Cuba Travel Diary, Part 1 - How to Travel to Cuba as a US Citizen

In this series I’ll touch on everything you need to know before traveling to cuba. Today’s post covers booking flights, why the travel RESTRICTIONS for us citizens exist, and how to avoid being scammed by taxi drivers.

If you follow me over on Instagram you already know that for New Year’s Eve this year my boyfriend, Chaz, and I decided to take a trip together. Every year Chaz’s work gives him some time off around the New Year and I work online so my schedule is really flexible. We’ve been wanting to go on an international trip together so we throw around some ideas and then ultimately ended up typing Havana, Cuba into Google Flights. After a little bit of research we booked tickets and started planning. 

I want to do a full post on why we decided to go to Cuba, all our recommendations, and what we’d do differently next time so that’s why I’ve decided to turn this post into a series. I want to make sure I give you guys some good information incase you decide to book a trip. There’s not a ton of information out there on the internet about traveling to Cuba so I’m hoping that this can be a good resource for anyone looking to vacation there. Hopefully, you won’t be too annoyed with all the Cuba content coming your way!

The first question everyone asked me when I told them we were going to Cuba was this: “How?”

As an American passport holder this was the first question I asked myself too. To understand the travel restrictions for American’s wanting to travel to Cuba involves a little bit of history.

Long before Cuba was what it is today it was a Spanish colony. Most of Latin American was colonized by Spain during this period. Spain ruled over Cuba with little regard for the well being of the country or it’s people. Eventually, the US took over Cuba. During this nearly half century rule conditions in Cuba worsened- racism persisted, gross inequality existed, poverty was widespread and corruption was rampant. The people had little say in what was happening in their own country. The US also had major industries in Cuba that were thriving during this time to the benefit of the US only. At the end of the US rule, Fidel Castro came to power. He was driven by the idea that the profit of Cuba’s labor should go to it’s people. His policy of nationalization did not sit well with the US corporations that once had free reign in Cuba. While the US may have uneasy feelings about communism, it works well for Cuba. Under Fidel’s 50 year reign he solved major issues that the US is still struggling with today. Homelessness is nonexistent, they have a thriving universal healthcare system that reaches to the most rural areas, and they are the only country in the America’s that is 100% literate. In the 1960s the US placed an embargo on Cuba which cut off trade and narrowed their resources. Fidel turned to the Soviet Union for help and relied on them as their major trading partner. The US embargo is still in place today because of the Cold War hysteria surrounding communism and continuing hostility. It is this same embargo that limits our travel to and from Cuba. Cuba has worked hard to become the thriving, self sustaining nation that it is today despite not having the support from the US. While we may not be fond of Cuba, the rest of the world is. To put this into perspective, in a recent UN vote to do away with the US embargo on Cuba, 187 member states voted to remove the embargo while only 3 voted in opposition (The United States, Israel, and Brasil). To read more about this vote check out this article. I want to present this history to you as factually as possible. I’ll let you decide for yourself how you feel about Cuba and US relations. 

That all being said the current travel restrictions require American’s traveling to Cuba to declare a reason for traveling. There is a list of 11 sanctioned reasons that allow travelers entry to Cuba.

Here is the current (January 2020) the list:

-Family visits

-U.S. Government business

-Journalism

-Professional research

-Educational activites

-Religious activities

-Public performances, clinics, workshops, athletic, and other competitions, and exhibitions

-Support for the Cuban people

-Humanitarian projects

-Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes

-Exportation, importation, or transmission of information or information materials

When booking your tickets online you’ll be asked to identify which reason you are traveling for on a drop down menu. When we booked our tickets we selected “Support For the Cuba People”

What does that mean?

This is a pretty vague category. During the Obama administration there was a 12th category on this list that was called “people to people”. Under this category tourism was opened up to US citizens with very little requirements. When President Trump took office he did away with this category, which is why it’s not listed above. The “support for the Cuban people” category that remains on the list is almost identical to the one that was retracted by Trump. Taking away the “people to people” category made it seem like travel from the US to Cuba was now impossible. While it did limit some travel, like travel via cruise ship, you can still vacation in Cuba. The “support for the Cuban people” category still exists and is just as easy to travel under. 

Support for the Cuban people very simply means this: spend your money with people who live in Cuba, and support privately owned businesses. There is a small list of places that as Americans are not allowed to visit, this includes a lot of hotels, certain government buildings and prisions. Here is the full list.

To prove your support for the Cuban people during your stay, customs officers can ask to see an itinerary of your trip or ask for the address of where you plan to stay. We made up an itinerary that had serval activities every day that proved our support of the Cuban people. This included free tours, Airbnb experiences, and specific restaurants we wanted to go to. This doesn’t mean we went to all these spots, it was just to give them an idea of where we’d be spending our time and money! I’ll talk more about itinerary’s in detail in next weeks post!

