Time Out Havana Guide 2004, a Comprehensive and Challenging Look into Cuba. A Real Tourist Best Friend in the Island

A new guidebook on Cuba is on the shelves of many libraries in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and many other English-speaking countries: Time Out Havana Guide 2004, a comprehensive and easy reading and a friendly companion for any tourist who wants to explore Cuba’s capital and beyond.

In its second edition, Time Out Havana Guide and the Best of Cuba provides a challenging presentation of Cuban politics, cuisine, music and dance, culture and arts, sports and fitness, the ongoing restoration program, gay life and some ravishing destinations and resorts in a country which by its tropical setting, rebel politics and nostalgic appeal, exerts a curious fascination on the outside world.

Edited by Time Out Inc., a London-based publishing house, the guidebook delves deep into the past, present – and the elusive future – of this often enigmatic country.

It performs a careful dissection of Havana’s legendary music scene, from locals’ hideouts to top venues, and includes a glossary of Cuban music terminology.

On music, for instance, a new feature on hip hop introduces you to Cuba’s fastest-growing, but barely recorded, music genre, discussing how ‘the US blockade has hindered the formation of the necessary infrastructure to record the fruits of the rap scene’ and the way that ‘the fresh, raw sound of Cuban hip hop has also been nurtured by its isolation’.

Sightseeing reviews keep you up-to-date with high-profile restoration work (for example, the Museo de Bellas Artes, which opened in 2001), as well as little-known spruced-up gems, while a new feature explains how the painstaking restoration work is proving to be financially sustainable, its editor Ismay Atkins wrote for its recent presentation in London.

Time Out Havana features a brand new chapter on Galleries, in which the editing and writing staff hand-pick the capital’s best galleries and private studios, and include essential advice on getting art out of the country in accordance with Cuban regulations.

So it does with Cuban cuisine: Since the growth of tourism, the government has poured resources into opening more adventurous, and pricier, restaurants to generate dollars. Some hit, some miss and many just do the job – our restaurant critics cut through the official blurb to give you a critical, incisive account of many of them.

The guidebook, too, lists selected easy itineraries for combining a trip to Havana with a taste of the rest of the country, taking in creamy beaches, mountains, colonial towns in the Central Provinces and Cuba’s second city, Santiago de Cuba. “Our Beyond Havana chapters feature advice on how to avoid the pitfalls of long-distance travel in Cuba, as well as critical surveys of sightseeing, restaurants and hotels in each area,” Ms Atkins assures.