Five Fun Things to Do in Cuba

Planning a trip to Cuba and looking for what to do? Here are five highlights of my trip when I went to the The Pearl of the Antilles a few years ago.

Stay with the locals
The Cubans were way ahead of sites like AirBnB and crashing in someones house has been a way of earning some cash for locals for a long time. For tourists it's a fantastic way of taking a peek in a real Cuban household and getting a glimpse into the local way of life.

Hitch a ride in an American old timer
Getting around in Cuba can be a bit of an adventure as public transport is quite limited. Having said that, it's really easy to hitch rides from locals looking to make a few extra bucks driving around tourists in their American old timers. As parts are hard to get by, do expect the occasional break down.

Listen and dance to salsa music
Cuba is the birthplace of salsa and there are lots of venues to listen to locals play and have a little swing around the dance floor. You'll even find some impromptu performances in the Malecon in Havana or in the square in Santiago's town centre.

Sleep on the beach at Maria la Gorda
One of the more secluded beaches in Cuba and great for diving, it's worth the trek which happens to be a easy on the eye as well. The drive from Havana to Maria la Gorda goes through Vinales. With its oddly shaped hills and numerous tobacco plantations, it's worth a little detour along the way. Once in Maria la Gorda there is a lack of accommodation, but we ended up sleeping in hammocks on the beach and slept under the stars.

Have lots of mojitos and daiquiries
Step in Hemingway's footsteps and have a "mojito in the Bodeguita del Medio and a daiquiri in the Floridita". A bit touristy, but a must do when in Havana. However, don't do as I do and sit on his stool at the Floridita. It didn't make the bar manager very happy.

My Most Memorable Trips

What do you do when you are not going away for a while and the weather at home only makes you want to crawl into bed and sleep till spring? You go through old boxes of photos from trips gone by. Yes, my travel adventures predate the digital era. Reminiscing about past trips is the perfect remedy to forget the wind and rain, but I won't bore you with listing all of the trips that passed by over the weekend, so here is my top 5.

St Maarten

Buenos Aires

Working for American Airlines ten years ago, allowed me to travel to exotic places for next to nothing. Now when you have cheap tickets at your disposal, you tend to go on whirlwind. I went shopping in NYC for one day, travelled to Tokyo for a long weekend, but my most memorable airline staff trip was when I flew to Buenos Aires for a friend's birthday party. It was only a three day trip, but besides showing up at the party dressed as Super Woman, we managed to see the grave of Eva Peron in the Recoleta cemetery, go out in the  Santelmo area and taste empanadas and dance a little tango in La Boca.

Tokyo

Another one of those memorable staff trips was a round the world in one weekend trip to Tokyo. Three of my friends flew out on ANA across Asia and discovered the weird and wonderful Japanese culture, before flying back home on American Airlines via Chicago. We did get some weird looks from fellow travellers when they asked us how long we were travelling for.

Cuba

There was a nomadic life before my travel career and when I was a student I was looking for a holiday as a newly single girl and decided to learn Spanish in Cuba. I stayed with a Cuban family and enjoyed private lessons in my teacher's home, which allowed me to see what day to day Cuban life is really like. Something you don't normally get to experience when staying in a 5 star resort.

Northern Ireland

When I was living in Ireland I went on a three day tour of Northern Ireland. We saw a few natural and urban gems, but what made this trip one I still remember vividly was the visual division between the two religions wich really came to life during a tour of Belfast in a black cab tour. You only realise the segregation in cities such as Belfast and Londonderry/Derry when you see it with your own eyes.

NYC

Number 5 maybe doesn't count as a trip as I was living in NYC at the time, but I will not forget the summer of 2001 any time soon. I was living in Queens, working a season as a holiday rep for an inbound tour-operator on 11th September. Luckily I was at home and none of my friends and colleagues were hurt, but those days were probably the most scary and uncertain of my life.

So there you have it. My 5 most memorable trips taken over the past 20 years. Happy ones and shocking ones, but memorable either way.

Travelling around Cuba

Photo by Kelp 1966

Travelling around Cuba can sometimes be a bit of a hurdle race. Not literally of course. When I was visiting Cuba in the 90s, there wasn't much of a public transport system to speak of. In fact, there was only one train a day between Santiago and Havana and some unreliable bus routes here and there, but that was it.

On the other hand, it was really easy to hitch a ride in one of the vintage cars that  you still see everywhere in the streets of Cuba. The owners would just drive by and offer to take us anywhere we wanted to go, hoping to make a quick buck.

Photo by Kelp 1966

The fact that there are still so many old timers around is really the result of the continuing embargo with the outside world. Cubans are only allowed to buy and sell cars that were built before the revolution. Not so great when your car breaks down and you need to find replacements parts, but the up side is that they give the streets of Cuba that quintessentially classic look.

I have to admit that I got very excited the first time my travel buddy and I hitched a ride in one. It made me secretly feel rather Grace Kelly-esque and my travel buddy shyly admitted that he fantasised about being part of the mafia doing all kinds of illegal things.

Photo by Kelp 1966

Those fantasies were quickly shattered one night when our car broke down in the middle of the night, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. After having fiddled around under the hood, the driver urged us to get out, get behind the car and get pushing.After a lot of huffing and puffing and swearing and sweating, the car came back to life.I do doubt that Grace Kelly and Al Capone ever had to get sweaty to kick-start a car, but we made it to Havana in one piece.

I do still believe that Cuba's old timers are a great way to get around. And the odd break down is just part of the fun.