Diaries of a Cuban road trip (unofficial survival guide)

written by Tom

You know you're in Cuba the minute you leave the airport. The international airport highway is deserted. On occasion you will blow past a colorful 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air or old Russian Lada, spewing out smelly black smoke from the exhaust.

This article is a survival guide for road trip through real Cuba based on 2015 summer experiences.

Driving in Cuba
Going to Cuba is time traveling to 1950. The choice mode of transport on the municipal highways are horse drawn carriage. Watching the horses pulling these heavy wooden wagons, uphill, in 95 degree weather at running speed is amazing.

Daytime driving is pleasantly relaxing. Keep your eyes open though, because livestock like pigs, cows, horses and goats sometimes end up on the roads. Near the coast, the roads are covered in 10,000s of land crabs that can puncture tires. You hear crunching sounds driving through the mine field of crabs, impossible to avoid the poor little guys.

Driving at night is an extraordinary adventure as you wind through twisty, pitch black roads, dodging nearly invisible horses, bicycles and horse carriages that have no lights or even reflectors.

Need gasoline? Plan ahead. Between Varadero and Trinidad we drove for 2.5 hours without seeing a single gas station.  With 1/4 tank gas remaining, darkness upon us and bad weather ahead, we finally came across a gas station. We were pretty pretty excited only to find out the gas station was.. out of fuel. Holy hell. A few buses, cars and trucks were parked there, out of fuel, waiting for the gas station to get refilled. We decided to press on.



Police Corruption, police chases, bribes
Police drive old, slow Russian cars and park under overpasses every 50km or so. They don't have speed guns. As far as I can tell they just pull over tourist rental cars, which there aren't many of, but are easy to recognize. Put a 10 cuc cash bribe (about $10usd) into a passport, hand it to the officer and he will let you go.

If you have a sense for extraordinary adventure, when you see the police on the side of the highway, accelerate to 140km/h for a few minutes, they cannot catch you, their cars are too slow.

In any case, part of your road trip planning is to have 5 and 10cuc bills for bribes. There are no ATMs in Cuba, so what you bring is what you'll have for the trip. Exchanging money is difficult, it can take  hours to exchange 100usd, as they write down the serial number of every US bill multiple times. If you are fortunate enough to find an open bank.



The stores are empty

In America even a small town gas station has enough supplies you could live thorough a zombie apocalypse. In Cuban towns outside of Havana and tourist centers there are no stores and gas stations are mostly empty. Gas stations sell beer, water and ice cream. Except usually the ice cream freezer is empty, and sometimes there is no beer. Stock up when you come across supplies.

The extraordinary side effect is there is no garbage in the street, or even in the garbage cans. The beaches aren't covered in plastic and debris, Cuba is pura vida. 

Hungry? I drove around in downtown Matanzas for 20 minutes looking for a place to eat. Finally come across an open air plaza, a sort of Cuban food court, excited to see a menu with food and people there eating. The ancient menu had fish, pizza, burgers, chicken and steak, fries, and other items. Except they were out of pizza, fish, burgers, fries... the only thing available was chicken. And the people there weren't eating, they were drinking beers.

Cuba doesn't import goods, they only manufacture, so many things we are used to simply don't exist. Things like sun block, bug spray, coca cola, golf clubs, batteries. camera chargers, WD40, you will not find anywhere in the country. So when you pack for Cuba pack like you are going camping. Bring protein bars, water, sun block, bug spray, etc.

Driving around is safe
In several days of driving through Cuba, far from tourist areas, we didn't see or experience any indication of crime or danger. Use common sense. but in general, I don't think safety something to worry about. We picked up some hitch hikers, they were very nice. The Cubans I met were all really nice people.

You will not find internet, phone books, tourist info centers. Talk to people if you want to find stuff. You will have to speak a bit of Spanish, there is very little English in Cuba. Fortunately Cuban Spanish is easy to understand, they speak clearly and slowly.



Economy of a communist nation
Wages are fixed. Typical job pays 20cuc a month (about $20 usd). Doctors and lawyers make a bit more, 30cuc. Managers with many employees make as much as 40cuc. Things are expensive - a new car costs $40,000usd, an old one $15,000usd.  If a Cuban doctor saved 1/2 their paycheck it would take 83 years to have enough money for an old car. This explains why there is no gabage, cars, or restauants. People don't have any money to spend on things. As result, there are also no recreational activities. No tennis courts, surfing, traveling or yoga gyms.


Despite this, Cubans have access to free education, free healthcare and guaranteed home so people are chill and easy going. In the US there is much more violent crime and hustling.  In Cuba there is no debt, mortgage, insurance, which all cause much stress in our western lives.



Cubans are not allowed to own boats without special government permission, so the coastline is very surreal. No docks, ports, marinas, except in Havana. Contrast with a place like Belize where there are no beaches left, every beach is a giant dock providing tourist boat services.

The dark side
Owning a private business is illegal. Every business is government owned, with exception of a few "room for rent" casa licenses and few "dine at my house" type of restaurants.


For example if a Cuban takes a tourist scuba diving they can be fined or jailed. As result there is a secondary economy in place. Deep corruption. People find ways to make extra cash.

The guys who work for the national car rental company will remove speakers from the cars, replace with cheap ones, and sell them on black market. They will take new tires, sell them, replace with old ones. Our rental car had 1/8 tank of fuel missing, presumably they sell this on black market too and give tourists not quite full tank of gas. Check your brake pads and tires carefully.



Lawyers, doctors and other professionals work for bribe money. They are supposed to provide the same service to everyone, but in reality, big favoritism goes people who pay them under the table.


We had a buddy, a marine biologist, who wanted to take us diving, he had connections with a certain trusted government beach motel and access to a boat. We drove out to the boat and had to cancel the trip. The motel guards tipped him off that the police were staked out at lookout over the water, waiting for him. If they as much as saw him on the boat with us he would get in big trouble. We had to go dive with a the government diving company instead. There are some real inefficiencies in the Marxism.

Cuba seems to be a functional society

It's difficult to summarize such an experience. Read between the lines, and realize that Cuba is actually a somewhat functional society. Imports from USSR stopped in the 1980s, so since then they have had to keep reusing the same stuff, repairing cars, trucks, houses. But it seems to work. People seem to be healthy, education works, there is a public transportation system, clean water, electricity,  jobs, low crime, and functional police presence, low environmental impact, and many other highly positive things we don't see in other places, including the United States.

But it comes at a great cost. What's missing is the big F (freedom) and the big H (hope). The economy is so tightly controlled by the Marxist government people have no opportunity to step beyond their meaningless, unfulfilled $20/month jobs. And the Cubans, with such close ties to Miami and the United States, have big dreams and spirits of entrepreneurs. 

As a side note, you don't know who Che Guevara is, you're robbing yourself extraordinarily interesting part of recent history. Go read up.

You can see more photos here.