Introduction to accommodation in Cuba
Cuba's infrastructure cannot be compared to that of other Caribbean destinations. While city hotels are generally good 3 and 4-star standard, accommodation in rural areas is in guesthouses where the facilities are more basic. All star ratings are the Cuban rating and should not be compared against more internationally recognised star ratings.
Cuba is still a developing country and and some of the accommodation is not of a standard that is perhaps expected from a Caribbean destination. The accommodation is all air conditioned and in excellent locations and what it may lack in some respects, you know you’re enjoying an authentic Cuban experience with all the warmth of a Caribbean welcome.
As Cuba becomes more popular, hotels are generally only confirmed 2 or 3 days prior to travel. Even then, things could change during the tour: we recommend not to have your heart set on staying in particular hotels in case of changes and you’ll have a fantastic time.
Many of the hotel facilities are still as they were 60 years ago, and money is only recently and slowly being invested in improving the hotels or the infrastructure. If you can see past the accommodation problems, and really travel with a sense of adventure, then the locals and the scenery will more than win you over.
Although we use the best available hotels in these areas, standards of service can be leisurely, but this is easily compensated by the warm welcome and Cuba's unique culture and scenery.
Food
Until recently the simple answer to any question about Cuban food was to say that it was not great! Meals of rice, beans with chicken or pork and a cabbage salad is what the Cubans have eaten for decades so it’s easy to see why Cuban chefs have got into a bit of a rut. Things are changing, however, and there are now some decent paladars (private restaurants) in most towns. True, the menus can be a bit repetitive but what’s not to like about cheap lobster?!
Don’t expect spicy food as Cubans hate anything with a hint of ‘picante’ but do expect plenty of gutsy home cooking with an emphasis on creole cooking: black beans, fresh fish, lobster, roast pork and chicken dishes are the staples with more and more restaurants trying to do something a little different with the limited range of ingredients available locally.
Vegetarianism is a relatively new concept in this part of the world, and vegetarian cuisine may therefore be rather basic.
What is Cuba really like?
The following is some information to help you be prepared for your trip to Cuba, the country that is ready to simultaneously delight and confound.
Havana is no longer frozen in time, at least not completely. With Cuba’s guarded openness to private enterprise taking hold, classic American cars and salsa singers now share the cityscape with new and inventive offerings in food, culture, night life and hospitality. No other city in Latin America, or perhaps the world, can claim to be having just the kind of moment that Havana has been experiencing in recent years after so long in isolation from the rest of the world.
For visitors, the capital is a mash-up of past and present, freedom and restriction. It’s a city of architectural decay, but also creativity, where artists have turned a defunct cooking-oil factory into a performance space, bar and music venue that on any given night makes Brooklyn look as cool as a suburban IKEA. It’s a city where finding ingredients for a stellar menu requires feats of Promethean ingenuity; where opera is subversive, and kitschy too; where the Internet is just arriving, fully formed and censored; and where young Cubans without money are fleeing, while those with connections and ideas await great success.
Until recent changes, Americans were flocking to the island, wanting to savour the “forbidden fruit” before Starbucks and McDonalds arrived. Adventurous Europeans have been travelling to Cuba for years but it’s only recently that Cuba has become so popular that travellers might mistake it for a mainstream destination.
Expect the unexpected
The first rule of any trip to Cuba is that nothing is set in stone. Even though your booking may have been made a year ago and HF Holidays has confirmed that all is in place, things can change quickly and at the last minute. Please understand that we and our local agent in Cuba will do everything within their respective and collective power to get the best possible solution and most enjoyable holiday experience for you.
The Cuban tourism industry continues to be controlled almost entirely by the State and its reservations systems are fallible and rickety. By law, most of your services will have to be booked through the central reservations systems – designed for the good old days when barely a European or an American came to the island. Now that Cuba is so popular, the system is critically overstretched, and things do have a frequent tendency to go wrong. To enjoy the holiday to its fullest, we recommend you go with the flow and take it as part of the authentic Cuban experience.
Enjoy Cuba for what it is, a gloriously disorganized, original and off beat place. If your guide does announce a last-minute change of plans, rest assured that everything possible has been done to try and avoid it.
As you will be staying in Casas Particulares (Cuban bed & breakfasts) and eating meals in paladars then you will experience the beginnings of private enterprise in Cuba and you’ll appreciate how efficient, warm and hospitable Cubans can be when they are given the opportunity to run things for themselves.
Health and Safety
Generally speaking, health and safety hasn’t come to Cuba yet. The basics are there so you don’t need to worry about whether your bus is safe to travel in: it is. In general, there is no obsession with health and safety and many of the safeguards we take for granted are not in place, so expect some or all of the following:
Potholes - part and parcel of any road trip in Cuba.
Cracked pavements - most pavements have their fair share of cracks and uneven surfaces so take care when walking – even in the centre of Havana – and wear comfortable shoes.
Jineteros - this is the local Cuban word for a hustler. Offering to take you to eat at their cousin’s paladar, to drink a mojito in their home or offering you cut price cigars they are the most charming band of hustlers in the world and can usually be batted off with a polite “No thanks”.
Electricals - loose wires and electric showers are part and parcel of a Cuban home. It’s not unusual to see loose wires in hotels and some of the Casas Particulares still use the electric showers. We would love to eliminate all of them but these risks to health and safety will probably be part of Cuba for several years to come.
Dehydration - it’s quite easy to get seriously dehydrated, especially during the first few days of your trip as you acclimatize to the heat and humidity. Make sure you drink plenty of mineral water, more if you’d like to enjoy a few mojitos!
It is recommended to take a water filter bottle so that water can be filtered and drank from any location. This then negates the need for single use plastic bottles.
Standards of hygiene – Cubans are extremely clean and house proud but lack the cleaning products which we take for granted. This can make it extremely hard to give the impression of a well cleaned bathroom when, for example, the bathtub is stained by hard water deposits.
Replacement taps, toilet seats or broken tiles can be very difficult or impossible to buy due to importation embargos which still makes importation prohibitively expensive; some hotels even sometimes lack the basics or fail to replace leaking taps or faulty toilets.
This can give the impression that high standards of hygiene are not being demanded of cleaning staff, but they are. No matter what standard of accommodation you’re staying in, expect some of the equipment to be faulty!
