Cuba tour companies
 

Hi everyone, my husband and I are wanting to go to Cuba, hopefully before the end of the year. We are US citizens and would like to go from the US, (completely legally and above board) so I think that means we need to go with a tour company?

I've been researching the companies and feeling a bit overwhelmed! Therefore, I'm looking for advice/recommendations regarding the tour companies. We would prefer one with small groups that stay in places in or very near city centers. It's certainly not that price doesn't matter but we are willing to pay more for a small group. Also we do love good food so any tours that are more food centric or at least that provide the opportunity to learn about the culture through food - at least to some extent! Tours that provide more free time to wander on ones own would also be great.

Maybe I'm asking to much? I'll keep doing my own research but I appreciate any help any of you can provide!

And I do know the difference between to and too. Typing quickly on an iPad.

"Tours that provide more free time to wander on ones own would also be great."

That's a problem. These tours are highly structured and you're expected to participate in all activities. The way U.S. law reads regarding approved travel to Cuba, you cannot spend time engaged in any leisure activities beyond what you'd have in the course of a normal workday. Not that you can never be on your own, but you're not going to get a free afternoon to do what you want.

A tour operator called Access Trips does a whole series of culinary tours, and they have a new one to Cuba. It looks like fun.

www.accesstrips.com

On the right side of the page, you'll see a link to the Cuba Culinary Tour.

Thanks Jeff_Costa_Rica, I looked at their website and gave them a call today. Sounds like a wonderful tour! We are strongly considering this one. I'll let you know!

I'll be interested to hear if you go with them. I'm researching this stuff, and my editor sent me their press release. You get cooking classes and a bartending lesson with these folks. :)

I've seen a brochure from Isram and their subsidiary Latour tours. Departs US from Miami, focused on Jewish history on the island. Adding to the original inquiry, does anyone have any experience with them?

And I'm interested for feedback on any companies that specialize in private groups. Checking out all of the above, plus Sojourn and Cuba Educational Travel.

Last January we participated in an approved cultural exchange program host by Iowa State Alumni association but run through GoNext. It was an outstanding program. Probably the most eye opening, exhausting, demanding, rewarding trip we have ever been on. The staff was outstanding. Just go to GoNext.com. They have up coming programs.

PS. Meant to add, Jeff-CR comments have been on dead on and much more accurate than many of the postings on the other thread related to Cuba.

Check out www.cuba-junky.com,http. www.cubaexplorer.com, www.insightcuba.com. These are three recommendations. I engaged the services of the second company which is based in Canada. ...flew out of Tampa and was restricted to stay in Habana for a mere 8 days. The price was right, was with an intimate group of twelve or thirteen, and was given a little leeway in terms of experiencing Habana. The itinerary was rich and varied. A few evenings we were free, so I did what I desired. Our Cubana guide was stellar in all ways. She made our experience to be one hell of an outstanding one, and since then I still bask in the afterglows of my second Cuban experience.

I plan to return sometime in 2016 and hope that I'll be able to go to Habana's famous art Biennale in 2017. Had planned to go to the 31st International Jazz Festival in December of this year but have since changed my travel plans. Do go and experience fully even if you have be go via a People-to-People program. Perhaps for your second trip, that hypocritical travel ban and embargo would have been lifted by our Congress. We and the Cuban people have been the ones to suffer, not the government!

[www.cubaabsolutely.com] ...wonderful resource

This travel company Myths and Mountains has two really great trips to Cuba planned, with the maximum number of travellers being 10! I like that they have a trip that takes you outside of just Havana so that you can see Cuba in a comprehensive way.

http://mythsandmountains.com/country...tour-packages/

Just wanted to let you all know that we did go to Cuba in December with Access Travel.

Highly recommend! Amazing small tour with wonderful guides.

Although perhaps soon US citizens won't need to go with a group we are so glad we did this tour!

I'll try to do a report on it if time allows

And thanks for the advice and responses!

Do you still have to go through a tour company?

I have a AAA flyer in the mail, said to "Discover Cuba before it changes forever!"

Tours start from $3640. I think that's per person on double occupancy. Says nothing about how many days or whatever but there are North American guides and Cuban experts and includes most meals.

So that's probably where all the money goes.

Guess they're looking to take advantage of the pent-up demand and all the exhortation about visiting before it becomes too commercialized like other Caribbean resort islands.

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to visit in a few years after a bunch of American or European quality hotels with amenities and other travel services (car rentals, day trip operators, etc) are built and people can DIY their own trips there.

