After checking in, we headed out for the closest town to change some money, get a Wifi connection (none in the marina) and rent a car. I was curious to see if those ancient American cars from the fifties were only around the big city of Havana or all over the country, and, to my delight, we passed some beautiful colorful old cars in really good shape, sharing the road with horse ridden cart (called coche) all over! Driving in Cuba is a sport, avoiding obstacles and changing gear constantly (stick shift cars only, no automatic guys!) as the cars, carts, bicycles, buses and trucks transporting people (called camiones) share the road equally!!! You will see also many pedestrians who are very aware of the danger and do not have the right of way, they get off the road very quickly, I would say. However, Bicycle and coche do not bulge and you have to slow down or come to a complete stop if there is any oncoming traffic. The roads are very busy especially from 7 to 1 pm, then again later around 4-5pm. All of this makes any trip quite a long one!!! I forgot to mention that on the main road from Holguin to Gibara, there are bus stops every half km!!!!
Driving in a big city like Holguin (4th largest city of Cuba) is a challenge since there are no sign, street names or minimal directions anywhere. We downloaded an app called “Galileo Pro” and bought the cuba area (a fellow cruiser, Scott, advised us on this life saver tool!!!) and it was wonderful, even showing the direction of the street’s traffic and pedestrian streets. I also tried two other app that I did not find as helpful (not showing the street traffic directions and not as accurate for one of them) called “Cuba” and “Cuba offline”.
A good place to park your car in the city is around the public squares (during daytime, there is no problem). At night, we were told to hire somebody to sit in your car all night ( around 2CUC/night) or to park your car in a closed garage offered in some casa particular. Your car will not disappear but you will find the rented car without mirrors or hubcaps in the morning! Day or night, never leave anything in your car. Cuba is pretty much murder and rape safe but petty crime is rampant and we unfortunately have some fellow cruisers who experienced it (slashing and taking their backpack with money, camera and iPad, not fun!!!).
A good way to travel long distances is to use those buses with A/C , toilet , etc. It takes 12 hours from Holguin to Havana for example and you avoid the stress!!!
We ended up renting a 4X4 jeep for 4 days as we were interested in seeing the small mountain villages and not as tourism traveled side roads (the GPS app “Galileo” was indispensable to accomplish this!).
Everything seems to slow down in the middle of the day due to the heat, I guess, there are only a few places (hotels) and stores (tiendas) that have A/C.