Travel Wisdom, Lessons, and Reflections from a New Year’s Eve in Santiago de Cuba, 1989 Some trips entertain you.Some trips relax you.And some trips — usually the ones that don’t go as planned — leave you with the kind of travel wisdom you carry for the rest of your life. My week in Cuba in …
Cuba travel stories
Santiago de Cuba, Cayo Granma, and the New Year’s Eve That Changed Everything
The Day We Went Off the Resort Map to Explore Santiago de Cuba and the Island of Cayo Granma We met another couple at the resort who understood a simple truth about 1980s travel: if you want to really see a place, you ask the people who live there. They spoke to the towel attendant — a woman with …
Climbing Gran Piedra & Exploring the Cuban Countryside
A Day That Felt Like Stepping Inside Cuba’s Soul After the moped adventure, I thought nothing else on this trip could surprise me. I was wrong. We signed up for a bus tour to a location called Gran Piedra. It was the kind that promises “local sights” and “authentic experiences,” though you never …
The Moped Adventure in Cuba That Changed Everything
Up until this point, the trip had been a mix of surprises and small disappointments — rocky beaches, rationed towels, food that didn’t quite agree with me. But everything shifted the morning we finally got our hands on two mopeds and set out on a moped adventure in Cuba! We woke before sunrise, …
The Cuba Resort That Wasn’t Expected
When I booked my Cuba resort in the late 1980s, I imagined something similar to my Dominican Republic trip — soft sand, turquoise water, and maybe a little diving if I was able. But stepping into the southeast corner of the island quickly taught me that this wasn’t Varadero, and this wasn’t the kind …
Canadian Travel to Cuba in the 1980s: The Other Side
Part 1: Santiago vs Varadero The late 1980s were a hopeful kind of decade — at least for me. I was young, curious, falling for someone new, and just beginning to peek beyond the borders of my home country. I’d traveled to the U.K. for work, spent a week in the Dominican Republic, and somewhere in …
