Hi Lynne . Not long now

I can't help with the havana question as regretably we didnt go but I'm sure SMa will steer you right there .

The sockets at SRLM are designed to take both European or the american flat type . We took both and my GHD's were fine if you are taking those .

Lesley (starry) went to swim with the dolphins there . If she doesnt see this drop her a pm Lynne .I'm sure she will be happy to help if she can

Hi Lyn
Thank you - no not long now
Is it Mexico for you this year ?
Lynne

Yes Lynne it is . Unusually for me I've not really given it a lot of thought or research yet .I must be getting more relaxed in my old age .

Going back to the adapters , Personally for an extra couple of quid I would take both . You will know this already but whilst the rooms are clean and comfy they are getting on a bit and a maintenence man with a trolley generally seems to follow the cleaners round doing little repairs. I'm amazed how they keep so much of it going .
I remember the socket I was mainly using in our room seemed a little temperamental and didnt seem to like my european adapter , preferring my flat pin one . The lads room next door it worked fine .

So I would go preparred with both .

I tried this morning to reply to you Lallygirl but having problems - in case the rpoblem is the length of my reply I'm trying posting in instalments to see if the makes a difference!

I have done a lot research but still confused as to which adaptors to take, are the european ones ok?

To be on the safe side I've found that it's always best to take both an adaptor for European round 2 pin sockets and also one for US style 2 flat pin sockets. I've not stayed in your hotel but it is common for both styles to be in use even in the same room - round pins for the 220V supply and flat pins for the local 110V supply. I've never come across the sort of sockets Lyn describes that will take both types of adaptors but if you take both s she suggests then you should be OK.

SM

I hope to go to Havana if the girls agree to fly (nervous flyers - may be too much after a long haul ) ! We don't want to go to the Tropicana so if we stay overnight what would you suggest the best way of entertaining ourselves . We would like to go and have cocktails and listen to live music but youngest is 15. Would she be allowed in?

Personally, I think that giving the Tropicana a miss is a good call and as far as entertaining yourelves is concerned then the easiest thing is probably to head for Obispo - a street in Havana Vieja - which is both the main shopping street in the old town and also the ideal place to find a bar with live music on offer and some of the best cocktails in town. They range from the very upmarket La Floridita at one end (an old haunt of Ernest Hemingways with prices to match!) to much smaller more downmarket bars at the other. It's worth doing a bit a 'crawl' until you find one that you like.

It won't be a problem having a 15 year old in the group - 15 is the age at which Cuban girls have a big party to celebrate their entry into womanhood. She's officially a grown-up there! But, seriously, the Cubans make a huge fuss of kids and they are welcome everywhere - and compared to bars and pubs in many places, if there are children and young people present, Cubans will be very mindful of their behaviour and language. So it won't be a problem at all taking her with you, whether into an upmarket hotel or bar or a corner 'local'.

SM

Are the hotels FC use central enough for us to do this independently or would the one day trip be a better option?)

I have no idea about which hotels FC use - perhaps they can tell you? If the hotel is in Havana Viejo or Centro then it will be easy to get out and about by yourself. But if it is out in Mirimar in the suburbs then you are a 15 CUC (approx £12) taxi ride away from the action. Either way, if you are going to Havana then I would suggest that you really do need to to do an overnighter - there is far too much to see and do for just a day and also, the city really does come alive after dark and it would be a shame to miss that.

SM

If we don't get to Havana we will go to Santiago instead . Any recommendations ?

Well I'm biased on this one - Santiago is my favourite city - but it does have some advantages for you in that firstly the transfer will probably be by road rather than air if some fo the party aren't keen on flying. But it's a much more compact city too and even if you are staying in the Hotel Santiago or the Las Americas then you are only a 3CUC taxi ride away from the city centre where all the action is. And if you are staying in the Casa Grande then everything is literally on your doorstep - their terrace bar really is the best vantage point for watching the nightly passeo on Pargque Cespedes and it is right on the corner of Heredia which is were you'll find some of the best live music in Cuba. The best music venues in Santiago charge a 'cover' for entrance beause they are more like clubs than bars but they are very cheap by our standards at 3/5 CUCs, and often include your first drink.

The most obvious venue that all the tourists go to is the Casa de la Trova which featured in the Buena Vista Social Club film. There are nightly performances by some of the best bands around and while there is a 'cover' it's rare for it to be more than 5CUCs for bands that I've paid £25+ to see here in the UK! But a bit further up Heredia is a bar called Artex where a mojito will cost you 1.5CUc and you can hear the band for free from the bar or else pay no more than 3CUC to go and sit and listen to them in the open air patio at the rear.

