Cuba
The largest island in the Caribbean at 750 miles long, Cuba stretches out like a crocodile dozing on the turquoise sea. Time seems to have stopped here: colonial facades in pastel tones bleached by the salt air, Cadillacs from another era, horses and bicycles, people playing dominoes on their front steps at the end of the day. This country full of contradictions, dazzling and decaying all at once, is like nowhere else, and you’ll cross its path through my journals, somewhere from North America to Costa Rica.
It all starts in Havana, a movie set caught between ruin and radiant beauty. You walk the Malecón, a 5-mile seafront where waves burst against the parapet, before losing yourself in Centro Habana: laundry drying on balconies, the sounds of salsa and son drifting from windows, would-be mechanics tinkering with an old máquina. Farther on, the Capitolio Nacional and the Gran Teatro raise their splendor at the capital’s kilometer zero.
Beyond that, Trinidad and its UNESCO-listed colonial center make it feel as if time froze back in the days of the conquistadors. Then you head for the Zapata Peninsula, the largest swamp in the Caribbean, where pink flamingos rise over the Salinas de Brito into a sky set ablaze — a sight that leaves you speechless. And finally the Viñales valley with its mogotes, those limestone hills carved by time, where the guajiros still grow the world’s most prized tobacco, riding caballos between the sugarcane fields.
Stories and tips from my travels in Cuba
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CubaWith Time, Everything goes away…
Havana, a last dive into Cuban culture… The colonial capital is a movie set lying somewhere between decay and sparkling beauty! With time… / With time everything goes its way / Even the dearest of memories…, sung by French singer Léo Ferré. Who would not dream of shooting a movie in the streets of Havana,…
38 11 min read -
CubaThe Old Good Days
“Muchos recuerdan los viejos tiempos…” (Let’s recall the old good days) Trinidad is a town full of history, not revolutionary history but architectural. It is located in the province of Sanctis Spiritus in central Cuba from about 225 miles from Havana and was founded in 1514 by Spanish conquistadors ! Trinidad is renowned for its…
31 9 min read -
CubaTake the Time
Bienvenidos in the Ciénaga de Zapata reserve (Ciénaga meaning swamps), the largest and most important wetland in the Caribbean located about 100 miles Southeast of Havana in the province of Matanzas. The Zapata Peninsula includes the Ciénaga de Zapata Biosphere Reserve established in 2000 as a UNESCO site and the Ciénaga de Zapata National Park.…
32 7 min read -
CubaGive it some Time
You have surely heard of the famous Bermuda triangle where everything disappears ? Well, in Cuba there is the tabacco triangle where everything disappears into smoke… ” Ne me contar la Historia del tabaco”, which may be translated as “Do not tell me nonsense”. In the region of Vuelta Abajo, in the westernmost corner of…
28 9 min read -
CubaO Time! Pause in your flight
When we talk about Cuba, the first images that come to mind make our head spin and fill us with desire: Salsa, cigar and mojitos, a Cadillac from another time, colonial architecture, lobsters, white sandy beaches, and colorful fish. However, Cuba is much more than all this… The country has a strong and unique identity,…
28 7 min read
Frequently asked questions about traveling in Cuba
Five stories from an island where time is the real captain, from Havana to the Zapata marshes: here are the questions I get asked most often about Cuba. I answer them with what I saw there, daiquiri included.
What should you see first when visiting Havana?
Habana Vieja, a Unesco-listed old town, walks like a film set caught between decay and dazzling beauty. My essentials: the Malecón and its 8 kilometres of seafront, the El Morro fortress built between 1589 and 1630, the Capitolio of 1929 and the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, topped since 1632 by the Giraldilla, the weathervane reproduced on Havana Club bottles. In Hemingway’s footsteps, El Floridita, birthplace of the daiquiri, still serves his sugar-free “Papá Doble”, and the Ambos Mundos hotel keeps room 511 as it was. My full city wander is in my last Havana stroll. The city also opens my American escapades.
Where can you watch flamingos and birds in Cuba?