All that being said, we never had an issue in the airport regarding our reason for traveling. On our way home from Cuba we went through the customs line in Miami. They asked me my reason for traveling to Cuba to which I gladly replied, “support for the Cuban people!” In response the customs officer said, “oh so for vacation?” and we all had a good laugh. 

After we purchased our tickets and declared our reason, there was only one more step till we arrived in Cuba. Waiting in the airport. Before you board your flight you’ll need to purchase a travel visa at the terminal desk near your boarding area. We flew with United on our way to Cuba and our travel Visa cost us $75 a person. Travel visa’s are a pretty standard procedure when traveling outside of the country. I also had to purchase one for my trip to China last year that was around the same price. Included with the cost of your flight/travel visa is a fee for healthcare. Healthcare is mandatory for all people traveling to Cuba. This small fee ensures that if anything were to happen to you in Cuba the universal healthcare system would extend to you during the duration of your stay.

Now for the part I’m sure you’re looking for, How much did the flights cost? 

I spend a lot of time on Google Flights fiddling with dates and times to try to find the best deals on airfare. I like to just play around and look at the destinations and price graphs for fun. This has been how I’ve booked all my flights in the last few years, you can find some great deals! As long as your dates are flexible and you don’t have a preference on airline then I would highly suggest using this search engine for finding and booking flights. 

For one round trip flight to Havana, Cuba from Cleveland we paid $253.25

As a disclaimer, we made one stop on our way there and took an overnight layover on the way back to save a couple hundred dollars. All in all, I would say it was well worth it. This flight was much cheaper than any of the other destinations we were considering. 

After we booked our flights we started looking into hotels and Airbnbs. When we travel we often stay in Airbnbs because it’s cheaper and it feels like a better, more authentic experience. We also decided to go for an Airbnb on this trip because it was one of the easiest ways to prove that we were supporting the Cuban people. Everything in Cuba is purchased with cash (I’ll go into more depth on this in a few paragraphs!) so there is no receipts to prove that you spent money with Cubans. Booking an Airbnb is an easy way to interact with Cuban natives and support their booming tourism industry. Also, like I mentioned a few paragraphs back a lot of hotels are on the restricted travel list for Americans. If you’re booking a hotel be sure to reference that linked list to make sure it is okay for you to stay there.

So, onto the Airbnb hunt! When we were looking at Airbnbs there was a couple of things that we knew we wanted. We were looking for something that had air conditioning, had a host that could speak or communicate in english, and that was an entire apartment to ourselves. We practiced our Spanish a bit on Duolingo before going to Cuba, and we got pretty good I might add, but we wanted to make sure that we could figure things out with our host incase we needed help with anything. There are advanced filter options when you’re searching on Airbnb so you can narrow options down according to your preferences. This is a handy tool if you have some requirements for your stay! We also messaged our host before we booked to make sure that she felt comfortable assisting us in english if needed! Through our conversation pre-booking with her, she also explained that she would help us arrange taxi’s to and from the airport and provide an option for a breakfast service that we could book. These two services are something I definitely think made our experience, and they’re offered at most Cuban Airbnbs. I would highly suggest talking with your host pre-booking to make sure they can help you out where you need it! 

Ultimately we ended up going with this Airbnb in Vedado. We booked this Airbnb for the entirety of the trip because we planned to stay in Havana for our whole vacation. Vedado is just a five minute taxi ride or a 30 minute walk from “Old Havana” aka the center of the city. This was a great area for us because it was very quiet and it kind of gave us some separation from everything without being too far away. Vedado also has some hidden gems that were very close to our Airbnb, it was a good hub to get to all the other small nooks of Havana that we visited. 

I can’t say enough good about our stay here with our host, Gilda. Before we left for our trip we sent Gilda so many messages about taxi services, booking tickets for events, and just general concerns. She was so helpful and communicated with us well. 

Here’s some more honest numbers so you can get an idea of how much a trip to Cuba will cost you. We booked our Airbnb for 8 nights, after taxes and fees it ended up being 67 US dollars a night. I also want to point out that this was one of the most expensive options that we looked at. You can definitely find something nice for $40 or less. If you’re new to Airbnb you can use this link for $55 off your first booking! That’s one night in Havana free!

The taxi service to and from the airport that I mentioned our host helped us arrange cost $30 each way. It was a 20 minute drive from the airport to our Airbnb and the Taxi driver waited for us to get our bags from baggage claim and to exchange our money at the airport which was at least two hours. The breakfast service we added to our stay was an addition $5 per person per day. It was a really flexible service, everyday we scheduled the next morning’s breakfast depending on our plans. Sandra, our cook, was always exactly on time and she cooked and cleaned as needed. While these services would probably be available for you at a hotel as well it was nice to really interact with the locals and support them directly. 