Another lovely open air patio is 10 mins max walk away on Plaza de Martie called Los Dos Abuelos and a bit further out again is the Casa de las Tradiciones which is more like sitting in someone's front room!

For a more nightclub atmosphere (and air-conditioning) you couldn't do better than either the Casa de Musica or the Casa/Salon de Son. The latter attracts more locals than the former which is more touristy but always has excellent bands. Both of these don't usually until 10pm at the earliest and won't really get going until after this. If I'm in Santiago I'll usually start off in Artex - their bands usually start at 9pm and then go on to one of the others later.

Wherever you go, remember that unless you are all on cocktails, when there is a group of you then in all these bars and clubs in Santiago you can buy a whole bottle of rum for the table and just order the mixers to go with it as you go along - they'll give a bucket of ice for the table. If you're tending to drink eg Rum and 'Coke' then this definitely the best way to go.

SM

But if you are going in July then one of the best reasons for going to Santiago instead of Havana is that this is the big party month with the Fiesta del Caribe/Diablo in the early part of the month and Carnivale towards the end of the month. What dates are you going to Cuba? That would help me check out whether any trip you did go on to Santiago was likely to coincide with either of these events which include all sorts of free day time street performances as well as big evening parades.

As for the dolphins, I'm afraid that I can't help at all but I'm sure that others will. One thing to bear in mind is that on the whole, the Cubans aren't big on animal welfare. They have a hard enough job ensuring that the humans are well fed and housed, let alone the animals, and it isn't one of their priorities.

SM

One final thing - are you a group of women only? If you are you may well find that you'll get chatted up a bit but it is likely to be very good natured. You'll see mention of ‘jineteros' elsewhere on the board and there are advantages to having a Cuban at your table - in return for drinks you'll have an escort who'll stop you being pestered by beggars, will get you up to dance etc and negotiate the taxis for you. Above all don't let the thought of it put you off getting out and about on your own - I always feel very safe in Cuba.

Hope this enough to get you started but do come back if I can help further.

SM

Thank you so much SM - what a fantastic reply !
We are going on the 10th of July for 2 weeks. Want to relax and also to get out and see some real Cuba .Santiago sounds excellent and will show my daughters your response but I'm sold !
Muchas gracias amiga
lynne

Hola Lynne,

The bad news is that if you are going on the 10th then the Fiesta del Caribe will be over by the time you are likely to be able to get to Santiago. But the good news is that you stand a good chance of being able to catch some of the Carnaval action if you are able to go in your 2nd week. The official dates are the 18-27 July and the big evening parades usually take place on 24/25/26 but in the run up to those the various neighbouhood 'congas' will be out on the streets during the day and the special children's parades take place if front of the Town Hall - opposite the Cathedral - on Pargue Cespedes in the earlier part of the week. There will also be lots going on the week before as the city starts to gear itself up for the week long partying.

The downside of Carnaval is that the all night partying needs stamina - some of the best bands in Cuba play for free but it's not unusual for them not to make their appearance until 2.00am! So you can find yourself standing around for an awful long time just waiting for the action to start. But there will be a buzz to the city 24hrs a day that gives it a really great atmosphere.

It's also sensible to take precautions in the crowds. I'm not wanting to sound alarmist - I've never felt unsafe - but if out and about at night during carnaval take the same sort of care that you would at any big festival event here. For example, leave the good jewellery in the safe deposit box, take enough but not a lot of cash, only carry the essentials with you in a bag that you can wear across your body and keep hold off etc. Even better if you can manage without a bag at all and carry what you need about your person - I always stash the paper money in my bra! Street crime against tourists is very rare but it's sensible not to put temptation in the way of people who are very poor and who see you as very rich.

SM

PS as a final afterthought, given the location of Guardalavaca you'll probably be offered the chance to visit the city of Holguin itself and it is a lovely little place - well worth a daytrip to get to see something of ordinary Cuban life and culture. As it's further away, I'm not sure whether trips to Baracoa will be on offer or not but it's a gem of an small old colonial town and the route there will take you through some of the lushest scenary in the eastern end of the island.

As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of Cuba - I just hope it lives up to expectations and you have a great time.

SM

PPS Your chamber maids will love UK nail polish as a small gift - Cuban women take immense care with their appearance and the local nail polish is naff. They'll appreciate removal pads for it even more - most use neat acetone to remove old polish!

Hi Sma - I'm also off to Cuba at end June - so the info here looks really useful.
However I got really interested in your mention of Fiesta del Caribe and so I googled it and came up with

http://www.whatsonwhen.com/sisp/?fx=event&event_id=19101

And that seems to suggest 3-9th July 2011...which seems to differ from the dates you mention.
Is that right please?

