Martin and Susan's Trip to Cuba

In November 2008 we went to Cuba on a last-minute package deal. Really cheap - they even included all the Cuban cocktails you could drink, provided you were happy to stay in a beach resort for 2 weeks. We forsook the cocktails and the beach for a few days in Havana, and to rent a car (horribly expensive) to see something of the rest of the island.

Actually the beach at Varadero was quite good - 20 kilometres of white sand.

Varadero is on the north coast. We drove to the famous Bay of Pigs on the south coast (which took a long time because there are few road signs), then stayed in the old city of Trinidad. We stayed there in a "casa particular", a sort of Cuban bed and breakfast, where the food was a lot better than in the hotel. We drove north through the mountains to Santa Clara, Che Guevara's town, and to the old colonial town of Remedios, where we stayed in another casa particular (where we were invited to park the car in the front room). We drove from there out to sea on a 48km causeway, built to access more magnifcent beaches on the offshore cayos.

We liked Havana. The Old City has been prettified to some extent, but it is still a lived-in city with plenty going on.

We saw lots of Cuba's famous old American cars, not just in Havana but everywhere we went. But a surprise was to find old British cars too - we even saw a Morris 10, built in Oxford 60 years ago. Though someone told us that a lot of the old cars have Lada engines now.