Other logistics that we should get into if you decide to book a trip to Cuba!

Exchanging money was one of the biggest headaches of our trip. Here’s a quick run down. Cuban currency is in two forms. CUC and CUP. CUC stands for Cuban Convertible Peso, this is the ‘toursit money’ and it is the only form of currency that you should be using on your trip. CUC can be converted back into USD at the Cuban airport, so if you get too much money exchanged you can exchange it back no problem. CUP is the currency for the locals, this currency cannot be transferred back into USD which is why you should probably not convert your money to this form of currency. CUC is 1 to 1 with the USD. You can only convert your American money to CUC when you arrive in Cuba. If you go to your bank in the US they cannot make a money order for CUC unlike with Euros or Pounds. That being said, the conversion rate from USD to CUC will likely cost you about 13% after converting fees. After reading some resources online we decided to convert our money to Euros before we got to Cuba so we could get a better exchange rate. To exchange money in Cuba you’ll have to find an official exchange house. These are marked with signs that read CADECA. There is an exchange house at the airport (be patient it will have a line!) and there are plenty through out the city center as well. We often went to the National Hotel de Cuba to exchange our money because they have the best rates and it was relatively closed to where we stayed. Plus, it never had a line. The other thing to consider when converting your money is that US credit cards do not work in Cuba. That’s right, nowhere. This means you really need to plan ahead and bring exactly how much money you expect to need and then a little more. When I was planning our trip I made an itinerary of everything we expected to do and then put estimated costs next to each event. This detailed plan included taxi rides, experiences, service tips (10% is standard in Cuba), and food. To figure out how much food was going to run us I found photos of each restaurant’s menu online and calculated accordingly. We also made sure to take account of our money at the end of each day and write down what we spent so we could have a good handle of what we had left. it takes some planning but it actually helped us a lot and we ended up spending way less money than we expected! 

Wifi is not available everywhere in Cuba. For us, this was a blessing in disguise. It was so nice to disconnect from the world and be really engaged in our trip. However, if you’re trying to make last minute travel accommodations, book a tour, or use a map, it can be a little frustrating. Getting wifi is a pretty simple process. You’ll have to find a ETECSA storefront that sells wifi cards. These cards have codes on them that allow you to use wifi for one hour. Each card costs one CUC per hour. These cards can only be used in wifi hotspots. Most of the time theres a wifi hotspot at or near the place you purchase them. Just look for areas where everyone is looking at their phones and then check for networks! To log in you use the codes on the back of the card. If you have to wait in line for a while to get wifi cards I suggest buying as many as you think you’ll need for the duration of your trip. However, be careful to make sure the cards your buying don’t expire the day you use them! Most cards expire a month out from the date purchased but you can never be too careful. Speaking of being careful, while waiting in the line to buy cards you most definitely will be asked by a local if you’d like to purchase cards from them instead. This is a scam, keep waiting in line. In general, if something sounds like a scam it probably is, use your common sense. There are spots to buy wifi cards throughout the city but we found that the wifi cards you can purchase at the National Hotel de Cuba, although more expensive, had the best connection. Wifi is much slower than the wifi we’re used to at home so be prepared. I mostly used it to text my family and upload photos to my Instagram. If you need Netflix to fall asleep at night or a google translate app to communicate, download these before you leave the US airport! 

Taxi service in Cuba is always readily available because it’s one of the best jobs to have in Cuba! Its a fun experience to take a ride in the different vintage cars and it’s an easy way to see the city. Our first night in Cuba we got seriously burned by our Taxi driver. If a Taxi costs you more than $10 then you’re probably being scammed. Our driver on New Year’s Eve had a meter in his car that was displaying a price in CUP. If you remember from before, The CUP currency is for locals only and it is 1/25th of the USD. At the end of our ride the meter read 35 which in CUP would be the equivalent of $1.36. However, he tricked us into paying him in CUC which is equivalent to the US dollar. So we paid $35 for a taxi ride that should have been $1.36. To put this into perspective, we never paid more than $8 for a Taxi after that night and even the $8 is over paying a bit. To avoid this scam, be sure to negotiate a price with your cab driver before you even open the door. They usually start negotiating at $10 if they can see your a tourist. You’re gonna have to be a little bit mean and abrasive but its the name of the game! Talk them down a bit! $5 is more than reasonable for a ride from Vedado to the city center. 

I know this was a lengthy part one to this series but there is much more to come! I wish we would have had more information before we left for Cuba so I’m really laying it all out for you guys. As I get started to type up part 2 be sure to leave me any questions you have about this post in the comments! I want to make sure I get you all the information you need to plan your own trip.