Considering holidays in Cuba? Excellent, this is one island in the Caribbean where you will want to do more than just a beach holiday. The people are bright, self-assertive and handsome. The heritage of Cuba is so rich as are the monuments and palaces throughout the country.

The country has evolved with a strong personality from its experience from Spanish colonization, slavery, civil war, invasion, revolution and relentless economic embargo. Havana the islands proud capital is energetically restoring the buildings of its elegant historic quarters and the grand old cities of Santiago de Cuba and Trinidad still recall their 16th century beginnings.

Go hiking or horseback riding in the countryside and you will see the palm trees and other subtropical flora in their green plenty in a landscape alternating rugged mountains with pleasant valleys farmland. The resorts do ample justice to Cuba’s tangy Caribbean cuisine—good seafood, great beach barbecues, luscious fruit— not forgetting those famous rum cocktails.

One in three visitors to Cuba heads straight for its biggest resort, Varadero, some 100 km (60 miles) east of Havana. Many can not tear themselves away from its magnificent beaches on the Atlantic Ocean. At the western end of the island, beyond Havana in the Pinar del Rioprovince, enjoy the quieter, slower pace of rural Cuba in the pretty country side hugging the Cordillera de Guaniguanico mountains. At Vinales, you can go horseback riding to admire the strange mogote mounds and explore the caves.

The Pinar del Rio region is of course most famous for producing the tobacco that goes into the best Havana cigars. The main plantations are concentrated in the triangle formed by the towns of Pinar del RIo itself, San Luis and San Juan y Martinez and, fur ther west, in the fabled Vuelta Abajo area along the Cuyaguateje river. But tobacco accounts only for a small fraction of the region’s farmland. Fields of sugar cane blanket the eastern plains until rice paddies take over to fill the marshlands south of Los Palacios. Cattle herds graze the Guaniguanico foothills and citrus or chards, grapefruit and oranges, occupy the western area around Sandino.

In Varadero hotels and beaches stretch along 20km (12 miles) of white sands on the Hicacos peninsula jutting out from the Atlantic coast of Matanzas province. Cuban holiday-makers have been com ing here since 1872, but it was launched as an international re sort with the 1929 purchase of land here by US munitions and chemical magnate Eleuthère Irénée Du Pont. He built himself a huge sprawling mansion, yacht ing harbour, iguana farm, golf course and airstrip. At the height of the American Depression, other American millionaires fol lowed, including Mafia boss Al Capone from Chicago—his home is now a restaurant named La Casa de Al.

Today, Canadian and European tourists come to Cuba’s 35 most popular playground for its super water sports facilities by day and the countless discotecas and the hotels’ lavish cabaret floorshows by night.

Cuba’s heartland stretches from the sugar and coffee plantations around the Guamuhaya (or Escambray) mountains of Cienfuegos to the cattle pastures of the Camaguey plains. As the region that has traditionally separated the poor peasants of the Oriente from the wealthy land-owners around Havana in the west, it has played a significant role in Cuban history. It has witnessed the early Spanish settlers’ fleeting dreams of gold in Trinidad, the first serious campaigns for independence led by the sugar-planters and Camaguey cattle barons, and, in modern times, Che Guevara’s decisive defeat of Batista’s troops at Santa Clara in 1958, followed three years later by the debacle of the Cuban exiles’ Bay of Pigs invasion. And the Ancón peninsula offers the best beaches on Cuba’s south coast.

Landscape:

Three mountainous regions account for more than a third of the total land mass. In the south— eastern oriental region, The Sierra Maestra range, extending from Cabo Cruz to Guantanamo is rich in flora and fauna and includes the island’s highest peak, Pico Turquino, alt: 1,972 metres (6,470 ft).

Cuba is the biggest island in the Caribbean, almost as big as all the others put together. It stands at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, its western end only 145 km (90 miles) from Florida’s Key West. Haiti is even closer, 77 km (48 miles) to the east across the Windward Passage.

