Cuba
- Thread starter Citizen66
- Start date
trabuquera
Modesty Bag
bugger, I forgot the most important bit of info for the OP:
YES, YOU DO NEED A VISA MATE! Only, just to be contrary, the Cubans call it a 'tourist card', to confuse you. It is possible, if you've bought a package holiday, that the tour company will have sorted it already, but CHECK WITH THEM because getting a tourist card at the last minute can be hairy.
If you are London-based and have time, go direct to the consulate in Grape St, Holborn, ask for "tourist card", fill in a short form, pay £25 and you're done; you don't need any extra passport photos or documents (although you need to fill in your passport #) and it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes at an absolute maximum.
If you're out of London try this link: http://www.cubaldn.com/ (it's the Embassy's own site, not a dodgy firm) where you can pay for it online and have it posted to you. But be aware they might take a bit of time - like a week or so - to sort it.
Note that they ask you to confirm you've booked State-operated accommodation for at least the first 3 nights - this info is confusing and wrong - just ignore it if you haven't got a hotel reservation. If you have got a hotel res then obviously you're fine and can fill in that info.
As an absolute last resort (boom boom!), if you are flying out of Gatwick, it's rumoured but not confirmed that Virgin Atlantic often have a stash of Cuban tourist cards at their desk there and they might sell you one if you ask very very nicely.
What you CAN'T do is board the plane or touch down in Cuba without having the tourist card so please do get one pronto!
Fascinating place at whatever level.... do remember to get SOME work done eh?
YES, YOU DO NEED A VISA MATE! Only, just to be contrary, the Cubans call it a 'tourist card', to confuse you. It is possible, if you've bought a package holiday, that the tour company will have sorted it already, but CHECK WITH THEM because getting a tourist card at the last minute can be hairy.
If you are London-based and have time, go direct to the consulate in Grape St, Holborn, ask for "tourist card", fill in a short form, pay £25 and you're done; you don't need any extra passport photos or documents (although you need to fill in your passport #) and it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes at an absolute maximum.
If you're out of London try this link: http://www.cubaldn.com/ (it's the Embassy's own site, not a dodgy firm) where you can pay for it online and have it posted to you. But be aware they might take a bit of time - like a week or so - to sort it.
Note that they ask you to confirm you've booked State-operated accommodation for at least the first 3 nights - this info is confusing and wrong - just ignore it if you haven't got a hotel reservation. If you have got a hotel res then obviously you're fine and can fill in that info.
As an absolute last resort (boom boom!), if you are flying out of Gatwick, it's rumoured but not confirmed that Virgin Atlantic often have a stash of Cuban tourist cards at their desk there and they might sell you one if you ask very very nicely.
What you CAN'T do is board the plane or touch down in Cuba without having the tourist card so please do get one pronto!
Fascinating place at whatever level.... do remember to get SOME work done eh?
trabuquera
Modesty Bag
Nope, not the case and never really was - the US embargo on travel to Cuba does apply to its own citizens AND to people resident in the US, wherever they're from (so for instance it applies to British people working or studying in the US, and anyone with a Green Card.) But thankfully it doesn't - and never has - applied to non-US citizens who happen to have travelled to Cuba and then need to travel to the US.
Biggest US embargo problem for a Brit going to Cuba is that if your UK bank is US-owned, then you won't be able to use your UK bank cards to get money at any Cuban banks. (Check this carefully if you're going to Cuba, direct with your bank - Egg card users, for instance, will be totally out of luck if they didn't bring any cash with them.... tho most Visa cards will work.)
ilovebush&blair
Well-Known Member
i went there in the summer for 2 weeks and its an amazing country, stayed with cuban families and spent most of my time with cuban people! if you are going to stay in Varadero or similar resort then you are an idiot, you should have booked a holiday in jamaica or the dominican republic. avoid Trinidad as it is full of tourists, vinales is a beautiful little town and has an amazing feel about it and Cienfuegos is worth a few days! didn't make it to baracoa but from what i hear from the people that did that it is worth it! the food in state run restaurants is of a poor standard i ate every day with the family's that i stayed with! no trip to cuba would be complete with out a trip to havana, but the jineteros do get abit annoying with offers of coke, weed, women and cigars. on our first night we befriended a bunch of cuban guys and bought a couple bottles of rum and shared it with them on the Malecón didn't get back to my hotel untill 5 in the morning, there isn't much crime and police are everywhere!
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That's definitely the way to do it.
As to crime, there is a fair bit of bags-snatching and pickpocketing, but there is very little violent crime. My advice would be to always carry a bag with the strap over your head rather than on one shoulder, and never to take too much stuff out with you. Then if you are pickpocketed, don't go running to the police. Write it off to experience and take more precautions next time.
As to crime, there is a fair bit of bags-snatching and pickpocketing, but there is very little violent crime. My advice would be to always carry a bag with the strap over your head rather than on one shoulder, and never to take too much stuff out with you. Then if you are pickpocketed, don't go running to the police. Write it off to experience and take more precautions next time.
ilovebush&blair
Well-Known Member
i was speaking to an english guy in Trinidad and he got his camera snatched and the police caught the thief and got his camera back in a few hours! that kinda of thing is unheard of in the UK! just take the usual precautions like wearing a money belt and not flashing wealth. if a cuban person commits a crime against a tourist then he will be punished ten time more than he he committed a crime against a cuban!
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the plight of the Cuban women, tbh.
If anything, it's the guys who are being exploited that I feel sorry for.
