The latest stop on the route. Testing how nomad coding holds up on the island: first notes coming very soon.
Cuba is the latest stop on the route, being evaluated first-hand for nomad coding: internet, cost of living, long-stay housing, power reliability, walkability and work spaces.
Notes and the full guide will land here as the evaluation progresses: no secondhand data, only what I actually live and measure.
Guide du pays
Entrée et visas
Cuba moved to a mandatory e-visa in mid-2025 and the paperwork itself is simple; the side effect on future US travel is the part most people miss.
The e-visa has been mandatory for nearly all tourists since July 1, 2025, applied for online at evisacuba.cu; physical tourist cards were only valid through the end of 2025 as a transition. It costs roughly US$25–100 depending on nationality and channel, processes in 2–5 business days, and is single entry for stays of up to 90 days, extendable once for another 90. On paper that is comfortable for one- and two-month stays, though those durations come from 2025 sources: verify the stamped duration on arrival. The D’Viajeros form (health, customs and immigration in one) is also mandatory, filed online in the days before arrival; the e-visa is linked to its QR code.
The big caveat is for anyone who uses the US Visa Waiver Program: any visit to Cuba on or after January 12, 2021 makes you ineligible for ESTA: existing ESTAs get revoked and future US trips require a B visa. Cuba remains on the US State Sponsor of Terrorism list as of 2026, so the rule stands.
Argent
Money in Cuba is three parallel realities: a collapsing peso, creeping dollarization, and an official exchange rate that silently costs you most of your money if you use it.
Plan the whole stay’s budget in physical cash: euros or dollars. US-issued cards don’t work anywhere because of the embargo; non-US Visa and Mastercard work in theory at some ATMs and hotels, but they pay out CUP at the punishing official rate plus fees; emergency use only. The rate that matters is the informal street one: around 380 CUP per dollar in mid-2025 and roughly 500–525 as of early 2026, against a personal official rate long fixed at 120 (a new floating official rate appeared in December 2025 around 410). El Toque publishes the daily informal reference; check it, because the gap between rates is where roughly three quarters of your money can vanish.
The reality on the ground: exchange informally through trusted people (casa particular hosts do this as standard), avoid the airport CADECA except for small amounts, and note that many private businesses now price and accept USD or EUR cash directly. There is also the Clásica prepaid dollar card (issued by Fincimex: non-personalized, available to foreigners, recharged with cash), accepted in state dollar stores and for fuel; useful, not essential. Tipping runs about 10% in private restaurants, and small tips in CUP or USD are customary and genuinely meaningful.
Connectivité
Connectivity is a state monopoly (ETECSA) and, together with power, one of the island’s two big constraints for remote work.
ETECSA’s main site is aimed at locals; as a foreigner you are effectively routed to suenacuba.com, ETECSA’s channel for visitors. The practical route: buy the Cubacel Tur tourist SIM on the site from abroad before flying (about US$25: 2.5 GB plus 20 minutes and 20 SMS, valid 30 days) and collect it on arrival, where the airport usually has several Cubacel/ETECSA counters and the staff help you get it working. If you didn’t buy ahead, you can do it on the spot: the airport provides a wifi specifically so you can reach the site and buy it there and then. Payment is always in dollars by credit card, at the prices published on the site (local currency is not accepted for this), and later top-ups go through the same site: packs include bigger bundles (mine was 10 GB) and each recharge extends the service validity. One tip I only learned when a top-up SMS mentioned it: inserting a new SIM resets your phone’s own data counter, so to see how much you actually have left, dial *222*887# (it appears to work only on the Cubacel Tur SIM).
A regular SIM runs about 1,000 CUP. Since the May 30, 2025 tariff change, peso top-ups are capped at 360 CUP a month and extra data is priced near dollar levels (~US$25 for extra gigabytes). In practice, visitors pay for data in hard currency.
ETECSA sells no eSIM. International eSIMs work only via roaming: GigSky and GlobaleSIM are verified options, with a 30-day unlimited plan around US$67 as of mid-2025. Note that Holafly and Airalo do not cover Cuba. Speeds are among the world’s worst: average mobile around 3–4 Mbps, 3G/4G in cities, worse during blackouts. Wifi means hotel and park hotspots via Nauta cards, or Nauta Hogar ADSL in homes (~8–10 Mbps at best, patchy). A casa with working Nauta Hogar is gold. Shutdowns are a real risk: the July 2021 protests brought a roughly 72-hour nationwide cut plus platform blocks, and targeted disruptions recur (NetBlocks tracks them).
A VPN is effectively mandatory, for US-company geo-blocks and local blocks alike, but not every VPN works from Cuba: VPNs headquartered in the US often fail here (embargo compliance). I learned this the hard way, with a US-based VPN installed abroad that seemed fine and then failed on arrival. Install a VPN based outside the US before flying: Proton VPN (Swiss) is verified working well from the island. Test at least two before arrival; setting them up from inside Cuba is not something to count on.
Se déplacer
From Havana airport into the city, the official taxi runs US$25–35 in cash (USD or EUR); agree the fare first, meters aren’t used in practice. Inside Havana, La Nave (iOS, Android) works as the Cuban Uber: cash-based with an upfront fare estimate, Havana only, and registration works with European phone numbers but not US ones. City taxis between neighborhoods run about US$5–15, and colectivos or almendrones, the shared classic cars on fixed routes, are the cheap local option.
