Cuba Cell Phones and Casa Tips

Old Jan 22nd, 2017, 11:50 AM
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Cuba Cell Phones and Casa Tips

Hello, We are travelling in Cuba for 7 days and have read that we can rent a phone from Cubacel at the Havana airport. I only saw that on one site and cannot find another mention of where Cubacel is at the airport or if in fact they are still there. Has anyone rented from them and was there a presence at the airport? We do not want to do a Sim card, we have had very mixed results using the ones from Cellular Abroad.
Another question please: when staying in a casa particular is tipping appropriate and what amount of total?
Thank you
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Old Jan 25th, 2017, 09:23 AM
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IMO it is not worth the effort to have a cell phone in Cuba for such a short time.
If you stay in casas particulars, the owner will be happy to make calls for you, local or to the next casa you may stay in or to arrange an excursion/tour.
Internet, while not good or widespread, is a better option IMO for keeping in touch with home. For example, with a card from the Cuban internet company, you could sit in any hotel lobby that has Wifi, without being a guest. We did it regularly at Hotel Florida in Havana, for example.

Cubans make about 30 CUC (think 25 dollars) per month at regular jobs. If the person making up the room is not family, and is being paid as an employee by a more well-off casa owner, a small labeled tip left on the pillow might be welcome. Otherwise, a tip adds to the rate the owner gets for renting his room because it is a family member (usually) doing the work.
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Old Jan 25th, 2017, 08:11 PM
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Just called Verizon today about having a travel plan put into effect for our 2 weeks in Cuba as we've had in Europe and the Caribbean.
Surprised to learn that they have no special plan for Cuba. Calls in Cuba on my phone would cost $2.99 per minute (whew!)and texts are 50 cents each.
The rep reminded me to keep my phone in Airplane Mode when I'm not using it so as not to pick up roaming charges.
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Old Jan 26th, 2017, 07:23 AM
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Why would this surprise you? Verizon is a US based company. US companies have only very recently been allowed to do business in Cuba. FYI:Your US based credit card probably doesn't work in Cuba yet either. Direct flights to Cuba from the US, which is the big incentive behind more tourism, only began in mid-September 2016, not much time for businesses to take stock of the opportunity.
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Old Jan 26th, 2017, 08:23 AM
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<Why would this surprise you? Verizon is a US based company.>

Honestly, haven't a clue as to how Verizon implements its plans. Just passing along info.

<FYI:Your US based credit card probably doesn't work in Cuba yet either.>

I know.
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Old Feb 1st, 2017, 01:25 PM
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wander - the card to access the internet that SC refers to comes in two amounts - 5 CUC for one hour and 10 CUC for 5 hours so I would get the 5 hour one! Try and get it from somewhere where there's not a long queue, but if you can't find the office, look for the queue! This website has more details:

http://www.drinkteatravel.com/wifi-internet-in-cuba/

[I think that they've got the price of the one hour card wrong as I say above].

As well as public hotspots in parks and plazas you can go into a hotel - all the big ones have wi fi - but you will see lots of cubans clustered around the backs of hotels doing the same thing so you can always go and join them!

As for tipping, we left a couple of CUC per night in the room for whoever did the cleaning and tipped extra if we had any laundry done. We also left behind glossy magazines, and took chocolate and biscuits, which we thought our hosts might appreciate, to give to individual casa owners, as well as tipping them for any extra service e.g. we gave a large tip to our first casa owner as she took a lot of trouble to book some other casas for us.

if you take notes to change, make sure that they are all perfect or you may have difficulty getting them changed at banks etc.
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