It feels like a lifetime ago that we were in Havana.
In all our travels, we have never come across a city like this.
Frozen in time. That’s the best way to describe it. One of the most difficult things about this trip for us was booking a place to stay. We knew we wanted to stay at a casa particulares in Havana – A casa particulares is like a homestay where you go and stay with locals in their houses. The problem was that there were tons and tons of them advertised on AirBnB and Booking.com with hardly any reviews. Everything was cheap. Luckily for us, we are quite certain that we found the best casa particulares in Havana!
We ended up staying at Hostal Coabana (Habitacion, Privada 2) run by the lovely Andres and his wife. They booked a taxi for us from the airport for 30cuc/£23, which took around 20 minutes. Based in the heart of old Havana, you’re close to all major tourist attractions and famous cafes, bars and restaurants. We were able to walk everywhere.
And the best thing about the place is that you get …WiFi!!!. Amazing right?! Let me tell you why this is amazing.
Cuban WiFI situation
The thing about Cuba is that internet is very scarce. You need to buy one-hour internet vouchers to get browsing. The voucher itself is 1cuc/£0.70. But on the “black market” aka people on the street selling internet cards, you can get it for 2 cuc. Once you find a voucher you then need to find a WiFi zone to access the internet. Wifi zones are in public areas such as parks, so it’s unlikely that your casa particulares may have internet. And so it’s unlikely that you’d be able to have a quick scroll on Instagram from the comfort of your bed (first world problems, I know). Luckily the casa particulares we stayed in was a 5-minute walk away from a WiFi zone.
Using an antenna on his rooftop that is aimed at the wifi tower in the park nearby, Andres is able to make the apartment a wifi hotspot. All you need to do is use one of your vouchers and connect to the wifi hotspot. Everyone else in the apartment could also then connect to the internet for free. We were surprised with free internet one morning when the guests in the next room did it. Technology is magic. (NB: Obviously because this is all magic, there are times when you don’t get a signal in the apartment. This is the main reason why Andres doesn’t advertise they have wifi in the place).
The WiFi is not the only thing great about this casa particulares. They provide a free local breakfast as well. Made by a lovely abuelita every morning. It consists of fruits and juice plus a big piece of Tostada Cubana (Cuban Toast). I have searched high and low for photos of our breakfast but unfortunately, we didn’t take any :((
Anyway, if this hasn’t persuaded you to stay at this lovely place, hope the (very) few pictures we took of the apartment convince you.
If you enjoyed reading this, why not check out our post on the trip to Lapland, Finland here.
Happy Travels!
Amana
