[Leica] Cuba?

[Meino de Graaf]

Hi Tina

Els and I traveled in 2010 for 4 weeks thru Cuba. We spend 5 days in 
Havana (Hotel Inglaterra) and for the rest of the trip we had a small 
rental car that was picked up in Havana and dropped of at Holguin 
(airport). My experience was that driving around Cuba was very safe 
because there is very little traffic. Although you have to be constant 
on the watch for potholes. Our trip was Havana, Pinar del Rio, Soroa, 
Guama (Bay of Pigs), Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Camague, Bayamo, Santiago de 
Cuba, Baracoa, Caya Saetia, Holguin. Most of the hotels and the rental 
car where booked here in the Netherlands by a regular travel 
organization as a Fly-Drive arrangement. For a number of places (Guama & 
Soroa) I booked directly via Internet on a Spanish booking site.

I'm not sure how the situation is at this moment, but in 2010 you 
couldn't use any form of electronic payment system (no credit cards, no 
ATM's and no traveler checks), so you had to carry all needed funds in 
dollars and change these at your hotel in CUC's.
Further because we weren't on a package tour we had to find eating 
places on our own. Finding was not the biggest problem, but most of the 
times there was very little available. Also the quality of the food in 
the restaurants of some hotels was very poor. This was not an issue in 
Old Havana and in touristic places like Trinidad.
A problem we faced was that both of us don't speak Spanish, which was 
not an issue in most of the hotels, but elsewhere we encountered very 
little English speaking people.

regards
Meino

On 12/18/2014 9:07 PM, Tina Manley wrote:
> PESO:
>
> Has anybody been or planning to go?  Suggestions for the best route?  Photo
> tour?  Looks like we still can't go independently.
>
> Tina
>