The island extends some 1,300 km (over 800 miles) in length. At its widest point, it measures about 200 km (124 miles), and at its narrowest, just 5 km (22 miles) across. Cuba comprises an archipelago of around 1 ,600 isles and cayos (cays), the largest being the Isla de Ia Juventud (Isle of Youth) south of Batabanó Bay. Sheltered by long coral reefs, the coastal beaches face the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean to the northeast, Jamaica and the Caribbean Sea to the south.

Cuba’s offshore isles, islets, cayos (keys), and rocky sandbars with a tree or two, number in all 4,195, grouped in five archipelagos around the main island. The biggest, Isla de la Juventud, has been inhabited since prehistoric times, the others worth a visit have been partly transformed into modern beach resorts—Cayo Guillermo, Cayo Largo, Cayo Romano and Cayo Coco—each with superb white sands and good facilities for swimming, sailing and deep-sea fishing.

Flora:

The Flora numbers no less than 8.1(00 varieties, Dense sub-tropical forest cover the humid lower mountain slopes, providing valuable timber products. Woods on the higher, drier slopes are principally pine and eucalyptus. The island boasts an astonishing assortment of palm trees, the best known being the royal palm, indigenous to Cuba.

Economy:
Sugar and its derivatives are the principal source of revenue, followed by tobacco, the Cuban cigar still being the most sought after in the world—and favourite contraband into the United States. Other sources are cattle breeding and fisheries, while agricultural products include rice, beans, coffee, maize and fruit.

Weather:

Thanks to the warm waters of the Gull Stream and the trade winds (northeast in the summer, southeast in winter), the island’s climate is moderate and stable, sub tropical but less hot than elsewhere in the Caribbean. In Havana, the average temperature hovers around 25°C (77°F). The dry season lasts from November to mid-May and the rainy season from end-May to October.

Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Varadero and the other beach resorts rarely have more than two consecutive days of rain if they come at all. Hurricanes blow into the Caribbean from June to November—150 recorded in the 500 years after Christopher Columbus nearly lost his fleet. Since then, Cuba has installed an excellent early-warning system. The worst storms usually arrive in September and October, blowing torrential rain with winds of up to 250 km an hour (nearly 160 mph).

The people:
The island’s population is just over 11,000,000 and a fifth of them is living in Havana, the largest city in the Caribbean—in addition to some 700,000 exiles, mostly in Miami. Other major cities are Santiago de Cuba (440,000), Camagiiey (294,000) and Holguin (242,000).

According to official census figures, 70 per cent of Cubans are white, 12 per cent black, most of them in Oriental provinces, and 17 per cent mixed (mestizo and mulatto). It is generally agreed, however, that the percentage of “mixed blood” is much higher, perhaps as much as half the population. (The island’s Caribbean Indians were almost totally wiped out under Spanish colonization.).

At any rate, the blend of Spanish and African has produced men and women of often quite stunning good looks, lithe and graceful.

Airports
Most international flights serve Havana’s José MartI Airport, Varadero and Santiago de Cuba. The terminals provide banking, car- hire and tourist information office services, in addition to duty-free shop, restaurant and snack bar facilities. There are bus and taxi links to town.

Climate or Weather
Caressed by the prevailing north east trade winds, the island’s climate is agreeably sub-tropical, most often around 25°C (77°F), rising to an average 28°C (82°F) in July and August and “dipping” to 22°C (71°F) in the coolest month, February. The east, especially the mountains, gets more rain than the west. The hurricane season is from June to November, most likely in September and October and more often in the west around Havana and Pinar del Rio than in the east. Storm winds can reach 250 kph (156 mph). Swimmers take note: Caribbean waters are slightly warmer than the Atlantic.

Communications
Postal services, as almost every where these days, are very slow and unreliable. If you have urgent mail, ask your hotel about the international courier services available. The island’s telephone services are problematic, though a phone card system is being progressively installed in the major tourist areas. Calls are best handled through your hotel, which also usually has fax facilities. Check the price first to avoid unpleasant surprises. The outgoing code is 119.

Crime
Cuba is much safer than other Latin American countries—and many places in North America. Pickpockets, however, work the tourist areas of Havana and the resort towns. A much sought- after item is your passport, so keep it well-protected. Street-corner hustlers (jineteros) are an in evitable offshoot of tourism and economic difficulties, but beggars and anyone else that hassles you can be shooed off with a calm “Por favor, no moleste “— “Please, don’t bother me.”