Yet again many thanks for your reply

If you hadn't have said I would never have guessed you had a soft spot for Cuba
Really , really looking forward to it . Will definately get out and about quite a lot as I hope to see a little bit of the real Cuba , somewhere I have wanted to go to for ages . If we get to Santiago the eldest is a real party animal so 2 am will be no problem for her even if I have to go to bed !!
Thank You

ps - good tip re the nail polish

And that seems to suggest 3-9th July 2011...which seems to differ from the dates you mention.
Is that right please?

Hi ukbill, those dates are right for the Fiesta del Caribe/Diablo which is a big international cultural and music festival hosted in Santiago every year and includes performances by visitng dance music companies. Think Llangollen International Eistedffod with rum and sun! It culminates on the last night in the burning of a huge wickerwork effigy of the devil down by the port with fireworks with lots of the local 'conga' bands parading though the city first. This is why Lynne will miss it because she doesn't arrive in Cuba until the 10th July.

However, Carnaval takes place in the latter part of the month loosely on the dates I gave Lynne and is a much more local affair with the main emphasis on the participation of local neighbourhood 'congas' in nightly parades and Cuban music and culture in the form of free street performances by some of the most popular current Cuban bands. There's always a couple of really big names on the Cuban music scene who'll do some free late night concerts in open air street venues. For many Cubans this is the only way they'll get to see major performers like this because whilst the entry prices to see them in concert performances are cheap by our standards they aren't necessarily so for the locals.

Think Carnival in Rio or Mardi Gras in New Orleans for something of the flavour of it all, with local community troupes spending most of the year preparing their costumes and practising their routines for the judging. But the evening parades also include big floats with bands and dancers performing on them - a lot of them sponsored by the likes of Havana Club and other rum distillers and beer brewers amnd which are spectacular to see. For the best viewing of the parades it's worth buying tickets for a seat in the stands which are erected along the roadside it will only cost a few CUCs ann its worth it because the parades go on for hours.

A couple of years ago the group that I go over to Cuba with each year were the first non-Cubans to participate in the big evening parade and we all got a certificate to confirm this! I think that this was in the spirit of Wilde's comment that the amazing thing about a dog dancing is not whether it does it well but the fact that it does it at all

So if you are able to get to Santiago in either the first week in July for the Fiesta del Caribe or the 3rd/4th week for Carnaval then both are huge fun though different in character.

SM

SMa
Thanks for all the info so far, and I'm really interested in going to Fiesta del Caribe in Santiago, and maybe even stopping overnight there for one night.
However I'm booked for a two week package hol in Guardalavaca
- and on the map that looks quite a way off from Santiago.
So a couple more questions please.

Is there readily available public transport to get to and from Santiago?
(I really like trains and I understand that steam trains still exist in Cuba!!)

Guessing that the city is going to be quite busy at that time, is it likely I'll easily get hotel accommodation, and can I somehow book it from here via the web in advance?

Hi ukbill,

First off, you are only there for a fortnight so don't even think about taking the train! Even where there are trains they actually take longer than the buses to get anywhere - I won't bother you with the full details but the combination of a very rundown network and rolling stock and Cuban bureaucracy when it comes to buying tickets meant that whilst the timetable says it takes 16 hours to get from Havana to Santiago, it took a friend 3 days from first going to the ticket office to try and buy a ticket and actually arriving. Of this 36 hours was spent on repeated visits to the train station trying to buy a ticket and 36 hours on the train. This is why anybody who can't afford to fly takes the Viazul buses which are much more reliable, are usually modern air conditioned Chinese coaches and as good as any long distance coach you'd get here and it generally only takes 12 hrs. Guadalavaca to Santiago is probably a couple of hours by road.

Going under your own steam would probably mean taking a local bus or shared taxi into Holguin and then getting the Viazul express bus on to Santiago. You can book Viazul buses over the Net from here but the more local services can be less easy to use according to friends who have made greater use of local public transport than I have. I have to admit I've done most of my internal travel in Cuba by air or private transfers because it tends to be easier and not necessarily that much more expensive by our standards. The journey from Guardalavaca to Santiago by road would probably take you through the Sierra Maestre mountains which are beautiful - inland Cuba is very different to the coastal areas. But if you are using public transport you probably need to be able to get by in Spanish to manage - once you are away from the main tourist resorts you'll find that most people don't speak English - for years, Russian was the main second language taught in the schools.

