Winter weeks in Cuba CALL OF THE WILD: RARE CREATURES, VIRGIN BEACHES AND SALSA SPOTS
FIERY FESTIVAL
Las Parrandas de Remedios, a festival in the small central Cuban town of the same name, dates back to the 18th century but has been growing ever more popular with visitors. Starting around December 16, it culminates on Christmas Eve in a terrifying firework competition between two barrios. Unique, it is gratifyingly close to the beautiful beaches of Cayo Santa María (book through cubagrouptour. com). Shift to Havana for New Year and be surrounded by music and dance. I would suggest renting a beautiful house like Villa Flora (villaflora.com) so you have a sanctuary from the bedlam. Alternatively, cubaprivatetravel.com is excellent for alternative accommodation.
DIVE DEEP
Lorena Gonzalez Casuso is a champion free-diver who is happy to teach visitors the basics of a sport that takes you where, she says, you are “surrounded by the blue”. The waters off Havana are magnificent and full of fish, although travel with her to María la Gorda or Playa Larga and it gets even better. Lorena is also a superb spear-fisher, if that’s your thing. Contact her through her Instagram (loreoceancuba).
COUNTRY ROADS
It’s a great time for a road trip. You will be welcomed with gratitude and alacrity as the first foreigners seen in two years. Journey Latin America (JLA) offers Trailblazer Cuba, a 10-day self-drive holiday, for £2,290 per person including international flights, excursions and prebooked places to stay. If you prefer not to drive, JLA also offers a variety of guided tours (020 8747 8315; journeylatinamerica.co.uk).
HAPPY HOUR
There are great new bars in Havana. Yarini (yarinihabana. com), named after a pimp who ran the old town barrio of San Isidro in the early 1900s, lit up interlockdown Havana. There is also Loft (Calle Oficios 402 e/ Luz y Acosta) which serves great Cuban cocktails, including the far too obscure Canchánchara in its traditional clay pot. But the place I’m most excited about, which will open in January, is Bleco. Set on Havana’s famed corniche, the Malecón, it is owned by one of Cuba’s most fabulous dancers, Lía Rodríguez (@liainside on Instagram) and has the city’s best barman, Wilson Hernández, making the drinks. It will be the place to party this winter.
CUBA BY AIR
While the roads in Cuba are better than you might imagine, the distances and potholes can be huge. Cuba Private Travel offers to lift you above all that. They will fly you to the island on an 18-seater twin prop from Cancún and then stop over in Havana, Cienfuegos, Baracoa, and Santiago, relaxing at the beach in Cayo Coco. This trip has the additional advantage of CPT’s brilliant owner Johnny Considine, who is my go-to for definitive advice on all the best places to stay – and should be yours, too.
CHASING SILVER The finest natural environment in all of Cuba – and there’s a lot of competition – is Jardines de la Reina, a paradise archipelago off the south coast. It is a preeminent diving destination but is also the place to fly-fish for tarpon, bonefish and permit. You stay on a live-aboard boat for a week, hosted by Avalon (cubanfishingcenters.com). Having been left alone for two years, it will be particularly spectacular this winter.
NEW CASAS ON THE RISE Some of Havana’s most beautiful houses are being restored and turned into guest houses and home stays. The newest, and among the most beautiful, are JM7 and JM5 ( jesusmaria7.com) with rooms looking out over Havana Bay. This is where Spanish treasure galleons once gathered before crossing the Atlantic. For elegance and to mainline into Havana’s rich theatrical life try Economía 156 (economia156. com), owned by Jazz Martinez-Gamboa, an actor and director, and his partner Stephen Bayly, former director of Britain’s National Film and Television School. Or take over all of Gardens’ four rooms (gardenshavana.com). Restored by Yunior Riveron, it is a real gem right in the middle of Old Havana’s liveliest barrio.
ALL-INCLUSIVE OR
PAY AS YOU GO
Cuba has always been good for a getaway in an all-inclusive beach hotel. And right now, TUI is offering a seven-night stay at Varadero’s Royalton Hicacos from £840 per person in December, flying from Manchester. Personally, I prefer to pay as I go as the service is better. Royalton has just opened Mystique Casa Perla (mystiqueresorts.com), a rare boutique hotel on Varadero’s perfect white sand, which I haven’t yet visited. The best new spot is Kempinski’s resort on the gorgeous Playa Pilar in Cayo Guillermo (kempinski.com). I wrote about it last year just as it tried to open, but it was derailed by the pandemic. It will now open in January.
