About Cuba Getaway

Cuba is one of the most misunderstood, most magical destinations on Earth — and it deserves a guide worthy of its complexity. Not a sanitized resort brochure, and not a political screed. Something honest. Something human. Something that captures the island the way it actually feels when you're standing on the Malecón at dusk, watching fishermen cast their lines as the sky turns the color of a ripe mango.

That's why Cuba Getaway exists.

The first time we visited Cuba, nothing went according to plan. The taxi broke down in the middle of Havana in a rainstorm. Our Spanish was embarrassing. The WiFi card we bought was stolen from our jacket pocket in a market. And yet — by the end of that first week, we were completely, irrevocably in love with the island. That is Cuba. It is not a place that works the way you expect it to. It is a place that works on you.

We remember the smell of tobacco drifting through the open windows of a cigar factory while a reader in a guayabera shirt recited Cervantes from a raised wooden pulpit. We remember the way a banda municipal started playing in a Trinidad square one evening — unannounced, for no one and everyone — and how two elderly women immediately stood up and began to dance son cubano with the practiced ease of six decades of muscle memory. We remember a farmer in Viñales who invited us onto his porch, poured us coffee thick as engine oil, and spent an hour explaining exactly why his valley was the most beautiful place in the world. He was correct.

Cuba smells like salt air and diesel and jasmine. It sounds like someone is always playing the trumpet somewhere just around the corner. It looks like a city that time tried to freeze in 1958 and failed — not because it stayed the same, but because it kept living stubbornly, defiantly, joyfully forward.

This guide was built for travelers who want to understand that Cuba. Not the Cuba of all-inclusive resorts and curated beach packages — though those have their place — but the Cuba of conversations with strangers, of paladares where the owner's grandmother still cooks the ropa vieja, of colectivo taxis packed with five people across a three-seat bench hurtling across the countryside, and of rum shared in a doorway during a blackout because there was nothing else to do and it turned out to be the best night of the trip.

We built Cuba Getaway because the information travelers needed didn't exist in one place. Visa rules change. Currency rules change. What was true two years ago about ATMs or data SIMs or which paladares were still open is often no longer true. We verify everything regularly. We update when things change. We tell you what we actually know and we tell you when we're not sure — because in Cuba, honesty is the most useful thing we can offer you.

We don't take sponsored trips. We don't accept payment for coverage. We don't run affiliate links to resort chains that want to keep you inside their compound. We write about Cuba because we love Cuba, and because the best thing that can happen for this extraordinary island is for more people to experience it thoughtfully, respectfully, and with their eyes wide open.

Cuba is changing. Faster now than at any point in living memory. The old cars are still there, but so are new restaurants, new private businesses, new anxieties, and new possibilities. The best time to visit Cuba is always now — before the next change, before whatever comes next. We hope this guide helps you get there.