Dear people on this website, I’m strongly considering going on a trip to Cuba soon alone. I’m a decent Spanish speaker and an American, wondering if anyone has any good tips or advice for the trip. I know I want to see that ice cream shop that fidel was obsessed with.

Thanks in advance!

  • aredditimmigrantEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Went there in 2018, few notes from my trip. Mostly warnings though

    1. Bring cash and expect to never have access to your bank acct/cc while you’re there … Everything is off the books there
    2. The local cuisine is shit. We stayed with families Airbnb-style in 3-4 towns and asked each of our hosts where their favorite restaurant was. They all pointed to places where the highest price item was a slice of spam and rice. For like $2 USD… though I may be spoiled, I lived in NYC at the time.
    • side note, best meal while we were there was $10 USD in the middle of Havana, buffet with fish/meats, everything, fry bread they made right in front of you
    1. Learn the diff between the two currencies before you go there… plenty of times we thought they meant one and it was really the other.
    2. Learn the history, it’s a gorgeous place
    3. In the cities, the grifters are next level… One told us their empty restaurant was open, only when we sat down and ordered, they said they turned off the ovens/grills for the night, but they know a party at a warehouse and has a friend who drives a cab that can get us there cheaply. We went with him, turning down several cabs while waiting for his friend, and he expected us to basically pay for his drinks all night. Ok/w/e … then after we bought him a beer or two, he basically passed it around to everyone there. AND THEN asked for us to buy another. Like I get buying you drinks, but then share them around?

    When we left, the guy’s friend was there and charged us a ride back to our Airbnb. We found out later the amount the million cabbies waiting outside the ware house would’ve charged to get us back was 1/5th of what the guy’s friend charged us.

    Another was a “friend” of a friend we had state side who said he’d show us around, we thought it’d be fun, we’d walk around and we’d buy the guy some drinks or dinner/lunch somewhere as a thank you. The stateside friend talked very highly of him, like they were best buddies and knew each other for a while. When it was time to meet up with the guy, he said his friend would be driving us and charge us some outrageous price to drive us around the city. We basically noped out of that … Turns out my friend state side forgot to mention how much he paid for his exp… It was also one of our last days and we were almost out of cash

    Tldr: it’s a very pretty place. Lots of history and lots to learn/see. Only issue is communism on the country scale in that country made everyone either starving with terrible food or a grifter.