Driving
The island has a well-developed network of roads, with a main highway linking Pinar del Rio to Guantánamo, more than 1,120 km (700 miles) away, and several good coastal highways between the resorts.

Driving is on the right. The rules follow Western European and North American norms and speed limits—50 kph (30 mph) in town, 90 kph (56 mph) on paved country highways, 100 kph (62 mph) on the Autopista Nacional.

To rent a car, you must be 21 or over, have a valid driver’s licence and preferably an internationally accepted credit card (not drawing on a US bank).

Even when there is a shortage for Cubans, fuel is usually avail able to foreign tourists at 24-hour Servi-Cupet filling stations. Tolls are charged on major highways and the Cayos cause ways.

Electric Current
The current is mostly 110 volts, 60 cycles, with US-style flat-pin plugs, but European-run hotels are increasingly equipped with 220-volt current and round-pin plugs, so be prepared with an adaptor for both.

Emergencies
Most problems can be handled at your hotel desk. Telephone number for police is 116, for fire 115, and for ambulance 118, Spanish- speaking only. Consular help is there only for critical situations, lost passports or worse, not for lost cash or plane tickets.

Essentials
Travel light, especially as far as clothing is concerned. You won’t need much formal wear. Pack a sun-hat and add a sweater for cool evenings. Good walking shoes are vital, especially for the mountains, and sandals or moccasins for the beach. Bring along sun-block, insect repellent and a pocket torch (flashlight) in case of electricity cuts.

Formalities
Apart from a passport, still valid for at least six months after you enter Cuba, you should obtain a tourist card (tarjeta de turista), usually provided by your travel agency or tour operator. Keep it safe during your stay as you will need to hand it in when leaving. (US citizens are discouraged only by their own government, not at all by Cuban authorities, who give them a warm welcome if they come equipped with an appropriate tarjeta de turista and will not put a potentially embarrassing stamp in their passports.)
At entry, DVDs, DVD players and computers with incorporated player will be confiscated at customs. When you leave Cuba, customs officers always look out for cigars, so if you buy them, keep your official receipts. The free export limit without a receipt is 23 cigars per person. US customs will confiscate Cuban cigars.

Religion:

The island’s Catholic community, 85 per cent of the population before the 1959 revolution, is making a comeback, especially since the Pope’s visit in 1998, though they still number fewer than 40 per cent. More popular are the Afro-Cuban Santerla cults blending West African Yoruba rituals with references to Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary.

After 40 years of subservience to the Marxist demands of the Cuban Revolution, open religious observance is back in force on the island. But it is not the Catholic church that is the most popular. The dominant religion remains Santeria, created 500 years ago by African slaves, amalgamating Christianity with the animist cults of Yoruba tribes of West Africa and others from the Congo region. Today, there are more than 10,000 Babalao conducting the rituals of Santeria, while the Catholic churches, progressively re opened since the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998, number fewer than 300 priests.

Forbidden to practise their traditional cults, Afro-Cubans sought to preserve their cultural heritage by paying lip-service to Catholic saints and various aspects of the Virgin Mary while identifying these with their own tribal deities, orishas. In rituals similar to Haitian voodoo and Brazilian mocumba and ubanda, these prestigious deified ancestors are invoked— like the saints and Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church—to deal with the daily problems of the Santeras. There are perhaps some 40 Cuban orishas in all, but only half are the object of regular worship. To the Santeros, St Francis of Assisi for Orula, a revered deity of knowledge and divination who is consulted, for instance, by worshippers embarking on an important journey. Orula’s wife, Ochun, is the sensual goddess of love and femininity, identified with the Virgin Mary of Charity, patron saint of Cuba, whose statue was found off the coast of El Cobre (Oriente) in 1605. Ochi is nonetheless also the mistress of, among others, Ogun, god of iron, mountains and wisdom, famous for his great anger and assimilated to St Peter. The warrior orisha Chango is St Barbara, Christian patron of artillery. Jesus is associated with Oddua, god of the dead and of ghosts and invoked to revive the dying. Another important manifestation of Mary, the Virgin of Merced, is regarded as Obatala, who reigns the divinity of creation. The “black” Virgin of a Regla is Yemayá, goddess of the sea and sailors.