Santiago is almost certainly offered as daytrip from Guardalavaca and on the one occasion when I stayed in the Hotel Santiago there were people staying there on an overnight trip from Guardalavaca. So the easiest way of doing it might be to make contact with Cubatur once you are there - whether you book direct or through your TO rep it will still be a Cubatur excursion. And to be honest if, there are two or more of you, then something tailormade by Cubatur could work out better value compared to doing it yourself. You'll always be charged 'rack rate' in a hotel if you try and book direct - got much better rates via Havanatour on a tour I did. I spent a week touring the eastern end of the island with just me, the driver and a fully bi-lingual Cuban tour guide in a people carrier for what some people end up paying to be part of large touring group. I you want the security of getting something sorted from this end before you go then contact Havanatour which is the other state owned agency and they have an office in England. Their website is at

http://www.havanatour.co.uk/

and the tel no is 01707 646 463. Be careful if just doing a net search because there is a dubious outfit based in the US that also uses the name and a number of people on Tripadvisor seem to have had bad experiences.

Alternatively, the more adventurous way of doing it is to take advantage of the fact that Cuban social networks are huge. There's bound to be someone working in your hotel who knows someone who will take you by taxi and knows someone who could fix you up with a Casa Particulare (a 'homestay' with a family registered to take in paying B&B guests). You'll really get the inside track on Cuban life if you do it that way but you probably need to be confident about your ability to negotiate in Spanish and take care to take a bit of time to suss out how reliable your 'go-between' is.

An option halfway between the two would be to use a company like Caledonia Languages - website at

http://www.caledonialanguages.com/

who could probably also arrange from here for a transfer between Guardalavaca and Santiago with an overnight stay in a Casa Particulare. All my trips to Cuba bar one have been arranged by them, staying in a different Casa each time and never a dud one. The facilities will be basic but you'll get a clean, comfy bed, air conditioning and your own bathroom - mostly but not always en-suite so check this if that is important. And in my experience better food than in anything other than the most upmarket hotels in Cuba. Either Kath (who owns the company) or one of her very experienced Spanish staff will actually be in Santiago for the Fiesta - they have a group going on holiday for it - so you would have a local contact in the city. I did this group holiday last year and can now vouch for just what good care they take of you when needed, having been poisoned by Cubana on the flight out and needing medical treatment whilst there!

I would think that hotel accommodation wouldn't necessarily be hard to get. Yes, the city will be busy but the fiesta doesn't seem to attract that many out of town visitors apart from those performing as part of the festival and a lot of them will be staying in officially arranged accommodation in student residences or hotels aimed at Cubans rather than those aimed foreign tourists. So I would think that you should find something.

Don't let me put you off with horror stories about the trains, if you can manage it, do try and visit Santiago - especially if you are into Cuban music - the standard in even the smallest venues is in my experience much higher than in Havana.

SM

Thanks SMa - for taking the time to provide a really useful detailed reply.

I had a look at the two links you provided and it does illustrate that there are really good ways of taking interesting holidays in Cuba without just relying on the "big two" package providers TUI/TC.
I'll know for next year!

The hotel rates in Santiago look good, and the hotels appear to have much more character than the tourist hotels sold in normal packages
For this year - I intend to get my steam train "fix" by simply taking one of the tourist excursions offered which includes a short steam train ride.
And for Santiago and a one night stay in the festival, I intend to try to do it, I'll take your suggestion of trying to organise something through cubatur when I get to Guardalavaca.

My Spanish language skills are pretty poor, just at the being sociable and 'ordering alcoholic drinks' level.

But I've got a book and CD, and I'll work on them!

Once again - thanks.

Hi, no problem, pleased to be able to help.

My suggestion for an overnight hotel stay would definitely be to try and get into the Casagranda. It's a bit quirky and not really a 3* by our standards (and I find it bizarre that it has the same rating as the Santiago which whilst a bit 'international soul-less' has much better facilities and standard of accommodation as well as a pool!) and the service is a bit laidback shall we say, but I like its very Cuban character even if the rooms could do with being refurbished. It's not popular with a lot of tourists because it doesn't have a swimming pool but given that you can use the pools at both the Las Americas and the Santiago for a small fee I think this drawback is outweighed by its location if you are only there for a short stay. It couldn't be better placed for being at the heart of the city and one of the main outdoor performance stage areas for the fiesta is on Parque Cespedes itself and all the parades pass through the square in front of the Town Hall. The terrace bar of the Casagranda is a great place to sit with a mojito and get a really good view of both.

I think that it's a shame that most people do end up going to Cuba with one of the 'big 2' - and couldn't agree with you more that there are far more interesting ways of seeing Cuba and doing more than just a beach + Havana package.

Enjoy your trip and do let me know whether you manage to get to Santiago and do enjoy the the train excursion. Perhaps on a longer future trip you can try the 'real' trains when time is less important

SM