Things to Know Before you Backpack in Cuba

Cuba is a unique country to travel through independently in so many ways. Transport and the internet in particular, follow different rules than traveling in Asia or South America or Europe, or anywhere we’ve been. Actually, Cuba has its own way of doing almost everything. Here’s what would have been helpful to know before we arrived.

Transport

From what we gleaned in our 17 days in Cuba, there are 3 main ways for tourists to get from town to town. There are Viazul buses, there are share-taxis and there is a government version of shared taxis. We took a combination of buses and share-taxis and were happy with our choices. There is very little information on the internet about these options, in English, at least. Here’s what we know, hopefully it helps!

Viazul bus

The week before we left for Cuba I almost had a breakdown. I tried to go online and buy bus tickets for our trip and it was a complete failure. There were no tickets available for any bus I wanted! I panicked thinking we’d have to take private transport everywhere and completely blow our budget. If you are frantically searching the internet for blogs like I was in that moment: breathe. It's going to be ok. The bus tickets aren't all online, Viazul only sells some of the bus tickets in advance. If the website tells you the bus you want is sold out, it's probably not (it turned out to never be sold out for us).

Tourism in Cuba is definitely growing faster than its bus system allows. There is one bus company tourists can use: Viazul. If you have secured Viazul tickets before leaving your home country- congratulations! If you haven't- don't worry - almost everyone else is in the same boat. Or bus, that is.

If you want to exclusively take buses I suggest you head to the bus station when you arrive in Cuba with your passport and cash and buy as many of the bus tickets for your trip as you can. Usually bus stations have a schedule on the wall with all the departures options. The lineup may be long and, in Varadero at least, there was plenty of confusion amongst the tourists.

You should be able to see online what time the buses leave from each destination. If possible, pick your ideal bus schedule in advance, from home before you leave, and write it all down. This will make your interaction with the ticket seller so much less stressful. The ticket sellers, at least in Varadero and Vinales, allow you to see the computer screen as they process your tickets so you can be assured everyone is on the same page.

Another option is to buy your bus ticket when you arrive in a particular town for your departure. This allows a little more flexibility, if you don't have a set itinerary. It's possible, during high season, or on a popular route, that your bus could be sold out if you want to leave the next day.

In Trinidad we had arranged a ‘share taxi’ to get to Varadero 4 days in advance. The night before our driver called and said he couldn't get fuel for his car, so he wasn't coming. This was stressful since it was a long journey (6+ hours) and we needed to get back to Varadero for our flight home. Our Casa owner suggested we go to the bus station and put our name on the waiting list for the next morning’s bus. We did so, but, seeing the list, had no confidence that it would work out. The bus ticket seller said to come back in the morning an hour before the bus was scheduled to depart. We woke up super early and got to the bus station before it even opened at 6am. To our relief we had no problem getting tickets for the 7am bus and it seemed to us that everyone there who wanted to be on that bus was when we pulled away at 7am. I'm not going to even try to understand how Viazul works. When trying to buy a ticket from Varadero to Havana on a sold out bus, the ticket seller had told us the same thing (to come an hour before the bus was scheduled to leave) and that we’d be able to get on. We didn't believe him and didn't want to risk it, so we had scheduled a shared taxi instead, but, in hindsight- it probably would have worked out.

We took a bus:

Havana- Vinales : 12 CUC per person

Playa Giron- Trinidad: 12 CUC per person

Trinidad- Varadero: 20 CUC per person

Shared taxi

I didn't really understand what this was before we took our first shared taxi from Varadero- Havana. I thought it would be very expensive, uncomfortable and confusing to arrange. It was none of those things. If you can pad your budget a little and use these shared taxis for most of your travel- I would do it. First, you get to ride in a super cool vintage car the whole time. Second, it's quicker to get from A to B. And you get dropped right at your casa door! Third, it's more expensive than the bus but not unaffordable like it would be at home. You’re paying for convenience, plus saving the taxi fares to and from bus stations. Fourth, you may get lucky, like we did, had a near private taxi for your journey. Fifth, it is so easy to arrange. Just ask your casa owner to book you one and they actually do everything! We took a bus to save a bit of money and because we wanted to see what it was like. If we went back to Cuba we’d travel solely by shared taxi. The only hiccup was when the shared taxi had to cancel because it couldn't get fuel and we had to scramble to get a bus ticket (explained above). I'm not sure how common this is, and everything worked out in the end! I also now feel incredibly lucky to live in a country where I am spoiled enough to complain about gas prices, not worry that I won't be able to fill my tank.

