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This content is excerpted from The Travel Book, TravelsLonely's inspiring journey through every country in the world. Covering 230 countries, this definitive pictorial combines stunning images with entertaining, informative text, including cultural insights, key facts and maps along with breathtaking photographs that capture the soul of each destination.
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Capital Havana
Population 11,263,429
Area 110,860 sq km
Official Language Spanish
In an amazing
balancing act, Cuba is at once poor and broken, and rich and
thriving. From the beat of the music echoing through towns
and villages to the hustle of Havana's glorious, crumbling
streets, | |
| Cuba challenges and enchants all who venture in.
Its political isolation has prevented a tourist flood, and
locals are sincerely friendly to visitors. While Fidel's infrastructure
has seen better decades and the food is, well, best not spoken
about, the last great bastion of communism enchants with its
intoxicating human spirit. Or was that the rum?
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BEST TIME
TO VISIT
November to May to avoid the heat and hurricanes
- or before Fidel goes, and whenever you want to shake your
booty
ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCES
Walking along Havana’s Malecón on a warm night
Pretending you can salsa in a nightclub
Taking a photo of a ’50s Cadillac on your first day
Speaking Spanish to the locals – even if you can’t!
Taking in a baseball game in Cuba’s Major League – Go Industriales!
Smoking a cigar…just because
Drinking mojitos…just because GETTING UNDER THE SKIN
Read Trading with the Enemy:
A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba by Tom Miller - it's
a rich feast of Cuban lore, and a great travel book about
Cuba
Listen to Polo Montañez's Guajiro Natural. Montañez died
tragically in 2002, but the raspy, mellow strains of this
album will leave you feeling full of life
Watch everyone's
favourite, Fresa y Chocolate, 1995's hit Havana comedy directed
by Tomás Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Tabío
Eat something home-cooked,
especially an ajiaco stew, featuring potatoes, meat, plantains,
corn, old beer and anything else lying around
Drink a minty,
sweet rum mojito as the sun goes down. IN A WORD
No es fácil
('it's not easy', applied to virtually everything) TRADEMARKS
Cigars; communists; rum; salsa; Fidel; poverty; sex; the Buena
Vista Social Club SURPRISES
Even if you know the food is bad,
it's actually much worse; many people actually like communism;
everything is priced in US dollars, and more expensive than
you'd think; TV soap operas are the biggest show in town Cubans
drive how they want, where they want. It seems chaotic at
first, but has its rhythm. Seatbelts are supposedly required
and maximum speed limits are technically 50km per hour in
the city and 90km per hour on highways, but some cars can't
even go that fast and those that can go faster still.
- TravelsLonely's Cuba
Excerpted from TravelsLonely's The Travel Book
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