How to get internet in Cuba

The tip that we would like to share in this article is about how to get internet in Cuba. Since people generally in most of parts of the world are so accustomed to be connected 24/7, Cuba is a great place to detox from the internet. The internet here is very slow and expensive (1 CUC per hour). So forget about downloading any books or heavy apps while in Cuba and plan this ahead if you need. For instance, if you would like to have a map of Cuba, we recommend to download an off-line map such as maps.me. It’s best to do this before arriving to Cuba. Also, there is an off-line app called Cuba-Junky that’s the “yellow pages” of restaurants and guest houses in Cuba. Very handy if you haven’t planned your accommodation beforehand. Online maps or any other apps that work only online will be useless here.

In order to get online, you need to buy an internet card (1 CUC per hour) at the state owned telecommunication office called Etecsa. If you want to avoid queues, and this happens often, there are guys selling in the streets for a little bit more expensive. When you turn on the wifi on your cellphone, a login page for Etecsa will show up on your screen. After typing in the codes on the internet card, you can go online. A word of advisory that the process to log in could be slow, since the log in page doesn't always show up instantly or at all.

You can get online either in hotels, some guest houses or wifi hotspots. The big cities as La Habana has a lot of wifi hotspots throughout the whole city center. A small town like Trinidad has three. Normally the internet is very unreliable and slow in the guesthouses as well, so the wifi hotspots would be the better option.

So, remember, Cuba is the place to be for the digital detoxification!