We took a shared taxi:

Varadero - Havana: 25 CUC per person

Vinales- Playa Giron: 45 CUC per person

Government Shared taxis

These are apparently booked at Infotur. In Varadero we asked at Cubanacan and they had no idea what we were talking about. We only saw Infotur offices in Vinales and Trinidad. We saw big station wagon looking vehicles jammed with tourists in them and assume that was the government shared taxis. By the time we found an Infortur office in Vinales we were happy with the bus/shared taxi combination we were using. A Korean girl we met in Trinidad exclusively used this mode of transport and said she just booked at Infotur the day before she wanted to travel. Apparently these government taxis are only elusive to us. Oh well.

Money

Cuban pesos are a closed currency, so you can’t order them from your bank at home before you leave. We brought Canadian money to exchange and our Canadian ATM card. Your bank card needs to have the little Visa picture on the bottom corner of it to be able to use it. Our ATM card worked fine in Varadero. However, following that, in Havana, Vinales and Trinidad it didn't work at the ATM machines. Perhaps all those ATMs were out of money? Maybe we were trying to take out too much money? I have no idea. But it was stressful. It happened enough times in a row that we even attempted to call our bank to make sure that they didn’t put a hold on our card. They hadn't. The solution, we figured out, was to go into the bank and use the actual person teller as an ATM. How old school, right? There is a guard at the bank door who will tell you to use the ATM, if there is one outside. If you tell them that the ATM isn't working for you (which was true, in our case) they’ll let you in. You’ll wait in line on chairs, not in front of the teller. Only one person can see the teller at a time. You need your passport, Casa name and address. Then the teller essentially does the withdrawal for you, from your card. Sigh. Life is good again, go get yourself a mojito. You deserve it.

Internet

Oh man. The internet in Cuba. When we hiked in Nepal and didn't have the internet for 3 weeks- I loved it. In Cuba, not so much. Anything you can think of that you might want from the internet, try to download it before you go. We downloaded on Google Maps all the places we were going and saved our Casa addresses and restaurants we wanted to try into the map before we left. We downloaded podcasts and movies. We are very very happy we did this.

To get the internet you need to find a ETECSA kiosk/store. You can save their locations on your Google Maps before you go to save some time! You need your passport to buy an internet card. Look for a lineup of tourists on the sidewalk- et voila, there it is! Wait outside until it's your turn to go inside. You need to buy a card with a scratch code. Each card is good for 1 hour and costs 1 CUC. Buy a few so you don't have to wait in line again! And, before you leave the counter with your newly acquired internet cards, check their expiry date. We were given several expired cards and didn’t notice until it was too late. Once you have your card you need to find a public space that has wifi for you to use. Look for a public square with lots of people on benches. Then enter your (very long card number) and scratch your card for the (also very long) code to sign in to the public wifi. Easy peasy, right? Well, kind of. Make sure you don’t scratch off the actual code...these cards are such low quality it happened a few times to us. Make sure you turn your wifi off after you check Instagram so it doesn't eat up the rest of your hour! You can use the card multiple times until all the minutes have been used up. It will make you really, really appreciate how lucky you are to have wifi in your very own house back at home!

Accomodation

Casas are the accommodation of choice in Cuba. We booked ahead on Airbnb because there were certain things I wanted in our casas (ie: a balcony in Havana, a view in Vinales, a rooftop in Trinidad). We were very happy with our choices. You can check out where we stayed here. If you don't want to book ahead you probably can get rooms for a bit cheaper and be more flexible with your time. Casas vary widely and they’ll all serve you breakfast, also of varying quality for 5 CUC.

Our gorgeous room at Casa D’ La Popa in Trinidad

Power outlets

Rooms in the casas we stayed at had both European and North American plugs. The voltage was almost always labeled. They were mostly very loose, but we always eventually found one in each room that held the weight of the cord and kept power at the same time.

Jinteros/Touts

We had read many blogs before we went about the ‘Cuban hustle.’ Tourists wrote about feeling hassled by locals selling things, always getting charged that extra CUC, etc... This is not something we experienced. In actual fact, compared to anywhere in Asia or South America, Cuba felt delightfully hassle free!