Between cities, Viazul buses connect the island (Havana–Viñales around US$18); book online with a non-US card, and book early because departures sell out days ahead. The booking domain has changed before, so verify the current one. Private intercity colectivos rival Viazul on price and comfort. Car rental is state-run only, expensive and scarce, with fuel queues on top; rarely worth it.
Coût et logement longue durée
The casa particular is the long-stay institution, and the monthly cash negotiation is where Cuba gets genuinely cheap. Nightly tourist rates run about US$20–60, and hosts typically handle laundry, meals, currency exchange and fixing whatever breaks. Negotiated by the month, a one-bedroom in Havana lands around US$250–600 (central Vedado and Habana Vieja at the upper end; modern or luxury places from US$1,000).
Airbnb operates in Cuba with licensed casas and works well for the first week or two; after that, the standard play is negotiating directly in cash for the month. The filter that matters more than price: generator, solar or battery backup, Nauta Hogar or strong 4G, and a water tank (tanque or cisterna). Ask about all of it explicitly before committing. A realistic all-in month runs about US$800–2,000 depending on comfort level and how well you handle the exchange rate.
Travel medical insurance has been mandatory for entry since 2010 and may be checked on arrival; US policies are generally not accepted, and travelers without valid coverage can buy an Asistur policy at the airport. Foreigners are treated at international clinics (clínicas internacionales) and pay out of pocket, claiming reimbursement later: insurers can’t transfer funds into Cuba.
Pharmacies are chronically empty: bring every medication for the whole stay, including basics. The US keeps Cuba at a Level 2 travel advisory (crime plus the unreliable power grid). Violent crime is low for the region though rising; the practical risks are pickpocketing, bag-snatching, overcharging and jineteros, the hustlers of the tourist zones. And don’t drink the tap water: bottled or filtered only.
November through April is the dry season and the best window: 25–30°C, low humidity, and peak pricing. May through October brings 32–35°C with heavy humidity and short, intense downpours, and it’s when blackouts bite hardest as air-conditioning demand peaks. Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 with an August–October peak; for a stay that depends on power and connectivity, that’s the stretch to avoid. March to mid-April is the sweet spot.
There is essentially no nomad scene in Cuba, and for this site’s audience the decisive fact isn’t the scene, it’s the service-blocking.
The community is tiny: one notable coworking space (Amarillo Coworking, in Havana’s Vedado), otherwise casas, hotel lobbies and hotspot cafés, with a mix of expats and resilient local developers. The timezone is a genuine asset: America/Havana matches the US East Coast and sits six hours behind Central Europe: excellent overlap both ways.
Now the critical part, straight: because of the US embargo, many US tech companies block Cuban IPs (the blocks come from the companies, not from Cuba). Google Cloud, Google Developers, Google Play and Google One are blocked (Search, Gmail and Maps work). AWS isn’t available; GitLab, Docker Hub, Zoom, PayPal, Stripe, Adobe and Oracle/Java downloads are blocked, and npm is partially restricted (the community-maintained cuban-restricted list tracks the blocks). GitHub is the big exception, generally available to developers in Cuba under its trade-controls policy. And the one that matters most here: OpenAI and Anthropic do not serve Cuba. Claude-, ChatGPT- and Copilot-class tools reach the island only through a VPN, which breaches those services’ terms and carries a real account-suspension risk.
The standard workaround is a paid VPN running 24/7, with accounts, billing and at least one backup VPN set up before flying. The honest verdict: a fascinating base for offline-tolerant work; AI-dependent coding runs on a VPN lifeline over roughly 4 Mbps with daily power cuts. Plan for exactly that, or pick another island.
Essentiels pratiques
Power is the number-one practical constraint. The grid suffered five nationwide collapses between October 2024 and September 2025, driven by fuel shortages and decades-old plants. Outside Havana, daily scheduled outages of 8–16 hours or more are normal; Havana is relatively protected but has still seen cuts of up to about 12 hours a day. The consequences are direct: book only accommodation with generator, solar panels or battery backup (EcoFlow-style stations are common in the better casas); bring a surge-protected power strip and big power banks; and expect blackouts to also take down mobile towers and water pumps. Provincial electricity companies publish the daily outage schedules, relayed through state media like Cubadebate.
There is a housing trick worth knowing: some zones have electrical priority because they sit near hospitals or facilities that need uninterrupted power, and homes there almost never lose electricity. A few Airbnb listings mention it in the description. It takes some digging, but it is findable if you search ahead of time and ask hosts directly through the chat. I spent a full week in one of these and had zero problems with power or water.
Electricity itself is 110V and 220V coexisting at 60Hz, with type A/B plugs mostly and C/L in newer buildings: check every socket’s voltage before plugging in a laptop. The language is Spanish, with limited English outside tourism. And scarcity is the daily backdrop: bring all medication, toiletries, snacks and spare cables and chargers for the whole stay.
Destinations
Havana
First-hand notes from Havana, based in the Vedado area. More sections will land here as the evaluation moves forward.
Getting in from the airport
The affordable option is Viazul: their site sells an airport transfer into central Havana, dropping you in the Vedado area for about €10. The alternative is a taxi at the terminal, which runs $30 to $50 depending on how you negotiate. I paid $30, and there is usually some margin if you haggle a little.
Getting around the city
What actually works right now are the electric tricycles. Some run fixed shared routes and save you real money; others act as direct taxis and charge more. You find them on almost any busy central street, and if you are somewhere quieter, walking a few blocks to a more transited street is usually all it takes. As a reference, Vedado to Old Havana costs around 2,000 CUP, 2,500 at the very most. The golden rule before getting in: ask whether it goes to your area and how much it costs.