OK did some Googling. Yeah there are still restrictions on travel so you have to do the "people-to-people" thing through tour companies.

And I found the insightcuba.com site, which has the same verbiage about discovering Cuba before it changes.

They have 1-week tours from Miami for almost $5000.

So what they mean is before their gravy train ends.

I can see the costs though, to be guided by experts and to have some meals included as well as a charter flight between Miami and Havana.

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to visit in a few years after a bunch of American or European quality hotels with amenities and other travel services (car rentals, day trip operators, etc) are built and people can DIY their own trips there.>>

scrb - there is a lot of sense in that, IF that's what happens.

You can already do everything that you mention on a DIY basis - stay in decent hotels, hire cars, do day trips, - but unless you go through an agent it takes a fair degree of effort and patience, and so far most americans play by the rules and stick to the person to person rules so they system is not quite over-run, though it was creaking at the seams when we were there in January due to all the non-US visitors.

However at the moment, Cuba does not have the hotel and infrastructure capacity to provide all that for the numbers that are going to want to visit when the restrictions are lifted. Whether they will manage to get what is required in place by then is a moot point.

in the meantime, as you say americans have the choice of breaking the [US] rules [Cuba doesn't care] or doing a person to person tour.

<<I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to visit in a few years after a bunch of American or European quality hotels with amenities and other travel services (car rentals, day trip operators, etc) are built and people can DIY their own trips there.>>

I don't think "a bunch" of "quality hotels" are going to be built any time soon. There is a new-ish Melia, and the amazing 50s Riveria is being updated/made habitable, but very, very slowly. At the present, only 200 of the 800 rooms can be occupied. The problem is with the infrastructure. There is a shortage of potable water and a shortage of food, as least food that is varied and good quality. The roads cannot handle the scores of tour buses that already have invaded. There is no dependable internet, and not because of censorship, etc. (at least not now). They just don't have the means to provide it. I recently returned from a nine-day tour there. The tour guides said that where, last year, there would be two or three tour buses at a venue, now there are eight or ten. We visited Trinidad on a day trip only, as there were no hotel rooms left in the town. Canadians have been able to vacation in Cuba all along, but they tend to go to beach resorts to get away from the cold, not cities.

We visited Trinidad on a day trip only, as there were no hotel rooms left in the town.>>


Maryann - I assume that the Melia and the Rivieria you are referring to are in Havana; there are however a lot of very nice casas and boutique hotels there and the infrastructure in the city is pretty good. IME there was also decent food to be had if you were prepared to look for it.

You are right that there is a severe shortage of hotel rooms in some places outside Havana, Trinidad being the most glaring example of the places we visited. Given the numbers visiting it, it seems extraordinary that there are only 3 hotels of any note. There are a lot of casas but they are of variable quality [we were staying in one that was definitely towards the bottom of the pile] and there is no quality control either of hotels or casas so far as we could see, which is odd given how bureaucratic the country is.

Other places we visited were better off, in fact it was surprising to find really quite good hotels in somewhat smaller and less popular places like Santu Spiritus and Remedios. They also seemed to have some nice casas too. [we stayed in a hotel in S/Spiritus and a casa in Remedios]. OTOH Santa Clara, which is very popular with tourists because of Che Guevara has virtually no decent places to stay at all, so far as we could tell and had a big water problem.

They are throwing up more hotels along the north coast, but I anticipate that isn't where the US tourists are going to want to go.

If I were going to advise someone, I'd say go now, before the US restrictions re removed, or leave it a few years until they have sorted themselves out.

Hmm, I thought the restrictions were because the Cuba govt. didn't want people to mix with the locals.

So all the tour companies offer escorted tours.

If it going to be like the other Caribbean islands, mostly high end resorts for the tourists with money?

I bet few years from now, there will be tours to show old hotels and cars from the '50s, long after enough money has come in to upgrade the hotel stock and newer cars become more common.

I appreciate "authentic" tourism to have more representative amenities up to a point. When I went to Puerto Iguazu last year, there were only a couple of western style hotels. A lot of the accommodations on booking.com were people offering rooms in their homes. That's probably a little too authentic for a lot of people.

But I'm sure like resorts in Mexico, they will offer hotel accommodations which are nothing like how the locals live.

No. It's our government that puts the restrictions in place. Oh, I'm sure if you got too chummy with local people, it would raise eyebrows among Cuba officials. But it's the U.S. government that has closed travel to Cuba for us, and it still prohibits us from going as independent tourists.