Lifestyle:
Not quite a blow by blow description, but will give my readers an accurate view of what I saw in Cuba. Cuba is what I thought it would be, but when it wasn’t, I was not too far off the mark.
Through a local tour company, Cuba360, we arranged a 8 day , 7 night trip through a good part of the Island. All told, we put on about 800 miles driving from city to city and side trips to areas that were slightly off our route.
Here is the itinerary as we finalized it.
Day 1, arrive in Havana
Day 2, Old Havana walking tour and classic convertible car tour.
Day 3, Day trip to Vinales.(Tobacco plantation)
Day 4, Bay of Pigs, to Cienfuegos and Trinidad
Day 5, Trinidad to Sancti Spiritus
Day 6, Varadero, beach
Day 7, Varadero, beach
Day 8, Drive directly to Havana airport from Varadero
* Working with Cuba360 was a pleasure with helpful folks guiding us with suggestions on what to see, and dealing with paperwork by the Cuban authorities. I would certainly give them high marks for their expertise.
* We booked our flights on United Airlines, through Houston to Havana. As my travel partner and myself are frequent flyers, we are pretty good when encountering issues with airlines.
United’s operational services were quite frankly, horrible.
Flight one from LAX to Houston was delayed 3 1/2 hours for mechanical issues.Fair enough, you don’t want a plane not working 100%. This seems to be a catch all excuse now, when anything goes off kilter.
*We finally arrived in Houston app. 100 am. By the time we gathered our baggage , we entered the hotel close to 2. The staff at the airport Marriott was quick to get us in the room.
Next morning around 6 am, we had a quick breakfast, arrived at the airport and checked our luggage in for flight two.
*Soon we received a text from United, another mechanical issue with the plane, so the flight was cancelled. However, we did receive another text stating another plane was forthcoming and the new flight would take off in a short time.
The short time was 1.5 hours later.
Service on the trip was solid and professional though the plane had seen better days.
*Arriving at Jose Marti airport was uneventful and Cuban paperwork went smoothly.
At the baggage area. we met a fellow traveler from Houston who often flies to Havana for business and to see his girlfriend. We had an affable chat about Cuba, what to expect and gave us some restaurant tips.
He also told us that our guide and driver who would meet us outside the gates as Cubans are not allowed into the airport unless they work there. News to me.
As we made it to the exit gate , Claudia our guide and Sergio, our driver greeted us.
It was time to see Cuba.
Keep smoking
