Cuba Discovery Guide

Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the least like the rest of it — a country with a genuine urban civilisation, an extraordinary musical tradition, and a history that has kept it apart from its neighbours for sixty years.

Old Havana is the draw: a UNESCO-listed colonial core of plazas, baroque churches and crumbling arcades, restored in parts and propped up in others, with the sea breaking over the Malecon at one edge.

Trinidad, on the south coast, is a sugar town frozen in the nineteenth century, cobbled and pastel-coloured and also UNESCO-listed.

The Vinales valley in the west grows tobacco between limestone hummocks called mogotes, ploughed with oxen because the soil will not take machinery.

And the music is not staged for visitors — son, rumba and trova are living forms. Cuba is also genuinely difficult to travel in, and that is part of the experience.

Havana

The UNESCO-listed old city — Plaza Vieja, the cathedral, the restored and unrestored streets between them — then the Malecon at dusk, the Museum of the Revolution, and Vedado for the Hotel Nacional and the jazz. Fusterlandia, a whole neighbourhood tiled in mosaic by one artist, is worth the trip out.

Vinales

Two or three hours west: tobacco farms between limestone mogotes, drying barns you can walk into, caves, and horse riding through the valley. Stay in a casa and it is one of the easiest places in the country to enjoy.

Trinidad and the centre

Trinidad’s cobbled streets and the sugar-mill valley behind it, the Escambray mountains at Topes de Collantes for waterfalls and walking, and Cienfuegos with its unusual French-influenced grid.

The east

The country’s other major city lies at the far end of the island, with the strongest Afro-Cuban traditions, the oldest Spanish buildings and the best carnival. Nearby, Baracoa is remote, rainy and distinctive, and the Sierra Maestra holds the highest peaks.

Beaches and water

Varadero for the resort strip, the cayos off the north coast, and the Bay of Pigs for genuinely excellent shore diving on a drop-off you can swim to.

Cuban culture is Spanish and West African in roughly equal measure, urban, verbal and musical, and shaped by six decades of a political system unlike any of its neighbours.

The revolution and after

The 1959 revolution, the US embargo that followed, and the collapse of Soviet support in 1991 — the periodo especial, a period of severe hardship — are the three events that structure modern Cuban life. Cubans discuss politics with visitors carefully, and opinions are far more varied than either official rhetoric or foreign assumptions suggest.

Resolver

The verb means to resolve, and it describes the national skill: keeping a 1955 Chevrolet running on parts from a Soviet tractor, finding what the shops do not have. It is the practical face of decades of scarcity and a real source of pride.

Race and religion

The African inheritance, brought through slavery on the sugar plantations, runs through the music, the dance and the Santeria religion, which fused Yoruba deities with Catholic saints and is widely practised.

Education and medicine

Literacy is near universal, and Cuba trains doctors in large numbers and sends them abroad. Both are genuine achievements and both are strained now.

Sociability

Life is lived in the street and the doorway, loudly, and strangers are addressed readily.

Where your money goes matters more in Cuba than almost anywhere, because the state and the private sector are separate economies.

Stay in casas particulares — licensed rooms in private homes — and eat in paladares, privately run restaurants. This puts money directly into households rather than into state hotel chains, and it is also how you will meet anyone.

Shortages are real. Food, medicine, fuel and power are all rationed or scarce, and the economic situation since 2020 has been severe. Visitors are insulated from this to a degree Cubans are not. Bring what you need rather than buying it locally, and consider bringing over-the-counter medicines, toiletries or school supplies to leave behind — guides and hosts can direct these usefully.

Water and power are intermittent; blackouts are routine and often long.

Do not photograph people as scenery. Asking first is basic, and paying a small amount when someone is clearly posing for a living is fair.

Coral reefs and the Zapata wetland are both fragile; use reef-safe sunscreen and licensed guides.

December to April is the dry season and the main window: warm days around 26 to 29°C, low humidity, little rain, and the best conditions for diving and for walking anywhere. It is also the busiest and most expensive stretch, particularly around Christmas and Easter.

May to October is the wet season, hotter and much more humid, with afternoon downpours that are usually short. Prices fall and the country is quieter.

Hurricane season runs from June to November, with the greatest risk from August to October. Cuba is well organised about evacuation and has a strong record of protecting life, but travel disruption is real.

Carnival in the eastern cities falls in July, and the Havana film festival in December.

February and March are the sweet spot for most people — dry, not yet stifling, and past the Christmas peak.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Cuba is not as cheap as its reputation. The state prices tourism separately, and imported goods are expensive and often simply unavailable at any price.