Night life

There are some people who come to Cuba and never see it by the light of day. And still have a fine time. Even those who do not intend staying up all night and sleeping all day should enjoy one of the best sides of Cuban life and join the exuberant islanders in their singing, dancing and all-round party-going.

Nightclubs, bars, cabarets and discotheques abound in Havana, Varadero and Santiago de Cuba. You should know in advance that you cannot hope to combine an evening of good music and dancing with an early night.

Many of the favourite nightspots do not really get started or even open be fore 10p.m. and then goon to the wee small hours of the morning.

We guide you here to the best known places. Most are well established institutions, but on the fast-changing Cuban entertainment scene, some inevitably close, some change their names. However, one of the great pleasures of Cuba for the more adventurous is to stumble on an open-air party when the fun on a hot night has spilled out onto the street or beach. Strangers are almost always welcome, all the more so if they bring a good bottle of rum. These places you must find for yourself. Just follow the sound of the music.

Tropicana
This huge nightclub, open-air in fair weather, is certainly the most famous in Cuba and perhaps in the whole Caribbean. A national institution since its opening in 1939, it is located at the south end of Vedado, quite far out in the city’s western outskirts, but is served by shuttle-buses stopping at the major hotels. Prices may seem steep, including transportation and one cocktail, but you get your money’s worth. The floorshow is truly spectacular, with scores of gorgeous, extravagantly costumed dancers, male and female, strutting their stuff on the stage and snaking their way among the tables in an exotic setting of tropical vegetation. The atmosphere is quite as intoxicating as the freely flowing rum, tempting the most staid custurners to get up on their chairs and dance.

Parisien

The opulent cabaret is located in the hotel whose guests once ranged from Winston Churchill to Ava Gardner—and several less savoury but equally renowned American mafiosi such as Meyer Lansky. Before the Revolution, Frank Sinatra sang here. Today, you can enjoy a splashy floor- show, smaller in scale than the Tropicana (and priced more modestly), but just as lively, and then launch into your own salsa, rumba and mambo when the dance- floor is opened to disco music.

Copa Rum
Replacing the legendary Palacio de Ia Salsa, the old hotel’s night club has been refurbished to capture the glittering atmosphere of the 1950s. Under the old nick name of the famous Copacabana, it has two floorshows, at 10 p.m. and midnight, with prices moderately expensive.

Café Cantante.

There are no frills here, and the prices are more modest, but the performance of Havana’s most celebrated son and salsa groups such as Los Van Van and Charanga Habanera make this club in the basement of the national theatre a favourite nightspot for young Cubans. You may have to compete with long queues of Habaneros to get in, but it is well worth it for the high-octane ambience. Whether there is a concert or disco, people are dancing non stop.

Delirio Habanero

Despite its delirious name, this café bar upstairs in the national theatre has a more sedate atmosphere than most of the other clubs. It attracts mostly Cuban students and artists listening and occasionally dancing to the city’s newest groups. The music is first class and the price of drinks very reasonable.

La Tropical
Located on the southern outskirts of town, this big open-air night club is without doubt Havana’s hottest spot, where 9 out of 10 guests are Cubans. This is the place to learn the newest Latin American dances. To enjoy the uninhibited atmosphere to the full, but without unnecessary paranoia, leave your jewels and extra cash at the hotel.

La Zorra y el Cuervo.
With an old bright red London telephone box for its entrance, “The Vixen and the Crow” presents the best in live Afro-Cuban and Latin American jazz in a modest but pleasant club atmosphere—but for listening rather than dancing. The prices are moderate.

Cabaret Continental in Varadero.

The beach resort is huge and equally expensive counterpart to Havana’s Tropicana, with a show at 10p.m. followed by disco dancing. The floorshow is dazzling, and the costumes awesomely daring.

La Cueva del Pirata in Varadero.

The “Pirate’s Cave” provides a colourful setting for its 10 p.m. floorshow followed by boisterous disco dancing. Prices moderate.

La Bamba in Varadero

Varadero’s liveliest and most popular beachfront disco, with futuristic decoration and videos. Moderate to expensive.