A SMOKE WITH BIG TOBY There isn’t a more storied English expatriate in Havana than Toby Brocklehurst. Ask for a “Tobito” in one of the city’s many bars and you will be served a mojito in a pint glass. Meet him at the beach and you will be faced by a wobbly table set out with lobster and the finest grilled snapper, and by the big man himself pulling
HP sauce and Gentleman’s Relish from a bag. But for the true Toby experience, accompany him on a tour of the tobacco fields of Vuelta Abajo, what he calls: “the Bordeaux of tobacco regions” (contact him at info@incloud9.com).
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RUM PUNCH-UP
Rum, another great Cuban speciality, is having its moment. Havana Club (havana-club.com) is the most famous, but others are fighting for their place. We who live here invariably reach for Santiago de Cuba (ronsantiagodecuba. com), which has recently rebranded and added an eight-year-old to its portfolio. Its website offers recipe ideas. If spiced rum is your thing, well, God help you, but Black Tears (blacktears.com) is the new pirate on the block, its name taken from the beautiful song Lagrimas Negras. Most sophisticated though is Eminente (eminente.com), from luxury brand LVMH. They have even opened a Cuban hotel in Paris to celebrate their new drink, just in case you can’t make it all the way here (hoteleminente.com).
way back in (2½ hours from Viñales) to a farm-to-table lunch cooked by Paristrained chef Annabelle at Finca Tungasuk (tungasuk.com; £22pp).
SUGAR BOOM TOWNS, WILDLIFE & ROOTS OF RELIGION
Sunseekers fly and flop on the 13 miles of glittering white sand at Varadero, Cuba’s popular beach resort, two hours’ east of Havana. But next door, and still under-explored, is Matanzas, the “Athens of Cuba”, a sugar-boom colonial city with deep African roots. Take in ballet at the restored frescoed Sauto Theatre, the handcrafted books at Ediciones Vigía (facebook.com/vigiaediciones), and the world’s only preserved 19thcentury French pharmacy on the main plaza. Connect with collective El Almacén (facebook.com/senderoalmacen) for musical know-how, with Sala de Conciertos José White (facebook.com/ SaladeConciertosJoseWhite) for jazz, son and danzón, and with mixed-media sculptor Osmany Betancourt “Lolo” (osmanybetancourt.com) at Galería Taller on the San Juan River waterfront.
Between the Cuban crocs, pink flamingos and endemic birdlife of the Zapata swamp are the turquoise waters of the Bay of Pigs, rich in coral, fish, and war wrecks. Stay with locals at B&Bs in Caletón – one good option is bright beachfront B&B El Varadero (bbelvaradero.com; from £37). Caletón delivers a beachside location with a mix of B&Bs, independent restaurants and bars. Serious birders should contact Orestes Martínez (chino.zapata@gmail.com). Martínez worked with Colin StaffordJohnson on the BBC’s visual feast Wild Cuba: A Caribbean Journey.
In Cuba’s wild east, epic mountain scenery shelters rare wildlife, rivers, coffee plantations and unspoilt beaches hundreds of miles from all-inclusive resorts. In quirky Baracoa, the first city founded by the Spaniards in 1511, your secret weapons are Roberto and Manuel from Villa Paradiso (villaparadisobaracoa. com). They’ll find you guides for Unesco-listed Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, passionate chefs cooking up locavore cuisine, archaeologists to show you Taíno relics, and bikes to pedal to those wild beaches for coconut-infused meals and rum cocktails on the sand.
In Santiago, you won’t find Bond ally Ana de Armas, but you will find the best salsa dancers on the island. For the finest footwork, travel with Caledonia (caledoniaworldwide.com), a company that has been running dance holidays to Cuba for 20 years. Need to cool off ? Climb to the Unesco-protected coffee plantation ruin at La Isabelica, outside the city – once the largest coffee-growing area in the world until the mid 19th-century.