Experience Cuba… the Rickshaw Way!

Cuba can be an exciting and confusing place, so it’s good to know that our team have been there. Even our Director Vicky has been horse riding through the tobacco hills and spent a few nights in a casa particular. Our Cuba Team are bursting with travel experiences and tips to share with you. Unlike most travel companies, they don’t work on a commission basis which means they’ll always help you find what truly suits you best.

When you travel with Rickshaw Travel all you need to worry about it choosing what kind of experiences you’d like to do, and we do all the rest. Piece together your own itinerary from our Cuba bite-sized trips or choose from our ready-made itineraries and create your own Cuban adventure with our expertise and support. Our trips will take you away from the tourist masses so that you can experience what Cuba really has to offer, avoiding huge hotel chains and enjoying the local charm. We’ll pre-book your transport, accommodation and visa arrangements saving you time, hassle and a trip to the Cuban embassy!

For us, Meaningful Travel is all about having experiences which benefit you and the destination you’re visiting. Experiences that give you a unique insight into the local culture whilst the local community can benefit from the extra income generated by tourism. Why not explore the coffee fields of Las Terrazas and help the local community continue their preservation of this unique biosphere while seeing this idyllic natural habitat? Or, spend the night in a Trinidad casa particular and put money directly into the pockets of the local people – it doesn’t get more authentic than that!

When you book with us you’ll travel independently with 24/7 support from our Cuban local partners on the ground. In a country where things can go awry more often than you would expect, that’s pretty awesome! Our kind and friendly English-speaking colleagues will look after you throughout your trip, ensuring you have a wonderful experience visiting this unique and fascinating country.

We arrange your stay at local casas particulares which are similar to B&Bs in the UK. Staying at a casa offers warm welcomes, delicious home-cooked meals and fantastic hospitality – the best way to experience the real Cuba. Casas also generate employment for local people, as well as lowering the impact tourism has on local culture. Booking a casa with us (we have three different categories) means you’ll be staying in casas that are inspected, regulated and quality-checked. If you want to know more about the benefits of staying in casas please read our blog post Mi Casa, Tu Casa | 15 reasons to stay in a Cuba casa particular.

In each of our destinations we support a local project and give you the option to make a small donation when you book your trip with us. As music is such an important part of Cuban culture, we’ve chosen to support Music Fund for Cuba, a UK based charity that provides much needed support and equipment for children and Cuban musicians, dancers and artists through the island.

As a small, independent company we really do listen to the feedback from our customers (fondly known as our Rickshaw Ramblers). Here’s one of our latest reviews:

“…Our drivers were always ready and waiting at each pick-up point on time. We stayed in a variety of different Casa Particulares which gave us a great sense of the different kinds of accommodation which were great and had their own unique look and feel. The hosts were always ready for us and couldn’t have been nicer.

We don’t normally go with tour guides but the tours were included in the itinerary and we wanted to get to know a bit more about the places we were visiting. They really hit the mark with the tours they had set up. No huge group tours, individual tours or four of us at most and the guides delivered the type of information we wanted. Not just history of some buildings but much more about how the culture and politics had shaped the landscape and the lives of the people in the areas we visited. Rickshaw were competitive with their pricing and I would say that the service at every location, and the quality of the tours and accommodation, was very good value. We met another couple on one of our tours who had also booked through Rickshaw and they were delighted with how their holiday was turning out too. You could do a lot worse than book through Rickshaw” — F. Paterson toured Cuba with Rickshaw Travel in July 2017