Activities

For family swimming, the long white sandy beaches at Varadero, Guardalavaca and on the Cayos are a sheer delight. Remember that the waters are calmer in the winter on the south and west coasts (November to April) and in summer on the north coast (May to September).

Wind-surfing equipment is available for rent at most resorts. Besides Varadero and Guardalavaca, the best conditions are at Cayo Largo and Marea del Portillo, the black-sand beach on the south coast of the Sierra Maestra. Surfers have to bring their own boards to enjoy the great waves brought in by the northeast trade winds on the Atlantic coast from December to April and, on the Caribbean coast, in August and September.

Diving
At Havana, Marina Hemingway, 20km (12 miles) west of the city centre, provides good facilities and training courses for sCuba diving, as do most of the major resorts. Aficionados home in on Cayo Coco and MarIa La Gorda. For exploring underwater caves, try Varadero and Playa Girón. Both Varadero (through Cubancan Nautica near the Kawama hotel) and Havana’s Marina Hemingway rent out yachts for day trips or for overnight with lobster meals and drinks galore.

Fishing
The Gulf Stream creates conditions for deep-sea fishing at its best on the northwest coast Havana, Varadero, Cayo Guillermo and Guardalavaca’s Bahia de Naranjo for barracuda, sailfish, shark, swordfish, tuna and mackerel. For freshwater lake fishing for bass, perch and trout, try Pinar del Rio’s Laguna Grande and Moron’s Laguna La Redonda (easy access by causeway from Cayo Coco).

Horseback Riding
The beach resorts hire out horses by the hour, as does Havana’s Parque Lenin. For longer treks, you might try the tourist ranches near Trinidad at Casa del Campesino or Los Molinos. Other good facilities in the interior are available in the Viñales valley and Pinar del Rio.

Hiking
The most ambitious hiking trails are to be found in the Sierra Maestra national park, but there are also delightful rambles in the forests around the Gran Piedra and, in the west, Soroa and Viñales. In the absence of detailed trail-maps, it may be best to hire a local guide.

Golf
You will find an 18-hole course at Varadero’s Las Americas club and nine holes at the Havana Golf Club. More are planned.

Architecture
The elegant, even grand, colonial mansions still evident in Havana, Santiago do Cuba and Trinidad combine traditional elements of 1 6th- and 1 7th-century Spanish architecture and its earlier Moorish influences with the special needs of the Cuban climate. No table Moorish features are the ornately carved wooden balconies, and the inner central patio around which the residential quarters are built. Entrances to 1 7th-centur houses are relatively austere, wit plain wooden doors set between simple Grecian-style pillars. The 18th-century mansions are more elaborately baroque. Entrances have monumental columns and sculpted pediments framing doors of carved wood-panelling. They lead to a patio with ornate fountains, surrounded by porticoes on the ground floor and arcaded loggias on the upper storeys, to pro vide shelter from the sub-tropical sun and rains. The more sober neoclassical residences of the 19th century replace the upper-floor arcades with painted wooden window-shutters.

Béisbol
Yes, baseball is Cuba’s national sport. A version of the United States’ national game, which Arcwak Indians called batos, existed here even before the Spanish arrived. It developed in its modern form with the growth of American influence in the late 19th century. Today every town has a baseball diamond. Encouraged by Fidel Castro who impressed Americans in 1 950s with his talent as a pitcher, Cuba’s national team is the best in Latin America and be came Olympic champions at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996.

Carnival
The Cubans’ taste for festivities, public and private, reaches its climax with the two great carnivals celebrated in Santiago de Cuba, usually the last week in July, and in Havana for three weeks in August. For the capital’s procession through the streets of La Habana Vieja, the neighbour- hoods stage comparsa: spectacles of masked and costumed dancers, singers and musicians playing the conga. Each comparsa enacts a traditional theme. These include the life of the colonial aristocracy, Los Marqueses; the erotic or social satire of Los Guaracheros; or the legendary massacre of El Alacrán (the scorpion). Santiago’s comparsas date back to the late 17th-century festivities for St James, the town’s patron saint, but the music is resolutely modern Afro-Cuban. The distinctive “sound” of the Santiago carnival is provided by the corneta China, a flute introduced by Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.

