Libson to Cuba

We left Lisbon relatively early, and made our way to the Airport. Even though we've travelled quite often over the past 8 years, pretty much all of it has been quite 'safe' travel, going to mostly just European countries and the US. While it's been fantastic to see all of the amazing places we've been to over the years, heading off to Cuba made us realise how safe we had been taking our travel.

I think we're going to be in for a bit of a culture shock over the next few months as we travel around.

First of all, we realised that our backpacks were relatively insecure, and we had read in the guidebooks (and also heard from a friend with first-hand experience) that the baggage handlers in Cuba will often just help themselves. It was in this vein that we decided we probably should get our bags cling-wrapped, and padlocked as much as possible. It's the first time we've ever really done this, but it was pretty good and only cost about £6 per bag, with a whole bunch of insurance attached to it as well. I'd really recommend it.

Our flight from Lisbon to Madrid was on an Embraer ERJ jet, and neither Nikki or I had been on a jet that was this small (we've been on lots of smaller planes, but not jets). There were only 3 seats across. It was really cool. It was with a company called Air Europa, and we weren't really sure what to expect with them to be honest.

Our flight from Madrid to Havana was delayed by about 3 hours, and considering we were going to be getting in originally to Havana at 9 pm, this was going to make it quite a late arrival. As we were staying at a Casa Particulare in Havana, and we had arranged it through a different Casa Particulare, we didn't even really have contact details for our accommodation.

Arriving to Havana, we had quite a bit to sort out - we assumed customs was going to be a bit of a hassle, and then we had to buy some local currency, as you are not able to get Cuban Convertible Pesos outside of Cuba. We actually managed to get through the airport and all of these things sorted very quickly, and then we ventured outside to work out how to get a taxi. We were feeling a little wary, as we had read in guide books about how taxi drivers may try and rip you off, but we managed to find one very easily and quickly and he was an absolute gentleman. Even with this said, as it had been some time since we had gone outside our comfort zone from a travel perspective for a while, we were both feeling a little on edge. This coupled with the fact that it was almost 2am, and we were driving down a back street in Centro Habana which was basically large potholes holding hands and piles of rubbish in the street, we weren't sure what to expect. We met our host who we had been negotiating with over the internet.

He took us to our other hostel (Casa B&B Armando) which was just down the street and we finally crashed into bed after a long day.