In the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest marsh in the Caribbean, about 160 kilometres south-east of Havana. A biosphere reserve since 2000, it shelters more than 190 bird species, and the Las Salinas outing, 350 km² of lagoons within a 5,000 km² park, gave me the full show: flights of flamingos, great egrets with orange bills, tricoloured herons and roseate spoonbills about 80 centimetres tall, all under a purple sunset that hardly looked real. A local guide who knows every track makes all the difference. My feathered safari is told in my day in the Zapata marshes. The day has its place among my wildlife watching journals.
How can you explore Cuban tobacco culture on site?
Head west, to the tobacco triangle of Vuelta Abajo and the Viñales valley, Unesco listed since 1999. At Finca del Piñar, Alejandro Robaina’s plantation, I saw wrapper leaves growing under 10 hectares of white veils and learned how the five leaf types of a habano come together; between hand-picking, some 50 days of drying and successive fermentations, the finest leaves wait up to five years in barrels. In Viñales, tobacco is still worked with ox teams, “el tractor natural”, at the foot of the mogotes. The cigar trail runs through my tobacco triangle visit. The valley also runs through my horseback ride in Viñales.
Why should you visit Trinidad and the Los Ingenios valley?
Because the town founded in 1514, Unesco listed since 1988, comes with a valley that tells the other side of the sugar story. Around the Plaza Mayor, I climbed the panoramic bell tower of the Convento de San Francisco and stepped into Cuba’s only neo-Gothic church; 40 kilometres away, the Valle de Los Ingenios counted more than 60 sugar mills and 11,000 slaves until 1850, under the 43.5-metre Manacas-Iznaga tower raised in 1816. And the neighbouring Sierra del Escambray hides the 62-metre waterfall of Salto del Caburní. It is all in my old stones of Trinidad.
Where can you swim and snorkel while in Cuba?
My two favourites: the Bay of Pigs and Cayo Levisa, two radically different moods. Between Playa Larga and Playa Girón, the Cueva de los Peces is a 70-metre-deep cenote linked to the sea by underground caves, and the nearby lagoon of Caleta Buena lines up parrotfish and limestone rocks as sharp as razors. To the north-west, in the Los Colorados archipelago, a half-hour boat ride from Palma Rubia leads to Cayo Levisa, its “cushion” sea stars and its mangrove. The dive itself is told in my Bay of Pigs cenotes. Cayo Levisa has its place among my favourite island stops.
The countries of North and Central America I have travelled
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Costa Rica
Between volcanoes and cloud forests, Costa Rica packs in 5% of the planet's biodiversity. I walked it on tiptoe, eyes wide open, through a tropical Noah's Ark of its own. -
Eastern USA
From the thundering water at Niagara Falls to the pink granite shores of Maine, the American East led me to where the mountains meet the sea and nothing sounds but the open water. -
Midwest USA
From the Missouri River to the vast shores of Lake Michigan, the Midwest unfurls free-roaming bison, the chiseled crests of the Badlands, and sunsets over the Great Lakes. A different America. -
Southern USA
From the Mississippi to the Florida Keys, the American South swings Cajun, slips through the bayous, and hops across the ocean. A brew of music, alligators, and bewitching ease. -
Western USA
From the Pacific Coast to gypsum deserts, the American West unspools its mineral wonders. I walked there with no trail markers, alone among the hoodoos, savoring a rare silence.
Cuba is an island where time moves to its own rhythm. A place where colours and landscapes come together to create a truly unique atmosphere.
From the limestone valleys of Viñales to the colorful streets of Trinidad, from white-sand beaches to lagoons inhabited by flamingos, every landscape reveals its own palette of colours and its own rhythm.
What moves me most is the feeling that time flows differently here. Villages seem to have preserved their authenticity, vintage cars tell stories from another era and the reflections of the Caribbean Sea create an atmosphere that invites me to slow down and simply take in the moment.
Photography has taught me to appreciate these simple moments when everything seems perfectly aligned. A quiet street in the morning light, an almost deserted beach or the graceful flight of flamingos become memories that stay with me long after the journey has ended.
With camera in hand, I invite you to discover an authentic Cuba, where every landscape, every colour and every light tells a story.
Every journey is far more than a destination. It is a collection of encounters, light and emotions that I am delighted to share through my photographs and travel stories.
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