Male friend of mine, he's got two buddies who went to Cuba on holiday. They're ordinary guys, with ordinary jobs. They're not the most attractive of guys, would definitely and did definitely struggle to get much action back in the UK. A couple of -- by all accounts, gorgeous -- Cuban girls threw themselves at these poor unsuspecting guys, and then attached themselves like leeches. The guys didn't stand a chance.
Fast forward a year or so, and they'd been home, run up big phone bills, been back to Cuba to see the girls again, blah blah blah, got married, the Cubans moved to the UK. One brought two kids from first marriage to the UK. The other swiftly had a child. By all accounts they were very demanding and competitive with one another, whatever one got (clothes, money, support for family back home) the other demanded and sulked and threw hissy fits for. Except one of the guys had a better job that the other and earned more. So whatever he was spending, the other guy ended up getting into debt to keep up with the Castros.
Fast forward another couple of years, one of them asked for a divorce and moved back to Cuba. Fair enough. With more disposable income, guy moves out of the larger rented house and buys a small place. Word spreads on the grapevine through the other chick and she promptly returns to the UK for a reconcilation. Which doesn't work out. So she wants a divorce again. Only this time she wants the property. So at 40-odd he gets chucked out of his own home (which he bought after she moved back to Cuba and threatened to divorce him or instigated divorce proceedings) and he has to move back in with his elderly folks. And kind of gets subject to blackmail: I'll stay here with our child, so long as you give me what I want. If you don't, I'll take our child back to Cuba with me.
Seeing what deal her mate is getting, living for free in a property provided by soon-to-be ex-husband, getting her living expenses and child support covered, basically living as a single parent with the guy footing the bill, marriage number two starts to flounder. I think it got to the point where it was mooted that this poor guy was going to have to pay child support for two Cuban children who weren't his.
I've met the guys concerned, they're decent but probably naive guys who thought their birthdays had all come at once, having these gorgeous Cuban women throwing themselves at them, but have subsquently been run through the mill, had their bank accounts rinsed, and are still being taken to the cleaners by the Cuban women. Nope. No sympathy whatsoever for the Cuban women who callously and calculatingly home in on average guys, naive guys, and rinse them, take them to the cleaners, seriously f*** them over.
ETA: Citizen66: If you paid a Cuban woman some token sum and told her to go home and tell the guy to f*** off, she'd probably be more likely to tell you to f*** off for interfering and getting in between her and her lucrative foreign meal ticket, don't reckon she'd be grateful for the intervention. Except if you look a better prospect than the other guy, and by virtue of tossing her some money she looks on you as her new meal ticket and attaches herself limpet-like to you.
Such people are known as prostitutes, or in Cuba "jineteras" (literally "jockeys"). There are undeniably a lot of them. But what I found was that these types and their male equivalents were the sort of shallow materialists that one finds anywhere. They all hated Castro and wanted to go to America. But everyone I met who was hard-working, decent, trying to do something positive with their lives, thought Castro was great.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Yeah, I'm sure that there are a lot of decent Cubans. And also a lot of Cuban's whose living conditions are quite desperate.
But I just making the point that I thought the sympathy for the 'jockey'-type of Cubans was a bit misplaced, because the who's-exploiting-who is a bit murkier and more of a grey area than littlebabyjesus and Citizen66 seemed to appreciate.
chilango
Ha! Ha! Armageddon
When i went in 2005, i got the tourist card either on the plane in or at the airport (I flew from Mexico via Panama) and I did not get a stamp in my passport or anything other then Mexican exit stamps to suggest that I had vistited Cuba.
They didn't stamp my passport either, but the US customs guy found it amusing that I was returning from a holiday supposedly in Canada, in December, with an obviously brand-new suntan.
Seriously though, they are enforcing the law these days. Anyone who has a US green card should think carefully about going to Cuba for a while.
I hate to break it to you mate - actually I don't care as you clearly don't give a fuck that you're going to Cuba to even find out anything about it - but one thing you won't be doing is "eating well."
You'll get a few days of 'feast' when it's illegal lobster every night, the rest of the time it's a bit of cold rice, few leaves of moulds lettuce and a slice of 'pizza' which is essentially cheese on toast but with kraft and mighty white. Which will take 1.5 hours to arrive.
The man plans to fly all the way to Cuba, has little interest in what lies outside the walls of the all-inclusive resort, and thinks it's a lack of sunshine that means his efforts at creative writing aren't go so well.
This thread definitely makes me feel like paying Cuba a visit sometime though...
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Miaow!The man plans to fly all the way to Cuba, has little interest in what lies outside the walls of the all-inclusive resort, and thinks it's a lack of sunshine that means his efforts at creative writing aren't go so well.
I've wanted to go for years. Ernest Hemingway, Buena Vista Social Club... but I always tend to travel eastwards. I definitely intend to get to Cuba before Castro dies, the embargo is ended and it fills with Americans.
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
Whilst its true that Cuba is most definitely not the socialist utopia some think it is a fascinating place. The architecture in Havana is the very definition of faded grandure, the people are incredibly freindly, the food is not that bad, and there are bundles of quirky (to us) things that will stay in your mind. No adverts instead massive posters of various heroes of the revolution, 1950s US classic cars everywhere, music blaring everywhere, sleeping workers everywhere (a cuban told me they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work), five museum attendants to every museum visitor, the communal transport system. Not everyone is after your convertible currency - we got taken to a couple of peoples houses and they were just interested to talk to us and show off Cuba really. As for tipping a lot of people wanted soap, paper and pens. If you want to be of any help take a suitcase of cheap clothes you dont mind leaving behind. Western magazines go down well also. The beauty ratio for Cubans appears to be very high as well - and they certainly smile more than people here do.
