ or 20$ bill in hand or in passport always helps.

cooker

How do you feel about Rosa Parks?

cooker

You don't have to go, but perhaps those Americans who do believe they don't have to let their own government dictate where they can go in the world.

sanford_w/o_son

thanks for the suggestions. i just saw that december flights to mexico city (mexicana air) or montego bay (jamaican air) are each around $450 from chicago, which is a more reasonable. is the ticket from montego bay to havana relatively cheap? buying in advance doesn't save much money? thanks.

challengea2z

Bush and his American goverment, are a bunch of two faced c*&%$S the wage a completely illegal war in Iraq but it's illagal for Americans to go to Cuba, what a joke lol, but it's legal for you to go to Russia go figure?? your goverment is so screwed up it makes me laugh.

Boudicca

You cannot buy the ticket in advance (embargo stuff), but Air Jamaica can give you the price over the phone. I remember it as $100 or so round trip, but it was 6-7 years ago, so the price has presumably gone up a lot.

Have fun.

sanford_w/o_son

thanks for all the input.

DogBoy

My inlaws did the educational trip to Cuba. They basically said that the primary industry is tourism from Europe and that the primary currency was dollars. They did have a few hiccups with the govt...

Their plane was denied take-off for a few hours, and the bus they were on was delayed a few hours for some reason or another. Also, if you go to see the statue of Che you cannot get too close or the guards get agitated. Otherwise they thought it was a nice trip.

Since they went, they were informed that the educational exemption had been eliminated. I'm not sure if that's for the particular program they used or for any US travel.