Havana Warnings Or Dangers Tips by Jefie Top 5 Page for this destination

Stick to CUC!!

Tricking tourists into exchanging CUC for Cuban pesos is one of the biggest scams in Havana. The worst place for this kind of scam is in the Vedado area, but it also happens in La Habana Vieja. If you're walking up the Paseo, young men will constantly come up to you and start chatting, trying to make friends with you, perhaps saying that they work at your hotel and have seen you arrive the night before. Now, if it's your first day in Cuba, you'll of course be delighted to speak a bit of Spanish and exchange with local people. After a while, they might slip into the conversation that you should be thinking about getting some Central pesos, that you would be getting a much better deal than with CUC. They might even offer to take you to a bank where a friend works, and put some added pressure by saying that you need to go straight away as he's taking the next week off.

To sum it all up, whatever you do, stick to CUC! They only place where you should be exchanging money is at an official Casa de Cambio. Central pesos are in fact Cuban pesos and although you might be able to buy an ice cream cone with them, that's about as far as they will take you. After talking to a few of these young men, we realized that there was a code they were using to see whether someone had already tried to trick you into changing money and it's the "salsa festival" (mind you, they might change it from time to time). But once we figured that out, every time someone would walk up to us we would tell him we already knew about the salsa festival and they would instantly disappear. Which is kind of sad because we really wanted to meet some local people, but it's still better than being taken for a fool.

Website: http://www.cuba-junky.com/cuba/crime.html

So I got mugged in Havana...

It was my first time traveling to Cuba and I must admit that I wasn't careful enough. Coming back from la Casa natal de Jose Marti, someone caught up with me from behind, ripped off my shoulder strap and ran away with my purse. Some people saw us running after the thief and next thing you know, there were about 15 police cars, 50 policemen and 2 boats looking for him. Sure enough they found him after about 30 minutes and found my purse as well, with almost nothing missing. The police then took me to the hospital to make sure I was fine and then to the police station. They were incredibly nice, and even funny!

So, my advice to first time travelers would be to leave your purse and wallet behind (in a safe, preferably). After all, you only need cash to get around Havana so just bring a small wallet which you can fit into your pockets. And if you want to avoid trouble all together, just stick to the more touristy areas - there are enough policemen there to ensure that nothing will happen to you.

Website: http://www.cuba-junky.com/cuba/crime.html