Music:
In 1997, Buena Vista Social Club exploded on the international scene with records and the documentary film of Wim Wonders. In their 70s and 80s, singers Cam pay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer and pianist Ruben Gonzalez suddenly became world stars. They reintroduced Europeans and Americans to the magic of Afro-Cuban music.

The richness of Cuban music derives from its mixture of African and Spanish rhythms and instruments. The first European music that African slaves encountered in Cuba was that of the Catholic Church and of Spanish military brass bands. To this was added the fiery drum rhythms learned in Africa, mostly in the Congo and Nigeria. The music was further enriched in the 17th century with the introduction of the Spanish Zarzuela, a popular musical play using folk songs for winy and satirical treatment of everyday life. Between acts of the musical melodramas, the old satirical tornadilla songs were given a frankly erotic twist by guaracheros who specialized in sexual innuendos. Occasionally, a touch of bucolic “innocence” was added by guajiro peasant songs created by workers on the sugar and tobacco plantations.

Spanish colonial musicians such as 19th-century composer- pianist lgnacio Cervantes spiced up traditional danzón folk-dances with Afro-Cuban rhythms. The most famous was his Habanera. In the 20th century, Amadeo Roldan included instruments of African origin in his symphonic orchestra. By the 1 930s, Ernesto Lecuona, whose talents had attracted the attention of composers Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin and pianist Arthur Rubinstein, introduced the world to Afro-Cuban jazz with his band, the Lecuona Cuban Boys.

To the Spanish lute and guitar, Afro-Cuban musicians added the three-stringed Tres and a whole panoply of percussion instruments for the all-important rhythm section: bongo, Udu and Conga drums; the marimbula, a xylo phone plucked rather than hammered; claves, a pair of cylindrical hardwood sticks tapped one on the other in the palm of the hand; maracas rattles and ser rated güiros fashioned from hollow gourds.

The romantic trova ballad had its beginnings in Santiago de Cubo, usually sung as a duet of trovadores, with a melancholy homespun philosophy. The best known is Guantanamera. More properly Guajira Guantamero (Guantánamo Peasant-Girl), this most famous of all Cuban songs, composed in 1929 by Joseito Fernández, later had text added from José Marti’s 1891 Versos Sencillos.

At the origin of practically all contemporary Cuban dance music is the son created in the 1 920s the mountains of Oriente province and the streets of Santiago. Classically, the songs are an exchange, often improvised, between soloist and the musicians’ choral back-up. Typical is Corn- pay Segundo’s Chan Chan, now rivalling Guantanamera in popularity in Cuban bars.

The rumba, born in the back- street slums of Havana and Matanzas and popularized in New York in 1 920s, had its beginnings religious rituals of the santeria, where tune was less important than strong rhythm. Since, for white American tastes, Cuban rumba was felt to be too erotic in its slow yambó form or frenzied guagancó, Cubans proposed the more sedate mambo and cha-cha cha in the 40s and SOs. Today, purists scorn the ever-popular salsa as a hybrid combination of Cuba’s lyrical son with American jazz and rock’n roll, forgetting the mixed African and Spanish origins of all Cuban music.

Even when music isn’t pouring out of a cassette recorder on the balcony, Afro-Cuban rhythms seem to punctuate conversation and even moments of silence, when the islanders may start to sway their shoulders and hips or shuffle their feet to the imagined beat of a salsa, mambo, rumba or cha-cha-chá. If Mexico and Brazil are the Cubans’ favorite Latin American countries, it’s because of the shared taste for their music, drawing on Spanish, African and distant, but never entirely lost, American Indian roots.

Even when life is at its toughest, the Cubans find time for a party in a backyard or down at the beach—and happily invite curious passers-by, who make themselves even more welcome when they bring a bottle of rum.

A bit of History:

Christopher Columbus disembarked on October 28, 1492, somewhere between Gibara and Guardalavaca. Following threats of mutiny and an overnight rain- storm, he wrote with undisguised relief in his journal: “Everything I saw was so lovely that my eyes could not weary beholding such beauty.”